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OAK CLIFF O C T O B E R 2 0 2 6 I A D V O C AT E M A G . C O M

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contents

OAK CLIFF ADVOCATE VOL.17 NO.10

OPENING REMARKS 4 From your Oak Cliff editor PROFILE 6 Sinister Strolls FEATURES 8 Fine Print curates global magazines 18 Our neighborhood’s independent bookstores DINING 12 Downtown horrorthemed coffee shop SPECIAL SECTION 14 Education guide BACKSTORY 23 Old Adamson is up for grabs

Lucky Dog Books offers used books, DVDs, CDs and more at the Jefferson Boulevard location. Read more on page 18. Photography by Lauren Allen.

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OPENING REMARKS

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The October print edition of the Oak Cliff Advocate is my favorite. Coming straight out of college, working on it as my first print with bylines last year, the education issue felt like the perfect way to start. And since making my home here in Oak Cliff, a literary theme for this year’s education edition feels perfect, too. There’s a reason we have an annual Oak Cliff Book Crawl. That The Writer’s Garret has found a home at Bishop Arts Theatre Center. That there are a plethora of book clubs and little free libraries all around our neighborhood. Oak Cliff is a hub for all things literature, and that’s what I wanted to explore for this October issue. In this edition, you’ ll hear from local bookstore owners on why Oak Cliff is the place to build community, discover the potential for the old Adamson campus and see what led to the magazines of Fine Print. You’ ll also ge t a chance to embrace spooky season learning about the upcoming Bishop Arts true crime tour from Sinister Strolls and see the horror-inspired coffee shop from a Winnetka Heights neighbor. I hope you enjoy this edition of the O a k C l i f f Ad v o c a t e . A n d i f y o u ’re s o inclined, let me know what book I s h o u l d p i ck u p o n my n e x t s t o p at a neighborhood bookshop. (My c urrent read is The Accomodation, and up next is The View from Somewhere. I’m on a nonfiction spree.)

D I ST R I B U T I O N / A D V E RT I S I N G 2 1 4 . 5 6 0 . 4 2 0 4 President/Editor-in-Chief: Jehadu Abshiro jabshiro@advocatemag.com Chief Operating Officer: Alessandra Quintero 786.838.5891 / aquintero@advocatemag.com ADVERTISING CONSULTANTS Frank McClendon 214.560.4215 / fmcclendon@advocatemag.com Catherine Pate 214.560.4201 / cpate@advocatemag.com John Lynch jlynch@advocatemag.com Caroline Dolan 214.560.4209 /cdolan@advocatemag.com Classified Manager: Prio Berger 214.292.0493 / pberger@advocatemag.com E D I TO R S :

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Victoria Hernandez vhernandez@advocatemag.com Syra Castillo scastillo@advocatemag.com Digital Editor: Cloi Bryan cbryan@advocatemag.com Chief Creative Officer: Jynnette Neal jneal@advocatemag.com Creative Director/Photographer: Lauren Allen lallen@advocatemag.com Contributors: Patti Vinson, Carol Toler, Hailey Smith, Alexander Kwapis, Emma Ruby Contributing photographers: Kathy Tran, Yuvie Styles, Victoria Gomez, Cat Iler, Jenni Cholula, Austin Gibbs, Ethan Good, Tanner Garza, Gabriel Cano, Brandon Gonzalez, Jessica Turner, Justin Schwartz

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Advocate (c) 2026 is published monthly in print and daily online by Advocate Media - Dallas Inc., a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation based in Dallas and first published in 1991. Contents of this print magazine may not be reproduced. Advertisers and advertising agencies assume liability for the content of all advertisements and sponsorships printed, and therefore assume responsibility for any and all claims against the Advocate. The Publisher reserves the right to accept or reject ay editorial, advertising or sponsorship material in print or online. Opinions set forth in Advocate publications are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the Publisher’s viewpoint. More than 180,000 people read Advocate publications in print each month; Advocate online publications receive more than 4 million pageviews monthly. Advertising rates and guidelines are available upon request. Advocate print and online publications are available free of charge throughout our neighborhoods, one print copy per reader. For information about supporting our non-profit mission of providing local news to neighborhood readers, please call 214-5604204 or email jabshiro@advocatemag.com

