Sometime in late December, in the hip, harmony-green halls of the Sammons Center, Chuck Moore and 26 other arts-group managers received their questionnaires. Their “Nonprofit Accountability Checklists,” to be precise. Sent by the influential Dallas Business Committee for the Arts, the mailing asked 20 questions about taxes, debts, budgets, and…
This little stretch of Parry Avenue, just northeast of Fair Park, isn’t the street of broken dreams. Not yet, anyway. The dream here is still tangible and exciting. But it has definitely taken some hits. Parry Avenue is a bitter window on what everybody in every neighborhood is going through…
The Texarkana federal judge who presided over Texas’ case against the tobacco industry, which led last year to a $17.3 billion settlement, is raising questions about one lawyer’s claims to a share of the windfall. U.S. District Judge David Folsom wants to know why a state arbitration panel that awarded…
Early in the morning, children line up on sidewalks to wait for the yellow school bus, much as their parents and grandparents did in their time. This time, though, something’s a little off. The bus has a sign on the side. Dr Pepper, it says. The kids get to school,…
Good council hard to find Watch out. Buzz is getting literary again. This time it’s Flannery O’Connor, who wrote: “She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” A psychotic killer in the short story “A Good Man…
The tall, deep-voiced security guard looked at his buddy, a squat cowboy in droopy trousers cinched at crack-level. “It’s a woman thing,” he said, as dozens of fans lined up in the Lone Star Park paddock for autographs from a tiny girl jockey with a hamster face, darting hands, and…
Money grubbers The only reason Dallas Observer Editor Julie Lyons is taking a big public stand for giving Dallas City Council members a living wage [“It’s the money,” April 8] is because Laura Miller, her buddy, probably needs the cash right now to pay off her Neiman’s credit card. Still,…
One of them is out there right now. The skinny raver who wears a different T-shirt in every picture on his Web site sat down on the concrete a week ago with his Dell Inspiron laptop and sleeping bag. Right there on the sidewalk of Hollywood Boulevard too, right outside…
“What in the hell?” asks Dallas City Councilman Al Lipscomb, who has just been put on hold by a goosey receptionist inside the city manager’s office and is thoroughly frustrated. On this Thursday afternoon, Lipscomb and Carol Brandon, his appointee to the city’s park and recreation board, are angry as…
More or less First comes the disclaimer: Buzz is not exactly a business whiz. Our long-term financial strategy is this: Earn money. Spend it. Borrow more money. Spend it too. Die young. So we’re probably not the best source to glean useful information from the 1998 annual report of A.H…
Bounty hunting–a cheesy but sometimes deadly occupation–has come under scrutiny in Austin, where a bill with law-enforcement backing would restrict who can go after bail “skips” and how the absconders can be arrested. The aim is to stop would-be goon squads, stoked on reality-TV bounty-hunter busts, from going out and…
On Monday morning, Alan Govenar and Akin Babatunde weren’t quite sure what was going to become of their surreal, ambitious musical based on the life of Dallas blues musician Blind Lemon Jefferson. For a brief moment, the men thought they were going to come up $30,000 short and wind up…
That sorry sidewalk Congratulations to Juliana Barbassa and the Dallas Observer for highlighting the situation at Dallas’ INS building [“Huddled masses,” April 8]. As a recent immigrant from England, I have had the “pleasure” of lining up overnight on that sorry sidewalk on six occasions over the past three years…
Rhett Miller sits on a couch in the Driskill Hotel’s mostly deserted, overdecorated ranch-styled lobby. A bright red baseball cap tugs awkwardly over his eyes; his lanky frame is engulfed by an even brighter lime-green button-up. He thrusts his head forward attentively as he speaks into the tape recorder of…
A lineup of heavy hitters was on hand for the Dallas Breakfast Group’s March 9 candidates forum at the Crescent Hotel. Real estate mogul Vance Miller was there, along with representatives of Texas Instruments, Southwestern Bell, and Hunt Oil Co., among other executives. They nibbled on eggs and fruit as…
For the last few months, Dallas County Community College District professors have exchanged a series of angry e-mail messages lambasting The Dallas Morning News for what the professors characterize as a greedy, monopolistic move that they believe is hurting their students. It seems Dallas’ Only Daily has a pretty high…
Model citizen Proving that nothing inspires good citizenship like running for office, District 2 city council candidate Pete Vaca has finally paid off more than $1,800 in back taxes to the city. Vaca, whose name means “cow” in Spanish, hoofed it (rim shot) down to the city tax office on…
The rising sun does little to disperse the cloying damp of this foggy morning, but dawn does bring some comfort to the long line of people curling around Dallas’ Immigration and Naturalization Services building: They know the office will open soon. Some have been here since midnight, their jackets wrapped…
This wasn’t the hardball question, the kind a reporter slips in at the end of a dull conversation, hoping to catch the city council candidate off guard. But it stumped District 4 hopeful Elijah McGrew. The patter stopped, all the easy talk in that soothing baritone voice about fixing streetlights,…
Say, that’s a good idea So Betty Culbreath thinks that as long as a public official is not stealing from the taxpayers, anything goes [Letters, April 1]? Sounds like the next investigation should be of the Dallas County Health and Human Services Department. Name withheld Via e-mail Vote for cutie…
On March 2, three months after zookeeper Jennifer McClurg was attacked and repeatedly bitten by a gorilla at the Dallas Zoo, she sat down with park department officials to tell them what she remembered of her terrifying 40-minute ordeal and explain how the animal got loose. The Dallas Observer obtained…
Steve Kahn thought the raid was routine. After all, agents from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission had paid him a fistful of visits at the Dragonfly over the past few months, checking out the kinds of problems every nightclub encounters–liquor-law violations, intoxicated customers. He suspected he had raised the ire…
