On a Wednesday afternoon in early March, just after two o'clock, when the lunch rush should long be over, Spiral Diner on Magnolia Avenue in Fort Worth reverberates with music and conversation: Virtually every table is still occupied. There are office workers sports in the united kingdom in business casual and tattooed artists in skinny jeans, young families with kids and at least one couple who appear to be in their 60s.
The novelty appeal of the restaurant, which serves an exclusively vegan menu in a town far better known for its steak, hamburgers and barbecue, has long since worn off (this location of Spiral opened in 2004). People eat here simply because they like the food, and because they are increasingly sports in the united kingdom flocking to Magnolia Avenue. The neighborhood has emerged in recent years as a little taste of Portland or Austin in a mostly conservative city; a strip whose bars, shops and eateries all owe a measure of their own success to Spiral.
Sitting at one of the restaurant's lacquered-top tables on this busy afternoon, just opposite the soda fountain that only spouts organic, agave-sweetened soda, are Amy McNutt and James Johnston, the married couple who built Spiral into what it is today. She has long, chestnut brown hair that she usually wears pulled away from her face and a sweet, self-effacing manner -- imagine Renee Zellweger's alt-rock younger cousin. He has a shaved head and a husky build, and his beard is the first thing everybody notices about him - a ZZ Top-style bristle that hangs to the middle of his chest.
sports in the united kingdom They are hunched over an Apple laptop, if not exactly planning world domination (they are much too unassuming for that), trying to figure out the next step in an expanding, cultural mini-empire that also includes Johnston's burgeoning film career, and plans to open The Citizen Theater , Fort Worth's first free-standing art-house movie theater in more than two decades.
Johnston adds: "I never stepped back and thought, 'We should move to Austin.'" Frustrated as he sometimes gets by rapid overdevelopment in other corners of the city, or the right-leaning politics of most of the populace, he observes, "For all the problems that Texas and Fort Worth have, I love being here."
What is most interesting about these two is that, separately and together, they are on the cusp of their biggest sports in the united kingdom challenges yet -- projects that could have a considerable impact on Tarrant County and beyond. Johnston is one of the producers of Ain't Them Bodies Saints , an independent feature to be shot this summer and directed by his longtime creative collaborator, sports in the united kingdom David Lowery. It has been workshopped at the prestigious Sundance Institute Labs and has the potential sports in the united kingdom to launch Johnston, Lowery and friend and partner Toby Halbrooks into serious film careers.
Meanwhile, sports in the united kingdom McNutt has been spearheading the development of the Citizen , a $3.5 million, twin-screen theater, three years in the making, that she hopes will soon begin construction on one of the last unoccupied lots along Magnolia. If it succeeds, it could prove to be yet another boon to the Near Southside area and Fairmount neighborhood -- the final piece of a community-building puzzle that has taken more than a decade to assemble.
"I've never met a more agreeable pair," said Lowery, who was Johnston's roommate in Fort Worth in the early 2000s. "If I wanted to get sappy about it, I've never met anyone who loved each other as much as they do. Whenever my wife and I get in fights, we're like, 'How come James and Amy never get into fights?'"
McNutt grew up in Southlake, graduating from Grapevine High School before moving to Los Angeles to study film at the University of Southern California. A vegetarian since she was a kid, during college she started researching the treatment of dairy cattle ("in some ways, they have it even worse than cattle raised for meat, because their miserable sports in the united kingdom lives are stretched out over many years," she says now). She decided sports in the united kingdom to go vegan, a diet that eschews any meat, fish, dairy or products sports in the united kingdom harvested from insects, like honey. After working with a documentary film crew after graduation, she found herself tiring of Los Angeles and eager to return home and find a professional outlet for her veganism.
With $50,000 from investors, and not much in the way of self-consciousness about the fact that she had never before run a restaurant, McNutt opened Spiral Diner at the Rail Market, a collection of shops, restaurants and a farmers market that launched with considerable fanfare in 2002 at the southeastern tip of downtown Fort Worth. sports in the united kingdom (A partner with whom she started the restaurant dropped out of the operation after just a few weeks.) And although the Rail Market never entirely caught on, closing in 2005, Spiral sports in the united kingdom Diner found an almost instant and devoted following.
One of those early adopters was Johnston, the outlier in what he describes as a "staunchly blue collar, unconcerned with the arts" family, the male members of whom were usually encouraged to enter the military. Rudderless after graduation from Amon Carter Riverside High School, working assorted hourly-wage jobs at restaurants and fast-food joints, he one day stumbled upon a flier announcing that Spiral Diner would soon be opening.
