For years Maria Frenkel couldn't talk about why she launched her own business. Her reasons for doing it were too personal, and if asked she would simply say, "I wanted to be able to help people." Only recently has she felt comfortable explaining why she started Crime Scene Clean-Up Services of Texas.

In the spring of 1996, Frenkel, then 37 years old, was pregnant with her first child. One morning, as she sat on her bed, putting on makeup, she felt something peculiar. "It was like an electric shock that was moving up toward my navel," she says. "And then I started feeling back pains. And I thought, 'What the heck is wrong?' I didn't know what was happening until I started bleeding.

"When I came home from the hospital, I was the one who had to do the cleanup. So I spent a lot of time praying about what to do to help other people who were in similar situations."

Thus from the umber stains of that stillbirth years ago sprang Frenkel's new business. She incorporated Crime Scene Clean-Up Services that same year. She says she went door to door, offering her services to people in whose homes and apartments and places of business had occurred all manner of messy, unspeakable tragedies. Teeth embedded in walls. Puddles of blood on Berber carpet. A bathroom shower raining on a dead man's face for two weeks.

She can now talk about her own reasons for getting into the business back then, but Frenkel closely guards the details of her work today. She has cleaned up the physical aftermath of some of the most publicized deaths in the area, but the emotional mess left by these incidents, some of them recent, can't be carted off in red bags for incineration. She'd prefer the families involved not have to read about any of it here.

One case she will discuss, though. About a year ago Frenkel got a call about a situation in an Oak Cliff apartment (she and her regular team of five assistants are always on call). So she drove there in her unmarked car with her tools and solvents. She pulled on a disposable white body suit and strapped on a particulate respirator. Plastic visor to protect the eyes. All mucus membranes covered. And Frenkel went in to deal with someone else's mess.

Seems a woman had decided to go out of town for an extended period, and she had decided, in the interest of convenience presumably, to leave five dogs in her two-bedroom apartment. "And these were not small dogs," Frenkel says. "We're talking big dogs. She left huge tubs of water and food for them. Long story short, the dogs ganged up and killed one of the dogs. Another dog died, I don't know how. The other three got trapped in the bathroom, very small bathroom, and chewed through the hot water line. The hot water was running the entire time. One of the dogs was actually boiled to death. It was a horrible, horrible situation."

Space prevents a full recounting of how difficult the entry was because of water pressure against the bathroom door or how hazardous the flea infestation had grown or even how quickly the dog owner, upon returning to town, found herself behind bars. But two animals did survive. What was left of the other three went into the red bags and the incinerator. Such material is handled like medical waste, and its disposal is regulated by the state. Frenkel contracts with another outfit to haul it off.

Frenkel handles about 70 cases every year. Unfortunately, she regularly turns away work because she's too busy. Since she started Crime Scene Clean-Up services, other cleanup concerns have entered the industry. Some have endured, but most have moved on because, according to Frenkel, they didn't understand "it's not a pleasant thing to do." This is called an understatement.

"The only thing that keeps me going, that keeps me from burning out, is that I do a lot of praying," she says. "We pray, and we fast. You have to pray. You can't do it without God. You just can't do it. You see things that people do to each other that are just horrendous. I can't do it apart from the Lord. I really can't."

If necessity is the mother of invention, then needing a cold beer must be the mother of all necessities. Because that was essentially the spark behind the Entertainment Collaborative, a klatch of successful formula-repellent entertainment and hospitality concepts hunkered down in Deep Ellum and downtown. The thirsty parent of this collaboration is 34-year-old Brady Wood, who as an SMU student back in 1988 was flustered that he couldn't hip-check his way through the hordes stacked 10 deep at the bar in the Rhythm Room to get a beer. He complained. The owner snapped back that he should buy the place if he didn't like it. "Within two weeks we sold our cars," says Brady's brother Brandt, 36, who directs marketing and concept development for the EC. "I think there were some neckties in the transaction, too."

But it would take a lot more than just the Rhythm Room to yank Brandt Wood from his New Orleans home to join his brother's bar venture. Brandt was set to join the family business, a marine contracting venture that builds levees, deepens waterways and assembles docks. "I grew up with the idea that Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest and all this great food in New Orleans was the way life was supposed to be," he admits. "I came to Dallas to visit Brady...and as I got to know the city more, I realized there was really something different about Dallas." Most notably Brandt realized that New Orleans is long on culture but has no money, while Dallas is long on capital but has a cultural depth of windshield dew. "So you have this contrast," he explains.

This chasm became a mission for the Wood brothers, and they sought to close it in perhaps the only way college-bar entrepreneurs could: by creating really cool places to drink. In 1990, they opened the Green Elephant, a "'60s hippie concept" bar and restaurant that took its name from an EZ Haul travel-trailer logo featuring a family of elephants (the Green Elephant was sold to its managers in 1996). In 1991, the brothers picked up Trees, a Deep Ellum live music venue, through some fancy legal footwork by assuming the befuddled owner's debts and tax obligations.

