White Rabbit Antiques offers steampunk flair
There's no need to ask the Mad Hatter how to find the white rabbit. It's at 2717 Stanley St. in Amarillo.
Debi and Steve McDonald opened White Rabbit Antiques in April, turning Debi's lifelong hobby into a business.
"I've been an antiquer for most of my life," Debi said. "I just love to see the old things find a new life and new home and continue on generationally."
The couple gathered their own treasures for years before channeling some goods out of their overrun home and into a booth in various antique malls in the city. After retirements closed their host stores, the McDonalds decided to create their own establishment.
"I loved the book ('Alice's Adventures in Wonderland') when I was a kid, and I just always liked the White Rabbit," Debi said.
White Rabbit contains their items, plus those of a couple of dozen other vendors.
Spaces brim with items from primitive to Victorian and from furniture to jewelry.
Steve came later to antiques than his wife, but the bug eventually bit. His collections include wristwatches and clocks. "I like the mechanics," he said.
Antiques remind us of the past - ours, our family's or history's, Debi said.
Her best find? An oversized National Geographic map of South America from the 1950s.
"My mother's from Chile," Debi said. "I walked right up to that map and found the tiny village where she was from.
"I always think of my mother when I look at that map." She added.
White Rabbit Antiques operates from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Check its Facebook page for more info.
I drank my first cup of coffee with a head on it last week.
Most iced coffee uses either coffee left to sit and cool or hot java poured straight over ice. But not the Nitro Cold Brew at Texas Tea at Georgia Street and Wolflin Avenue, in Wolflin Square, owner Justin Howe said.
The largely tea- and water-focused business added the Nitro brew cold-brewed by Amarillo bean expert Evocation Coffee Roasters.
Evocation steeps freshly roasted coffee in cold water for at least 12 hours to give it a strong, complex flavor, according to owner Roman Leal.
Evocation puts it in a keg and pressurizes it with nitro, which Leal said produces its creamy texture.
Dispensing with additional nitro creates a cup with a foamy head, sans ice.
There's no shortage of Leals making a splash lately. Foodways Texas honored Roman's grandmother, Irma Leal, with a Lifetime Achievement Award last weekend at its 2015 symposium in San Antonio.
Foodways Texas is a nonprofit promoting and celebrating the diverse food cultures of the Lone Star State. It's based out of the Department of American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.
Most people around these parts know Irma Leal and her late husband Jesse as the founders of original Leal's Mexican Restaurant in Muleshoe.
Shoppers buying specially market General Mills products at United Supermarkets and Market Street stores in West Texas, Dallas-Fort Worth and New Mexico can help Feeding America member food banks, such as High Plains Food Bank in Amarillo.
Buyers can enter promotion codes on the packages at outnumberhunger
.com to help secure meals on behalf of the food banks, a news release said. For every code entered online by Jan. 31, General Mills will donate 50 cents to Feeding America, with a maximum total donation of $1.2 million.
Some changes are in store for the intersection of South Washington Street and Southwest 46th Avenue.
Amarillo lawyer Keith Jones sold land he owned there to Toot'n Totum. The sale closed in January. The tract contains some businesses that were leasing buildings from Jones.
"They all knew about it in advance," Jones said. "I tried my best to give them as much notice, as long as possible to prepare."
O-Cha Seafood will close in two months, according to an employee who answered the phone there on Thursday. It will not relocate, she said.
Neither will Go Burger, which will close in September, owner Nicole Sims said.
The tract now owned by Toot'n Totum does not include Southlawn Liquors on the corner at 4432 S. Washington St.
Interact with Karen Smith Welch at karen.welch@amarillo.com, facebook.com/karensmithwelch or @karen_welch on Twitter. Welch blogs at amarillo.com.
