When I picked up the phone a bit ago, I was expecting a call back from a congressional candidate for whom I’d left a message. Instead, it was a robocall from a pleasant-voiced woman speaking Spanish. I would have hung up — I’ve forgotten what little I learned in high…
Today is the last Friday of the school year for Dallas ISD schools. For 11 schools in the city slated for consolidation after a school board vote, like the 89-year-old James B. Bonham Elementary, this Friday holds even more significance. Next week, after the students leave, the teachers will pack…
On May 5, the badly burned body of a man was found in a vacant field in far southeast Dallas, not far from the railroad tracks. Pieces of him were missing. The body’s condition made identification difficult, so Dallas police released macabre photos of his tattoos to the press: A…
It was shortly before or not long after I read Robert Wilonsky’s post from earlier this week about Dallas retaking its rightful crown as the country’s worst major city for cyclists that I wiped out, in suitably humiliating fashion, as I rode my bike to work down Hillcrest Road. I…
Around this time last year, the Internet had a collective chuckle when the Dallas Country Club sued the Dallas County Appraisal District, hoping to lower its annual property tax bill. The county appraisers had valued the club’s 118-acre property in the heart of the Park Cities at around $15 million,…
Recent anthrax scares at preschools, synagogues, government offices, and just about anywhere else the U.S. Postal Service will deliver a white powder-filled envelope, not to mention the panting media coverage, has people on edge, calling in the cavalry at the sight of powdered sugar. Or blow. Dallas Fire Rescue’s Haz-Mat…
When I wrote yesterday about Mayor Mike backtracking from his backtrack on the Trinity Toll Road, I glossed over the real purpose of his visit to the Oak Cliff Chamber, which was to pitch his GrowSouth initiative. For the uninitiated, GrowSouth is the plan to revitalize southern Dallas, which Rawlings…
. Remember those motorcyclists who briefly took over Central Expressway last year to peel out, do wheelies, spraypaint tributes to fallen comrades, and generally distract commuters from their smart phones? NBC 5 does and reports today that they’re coming back. But Central Expressway is so last year, so the riders…
It was unusual when Jakadrien Turner’s grades in high school began to falter after the death of her grandfather nearly two years ago. She was typically a good student and didn’t look for trouble. But after her grandfather’s death, she began acting out, according to legal documents, and in this…
Progress Texas doesn’t much like the virtual school movement that has drawn increasing numbers of the state’s grade-school students away from real classrooms, many of them full-time. For one thing, it’s proven ineffective, the group argues in a report released yesterday. Case in point: Texas Virtual Academy, an online charter…
Mayor Mike Rawlings was a bit late for his 9 a.m. speech at this morning’s “Building South” presentation at the Oak Cliff Chamber. I knew it was Mayor Mike because OC Chamber director Bob Stimson, waffling for time, kept saying things like “I was told if I started and talked…
As a nickname, “Dead Bird” hasn’t fit so well since the city of Dallas’ airport in South Oak Cliff changed its name from Redbird to Dallas Executive a decade ago in hopes of sparking a revival of the 67-year-old airfield, which tends to be forgotten in the shadow of DFW…
Politics is politics, and incumbents running for re-election in conservative Parker County, Texas, where the local economy is fueled entirely by shale-gas production, want to look like champions of the industry. But what if you’re a judge? And what if, at the very moment you put up fliers of Rush…
In addition to being smutty and un-hip, the DFW area is now ranking way down at number 47 on the American College of Sports Medicine’s Fitness Index. And the bad news is that unlike some of the other lists we’ve been bitching about lately (looking at you, perv index) this…
Tricky work deciding who gets the protections of a journalist in court. In the case of a natural gas production company suing a Parker County man who blames it for contaminating his water well, state district Judge Trey Loftin attempted to suss it out in a recent order compelling fracking…
Those kooky animal lovers at PETA are up to their crazy shenanigans again. (By “kooky” and “crazy shenanigans” what we mean is, “Have you ever wondered if PETA is just some sort of pervy scam to get twentysomething women to disrobe in public?) According to the groups press release, they…
If you order a hoagie in Philly, there’s a good chance it will come on a Sarcone’s roll. Sure, other bakeries supply bread for some shops around town, but Sarcone’s has built a legacy out of its sesame-seed-studded bread and that chewy texture that’s a workout for your jaw. Order…
I was 6 when Dallas went off the air, so I have been spared thus far, mercifully from everything I hear, from ever having to watch an episode. I haven’t been able to maintain the level of ignorance that I would have liked, since on occasion when I’ve mention my…
Anyone who has ridden cross-country on a Greyhound bus, and who walked by the bus station on Lamar Street yesterday, would have assumed that the group of protesters gathered there were speaking out against the inhumane conditions suffered by its passengers. On the contrary, the picketers were members of the Amalgamated…
So. This happened yesterday: Hi, I hope all is well with you! I wanted to let you know that GSN (Game Show Network) is coming to Vista Ridge Mall in Dallas next Saturday, June 2nd looking for Dallas’ best and brightest contestants to cast in our upcoming series, “THE AMERICAN…
View You too can see if your candidate lives in the Texas 33rd Congressional District When the polls close on the Democratic primary for Texas’ new 33rd Congressional District, surprisingly few of the nearly dozen candidates will have cast a vote for themselves. We received a note from a Friend…
Eric Dickerson, the Pro Football Hall of Fame running back and better half of SMU’s Pony Express, has joined the growing list of former NFL players suing the league for failing to protect athletes from permanent neurological damage stemming from brain trauma. Dickerson, along with 14 other players ranging in…
