If you didn’t stay up late on Monday night to witness the “Blood Moon,” fear not. The cosmos have conveniently scheduled three reruns over the next two years. Can’t wait six months? Observer freelancer Mike Mezeul II has you covered. He’s the guy who shot the time-lapse photo you’ve probably…
Sandy Vasquez and her 13-year old son, Ethan, were driving west through the M Streets Tuesday morning, apparently en route to school at William B. Travis Academy, when a stolen minivan ran a stop sign and broadsided their Nissan Versa. The car, as the photos show was demolished. Vasquez was…
With sex crimes, particularly those relating to children, the fair administration of justice sometimes takes a backseat to the urge to punish. Just glancing at the headline of the Tarrant County district attorney’s announcement of a 70-year prison sentence for failing to register as a sex offender might suggest 69-year-old…
Dallas Midtown, the mixed-use wonderland that will replace the decrepit Valley View Center, will have everything a modern urbanist could want. If everything lives up to developer Scott Beck’s vision, there will be several thousand apartments and condos, hundreds of thousands of feet of office and retail space, artists to…
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has consistently said that fracking has no significant impact on air quality, not in the Barnett Shale. Not in the Eagle Ford Shale. Not anywhere. It was news, then, when a TCEQ-funded study, performed by the Alamo Area Council of Governments, a San Antonio-area…
Rodrick Tippett got off relatively easy for the pair of burglaries he committed in 2009. After six months behind bars, the judge changed what had been a six-year penitentiary sentence to six years of probation. The fact that one of his victims had been his sister does not appear to…
If there was one thing Dallas City Hall would have been wise to take away from the fracking debate, it’s that you shouldn’t mess with Raymond Crawford. He’s the slight, balding, professional needlepointing David to your Goliath. City Hall, however, isn’t so good with lessons, which is why Crawford has…
Endorsements from southern Dallas’ Democratic heavyweights (i.e. Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, state Senator Royce West, County Commissioner John Wiley Price) and the natural advantages of an incumbent in a down-ballot race weren’t quite enough to propel Dallas County misdemeanor court judge Etta Mullin to reelection. She won just 36.4 percent…
Saturday, April 5, was drag night at Garlow’s, Gun Barrel City’s one and only gay bar. It also happened to be the night when a half dozen or so of Gun Barrel City’s finest showed up in the parking lot and began pulling over departing patrons for failing to use…
On March 20, 2012, a year before her filibuster against abortion restrictions catapulted her to national stardom and a gubernatorial bid, state Senator Wendy Davis had the singular distinction of having her Fort Worth office firebombed. Davis wasn’t in her office, and no one was injured, but the bag that…
Maybe, just maybe, Dallas has shaken its reputation as the country’s worst city for cycling. Bicycling magazine hasn’t mentioned it in a couple of years, anyway. The city has, however, earned another not-so-welcome distinction. It’s the “least outdoorsy” city in America, according to Outside magazine. We are, apparently, less outdoorsy…
How many dogs and cats are there in Dallas? It’s a hard, maybe impossible figure to nail down with any certainty, but extrapolating from the Humane Society’s U.S. pet-ownership statistics, the number is just north of 600,000. The American Veterinary Medical Association’s pet-ownership calculator gives a slightly smaller but comparable…
The Texas Rangers’ decision to rechristen their stadium the Globe Life Park in Arlington was easy enough to ignore. However lame the name might be — and it’s really, incredibly lame — no one could stop fans from calling it Rangers Ballpark. The blue-and-white Globe Life sign facing outward from…
The accusations leveled last week by Dallas Police Association President Ron Pinkston were serious: Dallas PD was relaxing standards for its driving- and firearms-training courses to allow unqualified recruits to become cops. More serious, certainly, than his assertion that keeping cops from shooting people, or allowing Avi Adelman to legally…
Yesterday afternoon, Dallas police were called to one of the dumber bank robbery attempts in recent memory. At 5:15 p.m. a man in his 40s pulled up to the drive-thru window (the sliding-drawer kind rather than suction tube) and placed what police described as a “suspicious device” inside along with…
The Dallas Morning News’ Brandon Formby spent days, maybe weeks, trying to chase down Councilwoman Vonciel Jones Hill to get her views on tearing down I-345, the short nub of freeway dividing Deep Ellum from downtown. She wouldn’t talk, twice begging off because she was too busy, then just not…
Of late, the North Texas Tollway Authority has been testing out a host of new methods to encourage drivers to pay their tolls. The agency will block your vehicle registration and impound your car. It will publicly shame you. It will sue you. Sometimes, though, nothing works as well as…
On March 24, Cheryl Blasius was stopped cold at her front door. Hanging from the doorknob was a notice from Terrell’s animal control department: Got complaint you own a monkey. You cannot have a monkey in Terrell. 10 days to remove of you will recieve (sic) citations for keeping an…
Garland ISD’s foreign teachers aren’t in danger of being sent back to their native countries because the human resources director might have been taking all-expense paid trips to the Philippines, or pocketing fees he wasn’t supposed to be charging in the first place, or illegally funneling business to his step-kids,…
A synagogue operating out of a Far North Dallas home has won a preliminary victory over neighbors who want it shut down. Collin County District Judge Jill Willis this morning denied the Highlands of McKamy homeowners association’s request for a temporary injunction against Congregation Toras Chaim, which operates out of…
On Wednesday, the federal government released a massive trove of Medicare data showing how much some 880,000-plus U.S. healthcare providers were paid for their services in 2012. Fully mining the data will take months or years, but using the data to compile a list of the top Medicare billers took…
Garland ISD trustee Scott Luna typically has a clear path to victory. Three times he’s been up for election, three times his name has been the only one on the ballot. Not this time. He has a challenger, 21-year-old Lawrence Billy Jones III, and now Luna’s become embroiled in a…
