Speaking of getting city officials’ responses to WFAA-Channel 8 stories …Maybe you saw the story last night about 15-year-old Ashley Donaldson, who found $2,000 stuffed into an envelope and, though her family sure could use the bread, did the right thing and turned it in. According to Ashley, she took…
I promise: Unfair Park won’t be clogged with piece after piece about that Happy Trails safety campaign contract. But this one merits its own item: City Auditor Craig Kinton, who functions as an independent investigator inside the hallways of City Hall, returned my call moments ago and said his office…
I’ve left messages and sent emails all over Dallas City Hall — to City Manager Mary Suhm, Assistant City Manager Forest Turner (who oversees Park and Recreation), City Auditor Craig Kinton, city spokesman Frank Librio and Chris Heinbaugh in Mayor-For-Now Dwaine Caraway’s office. I’ve been told they are all presently…
Stay tuned to the Observer’s food blog, City of Ate, for more from the In-n-Out opening.In-N-Out Burger is the best hamburger. Period. The end. When I’m in Oxnard, California for Cowboys training camp or Surprise, Arizona for Rangers spring training or Las Vegas for fun, yeah, I’ll go out of my…
You know me, the biggest Dirk Nowitzki homer in town. But Rick Carlisle even made me cringe earlier this week by tabbing the Mavs’ star as a top 10 NBA player “of all time.”Carlisle has been great in these NBA Playoffs. Keeping his Mavericks mentally together after the Game 4…
The song “Dirk41,” by German musicmaker Flula Borg, was originally released in December 2009. It’s available for purchase on iTunes, or you can listen to it on Borg’s MySpace page, where it’s received but a scant 6,709 plays in more than a year and a half. But, trust me, you’ll…
No doubt you’re well aware that President Barack Obama was in El Paso yesterday, where he said that “genuine, comprehensive reform” was the only way to repair a “broken immigration system.” In his speech, posted in its entirety to the White House website, Obama insisted his administration’s doing what it…
Rangers’ manager Ron Washington loves status quo. Likes the same ol’ routine of it all. When something extraordinary happens in the game he delivers his pet philosophical phrase: “That’s the way baseball go.” But in the midst of watching his team lose seven of nine games and seven of eight…
Speaking of ethics at City Hall…So happens that Patrick stopped by Dallas City Hall Thursday, just as ad man Jake Schroepfer was giving his Happy Trails Dallas safety campaign presentation, which included that star-studded Junior Brown music video. Those photos come in handy this morning: WFAA’s Brett Shipp had a…
While I was on the phone with Chris Heinbaugh about the item just below this one, he mentioned that Mayor-Not-For-Long Dwaine Caraway informed his council colleagues today that he’s ready to go with that whole ad hoc ethics committee mentioned at the end of last week’s rather tense back-and-forth over…
Last June, we took a look at some moneymaking brainstorms Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm presented to the city council, which Suhm hoped would offset some of the $131-million budget shortfall with which she was faced at the time. Among them was one in particular that didn’t get very far,…
Just couldn’t hold this till item till 4:20, so sorry. But I’d meant to mention last week that the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (or NORML) was staging its part of the World Wide Marijuana March on May 7 on the Dallas…
There’s really no bad time to check back in on construction at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science — but especially on a day like today, when some serious money has just changed hands. In a ceremony high atop the next-door Park Seventeen building, the museum announced Texas Instruments…
Ed Oakley, who once sat in the District 3 seat at the Dallas City Hall horseshoe, is already listed among Scott Griggs’s supporters, alongside, of course, Dallas County Commissioner Elba Garcia, former Dallas ISD school board trustee Jose Plata, former Dallas City Manager Jan Hart Black and a host of…
Anti-gas drilling activist Raymond Crawford sends word this morning: Moments ago the Dallas County Commissioners Court voted to adopt a resolution demanding the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency do something about cleaning up Dallas’s air. Long story short: The county wants state and federal…
As the Texas Tribune notes today, in the wee small hours of the morning, the state House passed Carrollton state Rep. Burt Solomons’s HB 12, the so-called “sanctuary cities” legislation deemed an emergency item by Gov. Rick Perry. As the Trib’s Julian Aguilar sums it up, those who are for…
I called John Crawford, president of Downtown Dallas Inc., on Monday morning, about something — can’t remember, not important. But in between my leaving a message and his calling back, I received a press release: TM Advertising, which moved from Irving into the Comerica Bank Tower at 1717 Main Street…
Hello, win column! third place.The Rangers started 9-1. But since Josh Hamilton broke his arm on that daring/dumb dash for home plate in Detroit on April 12, they’re 9-17.That equals 18-18. That equals — for the first time since April 30, 2010 — third place in the AL West behind…
Two years ago I posted a lengthy excerpt from the 1962 book The Prairie’s Yield – Forces Shaping Dallas Architecture from 1840 to 1962, published by Reinhold in conjunction with the Dallas chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Among its authors was Hal Box, who, at the time, was…
When the Lakers’ Empire imploded on Mother’s Day in Dallas, it did it in surreal style — under a barrage of 20 Mavericks’ 3-pointers, and punctuated by cheap-shot thuggery from Lamar Odom and Andrew Bynum. Was thinking about Bynum’s chicken-shit elbow to an exposed J.J. Barea. Other than the time Jason…
Moments ago, an old Friend of Unfair Park sent along this obituary that appeared on Variety’s website last night: Guitar great Cornell Dupree died at his Fort Worth home Sunday at the age of 69. For those unfamiliar with the name, you’re certainly well-versed in his estimable body of work…
While the Mavs were sleeping last night, they might have won another playoff game. How’s that? Because over in Memphis the Grizzlies and Oklahoma City Thunder played only the sixth triple-overtime game in NBA playoff history. On the heels of Saturday’s overtime win by Memphis, OKC survived last night’s marathon thriller,…