Trees was a success. And soon the brothers noticed their Trees patrons and performers were scooting off to Deep Ellum Café to eat before and after shows. So they decided to vie for a share of that belly space by formulating a restaurant that was both street-smart and refined. And a little daffy. "I lived on one of the banquettes there for two months, decorating it at night," Brandt says. "If you ever wonder why it's such a strange mix of décor...it's because it all made a lot of sense in the middle of the night." Brandt says he thought Green Room represented one thing Dallas didn't have, but needed: a gourmet restaurant in a funky neighborhood that didn't take itself too seriously. "We never planned a menu, much less a wine list," he admits. "But we knew how to make a place look cool." People told the Woods they were nuts, that no self-respecting "foodie" would trek down to Deep Ellum to nosh. But the Woods saw a mode of convergence in their little Green gourmet adventure: an opportunity to drive a generational transition; to take their bar crowds and bump them up to the next step in culture, all without their even knowing it. It worked.

They parlayed this intuitive know-how into the husks of downtown. Brandt Wood long had his eye on the ground floor of the Kirby building for a downtown brasserie. But the landlord was keen on pursuing some of the city's better-known, more established operators to create a street restaurant. "The response was, 'I think these guys are too young,'" Brandt says. Turned out those more established operators were too skittish to take a downtown fine-dining plunge.

Through Brady's negotiating footwork, the space was secured and Jeroboam was born. And Jeroboam boomed. "Jeroboam was a vision that conceptually we knew Dallas needed," Brandt says. "We saw downtown progressing before it was a news item." This insight was accrued through EC's efforts to cobble together participants and backers for Dallas 2000 and Dallas 2001, a pair of downtown New Year's Eve events. This work also inadvertently led to Umlaut, a subterranean New York-London modern lounge the EC opened in 2001 after discovering the space during the production of these parties.

Now the EC is gambling on an even further divergence from its club core: retailing. Armed with a portfolio of Deep Ellum real estate gathered over the years, the EC is banking that Deep Ellum can be successfully morphed into a gritty urban shopping mecca, with both national nameplates and local upstarts. But nobody wants to be first out of the chute. So the EC will chop the shopping path through the Deep Ellum weeds.

It's a small boutique called Star Cat, set to open in early October in the space across from Trees. This hip grit shop will sell apparel, shoes, handbags and concert tickets. Brandt Wood admits he's no retail wizard (he was no food and wine wizard either, he says). But he insists he's never been afraid to pull the trigger, adding that the only concepts the EC has ever lost money on are the ones that never made it off the drawing board. The Woods prove that it is perhaps best to reconquer established ground with ideas that seem daffy at first blush. Then again, nothing seems daffy after a cold beer.

It wasn't much of a party to begin with, but it looked as if the Barley House had gotten there when the last guests were putting on their coats and saying their goodbyes. When the Barley House opened almost 10 years ago, there weren't many other bars or restaurants in the Knox-Henderson area, and the ones that were there wouldn't be for much longer. Then, if Knox-Henderson was known for anything, it was the antique stores hanging around like a cobweb in the corner. It was a gamble, but to Joe Tillotson and his investors (including Richard Winfield and Scott Cecil), anything would be better than what they were doing before: They were stuck in boring grown-up jobs, working at a consulting firm, practicing law, actually using their degrees. They figured if they hung in there long enough, bluffed a little bit, they'd take home the pot.

They were right. Ten years later, the Barley House is a success, and so is Knox-Henderson, bars, restaurants and upscale retail crowded shoulder to shoulder on each block. While Tillotson, Winfield and Cecil (the latter two bought out the other investors long ago) aren't responsible for all of that growth, of course, they still deserve a thank-you note or two. Especially from the musicians who have played at Barley House (and Muddy Waters, the bar on Lowest Greenville they also own and operate); in the decade it's been around, a separate local music community has come to life at Barley and Muddy Waters, one that's much different from the one in Deep Ellum. Bands play there once and never leave.

"The Old 97's, the Cartwrights, Lone Star Trio--even back then, those kind of bands liked to hang out there and also play there," says Winfield, whose main role in the partnership is working with the bands. "You'll see guys from Slobberbone, Sorta and Sparrows, Little Grizzly, Pleasant Grove, Chomsky, Deathray Davies; they'll come in there to drink as much as to play. It sorta just happened, but it sorta keeps happening, as old bands go away or move on."