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p ro f i l e

The ghosts of Dallas’s past

Sinister Strolls says their tours uncover ‘the uncomfortable truths’ of our city Story by VICTORIA HERNANDEZ Photography by LAUREN ALLEN

t could be a sweltering summer night or the chill of winter in the air on a Saturday morning. Either way, it starts with Jesse Slaughter and Frank Romero standing below the spinning red neon lights of the Pegasus on South Lamar Street. The pair host true crime tours through Sinister Strolls, which shines a light on the dark history of Dallas, hitting on a variety of spots throughout two hours spent walking through Downtown. Depending on the audience, they also tie in a more paranormal side with the potential of vampires and poltergeists haunting historic sites. Some of the locations and stories include what Jackie Kennedy went through leading up to that fateful trip to Dallas as you stand in JFK Memorial, or staring at the very window of the Dallas County Courthouse that Allen Brooks was taken out of before his lynching. The two say that corporate tours in Dallas didn’t have all truths told. With Sinister Strolls, they highlight who these people were beyond one moment in history, how their lives and how these crimes have shaped the city “from almost a social justice frame point.” Sinister Strolls is based in Oak Cliff, with Slaughter living in the Wynnewood North area and Romero having roots in our neighborhood. Currently, they offer the Downtown Dallas and Pick Your Poison tours, which allows attendees to plan a custom true crime trek based on what intrigues them. This fall, they hope to launch their Bishop Arts tour.

Frank Romero (left) and Jesse Slaughter (right) used to be each other’s competition before joining forces to create Sinister Strolls.

6 oakcliff.advocatemag.com OCTOBER 2026

HOW DID YOU GET INTO TOURISM, AND WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO PURSUE THIS TYPE OF TOUR? SLAUGHTER: I fell into this work,

kind of honestly. I’ve always loved ghost stories and tours and things like that. I’m from New Orleans originally, so all of that’s kind of ingrained in our culture, but the reason I started this particular thing is I was part of a ghost tour in Dallas. We were hosting ghost tours, that’s how me and Frank met, actually. And when we started doing a little bit of deeper dives into the actual stories we were telling, we realized there was a lot of untruths, and then when we started actually doing the research and finding the real stories behind them, we realized that we had enough content to start our own tour telling the real story, not necessarily just the story that they want you to know. ROMERO: Well, it was rather just random, honestly, because I was a paranormal investigator from about 20 to 25 years old. It was like a short span. Really, really loved it. So, ghosts were already a big thing for me in the beginning. However, when I got into tourism, which is a bad economy, it was 2020, and you know, pandemic hit. Things were not moving as well as I like, and I just happened to see this thing on Indeed for the ghost tour, and I realized very, very quickly I had a knack for it. It was actually something that was quite fun for me. It wasn’t just a job. My biggest competitor, however, was Jesse. I mean, I couldn’t believe I finally got somebody on there that was like going toe-to-toe with me. It was really wonderful, but also brought out that competitive edge in me. And then one day we did a tour together. And in that, Sinister Strolls was born from that. HAVE YOU ALWAYS WORKED IN TOURISM? WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CORPORATE TOURISM AND WHAT YOU DO WITH SINISTER STROLLS? SLAUGHTER: I’ve always been a performer; I’ve always loved acting and everything else. I’ve never been great at it, but I have always been able to tell a story. So, what originally brought me to Dallas was architecture and interior design. I was an interior designer for years. During the pandemic, interior design got wild and crazy, and I felt like I burnt completely out. So, I was looking for an outlet, just to kind of do something after work to where I could exercise and be part of something, that’s when I found the ghost tours. But then we started realizing that the routes that were being planned and the stories that were being proposed and basically dictated to us were either all AI or they were written by people who lived in Boston. They don’t live in Dallas. I don’t know if they’ve ever even been to Dallas. We started realizing the homegrown aspect was not there. The respect for the people that came before, they were being turned into ghost stories. Their truths weren’t being told, and so we decided to step back. We need to talk about who these people were, how their lives and the crimes that happened against them shaped the face of our city. So we’re kind of coming through it from almost a social justice frame point. We want to make sure that their

