Pulse

{ THE ARTS }

Dr. Edmund Pillsbury first comes off like a posh Bond
villain—flashing cuff links, Savile Row suit, dramatic tone—but you
quickly realize that his ambitions for the Meadows Museum are nothing
but noble. “This is an important collection,” he says. “It should have
pride of place in the greatest museums in the world.” Next month marks
the one-year anniversary of his appointment to director of the museum.
It’s a bit early to tell, but Pillsbury’s ambitions should bear fruit
at the Meadows. This is the man who not only lifted the Kimbell Art
Museum to the position in the art world it enjoys today, but who also
was offered the directorship of the National Gallery in London and
turned it down. The New York Times dubbed him “one of the most
gifted men in the American museum profession.” Pillsbury says he plans
to add to the Meadows’ Spanish collection by “going deeper, not
broader.” But he says the most crucial way he can open up the appeal of
the Meadows is by engaging with contemporary Texas art and art
collectors. The esteemed Barrett collection, opening at Meadows this
fall, will include works by John Pomara, Melissa Miller, and Bill
Komodore. “The biggest challenge I face is to develop an audience,” he
says. “We need to create a place that is socially worthwhile.” We’re
watching. —Christina Rees

Photo: James Bland

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A Few Questions from TRACY ROWLETT

Texas schools are facing a financial crisis. The Robin
Hood scheme of equalizing school funding has proven to be a failure. To
make this year’s budget, DISD Superintendent Mike Moses was
forced to cut 360 teaching positions. If no new sources of revenue are
found—say, from a statewide business tax—he could be forced to cut more
teachers and enlarge class size for the district’s 170,000 students.
Now, he says, he’s frustrated and worried.

ROWLETT: You have a major problem on your hands.
MOSES:
We do. The state’s share of financing for public schools is the lowest
it’s been since World War II. It’s 38 percent, with 62 percent of the
cost of education being borne by local school districts and local
property taxes. Local school districts don’t have anywhere to go to get
additional revenue.

ROWLETT: Well, let’s get down to it. What’s the best way to tackle this?
MOSES:
We need to change the way we tax. We need to lower property taxes and
initiate a new tax. If you cut property taxes in half, you’re talking
about $8 billion. And there are really only two taxes that will raise
that kind of money. One is the income tax, which I do not think we will
have in Texas. The other is a business activity tax, which is being
widely discussed.

ROWLETT: But you’ve seen the same reports I
have, in which some business leaders are saying they already spend a
disproportionate amount in taxes for education.
MOSES: Those reports just don’t hold up. Of the 10 largest states, Texas spends the least on its public education.
 
ROWLETT: You have got to be terribly frustrated.
MOSES:
I’m very frustrated and very worried. We have worked hard in the Dallas
Independent School District the last three and a half years. We are
heading the district in the right direction, and we’ve seen some gains
in student achievement beginning to occur. And now we face the real
possibility of having to dismantle what we’ve done during these last
years. That is terribly frustrating and disturbing to me.

ROWLETT: If you can’t get more funds, and you are frustrated, do you think you’d quit?
MOSES:
Well, I think you evaluate every day how you are doing and what the
obstacles are and whether you can contribute and help children get a
good education. If you reach a point where you think, My contributions
are not as great, and they are not really what I want them to be, then
you have to step back and say, Well, maybe it’s time to do something
else. I hope that’s a little further down the road.

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{ NIGHTLIFE }
Music Man
DJ Chuck Roast is cooler than you.
by DJ Adam “McSlice” McGill

The first time Carter Voekel went to the hipster bar
Lee Harvey’s in South Dallas, the music he heard did not impress him.
He knew the bar for lowlifes and cool people deserved better tunes, and
he was prepared to provide them.

By day, Voekel, 29, works for
Yahoo’s audio/video streaming department. But when he attended the
University of Kansas, he deejayed at parties and such “for beer money.”
He made a proposition to Lee Harvey’s manager, Kellye Clackley.

“I
told her I’d deejay for free on an off night, and then, after a month,
we’d talk about money and a better schedule,” he says. “She said,
‘Cool.’ The rest is history.”

After that first Sunday night,
Clackley liked what she heard: good, old, funk-slash-soul with some
’80s songs mixed in, anything from Billy Preston to Aretha Franklin to
Tower of Power to Marvin Gaye. She gave Voekel—aka DJ Chuck Roast—a
paying gig and a better night: Mondays, before moving him to
Wednesdays, the bar’s service night.

If you go, don’t make
requests. DJs hate that. “I pretend like I’m looking for it and pretend
that I don’t have it,” Voekel says. “I tell them to come back next
Monday.”

A COLLECTION OF RECENT CHUCK ROAST SELECTIONS

Billy Preston, “Will It Go Round in Circles”
Modest Mouse, “Float On”
Hall & Oates, “Rich Girl”
Gladys Knight, “Nitty Gritty”
Marvin Gaye, “A Funky Space Reincarnation”
Lee Dorsey, “A Lover was Born”
Dolly Parton, “9 to 5”
Nina Simone, “Funkier than a Mosquito’s Tweeter”

Photo: Joshua Martin

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{ LAND USE }
Splendor in the Grass
What do soccer kids and strippers have in common? About a square mile, as it turns out.
by Adam McGill

After dozens of lawsuits, a three-year federal
injunction that kept the city from enforcing a zoning ordinance, and
countless pleas from nearby residents, the topless joints in the
Bachman Lake area have finally closed their doors. But Sante Fe, Fare
West, Baby Dolls, and others weren’t put out of business; they were
just driven to a different part of town.