Despite their prosperity, Tillotson, Winfield and Cecil haven't worn themselves out patting each other on the back. They're staying in the game, still gambling. The trio dealt themselves another hand a couple of months ago when they opened the Metropolitan, a classy eatery situated in Stone Street Gardens, a downtown pedestrian mall on Main Street. Since the partners are trying to grow a garden among a patch of weeds, it's pretty much the same situation as it was a decade ago, only this time it's on a much grander scale; developers have tried and failed to revitalize downtown Dallas a dozen times over. But just as they did with the Barley House, Tillotson and his partners are willing to wait.

"When we signed a lease down there, we wanted a long lease, not because we were trying to lock ourselves in at a low rate for a long time, but really, we knew we needed to be there for a long time to really reap the benefits of being downtown," Tillotson says. "I think downtown won't be fully mature, even in our little two-block area, for about five years."

Downtown may have a ways to go, but the Metropolitan has already paid off for Tillotson, Winfield and Cecil--much better than they thought it would at this point. "When we first opened, we didn't advertise," Winfield says. "We just kinda opened the doors, see what's gonna happen. We've been pretty busy every night, getting a pretty good reaction as far as the food, the décor, whatever. People, they're in downtown, they expect for there to be places downtown. If you're from pretty much any other major metropolitan area besides Dallas"--he laughs--"there's something to do downtown. These guys will be walking down the street and they'll find us."

And they're raising the stakes: In the fairly near future, they may also find another bar-restaurant the trio is talking about opening farther down Main Street, a casual place that will be more along the lines of the Barley House. They know it would be easier to stake out a new spot in a more happening part of town or expand into safer markets--they've had opportunities to open a Barley House in Denton and Addison--but that's not the point.

"We're all from Dallas," Tillotson says. "We grew up here. Our families are from here. It's a lot more interesting and exciting for us to be in an area like downtown, to see that revitalizing. We didn't conceive of the Metropolitan and say, 'Where are we gonna put this?' We put what we thought was needed at that location. We think that fits that corner, fits downtown, fits what downtown is supposed to be like. We wanted to create a place that, you know, people thought, if it hadn't already been in downtown Dallas for 10 years or 20 years or 40 years, it deserved to be there."

Tillotson, Winfield and Cecil deserve to be there, too.

"It seems I will never sell these She-Hulk vs. Leon Spinks comics. Worst crossover ever!"

--Comic Book Guy, The Simpsons, "Days of Wine and D'oh'ses"

Guys who own record stores are cool. Just look at John Cusack in High Fidelity, the big-screen adaptation of Nick Hornby's novel; he's young, hip, able to score with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Lisa Bonet. Guys who own comic-book stores are, well, not cool. At all. Ever. They are punch lines and punching bags, dudes without dates--save for a copy of Batgirl. Look no further than The Simpsons, which is populated by Comic Book Guy--his gut dangling over his shorts, his limp ponytail poorly masquerading a bald head, his insults shooting blanks at kids too young to fight back. Comic Book Guy lives on the Internet, surfing his newsgroups--"alt.nerd.obsessive" being a prime fave. Actually, he lives in his mother's basement.

Jeremy Shorr, proprietor of Titan Comics near Bachman Lake, does not. Actually, he lives with his wife, Cecilia, and their two young children in their own home, thanks very much. He did not even pick up a comic till he was 18, primarily because he grew up overseas: His father was a civil engineer, a builder of oil wells, and moved the family from Finland to India to Venezuela before returning to the States in 1976. Though he will cop to looking the part--"I'll be the last to say I'm svelte and muscular, and I am balding in all the right places"--his entire existence seems geared toward demolishing the pale, pudgy stereotype.

"The wife and I have a conversation about this on a regular basis: 'What image do we want to project?'" Shorr says. "I wanted to make sure I didn't present the standard Comic Book Guy image--the ponytail, the beard, the T-shirt that was washed, oh, last month sometime. I bathed recently; I cut my hair on a regular basis. I do what I can given my body's archetype. I'm sorry, I've tried to lose weight--short of having amputations. On The Simpsons, the only thing he's interested in is whatever comic book you're talking about. My wife calls me the comic-book bartender. I know most of my customers by name, I know their favorite football team, take the time to find out what's going on with them."

Twenty-six years after his introduction to comics, Shorr runs the coolest comics shop in town--a fanboy's paradise, and not because fangirls have been known to work behind the counter. In June, Titan celebrated its 11th anniversary, though Cecilia Shorr's been in the comics biz since December 1985, when she opened Houston's Phoenix Comics, then the largest store of its kind in the 713. Jeremy was one of her first, and best, customers; he was spending $100 a week--a "ton of money back then," Jeremy says. "They were happy to see me."

So, too, was Cecilia: One night in 1987, Jeremy came in after a date stood him up, and Cecilia asked him out. Within two years they were married. Fifteen years and a move back to Dallas later--Cecilia's dad worked for EDS, where Jeremy collected a paycheck for a while as a systems engineer--they're still together and selling comics. This, despite the fact most comic-book retailers have long gone the way of Jack Kirby and Joe Shuster. (Those are comics references, and if you don't get them, dude, why are you still reading?)

