Night Shift While you were sleeping, oak cliff, they were hard at work
Photo: Baristas Daniel Martinez and Nate McCabe assess the quality of espresso and drip coffee before Davis Street Espresso opens.
Photos by Danny Fulgencio
When the night grows dark and the moon glows bright, most of us cuddle between the sheets. But for some, the day begins when everyone else is asleep. They say it never feels quite normal staying up all night, but their jobs require them to keep vampire hours.
Story by Rachel Stone
THE BARISTA: Davis Street Espresso
If Daniel Martinez gets out of bed even a minute late, it throws his whole day off.
The 20-year-old college students rises exactly at 4:30 a.m., gets ready for work and drives from Duncanville to Oak Cliff, where he is a barista at Davis Street Espresso. He arrives before 5:30 a.m.
“I try to be early just because I don’t like to rush,” he says. By 5:40, he starts the coffee, and at 5:50, the second barista arrives.
Once everything else is ready, they taste the first espresso shots of the day for quality control.
PHOTO: Barista Daniel Martinez arrives to work at Davis Street Espresso before 5:30 a.m. Having a strange work schedule is worth it for the love of coffee and serving customers, he says.
Photo: Daniel Martinez.
“We get to see the sun rise. It’s nice to see the light change throughout the morning, and it’s like the whole room changes.”
When customers begin rolling in around 6 a.m., Martinez knows their faces, their names and their drinks, especially for the early morning regulars. Jenny is a cappuccino. Desiree, espresso.
As he gets to know Starbucks customers who prefer very sugary drinks, he tries to wean them off of vanilla syrup and appreciate how coffee tastes. He suggests using two lumps of sugar instead of three. He recommends a chai latte for a customer who isn’t that into coffee.
“There is trust involved,” he says. “I like talking about coffee and educating people about coffee.”
Martinez and his coworker, Nate McCabe, say they never eat breakfast before work.
“There’s no time,” McCabe says.
They taste coffee, an appetite suppressant, throughout their shifts. Sometimes they snack. But usually, they haven’t had a meal at the time they clock out.
Twice a week, Martinez works 5:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. or sometimes as late as 3:30. Usually there is a nap and then evening activities. He’s a leader in the young adult group at his church, Vida Dallas.
“If I’m not home by 9 p.m., it’s going to be a rough day,” he says.
PHOTO: Martinez possesses a developed palate for coffee, and he’s constantly tasting espresso pulls for quality control.
McCabe, who recently graduated with a master’s degree from the University of Dallas, has a roommate who works an evening retail job and also likes to party.
“There have been a few times when I’m leaving from work, and he’s still up,” he says. “And vice versa, where I’m coming home from work, and he’s just starting his day.”
Martinez and McCabe both say having a regular sleep schedule is impossible. Having a good alarm clock is a must — phones aren’t reliable enough. They take naps, and they learn to live with a little sleep deprivation.
They do it because they love coffee, and they love the people, Martinez says.
“I love that I can give someone a cup, and they’re like ‘Wow, this is so good,’” he says. “People look forward to coffee. It’s an important part of their day.”
McCabe says he prefers the mornings in wintertime. It’s dark when he arrives and gradually the sun begins to come up over West Davis.
“We get to see the sun rise,” he says. “It’s nice to see the light change throughout the morning, and it’s like the whole room changes.”
Photo: Nate McCabe.
THE BARTENDER:Barbara’s Pavilion
Even on his days off, Steven Geer usually finds a barstool at Barbara’s Pavilion.
Geer landed his first bartending gig 25 years ago, and he’s worked at Barbara’s twice. Previous owners fired him in 2005 for walking out during a shift, but he was rehired three years later and never left.
Photo: Barbara’s bartender Steven Geer.
Like many who have worked at Barbara’s or owned a piece of it, he describes Oak Cliff’s oldest bar as his living room. Geer, who also is a singer, points to Christmas stockings and tinsel garlands.
“I decorated here instead of my house,” he says. “This is a huge part of my life.”
Photo: The Karaoke at Barbara’s is legendary.
Dan Friessen, a Barbara’s co-owner for the past eight years, manages Barbara’s and is always there. He says he does take days off, but Barbara’s is his home. This dive bar, famous for its karaoke and chill vibe, is where his friends and chosen family are. It’s his whole life.
A typical day for Friessen starts around noon. He’s always at Barbara’s by 3 p.m. at latest to open up at 4. On a slow night, you’ll find him on his laptop at one end of the bar. When friends arrive, he teases them, makes them laugh and makes them drinks.
Photo: Geer pours a drink during his shift at Barbara’s. He often hangs out there even on his days off.
In Friessen’s eight years at Barbara’s, there’s been only one fight, after a gay guy bought a drink for the wrong straight guy. Occasionally things become rowdy, even shouty. There are times when the over imbibed are cut off and, if they are jerks about it, ejected. But that is all very rare, Friessen says.
Most of the time, it’s all karaoke and coolness.
Friessen typically finds a pack of late-nighters on the Pav’s back porch around last call. At 2 a.m., it’s time to kick everyone out. Not an easy job considering these are his friends and this is his back yard.