stories and their truths are actually told; they’re not just a punchline and a ghost story. ROMERO: We feel ours is more, way, way more, historically accurate than what’s being written. We’re trying to show the empathy and just give them a voice, these victims that we’re talking about that they’ve never been given before. Yeah, they get a sign. That’s all well and good, but having that voice and somebody willing to speak out against it and getting people a different side of Dallas’s history is what we really wanted altogether. WITHOUT REVEALING TOO MUCH, HOW WOULD YOU SUMMARIZE YOUR CURRENT DOWNTOWN TOUR? SLAUGHTER: From the decades, I say from the very beginning because our first story starts at the dawn of the City of Dallas, when Dallas was officially incorporated as a city, and our most recent is 2016. We have stories from the ’70s. We have stories from the olden times, from the 1910s. As we approach each neighborhood in each part of Downtown at the current moment, we talk about what the neighborhood was like, what the lives of the people of Dallas were like at that point in time, and then how the crime either impacted or changed the way people saw Dallas at that point in time. It’s a history tour with true crime kind of thrown in, so if people don’t necessarily like the true crime aspect, they can come and learn a lot about our city. WHAT ABOUT WITH THE BISHOP ARTS TOUR YOU’RE DEVELOPING? SLAUGHTER: We’re still in the trial stages, if we want to do a pub crawl-type situation where we tell a couple of stories, how long it’s going to be. We’ve uncovered there are so many stories in and around the Bishop Arts area, particularly with the history of Jefferson being right there. It’s kind of hard to keep it under an hour. That was our original goal, if we can do it in under an hour, that would be great. And now, we’re looking at it going, “It’s probably going to be an hour and a half to two hours,” and then we’re trying to figure out, do we incorporate the liveliness of the neighborhood with the businesses and everything around us? Do we bring people into the ice cream shops and do we have an ice cream sundae stroll? We’re trying to figure out what we want to do to make this tour different. The neighborhood alone is different. It’s more homey, there’s more people. It feels a little bit more welcoming than Downtown. Downtown has a very sinister outlook to begin with. It kind of feels that the doors are closed to a lot of people, but the Bishop Arts area is a lot different. It’s sunnier, it’s more welcoming. There’s more people, so we’re trying to keep the vibe of the neighborhood within the tour.

T h i s i n t e r v i e w h a s b e e n e d i t e d fo r c l a r i t y and brevity. OCTOBER 2026 oakcliff.advocatemag.com

In August, Fine Print was one of six independent magazine shops nationwide to exclusively carry a cover of Cosmopolitan’s Fall Issue starring JENNIE, the main rapper and lead vocalist of K-pop group Blackpink.

8 oakcliff.advocatemag.com OCTOBER 2026

Crystal Cobb took her passion and made it Fine Print Story by VICTORIA HERNANDEZ Photography by YUVIE STYLES

olorful magazine covers pop off the stark white walls to the right. A gallery of posters, featuring a variety of art mediums to the left. Long tables take up the middle of the quaint space on Madison Avenue, showcasing a spread of global artists, photographers and writers. That quaint space is Fine Print, an independent magazine shop and poster gallery that brings the world to our neighborhood. Curated products highlight design, fashion, photography, art, music, film and travel through shiny, sleek pages and installation-sized prints. The shop is owned by Crystal Cobb, and although she works as a UX product designer and a University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) adjunct professor, she has had a lifelong ambition of opening her own storefront. “I would say I always wanted to open a shop, probably since I was like … I think the bug hit me when I was like 13, 14 years old. That’s a long time,” she says. Originally from North Texas, she spent a decade in Houston where she earned her first degree from Texas Southern University (a B.A. in health sciences that she calls her “parents’ degree”). Initially, she had her mind set on opening a sneaker shop, often finding herself as the only girl in her sneaker community.

