Readers Voice Awards 2026

And the winner is …..
VERONICA OLIVO!

Each year in March, Dallas Voice draws the name of one winner from among all the folks who cast their ballots during January in our annual Readers Voice Awards voting period. This year, that person is Veronica Olivo of Dallas.

As the winner of our RVA drawing, Veronica receives

• $500 cash
• A $100 gift certificate Cremona Bistro Ristorante and
• Two tickets to her choice of Uptown Players productions.
  After finding out that her name had been drawn, Veronica took a few minutes to sit down and answer some questions for us so that Dallas Voice readers could get to know a little bit about her:

Dallas Voice: Your name is Veronica Olivo. Do you have a nickname? What do your family and friends call you? Veronica Olivo: Whoooooo! Everyone calls me Veronica. Nicknames are given as seen fit by friends, but I answer to most all “V” names.
Do you have a partner/significant other? What is their name? I am my significant other! I am currently dating myself and making friends along the way.

Do you live in Dallas or elsewhere in DFW? How long have you lived in the DFW area? All my 48 years. I am an East Dallas gal, born and raised. Grew up at Crossroads Market and met my chosen family at Union Jack.

What kind of work do you do? Where do you work? I manage an office by day, but my passion is Hoot ’n Hollar Thrift. I recently launched an online thrift shop to save vintage decor, repurpose home goods and help collectors find treasures. My first pop-up was last Sunday (March 22) at the Market on Cedar Springs. I am located here in Dallas, and you can find Hoot ’n Hollar Thrift on social media.

What do you plan to do with your $500 prize? I think this will be best spent reinvesting in my self-care. I see a sound bath and a massage in my near future. The rest will help me continue my resale passion with Hoot ’n Hollar Thrift and, one day, have a physical location for the business.

— Tammye Nash

RVA Special Recognition: The Rainbow Warrior Award goes to Joseph Whiteside

Dallas has learned over the last several months just how important some paint on some pavement can be.

We knew before the end of 2025 that the rainbow crosswalks on Cedar Springs Road would be removed; last-ditch appeals for an exemption that would keep the rainbows in place had been denied. The only question was how long could the inevitable be delayed.

Then on Thursday, March 19, word came: The rainbow removal would begin within the next week. But, city officials said, it was just the crosswalk at Oak Lawn Avenue and Cedar Springs Road that was being removed. And it was happening not because Greg Abbott said so, but because the city was in the process of making repairs to that stretch of Oak Lawn Avenue.

Then early Monday morning, March 23, word came that crews were already at work, removing not just that one crosswalk, but all the rainbow crosswalks.

There was nothing we could do but watch and mourn.

But that wasn’t good enough for 25-year-old Joseph Whiteside.

Sometime around 3 a.m. on Tuesday, March 24, Whiteside armed himself with rainbow-colored paints and rainbow-colored chalk and hit The Strip. He was already in the process of re-rainbowing the crosswalk on Cedar Springs at Knight Street when officers with Dallas Police Department showed up.

t was about 3:30 a.m. when officers stopped Whiteside and issued him a ticket, citing him with a misdemeanor grafitti charge.

Then officers discovered that Whiteside had two warrants out of Farmer’s Branch: one for a speeding ticket he didn’t pay and another for failure to appear in court. So they arrested him and took him to jail, where he was being held on combined bail amounts totaling $972.40.

By the end of the day, however, Whiteside had made bail and was back in The Gayborhood, sitting on the rainbow steps of Oak Lawn United Methodist Church, being interviewed by a reporter with the Dallas Morning News

Removal of rainbows from the gayborhood was seen as a win for homophobes trying to erase LGBTQ+ identity. The community in Oak Lawn can certainly live without painted crosswalks and can mark the neighborhood’s identity in other ways; Cedar Springs Merchants Association has already received an order of rainbow banners that will be installed all along The Strip.

But the fact remains that Joseph Whiteside’s decision to take to the streets with his paint and his chalk in the dead of night to repaint the rainbows that had been take from was a bold act of defiance, of bravery, even. It was a message to everyone who thought they could dim our light and fade our colors that we are not so easily defeated. We will persist. We will survive, and we will thrive.

Let me make this clear: Repainting the crosswalks with rainbows would be an act of vandalism; it would be illegal. And we are certainly not here to incite illegal acts.

So, hopefully, this will not be the beginning of a rash of graffiti artists drawing rainbows on Cedar Springs Road. I mean, arresting one person for restoring the rainbows was an easy task for police. But arresting 100 rainbow painters all at once? That would probably take an act of ICE. — David Taffet

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