“The other night I dreamed it was 2 a.m., and I couldn’t get anyone to leave,” he says. “I usually have my security do it.”
THE NURSE: Methodist Dallas Medical Center
Gaylene Wilhelm steps swiftly in bright pink Nike Air Max sneakers through the shiny halls of the Neurocritical Care Unit at Methodist Dallas Medical Center.
It is early, before 7 p.m., and her day has just begun.
She’s the charge nurse for the 34-bed unit, which almost always is full.
At 53, she’s been a nurse for 26 years, and she’s worked in this unit for 12 of those.
This unit, housed in the hospital’s new Charles A. Sammons Trauma and Critical Care Tower, treats patients who have had strokes, aneurysms and spinal surgeries.
There are tragedies. Unbearably young stroke patients. Those who don’t wake up from comas, who likely won’t get better.
“It’s so hard for them to see that things will get better. Of course, only the dear Lord above knows whether that’s going to happen.”
But there are astoundingly joyful moments too. There are patients who receive the clot-busting drug known as TPA in time to restore their brain to normalcy within hours following a stroke. There are some who struggle for months and years but eventually win their brains and bodies back.
Wilhelm’s strength is in helping families with their concerns.
“You see them at their worst,” she says.
Walking family members of patients through procedures and explaining every step of the way eases their minds a little, she says. Even neurology patients who are awake sometimes are not all there. Brain healing can take a long time.
Photo: Gaylene Wilhelm.
“It’s so hard for them to see that things will get better,” she says. “Of course, only the dear Lord above knows whether that’s going to happen.”
All of the nurses in the neuro unit work 12-hour shifts, and Wilhelm works 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. three days a week. She lives about 140 miles from Dallas in Wichita Falls. Once a week, she puts her truck in drive for two and a half hours, directly to the hospital. When her shift is over, she bunks with another nurse, Melinda Cox, who owns a home in Kessler Park. At the end of her third shift, she puts it in drive again all the way home.
Wilhelm, who is married with four dogs, says she doesn’t require much sleep. She doesn’t drink coffee, and she’s not a big eater. She has a meal before her shift and then she might have an apple or an orange overnight. She guesses she walks about 9 miles every shift in those Nike sneakers, and she says compression stockings are a must. Without them, her legs wear out before dawn.
She says neuro patient don’t always sleep well, and their internal clocks are usually off. So the night shift is never quiet.
“You’re always busy,” she says. “Any time something happens to the head, they’re always very needy patients.”
Photo: Gaylene Wilhelm checks on a patient in the Neurocritical Care Unit.
THE ARENA RIGGER: Lights and sound for concerts
Michael Dilger wants to work 100 jobs before he dies.
He’s been a restaurant facilities manager, a truck driver, a landscaper, the gatekeeper at a state park and a short-order cook at Larry’s Family Restaurant in The Colony, to name a few.
His full-time hat for the past year-and-a-half has been that of arena rigger. The 34-year-old Dilger is an independent contractor who works for companies that engineer the lights and sound for concerts and events at the American Airlines Center, Gexa Pavilion, Verizon Theater at Grand Prairie and the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center.
For a typical job at the AAC, he arrives at 4 a.m. and works 130 feet off the ground, walking on a 4-inch-wide beam, balancing his body to pull heavy lights up from guys on the ground. Around noon, when they finish, he grabs a meal and maybe a nap before returning at 9 p.m. to run spotlights during the show and then tear everything down. If there’s another show at the AAC or elsewhere, he turns around immediately to work that. Working 9 p.m. to noon the following day is common. Sometimes riggers can nap during shifts, when things are slow. At the AAC, there is a platform above the scoreboard that serves as the riggers’ lounge, Dilger says.
“If I don’t sweat at work, I don’t feel like I’ve had a good day.”
They’re used to working back-to-back shifts in their desirable field of work.
“You can’t say ‘no’ because if you say ‘no’ just once, they bump you down on the call list,” Dilger says. “There’s always someone gunning for your job.”
Besides that, he says, “it’s feast or famine.” He has to book jobs when he can because there could be lulls that last for weeks.
Dilger always is prepared when working overnights. Aside from the tools he needs for work, he has in his truck Clementine oranges, a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and an ice chest with milk and a case of Shiner Bock beer.
Bars close at 2 a.m., and riggers work at least until 4 in the morning.
“That’s our happy hour,” he says.
Finding a meal at 4 a.m. also can be a challenge.
“I’ve fallen in love with Oak Cliff’s 24-hour restaurants,” Cesar’s Taco’s and Metro Diner, he says.
The biggest perk of the job is seeing all the concerts. Dilger has seen Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Muse, Lady Gaga and Juan Gabriel, the 65-year-old Mexican mega star known for entering stage on horseback.
He once had dinner at the same table as Stevie Wonder.
Recently, he went on a six-city tour with Russian/German electronic musician Zedd. His next goal is to get picked up for a world tour.
Whether it’s that or something new, we know Dilger’s next job won’t involve sitting at a desk.
“I love things that give me an adrenaline rush,” he says. “If I don’t sweat at work, I don’t feel like I’ve had a good day.”