When Titan opened in June 1991, there were 25 to 35 comics-related stores in the area--"from Rockwall to Weatherford," as Shorr defines it. Today, Shorr estimates there are probably 15, including the eight stores in the Lone Star Comics chain, two Keith's Comics locations and the mighty Zeus outlet in Oak Lawn. But most of these retailers carry baseball cards, Dungeons & Dragons dreck, stuffed dolls and other non-comics effluvia--junk food, in other words, intended to appeal to the dilettante and their fad-grabbing kids for whom Yugio's the hottest thing since Pokémon. Titan is for the fetishist who knows his (or her) Golden Age Green Lantern from his Silver Age counterpart. Shorr's the fanboy's pusherman, the guy you turn to for a quick fix of superhero kicks.

His store's overrun with old issues--some from the 1950s--long the bane of the comics retailer's existence. Though he still peddles T-shirts and collectible statues, usually handcrafted and hand-painted, Titan's packed with only the good stuff. Need an early Justice League of America, when Green Arrow didn't have the beard? An X-Men from the '60s? He will hook a brutha up.

"I have people come visit me every four, six months from out of town strictly because they know I have the books they want," Shorr says. "And now back-issue sales account for approximately 30 percent of my sales--and in the comic-book world, if you can break 5 percent, that's amazing. There's just a need for my kind of store. So many people come in here and the first words out of their mouths are, 'Thank God, I found a place that sells comic books.'" Count us among them.

If you're to be the best, preaches Dallas Lincoln High basketball coach Leonard Bishop, you must stand ready to prove it. Which is exactly what his undefeated state Class AAAA champions did last season. En route to a 40-0 record and the No. 1 spot in the nation in schoolboy rankings conducted by USA Today and Prep Sports, his Tigers defeated five schools that were judged among the nation's premier teams.

Invited to a tournament in St. Louis, they won the championship by defeating No. 6-ranked Midwest City High. In Lake Charles, Louisiana, they knocked off No. 23 Westbury Christian. Closer to home they scored wins over No. 6 Beaumont Ozen, No. 9 Cedar Hill (before a crowd of 17,995 in Reunion Arena at The Dallas Morning News Shootout ) and The Colony, which was ranked No. 14 in the country.

"I think the fact we were willing to go up against so many outstanding teams in non-district play," the 52-year-old Bishop says, "was the reason we were ultimately picked as the national champion."

Which is a pretty daring act for a man who looks more like a businessman at courtside, rarely displaying the emotional rants of many in his line of work; a coach who insists his primary job is to make sure his kids excel academically.

"Basically," says the former all-state guard who grew up in little Sexton, Missouri, "my job is that of a teacher. I spend most of my time trying to help students learn life skills that will be important to them long after they've played their last basketball game."

He says with pride that all 10 seniors who made the recent season so memorable are now on college campuses.

"Every player on our team," he says, "grasped the fact that playing basketball wasn't the only reason they were coming to school every day. They were a group that recognized that hard work--in the classroom, at home, at practice and on game day--was essential to reaching the goals we had set before the season began. They realized that to be successful you have to apply yourself fully every day.

"What these kids accomplished," Bishop continues, "is something they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. I've done some research in an attempt to see if there has ever been any other high school basketball team that has gone undefeated, won state and been ranked No. 1 in the same year and haven't found one."

For the Southeast Missouri graduate who entered his 30th year of coaching when practice for the new season opened in October, the magical 2001-'02 season was not something he'd foreseen. Even getting a job at a school with a celebrated athletic history like that of Lincoln's seemed out of reach when he launched his career back in New Madrid, Missouri. From there he came to Seagoville, where he served three years as coach of middle school basketball before working his way up to the high school job he held from 1984 to 1999.

Then, three years ago, Lincoln High came calling. In his first season as head coach of the Tigers, his team made it to the regional finals. In the second year, they advanced to the state tournament. Then last year, Bishop and his team rang all the bells, turning away all opposition with a controlled fast break offense that averaged 78 points per game and an aggressive defense.

Where does one go from perfection? Despite the fact only two players return from last year's varsity, there are great expectations. Last year's junior varsity went 16-2, and the freshman team lost only one game, in overtime. Back from last year's championship team are junior forward Cedric Griffin and the coach's son, Leonard Bishop Jr., a senior guard. A 5-foot-10 sophomore, Byron Eaton, has already been ranked by one preseason publication as the No. 2 point guard in the United States. "One of the things we try to do," Bishop says, "is develop talent on our lower-level teams. We had kids playing jayvee ball who were good enough to be on the varsity had we not had so many good seniors. Now, it's their turn."