“So when I was in college, I wanted to open a women’s-only sneaker shop, and my whole existence at that point was to open a store. And at that time, yes, it was a sneaker shop, but I would say it wasn’t happening. It was like I was always so close, and it just wasn’t happening,” Cobb says. When she returned to the Metroplex, Cobb decided to pursue a degree for herself, earning a bachelor’s in photography and visual communications from UTA in 2015. “Me and my dad used to just go around Dallas looking for retail spaces together,” Cobb says. “After he passed, I would say a lot of the creative stuff stopped.” At that point, she threw herself into a “corporate mindset,” working and climbing up as far as she could, becoming more “hyper-focused” on digital experience work in the tech industry than her off-the-clock passions. “I was working at Dell Technologies, and I had been working from home for so long, being remote for so long, and when I was at Dell, it kind of hit me like, ‘What if this is it?’ Like this is the last job, or what if this job lets me go and I didn’t even try?” After bringing up the hypothetical to her mom on a Friday and a friend on Saturday, Cobb was laid off by that next Monday. “It happened just that fast,” she says. Cobb was laid off for close to a year. “And in that time, I said, ‘I think whatever I feared the most, it’s already gone, so why not try the store?’” she says. She also transitioned her original sneaker shop dream into something more than “I’m going to be a cool kid with a sneaker shop.” “Basically, I started to think more so about community,” she says. “The magazine shop, I think, came from me returning to self, like getting back to getting to know myself again.” The magazine idea came from her youth, growing up with print editions focused on musicians of the time and covering her ’90s teen bedroom with tear-out posters on the ceiling and all the walls. “So that love probably came from when I was much, much younger, ripping the posters out of magazines and buying magazines just for the posters,” she says. As Cobb began writing her business plan for the magazine shop, unlike the chasing she felt with trying to create the sneaker shop, she says she could see everything clearly. “All of a sudden, answers were showing up, and then I went to a magazine conference. There’s a magazine shop in Europe called Mag Culture. It’s pretty big. It’s been around for a long OCTOBER 2026 oakcliff.advocatemag.com

Cobb says she has never looked at magazines as a trend. “It’s just something that will be continuous, and so having places for someone to go ... they’re necessary,” she says. “They’re needed.”

10 oakcliff.advocatemag.com OCTOBER 2026

time, and he was having a conference, and I took my little bit of money, and I said, ‘I’m going to New York, and I’m going to meet them, and I’m going to get my questions answered and figured it out.’ And I did.” When it came to finding her physical storefront, she was looking for places that had a history and a diverse community. Originally, Cobb planned to find a space in Deep Ellum. She recalls fond times with her dad, who was a teacher and artist in his pastime, going through the old graffiti tunnel together. She called it the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. “I felt like that was the best place (for the shop), but of course, Deep Ellum changed,” she says. “I sat there and watched it, and it was super empty at the time when I was trying to open there.” She came across the Madison Avenue spot in our neighborhood after a visit to La Reunion with a friend. “Someone was like, ‘Just drive down the street,’ and then there was a for-lease sign up, and that’s really how it went,” she says. “And then I thought about it because it was already in my business plan, in my pitch deck, certain specific areas. And so when I drove by, I saw it. It just looked right. It just felt right, and it made sense with the Texas Theatre, and then the other theater further down the street, further down Jefferson … I could just see it even growing to something that’s more for creatives than just, ‘OK, we just got some retail shops, here you go. Walk around the shop.’” Now more than a year into the shop, Fine Print consistently curates core titles, like Japan’s Popeye and glossies or monthlies such as Cosmopolitan, with the overall selection reaching about 200 titles. Cobb says highlights of the first year have been seeing people come out to the shop, the creation of regulars she knows by name, and what she’s learned, such as scaling her business rather than taking on too much at once. She plans to continue to grow in terms of events and programming as the shop becomes more established. “I want this to continue, and I want this to last. … I would love for it to be around for a really long time,” Cobb says, “and so I have to love it and care about it enough to say, ‘I’m going to make sure that this lasts a long time for this community.’”

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fo o d

A SCARY GOOD BREW A Downtown coffee shop offered a Winnetka Heights man the chance to merge his passions for horror & caffeine Story by EMMA RUBY | Photography by JUSTIN SCHWARTZ

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Pastries available at Deep Cuts Coffee include a loaf Cutline + Photography by sentence. No photo credit if byline. ($2.50), cinnamon roll ($2.50), cake pop ($3.50) and a berry muffin ($4).

