It’s hard to pinpoint when Deep Ellum’s personas blur into one another. It’s a moving moment, not always tied to the sun that nudges a bustling business community awake or nightfall that invites music booming from clubs, restaurants and candy-colored Chevys to compete for passersby.
At times, the two scenes can be at odds. Reports of late-night shootings and alleyway brawls give it a reputation that keeps some Dallas residents distanced from the historic neighborhood and its 400 businesses, regardless of the hour.
It’s not unlike other areas in Dallas in terms of transgressions. This year, Deep Ellum has seen less crime than glitzier Uptown, but the offenses stick to its profile.
Long home to the ostracized and misunderstood, Deep Ellum became a bohemian meeting place. It brought blues, punk, artists, immigrants and blue-collar workers together in its bowl-shaped boundary. There’s an ongoing push to harness its dynamism without fueling its atrophy. Since its inception 150 years ago as a freedmen’s town, Deep Ellum was both a site of refuge and rebirth for the formerly enslaved people who built it. It gave place to a richness that the rest of the city chalked up to being on the wrong side of town.
It’s overly simplistic to say there’s a daytime and nighttime Deep Ellum. Some people exist totally separate from one crowd, while others are entangled between the two.
Take J. Damany Daniel. Before becoming an executive at The Event Nerd, a technical design and event production firm based in Deep Ellum, Daniel was the creative director at the bar and concert venue formerly known as The Bomb Factory.
He’s worked in the neighborhood in various roles for more than 12 years, and he’s been asked time and time again if it was safe. His answer was “yes.”
“I knew they were asking because they read something somewhere or saw something,” Daniel said.
When he was directing The Factory from 2016 to 2020, he saw more restaurants flocking to the area. Lunch hours brought new faces before sundown.
Today someone can wake up in a Deep Ellum luxury high-rise, loft, or one of the few remaining affordable units, Daniel said, and walk down the street and grab a cappuccino. They can walk to their office or co-working space. Within a few blocks, they can get a vegan burger for lunch, a happy hour sake martini, a brisket dinner, a nightcap with a friend.
“And you never leave a half-square mile, ever,” Daniel said. “Deep Ellum is now a true 24-hour district.”
He’s among many in Deep Ellum pleading with the rest of Dallas to see their beloved, historical — and often contentious — neighborhood holistically, as a layered, vibrant, multifaceted corner of downtown.
The Dallas Morning News spent weeks visiting the neighborhood around the clock, speaking with more than 40 business owners, residents, workers and artists. The only absolute is that Deep Ellum continues to change. Year to year, day to day, hour to hour.
8 a.m.
On the eastern side stretch of Main Street, a sandy-haired dog waits tethered to a hook on the front of Murray Street Coffee Shop as its owner takes a breakfast sandwich to go.
“TIP YOU BASTARDS!!!!” warns new and old customers alike from an oversized mug near the pastry case, and a smaller frame reads “now accepting tips.” Regulars trickle in in chatty clusters. Zucchini muffins are best served warm with butter in a ceramic cup.
In the first few years after Murray Street opened in 2005, the shop was the neighborhood’s sole cafe. With hours ending in the early afternoon, owners Liz and Doug Davis don’t deal with much of the nightlife. There’s a dime-sized hole in a large street-level window. They suspect the gash was from a pellet gun nearly six months ago now.
From inside their eclectic and airy coffee bar, Liz and Doug Davis have watched gentrification push out those who used to pop in. “Freelance photographers, artists, musicians, don’t come in like they used to,” Doug Davis said. “Their studios have turned into luxury apartments.”
Doug’s not one to wax nostalgic. “Things change here — tremendously,” he said.
9 a.m.
The fluorescent “Open” light flicks on at Purify Bowls and Smoothies as a woman carries her laptop tucked under her arm across Commerce Street toward Common Desk’s flagship space.
