Since the first Rick’s Cabaret opened three decades ago, the company has grown into a publicly traded strip club empire with more than two dozen locations nationwide. It prides itself on classiness, boasting on its corporate website that it was while dancing at Rick’s Cabaret that Anna Nicole Smith met…
Is the gas industry mature enough to have a serious discussion with the American public about hydraulic fracturing, one that explores the benefits of domestic natural gas drilling but also carefully considers methane leaks, groundwater contamination, earthquakes and other potential risks that peer-reviewed research has linked to fracking activity? Fracking…
It may have been that Johnny Charles Butler and James Robert Cleveland Butler hoped to etch their names in bank-robbing history by going out in a Bonnie and Clyde-style shower of bullets in August 2012. Perhaps the two brothers simply overestimated their chances against a professionally trained FBI SWAT team…
When federal agents raided local hacktivist Barrett Brown’s apartment last fall, throwing him in prison for what could wind up being the rest of his life, they succeeded in shutting him up for about a day. Soon, however, he was scribbling letters from prison claiming the FBI had broken his…
Updated at 4:56 p.m.: Dallas County Community College District sends word that, following a hearing in federal court this afternoon, they have agreed to allow Rodin to observer all the holidays. “Rodin has agreed to make up those clinical requirements on appropriate dates in January 2014,” DCCCD says in a…
The way Railroad Commission Chairman and Texas Attorney General candidate Barry Smitherman tells it, the aim of his 10 years of public service was not brazen tub-thumping for the industry he regulates in order to shore up deep-pocketed benefactors for his political aspirations. It’s only ever been about readying Texas…
Frisco residents worried about a power company’s plan to install high-voltage power lines above ground next to their homes have been frustrated by the company’s handling of their complaints in recent weeks, but this morning they can celebrate a momentary victory: Their city council last night passed a resolution opposing…
Pastor Chuck Kitchens sees God’s hand at work in the creation of My Son, the first feature film produced by Burleson’s Retta Baptist Church. As he’s told the religious press, it was the Lord who placed its director, a 31-year-old film editor named Jarod O’Flaherty, in the pews every Sunday…
Here’s the bad news: If you are young, poor, black or Hispanic, disabled, or just graduated from college, you are significantly less happy than you were two years ago. Recent polling says so. Now, the same folks at Harris Polling who brought us that depressing tidbit now bring a spot…
It was 1:30 a.m. when Cornellias Simon, aka “Bean,” burst through the door of the apartment. The tenant watched as Simon staggered for a moment, then collapsed onto the kitchen floor, dead of a gunshot wound to the chest. That was the first surprise. The second was the man who…
When Mike Miles announced a month ago that his wife and son were headed back to Colorado Springs, the question of whether Miles himself would soon join them was unavoidable. It would at least have been understandable given the shellacking he’s endured over the past year and a half. But…
Barry Smitherman recently leapt off the political springboard that is the Texas Railroad Commission and dove into the attorney general’s race. Heretofore, he has focused his campaign primarily on extolling the virtues of hydraulic fracturing, firearms and suing the Obama administration. Yet Smitherman isn’t just another Greg Abbott wannabe mindlessly…
Safe to say that most of us at Unfair Park celebrated Labor Day in the traditional way: by guzzling beer poolside while drunkenly scorching animal flesh. Many in Dallas chose to mark the occasion by more unconventional means, at least judging by the weekend’s police reports. Here is a sampling…
Pretend you busted your checking account and fell behind a few days on your rent. Would you feel safer if your landlord let a towing company take your car away? That’s the gist of an organization called the Texas Association of Safer Apartment Communities, a safety association landlords can join…
Ronald Thompson is not a particularly sympathetic defendant. Authorities say the 50-year-old visited Sea World in July 2011 to surreptitiously photograph young children. When police arrested him and seized his camera, they found 73 pictures of children in swimsuits, almost all of the images centered on the chest or buttocks…
In this week’s feature, we tell the story of Tim Samaras, one of the most respected tornado scientists in the country. On May 31, he, his son Paul and chase partner Carl Young navigated back roads southwest of El Reno, Oklahoma, beneath dark, circulating clouds. Just after 6 that evening,…
Last we heard from Craig James, he was groveling for cash to pay off the debt racked up during his ill-conceived U.S. Senate campaign and denying that he killed five hookers. That was more than a year ago. Then, on Friday, Fox Sports Southwest reminded the world of James’ existence…
It’s been eight months since the Dallas City Council passed new rules forcing drivers to be nice to cyclists. It’s been six months since the short-lived, ill-conceived public education campaign. It’s been almost a year since some asshole shot up me and my bike with paintballs. So, what has become…
Occasionally our long-time managing editor, Patrick Williams, sends emails to the staff lauding their prose, gently encouraging them, and otherwise helping them along in their journeys as reporters, writers and, well, people. Today was one of those days. I share this with you because you, as readers and commenters, deserve…
He’s held up five North Texas banks in six months. Each time, he wears a plain ball cap and glasses or sunglasses and calmly hands over a note and demands cash. His preference is for bank branches tucked inside grocery stores and Walmarts, always in the suburbs. He’s shown a…
Dallas County had long since forgotten what the metal plate above the water fountain in the Records Building was meant to conceal when, in 2003, it fell off. Even then, you had to be looking for it to notice the faded remnants of the “White Only” sign on the marble…
When the news came out that Avi Adelman, who stood sentinel over Lower Greenville for a quarter century, had sold his Belmont Avenue home, he was cagey when asked where he was heading. We now know the answer is Junius Heights, where he and his wife have purchased a modest,…
