Poets Books in Oak Cliff is one of the city’s best independent book stores.

Scott Tucker

Well, the snowstorm came, then went … eventually. The only remaining ice exists in the shadows. The highways are drivable, and, fortunately, life has returned to normal with minimal casualties. We made it through another version of Dallaska.

But while everyone races to reclaim their seat at their favorite neighborhood bar that shuttered for nearly a week, or books a dinner at their favorite local restaurant to recover losses caused by the inclement weather, other local businesses are trying to pick up the thawed pieces all the same.  

From Saturday to Wednesday, our world essentially stopped spinning. Most businesses, fearing the treacherous roads and anticipating low demand, closed up shop for the weekend and then some. A weekend closure is easy to bounce back from if you have conglomerate support and millionaire investors backing you, and in a city dominated by chain establishments, retailers in Dallas do. But not all, and for those who don’t, a lost weekend can be unrecoverable. 

“I’m just going to have to try to make it up,” said Chelsea Callahan-Haag, owner of East Dallas Vintage.

She lost Saturday and Sunday, her two busiest days of the week, and planned to open on a Tuesday outside normal business hours, but ultimately couldn’t.

“I am going to have to be careful and pull the purse strings a little bit for a couple of months, probably,” she said. “It’s a setback, but not a deal-breaker. I do worry about those businesses that were already just walking a fine line; closing for a weekend might be devastating for them.”

As for the next few weeks, she’ll do her best to keep payroll down and limit expenditures in her own personal life, skipping dinners out and pushing off small expenses until equilibrium is maintained. Callahan-Haag estimates things will return to normal around March. But she still worries about the trickle-down effect the freeze has on all the vendors who rent booths in her shop. 

“I have 77 small businesses inside my small business,” she said. “When I close, all those 77 small businesses have to be closed. It’s tough.”

It’s not just Callahan-Haag who skips her morning coffee at the locally owned cafe now; it’s all 77 vendors and the hundreds of other small businesses in the area that have a treacherous and typically slow winter ahead of them. 

Marco Cavazos owns Poets Books, with locations in Deep Ellum and Bishop Arts. Both closed shop for the weekend, at an estimated 70% revenue loss for the week. 

“For us, the ice storm coming over the weekend, we’re basically losing a whole week,” Cavazos said. “It puts a lot of stress. It puts a lot of pressure. It means playing catch-up.”

His plan to recover lost revenue is to drive e-commerce sales, push local products that won’t be further delayed by backorders and potentially close early on especially slow days. It’s the little changes that make a big difference for the business that will spend months recovering from a singular lost weekend. 

Poets Books opened in 2019 and survived 2021’s Storm Uri, which caused weeks of closures for some businesses. But Cavazos said the pandemic’s latent effects, which sparked a fervent national push to shop small, benefited local businesses during that storm. 

“Because of the pandemic, people already had that mentality of actively supporting businesses they wanted to see flourish and stay around,” he said. “I’m not saying that people don’t still have the attitude, but it’s not in the forefront like it was during the pandemic.” 

But it isn’t just businesses that are impacted by the freeze. Fab Roc is a DJ who splits her time between Los Angeles and Dallas, maintaining a Tuesday night residency at LadyLove. The vinyl lounge and club was forced to close, and her set was canceled. Not only did she have four flights canceled while attempting to return to Los Angeles, but she had $500 to $1,000 less than what she expected, and rent is due on Sunday. 

“The economy is already tricky, and so every dollar counts, especially when you’re freelance,” she said.

Roc, a native New Yorker who lived in Dallas for several years, like many others, is disappointed with the city’s approach to winter weather: shut down and wait it out. 

“Just wait it out? It’s not like my landlord is waiting it out,” she said.  “He doesn’t care. And how do I make up that money?”

She hopes to find a last-minute gig; otherwise, February will be a bleak month. 

“I have to dip into my savings just to cover the cost instead of having the cushion [from the residency] and reallocate my fun budget,” Roc said. 

The storm certainly has long-lasting impacts that disproportionately affect small business owners and service providers. So, if you are one of the lucky Dallasites who was able to work through the storm, break your isolation this weekend with a night on the town at a DJ set, or hit your favorite vintage shop right in time to find the perfect Valentine’s Day gift. It could make all the difference.