It’s one of a handful of office spaces nearby. There’s The Epic, The Assembly, The Stack. The latter was fully leased out last year by real estate firm Altschuler and Co. and sees nearly 250 people a day during the middle of the week. The modern 16-story office building is fitted with a gym and a grass exercise area, with vistas overlooking Deep Ellum and downtown.
Every prospective tenant asked about crime, said general partner Jon Altschuler. “It’s hurting our vibe.”
It’s well known among business owners that tabs are being kept, he said. If a venue doesn’t address crime affiliated with its crowd, it’s under threat of leases not being renewed.
“You have conscientious owners that don’t like trouble,” he said. “If the owners of the business can’t control it, they’re not going to be welcome here.”
10 a.m.
Before the 25-chair parlor of Blade Craft Barber Academy is filled with clients looking for haircuts and beard shaves, the school’s students use it as a classroom. Ahead of the morning’s lesson, they lay out their clippers and tidy their stations. More barbicide, a blue-colored disinfectant for grooming tools, is on its way.
“What intimidates you about dealing with women’s hair?” asked instructor Kathia Santana. There’s a moment of pause, until the first student kicks off a slew of hesitations: “Layers,” “face-framing,” “blowouts,” students call out. “Different textures.”
“Hair is hair, whether it’s growing from a female scalp or a male scalp,” Santana said. “The theory and the training does not change.”
The barber shop was started in 2015 by Lilly Benitez. Nearly half of Blade Craft’s graduates go on to start their own businesses and almost a third are military veterans. Students come from across the area, but also across the country, from California, Mississippi and South Dakota.
“It’s the Harvard of barber schools,” said student Colby Sage, from Tyler, Texas. He hopes to open up his own shop back home after graduation.
“Have you heard of a wolf cut?” Santana asked. A chorus of grunts means yes. “A fancy way to say layers,” she said as the students laughed while nodding studiously. “Everything always comes back to the basics.”
11 a.m.
Next door, Everything Ellum opens shop. The alternative apparel store stocks brands from the neighborhood and across Dallas-Fort Worth.
“We wanted to build a place that just showcases local things,” said owner Chris Lewellyn, who opened the store in 2022.
For a while, business has been slow. But there’s a new energy that’s coming back, Lewellyn said.
On staff is Kelly Saunders, who doubles as the host of the weekly outdoor market. After recently having a baby, Saunders moved out of her 700-square-foot apartment off Indiana Street to Fort Worth to get more space, after living in Deep Ellum since the late ′90s. But she doesn’t mind the commute to remain a part of Deep Ellum.
“I was kind of an outsider most of my life,” Saunders said. “I’ve come here and I’ve found a place.”
Noon
School’s out for summer. Uplift Luna Preparatory students pour out of the former Baylor Scott & White building. For a half-hour, Elm Street is overrun by giggling 14-year-olds in small packs, teenage couples working out their parent-dependent schedules for when they’ll see each other next and kids chasing stray basketballs. The 900 middle and high schoolers wait at the curb and then disperse into the neighborhood — with many heading to the 7-Eleven across the street.
José Leal, 18, often lingers after school while he waits for his father to pick him up from Pleasant Grove. In the last year, there were times when the family cars weren’t working and getting to campus involved Leal showing up with whiffs of gasoline on his hands. He worked to convince his father that the sacrifices the family made for him to get to school each morning would pay off.
“If we suffer today, we win tomorrow,” he told his dad.
He graduated in May with nearly a full ride to Southern Methodist University.
At the end of the upcoming fall semester, Uplift Luna will relocate after more than a decade. It’s unclear what will become of the building.
“There’s deep sadness about leaving Deep Ellum, even though there’s excitement for us about our new location,” said Yasmin Bhatia, CEO of the charter school network. The East Dallas site will have enough room for students of all grade levels and outdoor greenspace that the Deep Ellum campus couldn’t fit.