"We started e-mailing each other back and forth," recalls Johnston, who had recently gone vegan himself and reached sports in the united kingdom out to McNutt sports in the united kingdom to tell her that he was excited that the restaurant was opening. "I thought for sure that a filmmaker who's a vegan is a lesbian."
Yet even after they both figured out the other was straight, it took awhile for anything to happen sports in the united kingdom -- McNutt was too busy at Spiral Diner to even consider a relationship. Only after mutual friends kept arranging "accidental" meetings between the two did things take a more serious turn. They began spending time together every day, often watching movies after the restaurant shut down for the night. They married just a few months later, in February sports in the united kingdom 2003, eloping sports in the united kingdom while on a road trip through New Mexico.
Soon after that, Johnston came aboard full time at Spiral Diner, cooking and developing new recipes. And whereas most couples who work together quickly find themselves scratching each other's eyes out, they struck an easy balance, devoting their mutual energy to McNutt's vegan business in the hopes that it would one day free up Johnston to focus exclusively on filmmaking.
By late 2003, Spiral Diner was ready to expand. McNutt and Johnston were particularly taken by a building on Magnolia Avenue that they would pass each morning on their way from their house in Fairmount to the Rail Market. There was a hole in the roof, it seemed to be falling apart -- but something about it called to them.
"To use the gardening metaphor, the soil on Magnolia was being fertilized and prepared," says City Councilman Joel Burns, who represents sports in the united kingdom the Fairmount district, and who notes that civic-minded homeowners had been buying sports in the united kingdom and refurbishing old houses in the area since the 1990s. "And then James and Amy planted their seeds at the perfect time."
"We definitely had the sense that there was something brewing in this neighborhood," says Johnston. "You couldn't put your finger on it, but we saw new people moving in, we saw things were starting to build up."
The Magnolia Avenue location of Spiral Diner opened in August 2004 -- and though there were the occasional lean weeks at the start, it was soon regularly sports in the united kingdom packed. Over the next few years, a number of other businesses that didn't quite fit the traditional Fort Worth model began sprouting up all around it, usually in refurbished old buildings like the one that houses McNutt and Johnston's restaurant.
In 2006, Nonna Tata -- a tiny Italian restaurant with just a handful of tables and a menu of fresh-made pastas -- opened on the corner across from Spiral. Next-door-neighbor Lili's Bistro arrived in 2007. In spring 2009, the high end, locally-sourced eatery Ellerbe Fine Foods opened across the street. A few months after that, Brad Hensarling -- a co-owner of the Chat Room Pub, also on Magnolia -- joined with partners to launch the craft cocktail lounge, The Usual. Avoca Coffee, the independent coffee shop, followed in March 2011.
"One of the reasons that I wanted to stay on Magnolia is because of the success of Spiral Diner," says Hensarling. "It became apparent that you could do things on Magnolia that couldn't be done elsewhere sports in the united kingdom in the city."
It's unseasonably cold and pouring rain on the first Saturday of the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, but a capacity crowd is nonetheless on hand at the Long Center for the Performing Arts, for a program of short films by emerging sports in the united kingdom Texas directors. In the minutes before the screening, Johnston wanders around the lobby, wearing one of what seems to be an inexhaustible supply of short-sleeve plaid shirts. McNutt sports in the united kingdom is already inside the auditorium with a group of friends.
Most directors are usually sports in the united kingdom nervous presenting their works at a prestigious film festival. But Johnston -- whose short film Knife is the third entry in the nine-film program -- mostly just looks gratified to be invited to the party.
Johnston first got hooked on movies as a teenager, when he would drive to a store in Haltom City that would rent you a VCR and 10 VHS tapes for the weekend. But it wasn't until his early 20s -- when a friend who was attending the University of Texas at Arlington showed Johnston a VHS tape of short films that he and his classmates had made -- that Johnston realized he could actually make films here in Texas.
He met David Lowery sports in the united kingdom when the director was advertising for people to work on an indie film called Lullaby . Johnston was the only member of the ragtag crew who showed up every day. The result was amateurish sports in the united kingdom -- Lowery refers to it as "a film that no one will ever see" -- but it was a start. Soon both men were making short films together, working on each other's projects at every stage of production.
The 12-minute Knife was shot during sports in the united kingdom four days in the summer of 2010. It's an elliptical, dia
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