ADAM JOHNSON WATCHES AS A G ROU P O F P R E P PY D OW N TOW N DA L L AS COWO R K E RS A P P ROAC H ES H I S CO F F E E S H O P. Just before the door, a woman takes a startled step backwards, her eyes wide. Her friends begin to laugh as she shakes her head and insists that she won’t be able to go inside. She asks if they’ll order for her, then retreats around the corner out of the eyesight of the Chucky doll that sits on prominent display on the coffee shop’s counter. “He isn’t real,” Johnson thinks to himself, amused by the reaction. Typically, the horror movie-themed cafe inspires more awe than terror in patrons, he says. Still, he’s sympathetic to the near-universal experience of watching slasher flick Child’s Play at too young an age and being traumatized for life by the franchise’s dollsized serial killing star. Johnson, a Winnetka Heights resident, launched Deep Cuts Coffee in 2024. The shop is nestled in the Downtown Dallas sky bridge at Pacific Place, and a hodgepodge of adjoining residential buildings, hotels and business towers contribute to a steady stream of customers. Plenty of horror-obsessed individuals make their way to the shop, too, drawn in by the novelty of zombie-themed roasts, drink names that reference David Lynch characters

and Johnson’s personal collection of posters, T-shirts, VHS tapes, comics and figurines that decorate the store. “We get to be a bit more creative,” Johnson says. “It’s a good way to stand out. There’s not many horror-themed businesses in Dallas, much less (horror-themed) coffee shops. … The coffee community is great, the horror community is great, so we smashed those two things together.” Johnson’s appreciation for coffee goes deep. He manned barista counters across Dallas for 15 years before opening Deep Cuts, training at shops like Houndstooth and Cultivar. The job was a natural fit for him; he’s repelled by the corporate life, but eventually, he realized that “there’s not a lot of (upward) mobility as a barista.” So he dreamed of opening his own shop. Then, one day in 2024, Johnson’s wife, Jami, was walking through the skybridge attached to her Downtown job when she saw that the resident coffee shop was closing down. Johnson jumped at the chance to take over the space, and Deep Cuts Coffee was born. Deep Cuts’ beans are roasted by Cultivar, the East Dallas coffee shop whose Oak Cliff location Johnson manned before it shuttered during the pandemic. The roasts, like everything else, are on theme, with names like “Wake the Dead” and “Dead Tired.” John-

son says there are plans for Cultivar to begin roasting a Deep Cuts-exclusive cold brew for the shop, too. The shaken brown sugar espresso, Dead Tired ($6.85), is the most popular item on the menu, but Johnson’s pride and joy is a drink called the Laura Palmer ($5.50). The cold brew and lemonade concoction tends to “freak people out,” but the beverage is “all about balance,” Johnson says. The drink’s name is a double pun. While it pays homage to the tea and lemonade blend known as an Arnold Palmer, Johnson swapped out the first name to instead pay respects to the murdered small-town high school student whose death initiates the plot of the supernatural television series Twin Peaks. “That’s one of the ones (that people see) and they say, ‘Oh, I get that! I know what that is,’” Johnson says. Other signatures include the Monster Blood ($6.65) — an iced matcha suspiciously drizzled with strawberry puree — and the lavender honey latte dubbed The May Queen (starts at $6.35). While Deep Cuts Coffee observes a yearround spooky season, Halloween naturally lends itself to the shop’s vibe. Johnson unrolls a whole other menu of especially daring beverages for the holiday. The Witches Brew latte ($6.50-$7.50) is spiced with cayenne, while the Harvest Spice chai latte ($6.50-$7.50) is made with a housemade pumpkin syrup. Customer enthusiasm tends to spike in the weeks leading up to Halloween, Johnson says, and the holiday signals the shop’s “busy season.” Johnson attempts to further spookify the already heavily decorated shop for Halloween. (At home, he goes “all out” for the trick-ortreaters.) Last year, the shop sponsored a pop-up at Joe Bob’s Halloween Spooktacular at the Texas Theatre, and Johnson hopes to repeat the party again this year. In an ideal world, Johnson hopes to one day expand the shop to Oak Cliff. While he only moved to Winnetka Heights a year ago, he’s positive that it’s “the best neighborhood in Dallas.” Merging two of his passions together worked out before — why not add a third good thing to the mix? “I love being able to drink as much coffee as I want to,” Johnson says. “I’m just a nerd about this stuff in general.” Deep Cuts Coffee, 1910 Pacific Ave., Unit 2060, FL 2, 214.484.6098 OCTOBER 2026 oakcliff.advocatemag.com

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THE 5 INDIES The Dallas ‘literary hub’ has a concentration in Oak Cliff Story by VICTORIA HERNANDEZ Photography by LAUREN ALLEN