Days ahead of graduation, Bhatia remembers the work it took to get the school open in 2012. Ahead of the City Council vote to waive a rule about schools not being within some hundred feet of where alcohol was sold, she walked bar to bar, very pregnant, seeing how owners felt about having students as neighbors. “It was mixed, honestly,” Bhatia said.
Some saw the school as a way to signal safety, while others worried the kids would disrupt their day-drinking customers. Over the last decade, she said, the school never saw any issues between their students and the nearby bar operators. As businesses closed and new storefronts opened, some restaurant owners selling donuts, tacos and chicken wings benefited from being across from a sixth- through 12th-grade school, she said, smiling.
1 p.m.
On a blistering Saturday afternoon, Jim Bilgere sells from stacks of his paintings. Traces of the whimsy in his art can be seen throughout the murals he’s been commissioned to do on nearby businesses and buildings. They’re found inside Mexican joint Pepe’s & Mitos and on the side of Ed W. Smith Machine Works, a longtime local steel manufacturer for gas-liquid separation.
The artist and jazz musician has been a part of Deep Ellum throughout the last four decades. His debut art show was off Main Street in the 1980s. After his friends saw skinheads with baseball bats, an issue then, in the middle of the street, they never came back to one of his shows.
“See, now this is nice,” he said looking out at Canton Street and then pointing back to the ongoing Art Fair. “I know there’s still some nighttime troubles. But it’s changed.”
2 p.m.
The lunch crowd at AllGood Cafe is thinning as waiters bus the remnants of BLTs and chicken-fried steak. “Saint Dominic’s Preview” by Van Morrison plays from the speaker just above the bar of the funky diner. An empty stage will host a country music band later that evening.
Meandering between the kitchen and tables is owner Mike Snider. “How’d you like it?” he asks a man at the bar with a bowl nearly cleared.
3 p.m.
After checking into hotels and finishing bike rides, customers gather at Westlake Brewing Co. The Rainout Hazy IPA is the brewery’s best-seller. It’s citrus, floral and a touch bitter — like breakfast juice, but beer, said Art Harvey, the microbrewery’s founder.
As the afternoon inches closer to 90 degrees, locals in polos and slacks cut their days short and wander into the air-conditioned taproom. On some days, yogis and runners fill the brewery. The weekly activities have helped bring routine customers to Westlake after the pandemic put a strain on the business that started in 2017.
“In my brain, Deep Ellum is still the best place to build a brand in Dallas, period,” Harvey said. “All eyes are on Deep Ellum. Everyone wants to talk about Deep Ellum, good or bad.”
The neighborhood is an incubator for independent operators, said Stephanie Keller Hudiburg, executive director of the Deep Ellum Foundation. “There’s just an entrepreneurial ethos that’s very alive and well in this district.”
Almost half of the neighborhood’s 400 businesses are small operators, and a fourth are restaurants and bars. Some have been open for decades, while others have popped up in recent years. There’s a mix of regional and national chain eateries like Hattie B’s, Cane Rosso and Insomnia Cookies, 24 live music venues and a variety of retail outfits, such as thrift stores and plant shops.
4 p.m.
Max Sanchez is on the stairs of Add Vintage, his two-story, second-hand shop. A friend who has become the store’s accountant stops in.
The thrift shop owner has been a part of Deep Ellum’s nightlife for the last decade. He started working in radio and would set up bars and clubs. Then he began hosting art and music events at CheapSteaks, a Deep Ellum restaurant and club. Sanchez said his DJ persona doesn’t hurt the store’s business, as most of his shoppers are neighbors.
“When people get ready to go out, they just dip in and grab an outfit for the night,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez said in the past when he’s invited people to the Latin House music events he hosts, their ears perk up. When they ask where it is, and when he says Deep Ellum, some say they’re no longer interested.
“So we’ve seen that a lot, but it’s been changing.”
5 p.m.
Watermelon pink and gold earrings are on a table display at Uncommon James, a jewelry boutique on Main. Destiny Ayala helps shoppers pick the right pieces, hours after hearing word she had been promoted to store manager.
