Separate and Unequal

Going to school bored Rudy Barraza, an 18-year-old North Dallas High School junior. So rather than suffer large classes and harried, aloof teachers, he brainstormed a shrewd way to spend weekdays with friends at home, the mall or the park. In the morning, he said goodbye to his work-bound parents…

The Tex Files

TRINIDAD, Texas–When last we heard from the rebellious John Joe Gray family it was still entrenched on its 47-acre river-bottom farm near here, vowing if local authorities attempted to serve long-standing arrest warrants on its patriarchal leader all hell would break loose. It has now been more than a year…

Buzz

Dallas-based CompUSA Inc. and its former chief executive James Halpin must be feeling pretty happy this week, thanks to a decision by District Judge Carlos Lopez that took them off the hook for a multimillion-dollar judgment awarded by a local jury earlier this year. Mexican businessman Carlos Slim Helú, one…

Letters

Caught in the Middle Children as pawns: Mark Donald’s article “Access Denied” (May 10) is unforgivably one-sided, as if fathers are the only parents who are ever denied visitation rights with their children, and as if men are the only human beings whose lives are forever scarred by ugly custody…

Survivor

From the backseat of the single-engine airplane, Carmen Rivera-Worley watched uncomfortably as the 25-year-old pilot tapped his finger on an illuminated blue instrument. Raindrops streaked the plane’s windows as it raced at about 120 mph through a blanket of ink-black clouds west of New Orleans. Then, Rivera-Worley and the two…

Band on the Run

A week or so ago, Chomsky was in Austin to play a gig at the Flamingo Cantina with its friends from Kissinger. Instead of making the drive back to Dallas in the middle of the night, guitarist Glen Reynolds found a place where the band could get some sleep. Reynolds…

Dead Wrong

Location: Denton County, Texas Victim: Frieda Lorraine (Becky) Powell, w/f, 15 In June 1983, Henry Lucas described to officers that he and the victim were in Denton County…He and the victim began arguing, and she slapped him, at which time he drew his knife from his belt and immediately stabbed…

Bean Waiting

After 17 years of unrelenting global expansion that has hooked caffeine fiends from Seattle to Seoul, Starbucks Corp. has, at last, penetrated one of the most remote corners of the retail world: Oak Cliff. In what is certain to go down in Oak Cliff retailing history as the espresso shot…

Jilted

Let’s say you decide you’re going to be a whore. Maybe you’ve had a long, respectable life in which you’ve only rarely, quietly embarrassed yourself. Some silliness when you were young, a few wayward escapades while growing up, but for the most part you are seen as a sober person…

Buzz

Flip a coin: Dwaine Caraway is black. Ed Oakley is white. Which one is best fit to be the District 6 City Council representative? Buzz, who lives in the district, would suggest that voters need a little more information than that to decide. We would say that the best candidate–for…

Letters

High Hopes Fellow travelers: The information in Joe Pappalardo’s recent article, “Mean Green,” (April 19) is the complete opposite of what occurred at a recent activist camp in Huntsville, Texas. His false information damages the reputation of the animal rights movement and has put activists’ safety in jeopardy. Pappalardo said…

Buzz

Busted: At the risk of sounding like the crotchety old guy we’re in danger of quickly becoming, Buzz must ask: What kind of bizarro world do we live in that arrests school administrators and puts them in detention because a kid can’t read well? Oh, that’s right. This is Dallas…

Deep Doo-doo

So many accusations were flying at the end of the District 1 Dallas City Council race, it wasn’t clear who was blowing the whistle on whom, but Dallas County Elections Administrator Bruce Sherbet says there is no confusion about one thing: “Someone’s going to get in trouble.” Speaking on Monday…

Access Denied

It was all he could do to keep from going crazy, a little nuts, when he thought about how much he missed his kids. He claims he never anticipated the War of the Roses his ex-wife would wage–with his words twisted, his actions demonized, his own children turned bitterly against…

Letters

Bigotry by Any NameKind of WackStraight ShotCaptain Joke

Rough Ride

On a Saturday afternoon in late April, 10,200 horse racing fans have gathered in the tan stucco grandstand at Lone Star Park. They’re moistening in the warming sun, ordering beers with their Grand Prairie dogs, queuing up to invest in the ninth race, the $300,000 Texas Mile, which is filled…

Locked In

“It all begins here,” says Pam Schaefer, the founder and executive director of Trinity Works, a nonprofit agency also known as Trinity Ministry to the Poor. “Here” is the lobby of Trinity’s year-old, custom-built headquarters, located on Bryan Street in Old East Dallas. The headquarters are a spotless testament to…

From Russia, with Love

His modest home in Little Elm on Lake Lewisville is a bachelor-pad parody. Old newspapers and heaps of junk mail sprout like mushrooms in corners and under tables. Cobwebs and balls of dust cloud the narrow spaces under the couches. Tangles of socks, T-shirts and rumpled sheets are visible through…

Get Used to It

Is Dallas, a bastion of Bible Belt conservatism, ready for a law banning discrimination against its gay and lesbian residents? That’s the question John Loza, the city council’s only openly gay member, plans to put to his colleagues soon after Saturday’s election, in which Loza is expected to win a…

Buzz

He Hate Me: Buzz is one of your typical liberal-media agnostics, but we understand how religious discussions can go awry. Buzz once tried to ask the head of a very well-known Catholic girl’s school what it would take to get Buzz’s daughter admitted. “Is she Catholic?” was the response. Buzz,…

Letters

Missing Molly All the facts that fit the bias: I know Molly Ivins (“Parting Ways,” April 19) has distorted facts in the past. In 1989, she wrote a flattering column in the Dallas Times Herald about the Committee In Support of the People of El Salvador (CISPES), portraying them as…

Bare Knuckles and Bare Breasts

Does Dallas have a red-light district? Does the Pope live in Rome? It’s 2:30 a.m., closing time on a Sunday morning, and customers are swarming out of the topless bars on Northwest Highway like fire ants somebody just stomped on. They stumble, they fall, they trot, they wobble, squinty-eyed from…