Over the past couple of years, the changing West 7th Street area has brought us many wonderful, many-splendored things, such as a Super Target, a Subway, a PetSmart, a Mattress Giant, and nine million apartments.
Now, the district that at heart remains a dirty, musky, underground enclave, no matter how Ward and June Cleaver it gets, gives us a church. An evangelical church. Next Sunday, March 23, on Easter, a local mega-church’s satellite worship center will open on Carroll Street, in a warehouse formerly occupied by a restaurant-supply company, right across from Montgomery Plaza and within cigarette-flicking distance of the Bronx Zoo and the Shamrock Pub, not too far from Lola’s, and right across the street from Fred’s Texas Café and all of the hang-outs near or on Foch Street.
The organization behind the new development is Fellowship Church. Started in 1990 and based in Grapevine, with three satellite worship centers throughout North Texas and one in Miami (?!), Fellowship bought the warehouse last September, according to the Star-Telegram, and has stopped conducting services in another satellite worship center in North Fort Worth, where members had been congregating for about two and a half years. Average Sunday attendance: about 1,000.
There’s no telling how many Fellowship sheep are going to flock to the church’s new 51,465-square-foot outlet. In any event, you can bet that every Sunday, lots of cars will be rumbling around the area, exacerbating the swift rate at which the adjacent streets, especially the ones behind the church, in the poor but strong-willed Linwood neighborhood, are already deteriorating.
A lot of scenesters I’ve talked to or have eavesdropped on aren’t exactly thrilled. For one thing, there’s the sense that potential new bar owners and restaurateurs will be leery of doing business by a mini-mega-church. For another: a grim reminder that Big Religion, like germs and Jesus, is everywhere.
Maybe founder and senior pastor Ed Young hasn’t spent any time on West 7th. If he had, he would know that, while Fort Worth is extremely conservative, some of us, including West 7th’ers, don’t understand why someone (Ed Young) would say something like, “Most of us don’t know the truth about [homosexuality]. I lovingly and firmly refuse to accept the fact that homosexuality falls in line with God’s model and God’s math of sex. In other words, homosexuality is a sin.”
Any guy who uses “sex” and “math” in the same sentence can’t be any fun.
Though some activities will take place at the worship center during the week around happy hour, the building will be relatively quiet Mondays through Saturdays. Sundays, though, stand to be pretty lively, with three worship services happening consecutively, in the morning, early afternoon, and around – when else? – happy hour. Which probably won’t be a problem now, but who knows, once football season rolls around.
– Anthony Mariani
Jukebox Hero
I can’t remember the last time I was at a bar and someone not named me played a killer song on the jukebox. Yet – praise, 6-lbs.-10-oz. Baby Jesus! – there I was at the Showdown Saloon on Camp Bowie Boulevard last Saturday, drinking some beer and hanging out, when, after a steady stream of mediocre rock songs, a gem came on, “Perfect Strangers,” by Deep Purple. Don’t laugh. “Perfect Strangers” rawks.
And I should have left it alone, but I was so overcome with joy that I had to locate and salute the person responsible for the pick. Did I go around asking all 20 people there, “Was it you? Was it you? Was it you?” No. See, when I go to a bar that has a juke, I don’t normally just sit around and make small talk. I hawk the machine.
Mainly, I want to scout: A.) the kind of people picking; B.) if anyone skipped over any of my fucking songs; and C.) my next opportunity to get up and play something. In the course of my hawking at the Showdown, I noticed that only two other people were making return trips to the juke, some chick and some dude. As I rightfully and immediately assumed, the dude was the one who played “Perfect Strangers,” a dude named “Dave” and a dude who, upon meeting me, proceeded to limn in great detail the history of Deep Purple – and the histories of Black Sabbath, Ronnie James Dio, and Ian Gillan. Not that Dave was unkind or long-winded, but he kind of made me feel, y’know, a little stupid. Not as stupid as you feel when one of your friends says, “Dude! Oh, man.
Have you read [insert here: name of obscure novel written by obscure novelist]?! Have you heard [insert here: name of obscure band]?! Have you seen [insert here: name of obscure movie from obscure filmmaker from obscure country]?! Aww, dude. You don’t know what you’re missin’!” I didn’t feel that bad, just way out of the water, and up until then I had considered myself pretty well versed in all things hard rock. But did I know that Ian Gillan recorded an album with Sabbath? Did I know that Born Again is “fucking awesome”? Did I see Deep Purple at the convention center last time they came through? No, no, and no. No doubt painfully aware of my ignorance, Dave sympathetically said, “All right, man, good talking to you” – twice – and, like a guy who simply refused to believe he lost another game of Uno, I had to drag myself away and back to my friends. I didn’t have the heart even to look at the jukebox. – A.M.
Contact Last Call at lastcall@fwweekly.com.
