Southwest Airlines’s stock is taking a beating today — down $1.90 at last check, to $7.91, following an analyst’s decision to downgrade the stock to “sell” from “underperform.” That follows yesterday’s announcement that, for the second quarter in a row, the Dallas-based carrier posted a loss — even though it…
Steven Johnson, grandson of Robert Johnson, contacted Unfair Park today after reading this week’s cover story concerning the fate of 508 Park Ave. downtown, where the Mississippi bluesman recorded in June 1937. Says Johnson — vice president of the Robert Johnson Blues Foundation in Crystal Springs, Mississippi — this was…
Jeff Catlin just sent Unfair Park a press release proving Richie was right when he predicted the Dallas Cowboys and KTCK-AM (1310, The Ticket) would be parting ways sooner than later. Officially, the deal was up and into its option phase, and Catlin says the Ticket actually opted out of…
This Dallas Mavericks promo was just posted to YouTube, and the Unfair Parkers who semi-regularly attend home games say they haven’t yet seen this at the American Airlines Center. The joke, such as it is, works only when the vid’s viewed in high-quality mode. Still, not even in the same…
A welcome touch of class this morning courtesy the Dallas Opera, which tonight bows its production of Gaetano Donizetti’s lyric tragedy in three acts, Roberto Devereux. (Had plans to go, but, well, for those about rock and so forth.) Yet again, the Opera has smartly used YouTube to offer myriad…
As it’s never too early to sneak a peek at the city council’s agenda, as evidenced by this morning’s wake-up, do take a look at Item No. 42 when you have a chance. It has to do with proposed alignment of Central Expressway between Commerce Street and Live Oak Street…
In 1961, while compiling the Robert Johnson collection King of the Delta Blues Singers, producer Frank Driggs sent Don Law a letter with a few questions concerning the bluesman and his sessions in San Antonio and in Dallas in November 1936 and June 1937, respectively. Law — who worked for…
Well, actually, that’d be San Francisco-based Mother Jones writer Josh Harkinson, a Preston Hollow native (his parents still live here) who today posted an essay about what it’s like to grow up in the neighborhood populated by the likes of Ross Perot, Tom Hicks, AT&T CEO Rayford Wilkins Jr. and,…
Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city’s Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a “community meeting” with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. “Um,” I told her, “probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, the city’s…
Talibah Newman, David “Fathead” Newman’s granddaughter, tells Unfair Park today that on Sunday at 2 p.m., there will be a memorial service in honor of the saxophone great, who died Tuesday night in New York following a long bout with pancreatic cancer. The service will take place at the Warren…
Because, look, your ride just ain’t safe. KXAS-Channel 5 has the story of the “brick-wielding vandals” targeting cars in East Dallas. In all, more than 24 folks had their cars smashed up late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning — without anything being stolen. Alas, this no-really? note at the…
Will Dallas’s convention center hotel get a Bob’s Steak and Chop House? Fair question this morning, as Irving-based Omni Hotels — which the city council tapped to operate the convention center hotel — announced this morning that it has acquired a 50-percent stake in the brand name, with plans to…
Jeremy Gerard, a theater critic for The Dallas Morning News some two decades ago, is now a New York-based editor for Bloomberg News, the first media outlet to which George Steel denied he was leaving his new Dallas Opera gig for an opening in New York. This morning, Gerard weighs…
While thumbing through the final agenda for next Wednesday’s city council meeting, I came across Agenda Item No. 53 — which, to be honest, I thought had been ditched altogether, till Merten reminded me this morning it had merely been deferred. So, say hello to this ghost of Christmas past:…
It stands at the end of a short, out-of-the-way dead-end street a few blocks from City Hall: 508 Park Ave., where a man and a guitar more or less invented rock and roll 72 years ago. The building is vacant and decaying, but not alone. On a recent Saturday afternoon,…
Robert Wilonsky BUZZ Switch and bait: OK, before any of you fine weapons-owning people out there in Internet-land get all huffy and write in to tell Buzz that we’re an idiot, let’s be clear on one thing: Buzz knows we’re an idiot. Thank you. We say this because the last…
Josh Alan Friedman, who penned an amazing piece about the Texas Tenor for the paper version of Unfair Park long ago, brings sad news today: Corsicana-born, Dallas-raised sax great David “Fathead” Newman died yesterday. There’s only been one obituary, but a call to David’s wife and manager Karen offers further…
Josh Alan Friedman, who penned an amazing piece about the Texas Tenor for the paper version of Unfair Park long ago, brings sad news today: Corsicana-born, Dallas-raised sax great David “Fathead” Newman died yesterday. There’s only been one obituary, but a call to David’s wife and manager Karen offers further…
All that land you see at right marked “SITE” was supposed to be the location of Irving-based JPI’s Trinity River development — about 60.5 acres’ worth of residential, retail, offices, restaurants and everything else you could stuff into a billion-dollar mixed-use development. The city was counting on the project to…
Earlier today, Unfair Park learned that chef Kent Rathbun would be opening a new restaurant in Preston Center, next door to Shannon Wynne’s Flying Fish in the space formerly occupied by Carrabba’s, among others. I called Rathbun’s publicist Ariana Hajibashi-Martin to confirm, and she was very noncommittal: “Nothing’s been completely…
A Friend of Unfair Park directs our attention to the Dallas Cowboys’ official Web site, which published a Q&A with owner and general manager Jerry Jones last night. It’s not exactly the most illuminating interview — lots of assessing and evaluating going on, which is only, what, six months too…
Last week, while working on this week’s cover story in the paper version of Unfair Park, I discovered that the owners of 508 Park Ave. have filed with the city a permit to tear down the former Warner Brothers Film Exchange, built in the late 1920s. Long story, available soonish…