THE WILD DETECTIVES

hen Whose Books Neighborhood Bookstore owners Claudia and John Vega were growing up in Oak Cliff, they both recall going north of the Trinity River to buy their books. “We didn’t have access to a bookstore like this in our neighborhood,” Claudia Vega says while sitting in the lounge of the West Davis Street shop. “We were fortunate enough that our families really had the agency and took us to North Dallas or to the suburbs.” John Tilton, who has spent over half a century with Lucky Dog Books (originally founded as Mesquite’s Saturday Paperbacks in 1973), recalls a time when there was nowhere for our neighbors to take used books. The Oak Cliff location, which was first housed at 621 W. Davis St., has been on Jefferson for a decade. “I kind of wonder here, the psychology of the neighborhood, if there was so long a time where there were only a few (bookstores) … people just felt like, ‘Gosh, I don’t see any place to buy books. I don’t want to get rid of the ones I have,’” he says. In 2015, Deep Vellum Books owner Will Evans wrote in Literary Hub that “everything in the Dallas-Fort Worth literary scene today begins and ends at The Wild Detectives.” Since then, there have been up to four indie bookstores at a time just within Bishop Arts. The newest arrival to our neighborhood is Blush Bookstore, Dallas’s first romance bookshop, and though Pan-African Connection Bookstore & Resource Center had a brief stint in South Dallas from 2010-2015, it remains the longest-running bookstore with Oak Cliff origins. It’s clear Oak Cliff has become a hub for independent

18 oakcliff.advocatemag.com OCTOBER 2026

bookstores. But why is that? And can it last? BOOKSTORES’ BEGINNINGS When Akwete Tyehimba’s late husband, Bandele, wanted to open a bookshop, he had a specific vision. “He was someone who was always involved in different organizations dealing with Black culture and Pan-Africanism, so he really wanted to have a space people could come to and get information about Africa and kind of connect our identities and our history and our culture so people can have a stronger and more confident identity of who they are,” Tyehimba says. At that time, there was another Black bookstore in Oak Cliff, Black Images Book Bazaar, which was the oldest one of its kind in Texas before closing in 2006. “They were definitely the trailblazers, and then we came along to sort of give people just a little bit more history on Africa,” she says. “So that’s the main thing. But it was really his vision to have a space people could come to, organize, strategize and just kind of feel safe within themselves.” Pan-African Connection opened in 1989 on Jefferson and is now located in the Glendale Shopping Center. “We’ve changed locations about maybe four, five times really, but the majority, for 21 years of that, we were in Oak Cliff until we moved to South Dallas in 2010 for five years,” Tyehimba says. “Oak Cliff, at that time, the demographics were predominantly Black, so of course demographics have changed now to be almost half Latino, half Black, but it was a good space, very central location that no matter where Black people lived they would come

WHOSE BOOKS to Oak Cliff. Oak Cliff was a very established area where the majority of Black people lived, and that we could tap in, too.” Then, it was Lucky Dog Books in 2012. Tilton says he picked this area because “there was nobody here.” There was not a bookstore in this part of town, and I mean, we could have gone to some place like Carrollton or something,” he says. He adds that living in southeast Dallas, the space at Davis was “wonderful.” Javier García del Moral took inspiration from the Texas Theatre to start The Wild Detectives in 2014 with co-owner Paco Vique. They each moved to Dallas in the early 2000s. “My friend Paco and I used to go there just to hang out, and by having conversations with the people there, with the owners, that’s how they proposed we do a movie series, and all those things led to having the bookstore.” He notes the multi-purpose areas of our neighborhood, and Bishop Arts in particular, gave a similar feel to what you can find in Europe, with people living in the same area as where they work or hang out. “They usually behave differently with their environment, and those are things that are sometimes hard to pin down, but you can feel them,” García del Moral says, “and that sort of feeling is what we capture in Oak Cliff, and that’s why we decided to open up the bookstore in that area.”

