[Update Monday, August 9: The billboard was removed today.]One week ago today we introduced you to the latest downtown Dallas attraction — that Clear Channel billboard that damn near touches the Woodall Rodgers exit that dumps into northbound Stemmons. And while the city said on Monday, well, it appears to…
One week ago today the Texas Education Agency sent word: With significant help from the state, the Dallas Independent School District racked up 63 exemplary schools, while several high schools long on the academically unacceptable list finally get a reprieve. Not all was well, as dropout and completion rates knocked…
Late last night, the missive you see below — in which Dallas County Commissioner Ken Mayfield offers to pitch in $10 mil for that Oak Cliff-to-downtown streetcar line — appeared in the Unfair Park in-box. Mayfield tells Mike Eastland, executive director of the North Central Texas Council of Governments, that…
I guess this is the last time we’ll be running this picture of Tom Hicks in his Rangers cap noshing on a hot dog. But this certainly isn’t the last time we’ll hear from Hicks — he’s still a long way from dispensing with his sports teams, as the Dallas…
A good Friend of Unfair Park who recalls that creepy Dallas County Sheriff’s Department Squad Car Dashcam video sends along this freshly posted what-the-what: “Sequential Circuits,” described as “a camera mounted on a police helicopter monitored the highways of Dallas” in which we see …”an ambulation of a motorcyclist constantly…
So, fake pot’s on the fast track to becoming illegal in the city of Dallas — probably within the next couple of weeks, after the city council votes to make it a punishable-with-a-$2,000-fine misdemeanor on Wednesday. But what about making the real thing legal? That’s what Stephen Betzen’s pushing for,…
No doubt you recall the brouhaha in June over Park and Recreation’s proposal to ask voters if it’d be OK to maybe, some day, sell Samuell Farm and Samuell New Hope Park, neither of which the city has dough enough to tend to. Long story short: The Texas Attorney General’s…
Early last week I told you about 43-year-old Ben Gold, who, back when we were kids, was better known as “B-E-N” amongst the video-gamers who hung out at local arcades — like the late-great Game Zone at Preston Road and LBJ Freeway or TILT at Prestonwood Town Center — and…
Back in June, Patrick told you about Paul Woodfield, the Southwest Airlines dispatcher who’s been engaged in a lengthy legal battle with the city over its bike-helmet ordinance — which Woodfield insists isn’t enforceable, since it doesn’t jibe with any existing state law. Woodfield, who’s been ticketed more than once…
Perhaps you saw: Valley View Center has a new owner now, Miami-based LNR Property Corporation — well, actually, its subsidiary LNR Partners, the very same company trying to sell off the former First National on Elm Street downtown, amongst other local real estate. Dallas County deed records show LNR took…
If the plot of Middle Men sounds familiar—Luke Wilson gets in bed with James Caan, who just wants to fuck him—that’s because it’s the same as the plot of Bottle Rocket, Wes Anderson’s 1996 directorial debut, in which Wilson and Caan worked together for the first time. Middle Men is…
[Update: As Sam reports, Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan have won the auction. First thing Thursday morning.]This much, per Sam’s latest series of tweets from the Fort Worth courtroom where the Texas Rangers auction drags on … and on … and on. After Mark Cuban and Jim Crane submitted the…
El Chico’s origins date back well beyond the first Oak Lawn eatery opened in 1940 — all the way back, says the Web site, to 1926, “when Adelaida Cuellar’s homemade tamales drew crowds at a county fair outside Dallas, Texas.” Which I mention only because, well, let’s just say next…
Whilst awaiting a sit-down with a source, allow me to marry two unrelated legal matters, baby:Texas Watchdog has been Freedom of Information Act-ing out, requesting from the FBI the files of several “prominent Texas political figures” once they’ve expired. Today’s installment is … Fred Baron, the late asbestos litigator and…
Kyle Hall, who handles marketing and promotions for Legacy Books up in Plano, hadn’t taken a vacation since the mammoth indie bookseller opened its doors in November 2008. He was ready for his very first on July 25 when, the night before, he got a call from Teri Tanner, who…
Chris Kaplan, proprietor of Mawker Coffee, has been in Shed No. 2 at Dallas Farmers Market for 11 years — in other words, long before that $3-million redo. He was there when it was unbearably cold and insufferably hot — when it was known as “The Freeze and Fry Building,”…
The death of Cheez Doodles creator Morrie Yohai last week spawns this New York Times piece today about the myriad other cheese-flavored snacks available, well, everywhere. And it reminds us of another great inventor: Charles Elmer Doolin, the father of Frito and the creator of the Cheeto:Throughout the 1930s and…
Since 1978, Mercy Ships has been sending hospital boats, for lack of a better term, to impoverished and beleaguered countries to tend to the “forgotten poor”; at this very moment, matter of fact, the African Mercy is perched off the shores of Togo in West Africa, a country ranked near…
Updates: Sam will be posting via Twitter: @sammerten So, the 9 a.m. start time for today’s auction of Your Texas Rangers has been pushed back — how far, Sam’s not sure. He’s in the courtroom at this very moment, and Judge Russell Nelms, who’s supervising the proceedings, has yet to…
On Monday, Mary Suhm will present to the council the FY2010-11 budget, from which she had to trim some $131 million — a “painful, painful, painful” process, as she put it one month ago, because it will involve laying off hundreds at City Hall and gutting the budgets in myriad…
One hour from now, Your Texas Rangers go on the auction block in a Fort Worth courtroom, immediately after which there will be a confirmation hearing; Sam’s headed that way now, lucky fellow. And just when you thought, well, it’s too late at this point for any more surprise twists,…
Update at 8:35 p.m.: The Dallas Police Department has sent a statement from Chief David Brown regarding his comments about the increase in the number of reported sexual assaults this year — and the reaction to them. It reads, in full:Chief Brown wants to emphasize, “I absolutely did not state…