Not only to add to the school's string of victories but to benefit from the lessons coach Bishop will teach.

Local wine publications haven't shown much resilience in Dallas. At least two upstart carcasses litter the landscape, testaments to the absurdity of attempting to translate Big D's thirst for cork-finished juice into an urge to read about it through a local lens. The Dallas Food & Wine Journal, a food-and-wine rag launched by entrepreneur Harvey Jury in 1995, lasted just two issues. Even the considerable heft of Belo couldn't get Dallas' sipper denizens to think local. The Dallas Morning News' quarterly insert magazine Wine and Food, launched in 1998, was scuttled after just a couple of issues.

So what makes former computer parts broker Paul Evans think he can conquer a market that has bloodied others with better armaments? Mental instability. "You have to be a crazy person to do this," says the 30-year old publisher of Vine Texas. "But you also have to be very passionate."

It's that passion--a term so often tossed around with respect to wine it has become as tiresome as road tar metaphors in tasting notes--Evans thinks will drive him to publishing success with Vine Texas, an upstart four-color glossy with wine personality profiles, reviews, beer and cigar jabber, as well as tips on wine acquisition.

So what? Aren't there enough glossies from New York packed with cherry-berry-leather-tar-tropical fruit-cream-grass-gooseberry notes of the latest bottlings? Sure. But Evans says Vine Texas is different. It's dedicated to the whims of the Texas wine enthusiast (the July/August issue even argues that those tasting descriptors are obsolete, as much of young America has never tasted raw fruit or unprocessed veggies--are Fruit Roll-Ups that pervasive?). "You're not going to see articles about wines that are hard to find in Texas," Evans insists. "We're not going to stick our noses in the air and brag about how we tasted this 1989 bottle of Petrus that you can't find except in some restaurant for $2,000."

Not that Vine Texas has a nose-in-the-air pedigree. Originally launched as Vine Dallas earlier this year, Vine Texas was dreamed up by Evans and entrepreneur Mike Whitaker after Evans lost his job as a sales manager at The Met following its purchase and erasure by Dallas Observer parent New Times in late 2000. Whitaker, publisher of the free Dallas nightlife/lifestyle magazine called The Link, brought Evans on to breathe some life into the rag.

But Evans says it was quickly obvious The Link was not long for this world. "The Link was very stressful, near the end, money-wise," he laments. "To tell you the truth, Mike and I both, we got sick of club and bar owners. They never pay on time, and when you're running a company off revenue from advertising, you have to rely on being paid."

So the pair sought to unearth a niche stocked not only with a panting audience, but also a cache of vendors willing to open their checkbooks. They decided to focus on wine because it was the preoccupation of several Link staffers. Evans and his cronies met with jeers. But they also had some cheerleaders among Dallas' restaurant heavies, including Al Biernat of Al Biernat's, Judd Fruia of Pappas Bros., Alessio Franceschetti (formerly of eccolo) and Efisio Farris of Arcodoro Pomodoro.

With virtually no seed money, Evans assembled a magazine prototype on the cheap and printed 1,000 copies, dispersing them to potential advertisers. "Next thing you know, I have people all over the place calling me," he boasts. "It was passed around like the plague."

Smitten by the interest the prototype generated, Evans and Whitaker shut down The Link last January after a two-year run and flushed all their energy into Vine Dallas, which turned out a January and a March issue. The original plan was to secure the Dallas market and then customize the magazine for other Texas markets, distributing titles such as Vine Houston and Vine Austin. But national advertisers balked at the move.

Vine Texas was the upshot. Evans and Whitaker pumped 80,000 copies of the first bimonthly (July/August) issue through a number of outlets, including Barnes & Noble, Winn-Dixie, Albertson's and selected fine wine shops. They hope to publish monthly by next summer.

Evans snickers when he thinks about all the people who told him he was crazy--or worse--for launching a Dallas wine magazine. "They said, 'If you have a third issue, I'll pat you on the back.' Well, pat me on the back. Number three has arrived."

Frisk David Quadrini for his hidden stash of sleaze or schmooze, and you'll come up empty-handed. He's a dealer, all right, but strictly legit, and he couldn't make a blatant sales pitch to save his life. Quadrini deals in high-concept art, and he's part idea-monger, part talent scout, part visionary and part mentor to visual artists. Mostly, he's an influence peddler in the art universe. He may be centered in Dallas, but he moves easily in and out of rippling, concentric circles of artists, art patrons, art collectors, art scholars and art fans from Australia to Europe and back again.