LUCKY DOG BOOKS There’s also been recent growth in our indie scene. Whose Books opened in 2021 originally at Tyler Station with the launch of their nonprofit arm, Activating Reading Communities Organization (ARCO), a year later to help remove barriers to book access. Then the second (and now only) Blush opened in 2024. The Wild Detectives is now two bars and two venues, with the “Stories” location at the original Eighth Street address hosting fiction, poetry and literature in Spanish and the “Ideas” location, formerly Sketches of Spain, which opened in September to focus on history, philosophy, science, memoir, culture and the arts. THE BOOK BOOMS Booktok. Bookstagram. Book influencers are often taking over social media feeds. That is part of what inspired Jaclyn Wooten, owner of Blush, to get back into reading, ultimately leading to her career change. When she discovered the earlier days of the bookish social media space, she “started devouring” books with her new author discoveries and increased interest in the romance genre. “I have always loved reading, but I’ ll say that like a lot of people, there’s kind of that story about rediscovering your love of reading and not just reading, but reading fiction and a lot of it during the pandemic, during 2020,” she says. “It’s the era of hobbies at home and

Though our neighborhood at large has five independent bookstores, there are six different locations with the recent Wild Detectives expansion opening in September.

just having so much more time than I had previously, and I think a lot of people will always feel like they don’t have time to read. And this was really a time where that excuse just didn’t exist.” With her background in design and newfound passion, she was able to take a side gig making book-themed merchandise on Etsy and create the brand House of Jupiter, eventually launching her own indie bookstore. “I didn’t have the bookstore dream first. I think a lot of people who own bookstores will tell you, ‘I grew up thinking about this. I’ve always loved reading, and I’ve always wanted to.’ It was kind of the secondary thing because being an online business can be really lonely and isolating, and I just really wanted to feel some of that community that existed online in person,” Wooten says. Tyehimba described a similar boom that happened in the ’90s, specifically for Black bookstores focused on culture. “I mean, in Dallas, there were probably about five Black bookstores in existence, so it was a good time for Black bookstores,” she says. “There was just a resurgence of wanting to know your history and culture.” But with that rise of bookstores came a fall that was felt throughout the independent bookstore community. “There just used to be a zillion of them until OCTOBER 2026 oakcliff.advocatemag.com

PAN-AFRICAN CONNECTION

BLUSH BOOKSTORE

the internet came along. Not Amazon, but the internet itself was what people go out of business because they can’t pay it, which will be a bad really began to kick things for us,” Tilton says. “And cable TV then, of way to go if it does.” course, the little spate with e-books when that was really big for a little Even beyond the brick-and-mortars and unknowns of the future, Tilton while until it hit a happy medium of being something useful, but not notes that the literary scene is here. the entirety of the business.” NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY (OR CAN IT?) INDIE STRUGGLES “Well, one thing to credit over here, too, is that there have been Ironically to the talk of the book trends today, there was a time when a couple different community organizations that have really, I many thought their shop may disappear. And for good reason, from think, boosted the literary scene, so to speak,” he says. “And I’ ll evictions (which Pan-African suffered from in 2015) to a lack of lease use that term broadly. You know, their focus might have been renewals (which caused the move of Lucky Dog Books and the closure on more ‘ literar y stuff,’ but it just boosts the overall reading of Poet Books’s Bishop Arts location). There’s also the rise of the internet community, period.” and the marked-down prices from massive global companies. Tilton specifically highlights The Writer’s Garret and the events “Amazon, right? You can’t beat Amazon,” Tyehimba says. hosted at Apprentice Creative Space. It’s hard to stay afloat. Bookstore owners also have a goal to have more than just a Independent bookstores that work with new books have a different shopping experience for customers. model than a global company when it comes to pricing their books. They “They create third spaces. They’re much more than just a retail get their number directly from the publisher. store, right?” Claudia Vega says. “It is a community hub, but “We noticed lately that a lot of bookstores around the country are that takes a lot of partnerships and trust-building and really the starting to do posts that explain how narrow the profit margin is, how desire to see something like this succeed in your neighborhood.” hard it is for them to keep up with the increasing lease,” Claudia Vega Claudia Vega says she hopes it’s not just a trend with this rise says. “How many of them are facing closure because even though they of book interest back again. have consistent traffic, it doesn’t make enough to cover the increased Like Wooten mentioned, there’s a desire for community. García expenses that our economy is facing, and we’re seeing more and more del Moral says that he believes there will always be spaces like of those posted.” that, whether or not it is a bookstore. “It’s always hard to predict the future, especially nowadays “And book prices are going up, so the customer has to pay more if they with things changing so rapidly,” he says. “I’m almost 50 years go to an independent bookstore,” John Vega adds. Such significant price differences affect “the sustainability of running old. My generation, obviously, we already seek those places, and I a bookstore,” as Claudia Vega puts it. think there was a gap with the younger generation that was very Tilton says that his rent has increased drastically, with the current absorbed by the social media tools, and at some point, it was very rent “now 150% more.” hard for them to actually get out and find spaces to interact with “The store is generally on a much better footing. … We were frankly each other physically. But I think that the next generations are paying probably less than we should have paid before,” he says. “But, actually trying to reclaim that because they realize that there is a the amount, they’re really running an experiment to see just how much particular factor of the physical interaction that it can’t be repliwill the market bear, and the only way you find that out is by having cated in the digital world and that it brings peace to your mind.”

