Around lunchtime at the Omni today, a crew was dismantling those enormous red Christmas balls that have been heaped up on the lawn for the past couple months, while in the Dallas Ballroom upstairs, Downtown Dallas Inc. was holding its annual meeting. It was a $100-per-head affair ($125 for non-members)…
At this morning’s Quality of Life Committee meeting, we finally got to hear about that proposed new home solicitation ordinance with which we wrapped last week. We know what you’re thinking, and let us reassure you right away: Your Girl Scout cookies should be unaffected. Exhale. As City Attorney Tom…
A year and a half ago, the owners of Pan-African Connection Bookstore, Bandele Tyehimba and his wife Akwete, found out their building was being torn down and replaced with a dentist’s office. They’d been at the location at the corner of Marsalis and Jefferson for more than 21 years. “I…
The Dallas VA Medical Center nurse who told a lesbian Marine her depression was the result of “living in darkness” as a homosexual will no longer be working for the VA. We first wrote about former marine Esther Garatie back in November, after the Dallas Voice broke the story: Garatie…
Dallas Area Habitat For Humanity recently announced it would be razing Ollie’s Place this morning, a convenience store turned bar turned “hidey-hole for drugs and other criminal activity” . It’s the seventh building to be knocked down and eventually rebuilt as part of Fight the Blight, Habitat’s 25th anniversary celebration…
I was out wandering around not far from my house this morning when I was lucky enough to catch a bit of the annual Elite News-sponsored Martin Luther King Day Parade. Hundreds of people turned out to watch, lining the former Forest Avenue for at least a mile. The marchers…
“It’s mid-January,” Dallas Animal Services Commission member Bonnie Matthias said emphatically. “And we’re caught with our pants down again.” As usual, there’s good news and there’s bad news at Dallas Animal Services. This week, shelter manager Jody Jones and head of Code Compliance Jimmy Martin put in two appearances at…
Just four days after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Rick Perry’s favorite law — the one requiring women to get a sonogram, listen to a fetal heartbeat and hear a verbal description from a doctor of the sonogram image before they can get an abortion — is…
Texas’s dandy new “sonogram law” — which requires abortion-seeking women to look at a sonogram, hear a description of it from her doctor and listen to a fetal heartbeat — is legal, a federal court ruled today. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a temporary injunction, issued by…
Perhaps you were under the impression that the Texas Department of Transportation is responsible for mowing and maintaining the highway rights-of-way throughout the city. Or maybe you just never thought about it. What’s that like, not thinking about highway medians? We wouldn’t know. Either way, you may recall that way…
I’ll be honest with you: I don’t know squat about Dallas. Or rather, I don’t know squat about Dallas, the long-running, oil-drenched, big-haired, family-feuding epic that may still color how a lot of outsiders think about our city. When I found out some eight months ago that I’d landed this…
One night late last year, Jason Melbourne walked into a CVS pharmacy in Mesquite, hoping against hope to walk out with an emergency contraceptive, or “the morning-after pill.” It wasn’t the morning after. He and his wife had their “accident” a few days before, and the 72-hour window in which…
Teresa Hawthorne, the Dallas County judge who ruled that the state’s death penalty statute was unconstitutional, must recuse herself from a capital murder case, a judge ruled today. Hawthorne was presiding over the capital murder trial of Roderick Harris, who’s accused of killing brothers Alfredo and Carlos Gallardo during a…
Football fans who came to Fair Park for the Houston-Penn State match-up at the Cotton Bowl couldn’t help but see the sideshow: As promised, the Westboro Baptist Church showed up at the TicketCity Bowl to remind sports fans that God hates them, Joe Paterno, the Pope, gays, Obama … pretty…
There’s just one thing that will get us out of bed the day after the editorial staff’s holiday party, on what is (ahem) supposed to be a day off: a City Hall press conference concerning organized retail theft. Mayor Mike Rawlings, Dallas Police Chief David Brown and Dallas County District…
A Dallas-based strip-club chain facing a class-action lawsuit tried to compel its dancers not to join that legal action — and even fired a woman who wouldn’t comply, or so the strippers claim. In a motion filed earlier this month, the dancers also claim that the clubs foisted the agreements…
Perhaps you’ve heard by now: Joey Dauben, publisher of the Ellis County Observer and several other small-town papers and websites throughout North Texas, has been indicted and arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy. The 30-year-old Dauben, who Patrick Michels profiled in an Observer cover story earlier this…
Perhaps you’ve heard: Famous Person Khloe Kardashian lives in Dallas now. She spent her midday hours today over at Dallas City Hall, collecting toys for Children’s Medical Center of Dallas. Joining her were some 2,000 other not-famous people, all of whom stood in an enormous line for a very long…
It’s been a good 14 minutes since the state twisted its rusty knife into the already-wounded gut of women’s healthcare. But fear not: There’s a huge, ugly storm brewing between the state and federal governments over the Medicaid Women’s Health Program (WHP), and the fight appears likely to end with…
On Friday afternoon, 30-year-old Shontell Johnson lived in a rundown house in South Oak Cliff, where she took care of 13 children: six of her own, three from a neighbor with a drug problem, and four from her sister, who’s currently in prison. The kids were sleeping on mattresses on…
Undaunted by last night’s cold drizzle, around 30 Dallas ISD teachers, custodial workers and other support employees held a quiet march and candlelight vigil outside 3700 Ross Avenue. The reason? DISD’s budget-cutting plan to outsource custodial services and HVAC repairs to a private company. Along with the 471 teachers who…
Just after that totally delightful discussion on the voting habits of trees, after which the city council OK’d a new Walmart, there came another momentous development matter: the West Dallas mixed-use project known as Sylvan Thirty, the one we’ve been writing about since, I dunno, forever-ish. The city council voted…