Quadrini owns and operates Angstrom Gallery, an art-filled anchor to a wedge-shaped strip of historic storefronts at the intersection of Exposition and Parry avenues. He chose the name in deference to science--the angstrom is the smallest unit of measurement in theoretical physics. "I'm really interested in the similarity between science and art," Quadrini says. "Most of the great scientists of the 20th century had intuitive minds." Fresh out of the University of North Texas with a bachelor of fine arts in painting and drawing, Quadrini tested his idea and opened the gallery in 1996. Like all solid science and most conceptual art, it began as an experiment. "I didn't want to own a gallery," Quadrini says. "I was headed to Cal Arts for graduate school, and I was looking for something to keep my sanity until then." On a whim, he signed a six-month lease at 3609 Parry Ave. and slammed some paintings on the bare white walls.

At the time, he says, it was hard to find anything exciting in Dallas galleries. "I looked for what wasn't being shown for Angstrom," Quadrini says. "Every show was really for my benefit. I found great artists who weren't being shown but who were making the stuff I wanted to see and live with." Everything Angstrom showed sold well from the start, and was favorably reviewed in art media, so Quadrini says he renewed his lease for another six months. "I've made a career in six-month increments," he says.

Over the past six years, Quadrini has shaken up the Dallas art world, showing talented nontraditional artists. He's made Angstrom Gallery into a safe, high-profile world for artists he may find as nearby as Dallas or as far away as Cologne, Germany. "I look for art that violates your expectations," he says. "Art is generally not about the object itself when it's really good. Art becomes an all-consuming relic of a process or experience the artist went through when making it. I'm interested in the hiccup--the unexpected--or the gray area."

Quadrini travels often to Los Angeles and New York, looking for new artists, new work, new clients among patrons and collectors. He's comfortable working with people--influencing, discussing, arguing, digesting--and eager for innovative input and creative energy. "It becomes clear, when you look at as much art as I look at, that some artists are really inventing something. They are really creating a dialogue or an image system that hasn't existed previously. There's always something problematic about that kind of work. It's always a little bit hard to look at."

Heading into the new art season this fall, Quadrini has scheduled Angstrom exhibitions for Peter Zimmerman, whom he found in Cologne, and Mark Flood, who lives in Houston. "This will be my third show with Mark," he says. "His paintings are like heirloom lace that is shredded and floating away. He's created a hybrid process of painting and printmaking. And he used to be the lead singer for Culture Side." Hyper-optic paintings by Suzy Rosmarin, Robin O'Neil's odd drawings of dinosaurs and boats, new work by local fave Erick Swenson and the blue-chip art stylings of Jeff Elrod, Jack Pearson and Brad Tucker will enliven the gallery this year. "Brad understands the space between the way things look and the way things sound," Quadrini says of Tucker's sculptures that would be music. "He is very much about the barrier between you and the object." Tucker casts old vinyl records, creating imprecise grooves that convey interesting, warped information and can be played on a turntable. "It's the textbook definition of an artist," Quadrini says. "He is dissatisfied with the world and has to remake it. He has to fix it."

Some months, Quadrini spends as few as 10 days at home in Dallas. He's here mainly to plan and install every monthlong exhibition at Angstrom, then he's off again in search of the next new thing. If you can catch up with him, you're in for some good, and decidedly intellectual, conversation about art and music, philosophy, science. The best scene, he says, is his neighborhood, unless the State Fair is on. "There are the greatest bars around here," he says. "Double Wide, New Amsterdam, Meridian Room, minc. Ours is the only block that is really interesting in the whole city. There are always musicians, writers and artists around. I love the bars and good conversation. But during the fair, we all leave."

Terdema Ussery is in his office. He's talking on the phone in lengthy, measured sentences, answering every question with cool aplomb, which is odd only because he's stayed in one place long enough to conduct the interview. He ought to be out conquering the world, or at least his corner of it. That's his daily gig. Formally, he's the president and chief executive officer of the Dallas Mavericks and the CEO of HDNet, a high-definition TV network. Informally, he's Mark Cuban's rainmaker, the guy who, in both the basketball and television businesses, generates the deals that keep your favorite billionaire flush with cash. Earlier today, on behalf of HDNet, he reached an agreement with Japan-based NHK, a big-time television company in the Pacific Rim. (Which means the Japanese soon will be able to utilize their expensive high-def TVs while the rest of us curse their purchases. Great.)

"They're the 800-pound gorilla over in Japan," Ussery says. "It's pretty exciting. I love it all, everything I do, but the interesting thing about the HD side is that it's all uncharted. It's always a challenge; I'm constantly on the move."

Perhaps that's why you've never heard of him. Or maybe that's not fair. Maybe you're a big Mavs fan and you make it your business to know these sorts of things. Maybe you're a player in high society and you've caught word of his windfalls while commanding your valet to bring you another, bigger bottle of Cristal. More likely, you're a slob who knows the name but not the face; you know he's a somebody, but you're not sure why.