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BACK STORY

By VICTORIA HERNANDEZ

ANYONE WANT THE OLD ADAMSON?

aking on a historic renovation can cost a pretty penny. Especially if a building is not structurally sound. After a request for demolition of the former W.H. Adamson High School was put on pause in November 2025, and after an unsuccessful bidding process, the building is now up for grabs in another way. There’s currently a call for proposals on what to do with the building that has a deadline this month. Located at 201 E. Ninth St., the American Classical Revival style red-bricked building was built as Oak Cliff High School in 1915. Additions were later completed in 1919 and 1938. The campus was renamed in honor of William Hardin Adamson in 1935, who served as an area principal for 31 years up until his death that year. In 2009, Dallas ISD wanted to use over $48 million in school bond money to take down the old campus and build a modern campus. Alumni spoke out against this decision, with the support of Preservation Dallas. “This reconstruction will provide a clean, historically accurate image of the original building and provide the school district with a new facility with a stable, modern, supporting structure for a full lifetime of use,” Dallas ISD said in a statement to WFAA at the time. The Adamson Alumni Association moved ahead with efforts to earn a historic site designation from the Landmark Commission. As of 2011, the campus is an official City of Dallas Historic Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places. Since then, efforts have been made to keep

the campus in use for the district. In 2020, voters supported the bond program to provide resources for the historic restoration of the building. And plans were made to become a choice school focused on creative and digital arts, slated to open in fall 2024. However, the cost to refurbish the building as a school would be “north of $100 million, which is far too much to justify as a school building,” says Ben Mackey, who serves as a Dallas ISD Trustee for District 7 (which includes Adamson). There are also the structural issues. “One of the largest concerns with it is the facade of the building,” he says. “The front is not appropriately attached to the building, which is something that was a functional defect when it was built back in the early 1900s, but that would require quite a bit of restoration expertise to make sure that the facade stays fully attached to the building.” Last year, attempts were made for a demolition permit requested on Oct. 24, 2025 that was later withdrawn. The building was also up for bid, but received no proposals, Mackey says. Now, the district is calling for a new plan: seeking a redevelopment partner. “We’re trying to explore every possible option before even entertaining a conversation about what to do,” Mackey says. With this proposal call, there are more restrictions. It can’t just become a new business, but has to serve a public purpose and preserve the historic significance of the building. “I’m not familiar with a time in the time that I’ve been a trustee where we have done

a public gift. This would be the first one, to my memory, where we do this,” Mackey says. “It’s not unheard of.” Per the solicitation summary, Dallas ISD is seeking proposals from “qualified governmental entities, non-profit organizations, and Low-to-Moderate income affordable Housing Developers” to redevelop the former campus. This is done in accordance with Texas Education Code and Local Government Code. The goal is to identify “a qualified governmental entity, nonprofit organization affordable housing developer or other eligible organization that can: Preserve and rehabilitate the historic • structure. Place the property into productive use • serving a public purpose. Generate long-term community ben• efits. • Secure the necessary redevelopment and ongoing operations. • Ensure the long-term maintenance and stewardship of the historic asset. • Complete redevelopment within a reasonable and achievable timeline.” The completed proposals are due on Wednesday, Oct. 15 at 3 p.m. “We would want to do something to retain aspects of that building and the history of the building and turn it into a functional and usable space for Adamson,” Mackey says. “I think there are ways to do so that would honor the history and legacy of it, if we needed to, as well as create the space in a safe and functioning environment.” OCTOBER 2026 oakcliff.advocatemag.com

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1147windomere.daveperrymiller.com

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