Russell Hobbs is reborn as a Deep Ellum Restaurateur

Russell Hobbs is still dead.
He declared himself so a year ago and celebrated the event with a garage sale. Out with the old Russ, in with the new. Five years ago, Russell Hobbs ranked as sort of the Hugh Hefner/Timothy Leary of Deep Ellum: crack pot philosopher dreamer, schemer, and latter-day hippie. He ran the Theater Gallery and the Prophet Bar--primitive pseudo-underground nightclubs that glorified art and rock  n' roll. And sex and drugs and youth.

"I came down here just to get away from suburbia, get away from the malls and stuff. And I started being liberated, running around barefoot, growing my hair out, just smiling and having fun." Russell says today.

"What everybody's searching for is love, I guess. I was looking for a girlfriend." He laughs. "I found a lot of those."

Late in 1987, Russell Hobbs found something else.

"It's all God's plan," he says. "When I came down here to Deep Ellum I wasn't looking to meet Jesus."

Well, you can imagine how that went over. As you may recall, first the Prophet Bar stopped selling alcohol, then Russell began questioning the musicians about what they believed in. He disapproved, in particular, of bands whose names he felt bordered blasphemy--like Three on a Hill and Lithium Christmas.

"I came back full of love and Jesus, saying, 'man I found the truth!' And they ran away."

After his spiritual conversion--almost everyone who knew him thought it was just another typically bizarre Russ Hobbs phase...."