"Terdema has been invaluable to the Mavs' comeback and HDNet's rise," Cuban offers. "With the Mavs, he keeps everything people don't get to see on a day-to-day basis humming along, which has enabled our revenues to grow even more quickly than our ever-expanding Mavs payroll. One of Terdema's great qualities is the ability to connect with just about anyone. We can have him working with local community groups, with our employees or working with the Japanese to acquire content for HDNet. That versatility has been a huge part of our success and makes my life much easier on a day-to-day basis."

Ussery is the embodiment of a strange dichotomy--at once omnipresent and unseen. Along with honing his business acumen, he's a community darling, doing benefits for Boys and Girls Clubs, heart disease and whatever other charities need an assist on a given week, and all the while without finding, or embracing, the spotlight's warm glow.

"You know, there are advantages to living that way," Ussery says. "You don't get hit. It's cool to be acknowledged, but I think part of the reason why Mark and I work well together is that I try to stay low-key. It's his team, and it's his show. My job is to make it work--that's what he pays me to do. And my ego is such that it doesn't bother me that people don't really know who I am."

A shame, really, considering the back story there, the mettle that makes the man, is all kinds of interesting. He grew up in South Central Los Angeles, in a section of the city called Watts--the birthplace of gangsta rap and home to a healthy crime rate. He left that behind, went to Princeton and got a bachelor's degree; went to Harvard and earned a master's; went to California and became a lawyer. Since then, he's served as commissioner of the Continental Basketball Association and president of Nike Sports Management. Sports Illustrated named him the 21st-most influential minority member in sports, and Black Enterprise recently selected him as co-corporate executive of the year. He speaks "passable" Japanese and...oh, you know what? That's enough. All these accomplishments are making us depressed.

"I am proud of those things; you appreciate where you came from," Ussery says. "I like to say that I'm bi-/tri-lingual. I think that you can put me in any situation, boardroom or inner city, and I'll be able to converse. My past made me who I am and, I think, my experiences have given me a skill set that's, I guess, a little unusual."

As he gives a tour of his metal shop, it takes Brad Oldham some time to describe exactly what it is he does.

Partly because he is passionate about his work, partly because he is paid to craft and forge and construct so many different metal things, well, he's got some splainin' to do.

Oldham goes into great detail about each piece of metalwork you come across in his shop. He excitedly notes that the heavy, ornate doorknobs to your left were fashioned as part of the historical restoration of the Parker County Courthouse in Weatherford, and he tells how many layers of paint he had to peel through to discover the knobs' original color. He spins to his left and begins describing the 135-pound eagles he's crafting for the restoration of the Harrison County Courthouse. He takes two steps and introduces some of his seven full-time employees. He circles the workshop, pointing out hinges and cabinet pulls and sculpture. He takes a dip of molten pewter and whips up some special-order coins. He shows off the plan for the donor recognition statue he'll unveil at Presbyterian Hospital on behalf of The Shiu Society.

These items and more he discusses in an attempt to explain what he does, why he's given up the fashion industry that he once worked in with his brother (Todd Oldham), why his kids draw pictures of him that pose him as a superhero called Metal Man.

"Basically," he says, trying to sum up, "we do the stuff you can't find anyone else to do."

Oldham (and, by extension, his employees) is a metallurgical jack-of-all-trades. For public entities that need restoration (usually courthouses), his company, Phoenix Restoration and Construction Ltd., asks Oldham's division to re-create the hinges, doorknobs, sculpture and other hard-to-produce architectural touches common in historic buildings. This makes up 35 to 40 percent of his work. Another 25 to 30 percent of his time is spent with restaurant and hotel clients (he's worked for everyone from Emeril Lagasse to Fossil to Manolo Blahnik). And about 40 percent of his time now is spent with residential work, i.e., folks who are smart enough (and have enough coin) to have Oldham create something unique for their homes.

"With me, you could walk in and say, 'I would like a stairwell banister made of my kids' arms and legs,'" he says. "And I'll say, 'All right, bring 'em in. Let's see what their arms and legs look like.'"

In fact, Oldham gets a big charge out of the challenge. Sure, it helps if someone says, can you re-create that chandelier, or this type of ceramic backsplash, or one of them sorta sconces. But it's not necessary. Oldham will come to your house, meet with you, try to get a sense of what your particular style is, what you like and dislike, and then craft what best fits you. "It allows me to design for them better. I can get a feel for what they want, what will make them happy."

Follow him into a back room, and you can see some of the wildly original products Metal Man has crafted, such as the sink where the gargoyle spits water off his tongue. "I feel like Felix the Cat sometimes," he says. "I open up my bag, and I've got all my people in there, with all our tricks we've learned; we try to make the magic happen."

Although the historical restoration does give Oldham a sense of satisfaction--"Being trusted to work with stuff that is 110 years old is wonderful"--he hopes to move more toward his passion, which is creating his own sculpture and artwork. He's already produced several by-commission works (including a 6-foot-tall bowling pin--long story) and anxiously awaits his first gallery show November 7 at Debris. If you go, you can ask him about the time he made 350 whoopee cushions for Pee Wee Herman, because we've only begun to talk about the variety of works Brad Oldham produces, and we're already outta space.