Ayala left New York one year ago and was looking for a spot in Dallas that reminded her of Brooklyn. When she saw the industrial and pedestrian-friendly neighborhood, she knew it was the closest she’d get to home in Dallas-Fort Worth. “It’s like the hipster, urban, artsy area,” she said.
She feels like crime in Deep Ellum is highlighted with extra emphasis, with some tallying each incident to find reasons to stay away.
“I feel very mixed when I hear people talk about Deep Ellum the way that they do,” said Ayala, who walks a few blocks to work daily as one of the area’s more than 3,600 residents. “It’s a little disheartening because I love my neighborhood.”
6 p.m.
A half-dozen people swirl around tables and tall shelves in the small sunlit bookstore called Deep Vellum. Shoppers speak in Portuguese, Spanish and English amid copies of lesser-known literature. Tourists come from across the world, and the publishing house ships books internationally.
Founder Will Evans has a small office in the back of the shop that’s ripe with delightful chaos — there are ecstatic exclamations to God as old friends walk through the door and impromptu gushing about the staff’s latest read. Evans often sneaks away to Common Desk across the street as it’s more conducive to getting work done.
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It’s easy to get lost in the appeasing, manicured residential districts and shopping centers of the city, Evans said. But for those willing to come to Deep Ellum, they can find a cultural haunt in their half-square mile.
“It’s all here, man. You gotta dig it up. You gotta dredge it in a city that’s so big geographically and at the heart of this massive region. This is a real neighborhood,” Evans said. “Deep Ellum is Dallas.”
7 p.m.
The last few shoppers make their way out of Dallas’ sole Patagonia store. The Ventura, Calif.-based outdoor apparel retailer requires its outlets to be housed in historical buildings. “Find me one in Dallas that’s not in Deep Ellum,” said Brittany Raschke, the retail team lead.
As weekday happy hours begin to wrap up at area restaurants and bars, more bodies fill sidewalks. The post-work crowd begins to be outnumbered by thin-strapped tank tops and shorts. The music playing from open-air patios is no longer competing in anticipation of diners and drinkers, but with the stacking sounds of conversations and cars from the street.
8 p.m.
Main Street Market is just about a year old and sells a bit of everything. It’s a grocer, a restaurant, a place to buy beer and wine. Most days, owner Steve Alkayed sees Baylor’s visiting patients from the apartment building across the way. Some are receiving kidney, liver and bone marrow transplants. He’s stocked the market with new goods for them, like toothpaste and tissues.
The last streaks of sun wane over the neighborhood to make room for the night. In the area’s four main thoroughfares, the number of calls to police starts to creep up. In the month of April, there were 38 calls for police response between 8 and 9 p.m., about twice as many as the previous hour. It’ll grow to 65 in the next hour. Most of the time, the calls were requests for routine check-ins or to show law enforcement presence.
Alkayed gets ready to close at 9 p.m. He used to keep the market open later, but things have been shaky. After hours, he ends up seeing more people who are homeless than those looking to shop.
“People say after midnight nothing good comes out,” Alkayed said. “Here I’d say after nine. It gets a little rough in Deep Ellum.”
9 p.m.
Streetlights and neon signs puncture the otherwise dark and quiet end of Commerce Street. Some 200 people huddle inside Deep Ellum Art Co. to hear Catie Turner, a singer-songwriter who gained prominence on American Idol.
Outside there’s a large yard with multicolored lights and picnic tables that sometimes hosts food trucks and fire spinners, and the fire marshal.
Surrounded by professional offices, the venue is off the beaten path for live music. John LaRue, the art hall’s soft-spoken co-founder, said while they might miss out on foot traffic, concert-goers can see a show without feeling like they’re at a busy intersection.
“It won’t be a pain in the ass to park,” he said.
10 p.m.
The neighborhood’s central corridors are barricaded off to cars, making way for the night on foot. Dallas Police Department officers and their patrol cars lit with blue and red lights mark every other street corner.
