Behind the podcast uncovering the stories of Oak Cliff
Photography by Yuvie Styles
Brothers Doug and Grant Klembara are Dallas natives who live in and love Oak Cliff. That’s why they decided to create the first Oak Cliff-centric podcast.
Hidden City is available on all streaming platforms and dives into the stories and people who make Oak Cliff, Oak Cliff.
The brothers grew up in East Dallas before leaving the area for college, but they later both found their way back to Dallas.
“All of our friends and all the people over there were mostly artists and stuff, and they were all just in Oak Cliff,” Doug says. “So I kept coming over here and seeing this place and loved it. We lived downtown for a while, but my wife and I ended up moving over here and haven’t left.”
“I think we just love the vibe, love the crossing of the river and being in your own place — it really feels different,” Grant says. “It’s just not Dallas, and because of that, it feels like a small town.”
The pair say they have wanted to do a podcast for a while, and something that always came naturally to them is their love for Oak Cliff.
The first official episode was released last September, but the duo first started recording episodes about four years ago.
“We had a makeshift podcast studio … and I think we got a couple of good recordings, but when it came to actually producing an episode, we just didn’t know what we were going to do,” Doug says. “We were eventually like, ‘Hey, we want to pick this back up.’ We met Jason, our producer, and he was kind of able to perform this miracle for us.”
Having a product that they are proud of means the world to the Klembara brothers, and they say they owe a lot of it to their team.
“There’s definitely a little bit of imposter syndrome,” Doug says. “I don’t think anyone knows how to do anything until they do it 150 times, but we are very OK with the idea that it may not be perfect. We just want to do it because it’s fun, and hopefully people enjoy it and we get a little bit better as we go.”
They decided to put some time and money into building a podcast studio in Wax Space.
“We love stories. We love telling stories. We love good stories in general,” Doug says. “There’s these little pieces of history that exist everywhere, and I get excited about the history side because I want to draw these stories out and tell them.”
Gayla Brooks was a recent guest who unpacked some of the rich history of Oak Cliff, from the postwar boom to the legacy of Stevie Ray Vaughan. She also shed light on lesser-known local figures, the impact of JFK’s assassination on the community and the long-lost hotspots that once defined the area, like Austin’s Barbecue, Wynnewood Theatre and the infamous drag on Hampton Road.
Additionally, the pair has had local figures such as Taylor Toynes of For Oak Cliff, a nonprofit with a mission to provide culturally responsive initiatives in South Oak Cliff to liberate the community from systemic oppression. Local restaurant owners such as Jimmy Contreras of Taco y Vino and Skye McDaniel of La Bodega have also joined the show. April Allen, president and CEO of Southern Gateway Park, and José Ralat, the Texas Monthly taco editor, round out some of the many guests that have made appearances on the weekly podcast.
“Part of the goal is to uncover stories,” Doug says. “It’s to highlight the person you may not have heard about yet, but they’re doing something really special that nobody really knows about yet. It’s also to meet the people who we all know and names we’ve all heard and learn their origin stories and how they started certain things. It’s just fun stories about Oak Cliff that are easy to listen to.”
The unabashed theme, Grant says, is being pro-Oak Cliff.
“We love the neighborhood, but we’re still bringing on people who are honest with the neighborhood and some of the darker history,” Grant says. “But genuinely, we’re fascinated.”
