Live from City Hall

Among those in the audience is Dwayne Jones, executive director of Preservation Dallas, who says he is “perplexed” by the outrage being directed toward the plan and the council committee that approved it. Contrary to the opinions of the speakers snaked around the council chambers, who insist ForwardDallas! will ruin…

Live from City Hall

So far there have been legal and accounting issues raised regarding FD! One speaker said it violates Texas zoning law, another said it’s inviting dangerously speculative development along the so-called transit corridors that cannot even withstand the density proposed in the plan. And a woman from Bluffview cried at the…

Latest Weight-Loss Craze: The Coyote Diet

Of the 700,000-plus people estimated to have entered the United States illegally last year, at least 463 died trying, 140 of those in Texas. Many more bodies lie undiscovered in the desert. Because of increased border enforcement in urban areas, illegal immigrants are increasingly turning to more hazardous routes across…

Live from City Hall

The first speaker against the plan was Neil Emmons, a plan commissioner. He was representing Cay Kolb, a former city planning commissioner and former DART board member. She could not attend the meeting today, Emmons told the council, because she is tending to her husband in an intensive care unit–and…

Live from City Hall

Don Hill says he is giving 45 minutes to each side of the FD debate, which may be impossible. When he asked who was here to speak, everyone raised hands. Lill and Finkelman are going last, but Larry Duncan is up now: “This is where I came in 30 years…

Live from City Hall

Jim and I have decided Laura is on a Southwest flight to Vegas, cause she sure as hell ain’t here. One thing I did notice as Bill Blaydes was bemoaning the yay vote regarding the homeless shelter (“It will destroy the southeast corridor!”): He’s kinda…unhinged. –Robert Wilonsky…

City Hall Live

Uh…as Jim just asked, “Where the hell is Laura?” The FD debate is about to start, and she ain’t here. –Robert Wilonsky…

Let’s Just Call These City Hall Live

The chamber is packed with Angela Hunt fans–if nothing else, their bright green “CPC YES” and “PEOPLE’S PLAN” stickers suggest they also want the version of Forward Dallas! containing the Plan Commission’s alterations. Not yet to the discussion yet, and room is getting warm and restless. –Robert Wilonsky…

More Live from City Hall

Veletta Lill’s back amongst the council, patting backs and doling out hugs. Still talking Deep Ellum–Lazerz, specifically, and its late-night crowd. Uh, where’s the mayor? –Robert Wilonsky…

Eyewitness News

Observer blogmeister Robert Wilonsky is bravely putting his sanity on the line–and online–to blog live from City Hall as the council debates the ForwardDallas! master plan. He’s paying attention so you don’t have to. Take it away, Bobby W.: City council chambers are stuffed–if they charged admission, they could pay…

I’ll Be Your Huckleberry

Somewhere, the old boy must be chuckling sardonically under his big, bushy mustache. First, Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a tale of boyhood life on the Mississippi suitable for children. Nine years later he produces The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, starring one of the little rascals from…

Leading man

Leading man: How many times does a rumor have to be repeated before a responsible journalist passes it on? Beats us. We’re Buzz, not Responsible Journalist Man, so here goes: Twice in the past week we’ve come across rumors that Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill was the leader in a…

Communicating Nonsense

A time-traveling dominatrix is pursued through three time periods by a homicidal maniac as she hustles to save the lives of two of his victims, who happen to be the future late wives of the client the hooker was called to service in a hotel room in the year 2014…

Light the Corners

Light the corners: Remember the good ol’ days at the Dallas Independent School District? Crooked Yvonne Gonzalez riding a big bulldozer and writing mash notes to top administrators. Threats of blood in the streets. Guns. Shouting. If you were a parent or, God forbid, a student back in the ’90s,…

Trapped in a Sea of Church Ladies

Last night many women who attended a huge church conference at the Dallas Convention Center found themselves in the midst of a nightmarish crowd control situation when thousands of people were forced to exit through only two sets of two doors. When they finally wrenched themselves out of the mass…

Big D and the Kennedys

So yeah, our fine city is most known for one devastating day, the Grassy Knoll, that presidential X-marks-the-spot. While America remains obsessed with our version of the royal family, the name Kennedy has been sadly associated with Dallas since 1963 and probably will be forever. If you search the Internet,…

Help Wanted

If you’re a college student looking for some summer cash waiting tables, then we have a deal for you: $8 an hour plus benefits. Sounds great, right? Of course, the commute will be kind of a bitch, since the job’s in New Orleans. Doing our part to help with hurricane…

Keliher Gets Testy

One day after news broke here that Sheriff Lupe Valdez flunked a required state law enforcement test, Dallas County Judge Margaret Keliher is thinking that the folks down in Austin need to draw some guidelines on who exactly can ascend to the top law enforcement position in Texas counties. “You…

True-Crime Tour

What would John N. Bucher think about our endless fascination with Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker? Never heard of him? That’s probably because the Hillsboro store owner wasn’t depicted in the movie Bonnie and Clyde. Bucher opened his shop one night in 1932 to two men who said they needed…

Science!

Brownian motion? Pshaw, that’s easy. Massive bodies warp space? Tell us something we don’t know, pal. The passage of time is relative to speed? Umm…okaaaay. E=MC2? Look, can’t we go back to talking about Brownian motion? That one we have nailed.More than a century after Albert Einstein’s 1905 “miracle year,”…

Tick-tock

Tick-tock: It’s coming up on a year since the news broke of the FBI’s corruption investigation into City Hall’s dealings with…huh? What investigation, you ask? You remember. Last June, the FBI searched the offices of Dallas City Council members Don Hill and James Fantroy, along with the offices of Southwest…

Demons on the Brain

One of the Friends of Unfair Park has this to say about Doyle Davidson’s bizarre theology and some stuff I’ve written in the past about Pentecostals: Funny, this is the opposite side of the Charismatic movement that you wrote about in one of your earlier blog entries. While I thought…