They waited as long as they could before they left without him. “Don’t bother going out tonight,” Kathy O’Keefe had told Brett, her 18-year-old son, the night before their family vacation. It was March of last year. Brett’s older brother, Kyle, was home from college for spring break and his…
Spurred by that for-sale Byrds concert poster dating back to an all-but-forgotten June 1, 1968, concert at the Forest Theater, I drove by the place a few days ago to see if the historic haunt had found any takers. But, no: The Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard landmark built in…
We’re ahead of the curve here in Texas when it comes to our treatment of the wrongfully convicted. These days, instead of loosing them into a world they barely recognize with empty pockets, we hand them well-deserved golden parachutes worth $160,000 for each year they spent in prison for crimes…
A few tree-hugging Friends of Unfair Park sent word earlier today that someone from Park and Rec was out clearcutting trees in the Great Trinity Forest, which seemed a bit … odd. Wrote one, the guy was using a chainsaw in Gateway Park to cut down Red Oaks, Possumhaw Hollies,…
As Merritt noted on Mixmaster earlier, The Dallas Morning News will no longer publish Quick after its August 4 issue, bringing to a close the free weekly’s 8-year-long run. Jim Moroney, the publisher and CEO at The News, tells Unfair Park he broke the news to its staff at around…
Arrived in San Antonio this morning and will attend owner Jerry Jones’ State of the Franchise press conference at 3 p.m. in The Alamodome. (After an off-season of relative silence and so many topics to cover, this baby could go 90 minutes.) In the post-lockout NFL, the Cowboys have hit…
Last we looked, the council tabled till after its summer vacation a proposal from Marys Suhm and Nix to force all the solid-waste haulers in the city to dump their trash at the McCommas Bluff Landfill rather than one of the dozen other sites in the region. The city manager…
OK, no one has actually studied the effects of redistricting on the human body, but after last night it seems safe to say that the longer a redistricting process goes on, the grouchier everybody gets. At the county level, we have Maurine Dickey’s temper tantrum as evidence. And last night’s meeting…
The city’s gas drilling task force slurped down a hearty helping of alphabet soup last night, with visits from representatives of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), the TCEQ (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality) and the RRC (the Railroad Commission of Texas), all of whom provided a breakdown of the regulatory…
Oklahoma native G.D. Spradlin was many things before he became an actor: attorney, oilman, politico, scholar, wealthy. But at some point he decided all of that wasn’t enough, and turned to his greatest passion: acting. And so his became, in a short time, an estimable body of work that spanned…
After we broke the story about the Dallas City Attorney’s Office going after The Playground, a Harry Hines swingers club operating with a house-o’-worship certificate of occupancy, Glenn Hudson or someone working for him had some of the club’s websites taken down, among them the one featuring interior photos while…
While the Cowboys cut familiar faces in an attempt to reshape their team on the field, the organization has also decided to give its stadium an audio makeover. Out as Cowboys Stadium public address announcer is Jody Dean, to be replaced by local award-winning sports reporter Roger Emrich. And for the…
I was sure Cash Sirois was behind RetroMavs.com. But, no: He sends word that Ken Bonzon and Steve Chavera, the webmasters for Your Dallas Mavericks, are behind the champs’ new flashback site, which made its bow yesterday and, so far, features a few video flashbacks (including Popeye Jones and Tony…
In December 2007 we said farewell to R.C. Hickman, the Mineola native who became the staff photographer at the Dallas Star Post and whose astonishing body of work tells the story of black Dallas in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. Most of his photos reside in the Dolph Briscoe Center…
Mayor Mike Rawlings’s office confirms: From 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on August 2 he’s throwing a dinner for the city council — a sort-of get-to-know-me BBQ-flavored wingding in advance of the council getting back to work. Problem is, that conflicts with one of only two public hearings on the gas…
Like I said Friday, when we looked at Dwaine Caraway and Carolyn Davis’s messed-up maps, Anna’s heading to that Redistricting Commission meeting this evening at City Hall — sooooo lucky. (Tell Sandra Crenshaw that Schutze sends his warmest regards.) In advance of that wingding, I went to the commission’s site…
Greg McEvilly and his co-workers typically hold their meetings tethered to branches, poles or anything they can find that will support their body weight. They do it because they don’t have an office, but also because they hope you and your friends or family or coworkers will one day be…
This morning the United States Postal Services announced it’s looking at some 3,700 retail offices that may be in need of shuttering to save dough. Because, per the release, “As more customers choose to conduct their postal business online, on their smart phones and at their favorite shopping destinations, the…
In February 2010, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood announced that the downtown Dallas streetcar project, then expected to run around $58 million, would get a huge hunk of its funding from the feds — $23 million, to be precise, courtesy Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery funds, otherwise known as TIGER…
No doubt you remember well the glory days of December 2007, which is when the city of Dallas convened its Green Building Task Force consisting of real estaters (including The Real Estate Council) and city staffers with the intention of rewriting the City Code to pave the way for happier,…
The NBA is locked out. Dirk Nowitzki is preparing to play for his home Germany in Olympic qualifying. League stars are pondering playing overseas in Turkey and Italy and Spain and such in preparation of missed games next season. But, alas, the tireless work of a dance team never ceases…
At this late date I won’t detail the case pitting Highland Park developer Hiram Walker Royall against author Carla Main, which we’ve been following for the past three years. Let’s just put it like this: Royall, who was involved in an eminent domain case down in Freeport, became the subject…