A few feet away, Steven Austin works the door at Punk Society, as he has for the last five years. A fog machine clouds the nearly empty bar. It won’t pick up till after 12:30 a.m., Austin said.
Overall, he’s seen a decrease in street traffic since the pandemic. There is also less late-night chaos than in previous years, he said. The foundation’s new safety plan has the neighborhood laced with cameras and officers, so if something happens, a police unit is already on the way there.
“Just the presence of them out there in the first place really helps deter stuff from happening,” Austin said.
11 p.m.
A woman sneaks around the corner of the clogged Twilite Lounge bar and orders a frozen Irish coffee. Two friends sit atop the lip of a leather booth to watch a six-man band play a cover of Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine.”
A pack of Parliaments, American Spirits or Marlboros will run you $10 from the vending machine.
The line at Cafe Salsera stretches to the Deep Ellum Candy Co. building, which is a prohibition-era-style lounge. As the hour closes out, Serious Pizza is busy with people either refueling or capping their evening.
“It’s one of the first years it feels like a community again,” said Jeremy Bridges, whose family owned the now-defunct Anvil Bar, as he checked IDs. “Deep Ellum has been on the up.”
Midnight
As the clock teeters between days, police receive the most calls.
On the rooftop of Nines, scents of smoke weave with a growing crowd. Heavy bass ripples across the dancing crowd and ears meet mouths as friends try to make out a few words. A woman with glowing pink acrylic nails picks loose marijuana out of her crossbody purse and rolls a joint.
Down below, a line grows as groups ditch their parking lot parties to mingle among unfamiliar faces. The balmy weather welcomes one of the first weekends when miniskirts appear.
With a partially golden smile, Oscar Sanchez, 29, waits to get into Off The Cuff. The mechanic is late and his friends are already inside. He’s been going out in Deep Ellum since he became old enough to buy a drink.
The closed streets remind him of Sixth Street in Austin. “It gives that kind of vibe, and I like that,” he said. “I wish they did that sooner.”
1 a.m.
Sweat beads on the foreheads of people dancing to reggaeton at CheapSteaks. The clubbers’ bare arms glisten under red lights as the beat quickens. New couples emerge and dissipate.
Sanchez, the owner of the vintage store a few blocks away and host of the event, looks up from behind the DJ booth to the mass in front of him.
Jeff Biehler, a co-owner of the bar, is serving drinks tonight. The cut-off just passed to order a New York strip steak. If he’s lucky, he’ll head home by 4 a.m.
On the patio out back, partygoers find fresh air and the aroma of carne asada searing on the grill. A man turns heads by hitting a güira, a Latin percussion instrument made of metal.
2 a.m.
One by one, venues begin cutting the music and returning the dark dance floors and bars to sobering overhead lights. Bouncers usher small herds out the door, creating pools of people at each street corner. There are sequins and chains and leather and shouting and swearing.
Police officers lean up against their car, watching young people sing and record videos of each other in the middle of a closed road, while others cruise off in convertibles, revving their engines at stoplights. Some police control the congested traffic, some stand behind a metal barricade and patrol. Most will stay until sometime after 3 a.m.
After hours
One night, a half-dozen calls come over the next 2 1/2 hours until 5:30 a.m. for tow trucks at a parking lot off Main Street, near Terry Black’s BBQ. The line for pancakes and egg scrambles at Cafe Brazil trails outside the door until 4 a.m., with wait times up to 40 minutes long.
“No sleeping at the tables, even if you purchased something,” a sign taped to the door reads.
Inside it’s chaos, said server Nikki Dietz, otherwise known as primetime business hours for the diner, which is open 24 hours most days.
At Cafe Brazil, it’s the transition hour — when the night begins to blur with the day. Morning light starts to seep into the longstanding spot, with longtime scents of syrup and black coffee.
There’s a slowdown of partygoers as early-bird business people pull their laptops out of their bags.
“The whole crowd changes,” Dietz said.
