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With a satisfied smile, Jack Lowe Jr. works his way through the nest of cubicles at TDIndustries, a Dallas-based plumbing and air-conditioning contractor where he serves as chairman and chief executive officer. Lowe, dressed casually in an open-collar shirt, walks at a leisurely pace, stopping several times to greet employees,…

Party pooped Well, this is just great. Just when we thought we had our New Year’s plans down, The Turn: America at the Millennium goes belly-up and Buzz faces greeting the end of the century with Dick Clark and a bottle of cold duck. Frankly, we hesitated at taking a…

At 9:30 last Friday morning, moments before the start of a court hearing that centered on his installation as president of the Dallas branch of the NAACP, the tall, nattily dressed Lee Alcorn conceded he was perplexed. “I just don’t understand it,” Alcorn said of a battle that has erupted…

Alone protester ushered in the 26th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade last Friday at Denton’s only abortion clinic. “I’m a sidewalk counselor,” said Sue Cyr, who carried a poster of a bloody fetus in front of the gray medical office on Elm Street. Cyr’s sign read, “Stop Clinic Violence,” a…

High scores for game story Just had to congratulate you on one of the finest pieces of journalism on the gaming industry I have ever read [“Stormy weather,” January 14]. As a marketing professional with five years of experience swimming in that polluted pond, I have been following ION Storm’s,…

The use of sales tax money to bankroll sports stadiums and other private projects has always been contentious. In Arlington, voters approved a half-cent sales levy eight years ago for a new stadium so the Texas Rangers wouldn’t pack up and leave. Critics argue it ended up shifting wealth from…

Reid Ryan remembers bumming around the streets of San Francisco alone as a 12-year-old kid, carrying $20 that his dad slipped him before heading to work. It was enough cash to cover Reid’s cab fare to Candlestick Park, the wind-swept stadium on the bay where the boy’s dad suited up…

Let’s not Was the Houston Chronicle making a snide prediction about the vapid speech Gov. George W. Bush gave at his inauguration, or was it just a Freudian slip? Buzz is referring to a typo in a Chronicle story that appeared before the event. The inauguration’s theme was “Together We…

When Plano resident Jane Neidenfeuhr walked into her neighborhood library early last October, she was just looking for books. What she found instead caught this homemaker and mother of two off guard. “I had just gotten off a computer, and I saw two boys–maybe fifth- or sixth-graders–waiting to get on…

Christy Morrow is hard at work on this Tuesday evening inside the Munger Place United Methodist Church, where more than 100 people have gathered for yet another meeting about Albertson’s request to change a zoning law so it can build a massive grocery store in Old East Dallas. Shortly before…

We’re not sure precisely what prompted former DISD trustee Don Venable to send Dallas Observer Editor Julie Lyons this strange e-mail message at the end of December. Maybe it was his way of explaining why he reappeared on the school board this month after resigning in October (“Now you see…

The Venable-ini speaks Well OK, so I reserve the right to repeatedly change my mind and join or rejoin that troublesome tribe of cannibals known as the Dallas school board [“Now you see him,” January 14]. Well…SUE ME! Don Venable Via e-mail Editor’s note: For more wit and wisdom from…

How perfect. Just as they begin trying to hire a new superintendent of schools to replace the one who left to go to the Big House, the members of the Dallas school board have erupted into a particularly nasty behind-the-scenes battle over fraud, lawsuits, and their own personal liability. The…

It’s that time of year again. Time to purge after the holiday binge. Even formalize it with a New Year’s resolution. You vow to rid yourself of excess pounds and inches by joining a fitness club. You’re not alone. Thousands of bulbous DFW boomers and slackers will be signing on…

Firewalk with him “Meet the challenge of a single evening and transform your entire life.” The last time Buzz heard an offer like that, we became engaged to be married. (Happily! Happily!) Now that Buzz has cleared our social calendar for, oh, the next decade, maybe we will take this…

In the fall 1998 issue of The Lone Wolf Letter, a promotional newsletter for tobacco retailers, television and film star Chuck Norris and comic actor James Belushi gush over the success of their 2-year-old cigar company. The actors call Lone Wolf one of the most exciting new premium cigar brands…

Toe the whine I guess your sports columnist, Robert Wilonsky, got a late Christmas present when the Cardinals derailed the local NFL team. I’ve enjoyed his ravings against the more hypocritical players (and owner Jones), particularly Deion “The Toe” Sanders. Why would Dallas’ only daily choose His Holiness as Cowboys…

Jim Carrao stares through the windows of a ninth-story conference room into a thicket of fog that has swallowed the city’s skyline and blotted out the view of the world outside. And he frowns. Once again, it seems to him, forces beyond his control are engaged in a conspiracy. How…

In August 1997, when they took him to jail, Nick Jolly was 18 years old and had just graduated from Lincoln High School, where his mother and aunt both graduated before him. He was a third-generation Dallasite. His grandfather came here from South Texas to work for the Dallas water…

Dallas 1998. Think back with us to the unique, exciting moments over the past year. Really, we mean it. Think back with us. Better yet, think back for us, because, frankly, Buzz’s memory is not what it was before we discovered beer many, many years ago. Let’s see. We recall…

Every other January, 181 state legislators, supposedly representative of Texas and supposedly armed with good intentions, come to Austin and instantly become the most sought-after people in town. For every legislator, there are at least eight lobbyists–about 1,500 type A personalities paid to troll the halls in search of something…