Safer Dallas Better Dallas is a local foundation that raises money to buy new equipment for the Dallas Police Department and, as they put it, “fund the priorities” of DPD, something they’ve done to the tune of $17 million since their founding in 2005. 7-Eleven is the place where you…
When the Denton County Transportation Authority was shopping for rail cars for its A-train commuter line in 2009, it settled on 11 diesel-electric vehicles manufactured in Europe by Stadler, a company based in Switzerland. The cars are quieter, more fuel efficient and more spacious than the light rail cars on…
A case out of Marshall, reported today by Courthouse News, is truly the Bermuda Triangle for moral compasses. Janna Ardoin brought Chester, her Chinese Pug, into Patchwork Pet Resort and Veterinary Clinic with his eyeball dangling from its socket, attached by the merest of threads. She had three choices: Pay…
The New York Times this morning has a piece arguing that the Chicago teachers strike is a window on the nation’s heart over the last few years, where education is concerned. I would say it’s been 15 years at least, and in a weird way a lot of it started…
As odious a human being as Glenn Beck is, the man is brilliant in his way. His decision a year ago to break with Fox News, move from New York to North Texas, and launch an Internet-only TV station seemed a dubious bet. The cable network is, after all, the…
The ad above was intended to go on every electric bill in the city of Plano, part of a marketing campaign that would be “bold and memorable,” Sustainability and Environmental Services Director Nancy Nevil told the City Council on Monday, according to the Morning News. “We feel like we need…
George Hall’s 10-year-old, high-powered telescope was trained on Jupiter at 6:35 a.m. on Monday when it caught a brief flash of something lighting up Jupiter’s surface. Hall didn’t actually see the flash — possibly a meteor impact — but another amateur astronomer named Don Peterson did, and when Hall checked…
Sean Payton is cooling his heels at his home in Westlake while he takes an NFL-mandated break from coaching the New Orleans Saints.
Robert Garmon and Rodney Spinato were the only black bartenders working for Wolfgang Puck Catering’s Dallas operation. They were, as they describe in a discrimination lawsuit filed today, “excellent, hard-working employees who were wrongfully terminated because of their race.” What led them to this conclusion was not the fact that…
Saying someone throws like a girl is not generally acceptable, at least in the age of Title IX and political correctness. Such pronouncements reek of paternalism; certainly we’re sophisticated enough to know that gender differences that seem to be innate are really learned, the product of a lifetime of social…
The Dallas Observer: You built that. Or you can, anyway, if one of the following opportunities suits you. Clubs Editor The clubs editor researches, reports, writes and maintains the Observer’s clubs and concert listings, helping ensure that our newspaper and web site offer the city’s most comprehensive, liveliest and most…
Back in July, the Animal Shelter Commission met for an update from city staff on the state of Dallas Animal Services (DAS). As usual, they ended up talking about a few major, unresolved issues: The air-conditioning in the shelter doesn’t really work. The shelter is still understaffed and manned with…
The North Texas Municipal Water District, which serves 1.6 million people in Plano and a dozen northern and eastern suburbs, took a major hit in 2009 when zebra mussels were discovered in Lake Texoma. It’s a federal crime to transport the highly invasive bivalves across state lines and, because seven…
A while back, DART was toying with the idea for a while of auctioning off naming rights to some of its stations to the highest bidder. Such measures have proved to be relatively painless ways to generate cash for some transit systems in places like Philadelphia, and DART estimated it…
Franklin Davis, the Irving man accused of murdering 16-year-old Shania Gray Thursday on the banks of the Trinity River, gave a series of jailhouse interviews to local media outlets to share his part of the story. Demons, he said. It was the demons. “I didn’t plan on hurting her,” he…
Dallas Police Chief David Brown sent word yesterday evening that Christopher Pasley, a five-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department died yesterday “as a result of an apparent accidental discharge while cleaning his weapon at home.” “The Department’s Employee Relations Team has been activated to coordinate assistance to the family…
Dallas was already having its worst-ever year for West Nile at the end of July, but things were only going to get worse, as August would prove to be the outbreak’s worst month. The number of confirmed human cases in Dallas County jumped by 10 or 12 or 19 per…
John Jay Myers owns the Free Man, a Cajun joint in Deep Ellum. He also runs a wholesale embroidery business, has a “deep, deep mistrust of the government,” would like to legalize medical marijuana, and thinks we should bring all the U.S. troops home. And he believes Texans are being…
In June, the city of Dallas unveiled its Complete Streets Design Manual, a rather dense set of guidelines for the city as it dabbles with the idea of building certain roadways less as places that cars blow through en route from Point A to Point B and more as boulevards…
The Dallas City Council is meeting this morning to decide how it wants to divide a last-minute, $329,000 windfall in the form of additional franchise fees from Oncor. In the context of the a $2.57-billion budget, it’s peanuts, but it offers council members a way to fund their own pet…
Chesapeake Energy, the country’s second-largest producer of natural gas, has been hit with a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of violating royalty agreements with landowners in Tarrant and Johnson counties. As you may recall, an identical suit was brought in July by a family of Johnson County landowners who claim…
It’s been nearly a month since the housekeeping staff of an upscale Chicago hotel discovered the body of Brianna Gardner, a 22-year-old Dallas woman who had been fatally shot in the head. The case seemed to be headed for a quick resolution when police arrested a 28-year-old man whose cell…
