Two days ago in this space, Observer managing editor Patrick Williams (a.k.a. Buzz) rehashed the moments that defined life in Dallas during the past 12 months — Ebola, dick pics and all. Everything Buzz cites is important and true, but the list, like all year-end recaps, suffers from a recency…
Shane Garner’s alleged scam was simple: Set up a reputable-sounding company, i.e. the Credit Alliance Group. Flood the Internet with promises that he can help hard-working Americans escape from crushing debt. Convince the people who respond that they need to pay the company up front so it can negotiate down…
Christina Tutt was in the kitchen preparing dinner when her husband arrived home from the store and told her the garage was on fire. In an eye-blink, she gathered the four children and hustled them outside where they stood in the cool November evening watching as the flames jumped from…
It’s illegal for payday lenders to pursue criminal charges against borrowers who can’t repay their loans, debtor’s prison being out of fashion nowadays. Under rules passed by the Texas Legislature in 2011, they can’t even threaten to file criminal charges. And yet, according to a report released last week by…
Twelve months ago, Flower Mound Mayor Tom Hayden left his seat behind the Town Council table, stood before the unusually robust audience and issued a bold call for unity. Flower Moundians -ites residents, regardless of their creed, should set aside their differences and spend the next year carefully studying the…
It was a valiant effort. Earlier this year the Texas Package Stores Association, in an attempt to shield the thousand or so liquor stores it represents from meaningful competition, sought to resuscitate an obscure and transparently stupid provision of Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code barring non-Texans from holding Texas liquor licenses…
Jaguars isn’t just any strip club. “Built with the look of the Roman Colosseum, we promise a first class night out each and every night,” its website explains, adding modestly, “This simply the greatest nude club in the country.” Would a not-great strip club be open until “???” on Saturday…
Remember Dallas in 1969? Roger Staubach had just joined the Cowboys. A noose of freeways was closing in around downtown. DISD was planning to desegregate its schools any minute. Enjoy the memories, because it’s all been downhill since then — “it” being the economic well-being of the average Dallas resident…
Mark Cuban’s curious real estate play at Preston and Northwest Highway — the one where he’s tearing down 80-year-old estates and floating plans to build a couple office buildings — has gone over about as well as if he had littered the earth with the carcasses of a thousand rotting…
Get ready for Round 3 in the ongoing — and possibly never-ending — bout between Laura Miller and would-be Preston Road/Northwest Highway developers. A few months after helping neighbors kill two proposed apartment developments near the intersection, Miller is limbering up to fight Crow Holdings’ plan to build a pedestrian…
In his first term as North Dallas’ state representative, Jason Villalba established himself as a serious, policy-minded lawmaker focused on finding common-sense solutions to important problems, like freeing Mavs fans from stupid and outdated liquor laws. Unapologetically conservative, to be sure, but in a reasonable, non-pandering way that has won…
Oak Cliff’s University General Hospital, touted as one of Mayor Mike Rawlings’ GrowSouth success stories, is on life support — or maybe in an induced coma — while its owners try to sell the 111-bed facility. Houston-based University General Health Systems Inc., which purchased the former South Hampton Community Hospital…
In Houston, the cosmopolitan big city with an openly gay mayor, the battle over an equal-rights ordinance that barred discrimination against the LGBT community raged for months before the City Council approved it in May. In Plano, the quintessential Texas suburb and home base of the Liberty Institute, the religious-right…
Bentley the dog, may he live a long and prosperous life, survived Dallas’ recent brush with Ebola. Maybe it was the $27,000 the city spent on his care. Maybe it’s that, though it appears that dogs can be infected with the virus if they snack on Ebola-infected animal carcasses or…
The Texas UIL’s system of determining high school athletic eligibility has meted out another dose of its strange justice. Gabrielle Gregory, a junior point guard at Irving MacArthur and a four-star recruit who’s made a verbal commitment to Kansas State, has been sidelined for the first weeks of the season…
Back in April, the carefully airbrushed Yelp reputation of Irving attorney Sherin Thawer took a major hit when user Kayur P. left a bruising, one-star appraisal of her legal talents. The content of the review has since been removed from the site for unspecified violations of Yelp’s terms of service,…
The Texas Legislature, when it meets in January, will be grappling with very serious issues. Criminal justice reform, immigration, tax policy, transportation — lawmakers will be making decisions that will shape the state’s future for years to come. State Representative Jason Villalba of Dallas, a rising Republican star who has…
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A developer wants to build some apartments on an extremely valuable yet bizarrely underdeveloped major North Dallas intersection. These apartments will be very classy, as evidenced by the slick, full-color brochures zoning/PR consultant Sarah Dodd is distributing as part of a campaign…
Back in February of 2013, Schutze shook loose a secret memo showing that City Manager Mary Suhm had struck a secret deal with Trinity East Energy to allow gas drilling on city parkland while, at the same time, promising the City Council that there would be no gas drilling on…
It was never going to be easy for Kimball to win its fourth state basketball title in five years. The heart of last year’s team, 6-foot-7-inch small forward D’Angelo Allen, was gone for University of Missouri. Gone, too, was longtime Kimball Coach Royce “Snoop” Johnson, who was fired in the…
The Dallas City Council’s decision last week to repeal its anti-protest ordinance — the one that has irked both the far left and far right, from the peaceniks railing against the Bush Presidential Library to the Obama-hating patriots — was a tacit admission that banning people from protesting next to…
Duncanville ISD thought it was getting a great deal when, one year ago this month, it switched electric providers and signed on with the State Power Program through the state’s General Land Office. Just like that, Duncanville ISD’s price-per-kilowatt hour dropped almost 20 percent, from 7.3 cents to a maximum…