The sexually oriented
businesses thought they had found a new home in the industrial part of
West Dallas, cordoned off by Stemmons Freeway, Royal Lane, Luna Road,
and Northwest Highway. Because it’s not a residential area, there could
be no residents to offend with erotic interpretive dance to Whitesnake
hits. Everyone seemed satisfied. But now comes the prospect of the
pitter-patter of young soccer-playing feet—right in the backyards of
those selfsame fleshpots.

See, while the left hand of the city
was giving tacit approval for the SOBs to relocate to the area, the
right hand was figuring out a way to turn the former landfill site into
a soccer complex.

“We’ve been working on this for three or four
years,” says a Parks Department source who asked not to be named. “The
soccer complex has been on the table long before the clubs were kicked
out.”

Since the Trinity River Bond Program, the Parks Department
has sought an area of land for a soccer tournament complex, something
to alleviate the crowded fields in North Dallas. Their search led them
to land near the intersection of Walnut Hill Lane and Stemmons
Freeway—the same area the topless joints found—which happens to be the
largest piece of undeveloped land suitable to serve as athletic fields.

“If
we ever have a chance of building an athletic site, this is it,” the
Parks spokesperson says. And he doesn’t begrudge the park’s potential
neighbors. “We can co-exist,” he says.

Orange slices for everyone.

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{ TRUE CRIME }
The Busiest Little Jail in Dallas
Crime doesn’t pay at the DFW Airport.
by Carlton Stowers

There was the harried businessman who forgot he had a
pistol in his briefcase. And the guy who rushed to a pay phone, began
talking gibberish, and methodically stripped naked. Also, there were
the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and speeders and unsuspecting arrivals
greeted by arrest warrants on everything from bank robbing to dealing
dope back home.

And each was quickly booked into a jail you’ve
likely not heard of. It is located near the Delta Air Lines hanger on
the south edge of DFW. Those who have spent time in the airport jail—a
three-cell facility with all the high-tech bells and whistles you’ll
find at better hoosegows everywhere—range from an out-of-state federal
judge and boardroom bigwigs to enough celebrities to fill an autograph
book.

Among the 871 jailed there in 2003 were a traveling
husband and wife who have become part of the jail’s folklore. The
husband was arrested for being drunk and unruly in the terminal. His
wife, angry and frustrated by the hitch in her vacation plans, retired
to an airport bar where she, too, got tanked and ultimately arrested.
Says Alvy Dodson, vice president of the airport’s Department of Public
Safety, “It is the only husband and wife I can remember us having
locked up at the same time.”

Though the sign on the door that
opens into the windowless, glaring white-walled facility says, “Jail,”
it is, in truth, little more than a holding facility. “People are
rarely here for more than 24 hours,” says veteran chief Tom Shehan.
“Once arraigned, they most often bond out or are sent to the Dallas
or Tarrant County jails.”

The
241-member DFW police force, notes Shehan, watches over what amounts to
a medium-size community on more than 18,000 acres. “At any given time,”
he says, “there are 250,000 people at the airport, and it is our job to
see to their safety and that the law is enforced.”

Photo: Sean McCormick

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{ SPORTS }
Thunder Struck
My date with that guy, the one who rips off his shirt at Mavericks games.
by Allison Hatfield

I had been curious about Kevin Kirk—though I didn’t
know his name then—for some time. He’s the guy at Mavs games with the
courtside seats who lip-syncs, does the air drums, bangs his head, and,
in a Dionysian fit, finally tears open his shirt to reveal a t-shirt
that reads: “Thunder.” The crowd loves it. When I called him up, he
asked me to a game.

Pre-game, Thunder tells a few ice-breaking
jokes. “I bet you want to know how I get all the hot chicks,” he says.
“I’m a condom model!” He’s not a big drinker, but he’s charming and
energetic, more tornado than thunder. He wears a Rolex on his right
wrist—because he likes to be different. He’s a Gemini. He’s 32 and an
heir to a trucking fortune (his dad owns Peterbilt dealerships in four
states). Basically, he does nothing for a living. “If you must, say I’m
in private investments,” he says. I hate him.

Thunder leads me
to his baseline seats. Ticket punchers, concession workers, TV
cameramen—everyone congratulates him on the prior week’s performance.
Thunder calls to Scott Williams, who is warming up, and introduces me.
He points to the dancers, saying there were three at last year’s Byron
Nelson party, held at his home, just off the fourth green at TPC Las
Colinas. I hate them.

AC/DC’s “Thunder Struck” is his cell’s
ring tone. “Where you at?” he asks at least a hundred callers, scanning
the stands. At one point he looks into my eyes and says, “I’m going to
read your mind.” Then he pulls a cricket out of my ear.

Midway
through the night, Thunder tells me I meet his “8-8 Rule.” “A girl’s
got to wear a size 8 or smaller and be at least an 8.” He slaps his
knee and elbows me, plotting to steal my heart. But first, he says,
he’ll have to get rid of his girlfriends. Plural. “Just give me a
week,” he says. I am simultaneously embarrassed and exhilarated.

Mavs
Dancers coach Shella Sattler drops by with a sheet listing the night’s
special events. What once was impromptu enthusiasm has become official
Mavs game programming. Thunder is not scheduled. I sigh with relief and
slump in disappointment.

When the final buzzer sounds, we’re already headed out. Back at my car, Thunder went for the pinky shake. I obliged.

I’m still waiting for that invite to his Byron party.

Photo: Tom Fox/Dallas Morning News