Audio By Carbonatix
Its beige brick façade is hardly flattered by the dim brown trim edging the roof. The sign above the front awning has the word “Buckner” hastily scrawled over the word “Barbecue,” done up in neat block letters. It seats roughly a dozen. “It’s kind of a small, intimate setting,” says Buckner Barbecue owner Kevin Massey. “It’s mostly takeout, but we do have an equal number of people who like to come in and enjoy the atmosphere.” The recently opened barbecue joint is parked under the Loop 12 overpass on South Buckner Road. Next door is a vacant storefront, its windows collaged with yellowing newspapers. A railroad track ribbons under the overpass a few feet away. Plus, it has a little nostalgia–at least in barbecue parlance. According to Massey, a painter by trade, the building has housed various barbecue joints since 1932. It even has a disheveled carport, which Massey says once served as a barbecue carhop. “Like Sonic I guess,” he explains. “Dine al fresco.” Massey says he wants to resuscitate this drive-in dining ritual. And he stresses his barbecue and fixings are homemade. Turns out this is a big deal. The previous occupant, known as Sam’s Barbecue, tried to tie in its recipes a little too closely with its namesake. According to Massey, the owner bought the bulk of his barbecued meats precooked and prepacked in plastic bags. From Sam’s.
You’d think Dallas Texadelphia founder Tom Landis would be deflated after the U.S. Olympic Committee snubbed Dallas in its bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. After all, he put up a billboard at Lovers and Greenville Avenue just before the snub hit urging, in four languages, a “yes” vote for the Olympics and to announce his mayoral candidacy. But no air seems to be hissing from the Landis bid. Instead, like a true politician, he’s recycling the air with a good dose of spin. “I think it really helps [the campaign] a lot,” he says. “I think Dallas sometimes needs a wake-up call, and I think the Olympics kind of delivered.” So what’s his campaign message now? “I want to make 670 a cool phone number to have,” he says, referring to the ubiquitous 670 prefix at City Hall and how he wants to make Dallas a cohesive metropolis. He’s also embarking on his own version of campaign finance reform by capping individual contributions to his campaign at $25, for which you get a campaign T-shirt, bumper sticker and e-mail subscription. And just to show he’s working on the campaign numbers, Landis says roughly 100,000 people filter through his five restaurants every 56 days. He needs 100,000 votes to win. So it’s a slam dunk. You do the math.
