Michigan’s favorite son and Dallas Observer columnist Jim Schutze was on Facebook live Wednesday afternoon, responding to readers’ questions about politics, Dallas’ future, biting dogs, The Dallas Morning News’ Texan of the Year and a whole bunch of comments about whether he’s a Texan. (Hint: He doesn’t like okra. Enough…
The Texas Restaurant Association and a bipartisan group of state legislators say the Texas Department of Agriculture has put its thumb on the scale, flouting a new state law intended to lift a regulatory burden on restaurants. House Bill 2029, passed unanimously by the Senate and with only one “no”…
Amy Ero, the Dallas Observer’s advertising director, is leaving us for a gig as managing director of a Dallas-based design and consulting agency. It’s not so much a “goodbye” as a “see you around” — she’ll continue to collaborate with the Observer at her new job developing digital marketing for…
We understand that recent experience in the voting booth might have left a bad taste in your mouth, but don’t give up on democracy just yet. It’s Best of Dallas® time again, your chance to cast a ballot that really matters. This is an opportunity to help your fellow citizens…
“I always wanted to save the world with journalism,” says Candace Evans, the challenger for Lee Kleinman’s District 11 City Council seat. Considering the last time Dallas elected a journalist to the City Council, Mayor Laura Miller, that’s either a pretty bold statement or a give-up. Miller had a habit…
A lethal fungus that has driven some bat species to near extinction across the eastern United States has been found for the first time in Texas, researchers say. Biologists from Bat Conservation International and Texas A&M University’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences and Institute of Renewable Natural Resources spent…
Ever ready to rush in with a press release where the religious liberty of Texas public school students is threatened, even when it isn’t, the Texas Attorney General’s office fired off a letter to Frisco ISD on Friday warning them that a “prayer room” available to Liberty High School’s 2,100 students had…
Tyrone Paxton was shot dead in broad daylight in mid-morning on April 19. His body fell next to the road at 2800 Cleveland St. in Southeast Dallas, alongside a vacant, grassy lot overlooked by nearby apartment buildings and their parking lots. Dallas homicide Detective Derick Chaney believes as many as…
So, last week the city of Dallas reached an agreement in its battle with HMK, a company the city accuses of operating as a slumlord. Families that faced imminent eviction in West and South Dallas now need not worry being put out onto the street. They don’t, at least, until…
When former Dallas Observer Editor Joe Tone left the paper in 2015, he told us it was to work on a book about how a young FBI agent helped take down the Zetas drug cartel. Turns out, he wasn’t kidding. He not only wrote a book, due to be published…
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor has made himself perfectly clear: An order he issued in August to stop the Obama administration from enforcing guidelines that would push school districts to allow transgender students to choose which restroom and locker rooms they use applies everywhere in the U.S. Texas Attorney General…
Not that newly retired Dallas police Chief David Brown is asking for the Observer’s advice, but that’s never stopped us before, so here goes: Sic transit gloria mundi. That’s Latin for “the glories of the world are fleeting” or, less literally, “don’t get a big head, pal.” It’s what slaves…
The Antichrist, the embodiment of evil, manifests itself in the internet. The wired world isolates humans, ruins them mentally and physically and releases their darkest impulses, yet humanity has grown so dependent on it that one good solar flare could be enough to fry the ‘net and civilization along with…
Dr. Susan Harper isn’t the first woman to be called a “feminist witch.” She’s just one of the few who don’t mind. Why should she? She has traveled far, spiritually and geographically, to earn the title. Professionally, Harper is the graduate reader at Texas Woman’s University, editing and offering guidance…
Last November, the National Institutes of Health announced that it would stop providing funding to biomedical research using chimpanzees as test subjects. “NIH will no longer maintain a colony of 50 chimpanzees for future research. All NIH-owned chimpanzees that reside outside of the Federal Sanctuary System operated by Chimp Haven,…
The old cotton gin on the west edge of Gunter seems an odd place to launch an economic boom. A breeze blows through broken windows and holes in its rusting, corrugated metal walls. Inside, a half-dozen or so squat machines that once separated cotton from seed sit corroding in a…
Turns out that the Walker Stalker Con that hit the Dallas convention center last week was not, in fact, devoted to the city’s favorite TV son, Walker, Texas Ranger. Nope. This con was for the fans of The Walking Dead, who came in whatever the collective noun is for the…
Didn’t get ticket to last month’s Magic Men show at the Bomb Factory? No worries, the Observer did, and videographer Sarah Passon brought along her camera to boot. Take a look at what you missed — acres of ripped male flesh, mainly…
A 55-year-old “non-pregnant” patient from DeSoto who traveled recently to El Salvador is the fourth person to test positively for infection with the Zika virus in Dallas County, the county’s Health and Human Services Department said Tuesday. Of the four Dallas cases so far confirmed by the Centers for Disease…
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed the first case of the Zika virus, contracted through sex, in a Dallas County resident in 2016. The virus, which causes a relatively minor illness in adults, has tentatively been linked to birth defects in the children of infected women. At…
The Observer has a new food editor on the way at the end of January. Her name’s Beth Rankin, and for the past five years she has been editing the Beaumont Enterprise’s Cat5 Magazine, a weekly arts, entertainment and dining tabloid. She also created, hosted and produced the Local Scene on 91.3 KVLU,…
Earlier this week, Eric Nicholson told you about the latest travesty in the Great Trinity Forest: a long muddy gash of felled trees, cut through the woods by a contractor working to build the private Trinity Forest Golf Club on city property. Ben Sandifer, one of the chief defenders of…