They look like freeze-dried serpents, brittle with a golden sheath forged in a deep fryer. They're called tripas fritas, and they're served with rice and ranchero beans. But once euphemisms and lyrical language are boiled away, tripas fritas reveal their roots: coils of crispy cow intestines.

This dish is a delicacy in Northern Mexico. "My philosophy is to serve the food that people will find in Mexico that brings back memories as soon as they taste it," says El Ranchito Café & Club owner Laura Sanchez. This philosophy has paid off handsomely for the 52-year-old. Since she and late husband Oscar purchased the Oak Cliff restaurant in 1983, El Ranchito has gone from slinging some 30 pounds of coiled cattle plumbing per week to between 150 and 200 pounds. Cabrito a la parilla, or baby goat on charcoal, is another staple, and drives some 30 baby goats through her kitchen per week.

Since 1981, when her husband purchased La Calle Doce in Oak Cliff from the Cuellar family of El Chico fame (a second La Calle Doce opened on Skillman Street in 1999) for $1,250, Sanchez has unabashedly marketed her restaurants to Dallas' thriving Hispanic community, virtually ignoring those hordes of "see and be seen" Anglos who drive most Dallas restaurateurs into fits.

Sanchez never has to agonize over the latest tastes preoccupying this fickle society. Though she won't cite specific numbers, Sanchez says El Ranchito, whose clientele is 80 percent Hispanic and is the most robust earner in her stable, pulls in roughly $3 million per year. La Calle Doce restaurants, which draw roughly equal numbers of Hispanics and Anglos, earn a bit less.

It wasn't always this way. When she and her husband became restaurant owners in 1981, they geared the restaurant toward an Anglo clientele. "We were surrounded by banks and offices and lawyers," she says. "So the business was already there." They employed the same strategy when they bought the Fallis Steakhouse in 1983 for some $30,000, also from the Cuellar family, before converting it to El Ranchito. But as their Oak Cliff neighborhood gradually morphed into a Hispanic enclave, they shifted their strategy. "My husband used to say, 'I know the market is there, and I know it will take off once they know they can get the same kind of food that they can get in Mexico,'" Sanchez says.

They transformed the menu and aggressively marketed their restaurants on Hispanic radio and television. "I have good service, cleanliness--whatever you find in Dallas--but geared to the Hispanics. Sometimes there are invisible fences," Sanchez says of the experiences Hispanics often encounter in mainstream restaurants. "Here we welcome them."

That welcome mat is not made simply with exotic dishes like tripas and cabrito; it also features the rougher tequilas Hispanics prefer and mariachi bands--two of them, seven pieces each. "For an Anglo person, it sometimes is a little too loud," she says. "But for my Hispanic clientele, they feel extremely offended if the band doesn't play at their tables."

Originally from Monterrey, Mexico, Sanchez took the helm of the family's restaurants after her husband was deported to Mexico in 1990 after several marijuana possession convictions caught up with him. He retreated to the family ranch in Garcia, Nuevo Leon, while Laura Sanchez operated the restaurants, squeezing in frequent and regular visits to the ranch until her husband died from a heart attack in 1997 at age 58. His death thrust the future of the family restaurant business into her hands.

The shift sparked a sleeping ambition. Sanchez has a map that crisply delineates Hispanic Dallas neighborhoods--locales ripe for her restaurants. Over the next few years she plans to pebble these targets with at least three more El Ranchito restaurants and at least one more La Calle Doce. Yet this may only be the footing for a far-reaching restaurant empire. Her son Oscar, 28, who comes equipped with a degree in economics from the University of Texas, has spotted targets throughout the Southwest as well as pockets in Colorado and North Carolina where he wagers El Ranchito will thrive.

To lay the groundwork for this expansion, Sanchez is radically altering the way she has done business for more than 20 years. Since opening La Calle Doce, Sanchez and her husband fed their methodical inch-by-inch growth exclusively via profits from routine cash flow. Now she is dredging her operations and implementing more sophisticated financial and management systems in an effort to attract bank financing. She expects to have her second El Ranchito restaurant open by the close of the first quarter of 2004.

To ensure success, Sanchez will continue to cater to the Hispanic cultural nuances that have made her businesses thrive. That includes a willingness to accommodate large groups of extended family members on a moment's notice. "Hispanics don't believe in baby-sitting," she insists. "It makes no difference if there are 20, 25 or 40 people. Have you ever heard of a place where they go in on a Friday night and say, 'Hi, how are you? We're going to be 20'? They're going to wait two hours. When was the last time you went in and waited two hours to be fed?"