Denton, despite the best efforts of the UNT student body and its lefty professors, has managed to hold on to the attributes of your typical small Texas city. A lot of people there still enjoy pickups, which they drive to high school football games while listening to country music and…
The Texas Retailers Associations and its allies in the fight against Dallas’ proposed ban on plastic and other single-use bags have succeeded in stalling any action for the foreseeable future. So, even though Councilman Dwaine Caraway swears to us that the measure will ultimately pass, they’ve won at least a…
William Skyler Leak’s tenure as the caretaker of a small Fort Worth stable was brief. Last August, after a short time on the job, he was fired and ordered to clear out of the on-site mobile home he’d been allowed to live in. “The owner didn’t like his work performance,”…
The controversy surrounding the dress code at this year’s Dallas Pride parade was never really about nudity. It was about whether the LGBT community should voluntarily adhere to the norms of a mass culture that remains unrelentingly heteronormative, or whether it’s better to flout those standards as a form of…
We don’t mean to cast aspersions on Lewisville, which as far as we can tell is a fine suburb, home to 95,000 mostly law-abiding Texans and a fine lake to get drunk on. But the stench that wafts over Old Town, the city’s historic downtown, is unmistakable. “A lot of…
At this point, no one is quite sure what made 34-year-old Aaron Alexis walk into the Washington D.C. Navy Yard on Monday and allegedly open fire, killing 13 people. Yesterday afternoon, the FBI put out a call “for any information regarding Alexis.” “No piece of information is too small,” Valerie…
At first glance, there aren’t many reasons for outsiders to visit Sulphur Springs. Obvious concerns about water potability aside, the lure of low-brow chain restaurants and curiosity as to why Ocean Spray bottles its juice there are rarely enough to divert travelers off of Interstate 30. Then again, those drivers…
Saturday was a banner night for carjackings in Dallas. The one in which the thief drove off with a 14-year-old girl sleeping in the backseat got the most attention, but there were several. At 1 a.m., a man was attacked by a group of men who took his Cadillac Escalade,…
You don’t hear T. Boone Pickens talk much about wind energy, once the cornerstone of his plan for U.S. energy independence. It’s not so much that he’s given up on the idea of wind as a key component of the country’s future energy portfolio as that his recent forays into…
To the untrained eye, the Google Earth view of the Dallas area looks about like what it is: a cancerous patch of concrete inexorably gobbling up the surrounding pastureland. But to those schooled in the ways of the Illuminati, it’s something else entirely: a blueprint for the end times. All…
Plano East High School slaughtered Richardson’s Berkner Rams on Friday night in the completely metaphorical sense that its football team scored more points (34) than its rival (13). The night before, the slaughter was quite literal. Members of Berkner’s marching band arrived at the high school’s football field at around…
The stakes were high for Saturday night’s fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Mayweather was out to defend his crown as this generation’s most dominant fighter. Canelo, hugely popular in his native Mexico, was out to prove his skill by dethroning a world champ. Then, of course,…
A brief word of advice to Parkland and UT Southwestern. It’s time to throw back the curtains and let in some sunlight. Drag all the skeletons from the closet. All of them, even those gruesomely deformed ones stuffed in the back. Put them where passersby can take a good long…
It should probably go without saying. If you get a random text message saying you’ve won a cruise, or telling you your debit card has been compromised, or offering discount Viagra, you should probably ignore it, unless, of course, you happen to be in the market for some under-the-table boner…
The Texas Worm Ranch, a fixture at local farmer’s markets and producer of the Observer’s reigning Best Worm Doo-Doo Pee-Pee, is in crisis. Yesterday, they declared a “worm emergency” after its five commercial air conditioning units were stripped of their copper wiring, rendering them inoperable. When The Dallas Morning News…
When he drove through the Shadow Brook Apartments on Ferguson Road at 10:30 Thursday night, he dismissed Edward Jackson as just another bumbling rent-a-cop hiding behind a faux badge and uniform. That was his second mistake. His first was playing his music too loud on Jackson’s turf. His third, according…
Carol Nix says she saw the whole thing happen from the door of her front porch. Zuri, a friendly, three-month-old terrier mix she’d given a drink to a few hours before, wandered down Oakview Drive when three teenagers appeared, two boys and a girl. One of the boys grabbed a…
A beer delivery truck idles in a convenience store parking lot, a couple of cases stacked on the pavement while the driver momentarily disappears inside. The cool, refrigerated air wafting from the open beckons you closer. A fleeting voice tugging at the edge of your mind whispers about how easy…
Coverage of the serial rapist targeting South Dallas has dominated local news for the past week. First came the revelation of the attacks, then questions about the speed of the police department’s response, then the search for and capture of a suspect, Van Dralan Dixson. All of the major local…
Hooter Boswell has been a bullfighter — a rodeo clown for the uninitiated — for more than 20 years, the past 15 of them on the circuit with the Big L Rodeo Company out of Oklahoma. In all that time, he’d managed to keep his face intact. Then came this…
Craig James, former SMU running back and failed U.S. Senate candidate, has managed to alienate an impressively broad swath of humanity, including but not limited to Texas Tech fans, sex workers, the entire LGBT community, Republican primary voters, and the executives of now two major sports networks. The second of…
The first attack began as a robbery, turned into a carjacking, and ended in sexual assault and arson. Police say that Van Dralan Dixson approached a man as he stepped behind a South Dallas building to take a leak at about 4:45 on the morning of June 22. After the…
