Pastor Chuck Kitchens sees God’s hand at work in the creation of My Son, the first feature film produced by Burleson’s Retta Baptist Church. As he’s told the religious press, it was the Lord who placed its director, a 31-year-old film editor named Jarod O’Flaherty, in the pews every Sunday…
Here’s the bad news: If you are young, poor, black or Hispanic, disabled, or just graduated from college, you are significantly less happy than you were two years ago. Recent polling says so. Now, the same folks at Harris Polling who brought us that depressing tidbit now bring a spot…
It was 1:30 a.m. when Cornellias Simon, aka “Bean,” burst through the door of the apartment. The tenant watched as Simon staggered for a moment, then collapsed onto the kitchen floor, dead of a gunshot wound to the chest. That was the first surprise. The second was the man who…
When Mike Miles announced a month ago that his wife and son were headed back to Colorado Springs, the question of whether Miles himself would soon join them was unavoidable. It would at least have been understandable given the shellacking he’s endured over the past year and a half. But…
Barry Smitherman recently leapt off the political springboard that is the Texas Railroad Commission and dove into the attorney general’s race. Heretofore, he has focused his campaign primarily on extolling the virtues of hydraulic fracturing, firearms and suing the Obama administration. Yet Smitherman isn’t just another Greg Abbott wannabe mindlessly…
Safe to say that most of us at Unfair Park celebrated Labor Day in the traditional way: by guzzling beer poolside while drunkenly scorching animal flesh. Many in Dallas chose to mark the occasion by more unconventional means, at least judging by the weekend’s police reports. Here is a sampling…
Pretend you busted your checking account and fell behind a few days on your rent. Would you feel safer if your landlord let a towing company take your car away? That’s the gist of an organization called the Texas Association of Safer Apartment Communities, a safety association landlords can join…
Ronald Thompson is not a particularly sympathetic defendant. Authorities say the 50-year-old visited Sea World in July 2011 to surreptitiously photograph young children. When police arrested him and seized his camera, they found 73 pictures of children in swimsuits, almost all of the images centered on the chest or buttocks…
In this week’s feature, we tell the story of Tim Samaras, one of the most respected tornado scientists in the country. On May 31, he, his son Paul and chase partner Carl Young navigated back roads southwest of El Reno, Oklahoma, beneath dark, circulating clouds. Just after 6 that evening,…
Last we heard from Craig James, he was groveling for cash to pay off the debt racked up during his ill-conceived U.S. Senate campaign and denying that he killed five hookers. That was more than a year ago. Then, on Friday, Fox Sports Southwest reminded the world of James’ existence…
It’s been eight months since the Dallas City Council passed new rules forcing drivers to be nice to cyclists. It’s been six months since the short-lived, ill-conceived public education campaign. It’s been almost a year since some asshole shot up me and my bike with paintballs. So, what has become…
Occasionally our long-time managing editor, Patrick Williams, sends emails to the staff lauding their prose, gently encouraging them, and otherwise helping them along in their journeys as reporters, writers and, well, people. Today was one of those days. I share this with you because you, as readers and commenters, deserve…
He’s held up five North Texas banks in six months. Each time, he wears a plain ball cap and glasses or sunglasses and calmly hands over a note and demands cash. His preference is for bank branches tucked inside grocery stores and Walmarts, always in the suburbs. He’s shown a…
Dallas County had long since forgotten what the metal plate above the water fountain in the Records Building was meant to conceal when, in 2003, it fell off. Even then, you had to be looking for it to notice the faded remnants of the “White Only” sign on the marble…
When the news came out that Avi Adelman, who stood sentinel over Lower Greenville for a quarter century, had sold his Belmont Avenue home, he was cagey when asked where he was heading. We now know the answer is Junius Heights, where he and his wife have purchased a modest,…
The Fort Worth Cats, Cowtown’s minor league baseball club, was supposed to make good on its debts on January 15, 2013. That’s at least what the team’s owner, former Congressman John Bryant, told us last December, explaining that the team was experiencing an acute but temporary cash shortage after the…
State Senator Wendy Davis’ epic abortion filibuster in June inspired many things: a spike in pink Mizuno sales; imaginary jars of human excrement; an unfamiliar sense of accomplishment among Texas Democrats. And now, a video game. The New York Daily News brings us the story of “Choice: Texas,” which its…
David Hartman’s death at the hands of Highland Park police back in June was weird. For starters, there was the shooting itself. The 32-year-old had already been searched and was handcuffed in the back of the squad car when police say he managed to pull out a handgun and shoot…
Details are scant so far. A spokesperson for Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport tells Unfair Park he can’t release a police report or discuss any of the facts of the case until the legal department takes a look at it. He did, however, confirm that Shemane Ann Nugent, wife of rocker…
A couple of years ago, Dallas police officers parked one of their bait cars outside an apartment complex in West Oak Cliff, complete with a set of keys and unlocked doors. But the man who took the car, 31-year-old Louis Torres, didn’t bother with the keys; he used a tow…
Hispanics have boycotted Farmers Branch before. In 2006, as the city was first considering a crackdown on illegal immigrants, including an instantaneously infamous rental ban, immigrant rights activists called for supporters to shop and conduct business elsewhere. It didn’t work. Tim O’Hare, the city councilman who proposed the crackdown to…
There are plenty of examples in Texas of some poor middle schooler getting a ticket for chewing gum at school, or nodding off in class, or wearing too much perfume, or something similarly outrageous. But to those pushing to reform the way school discipline is meted out in the state,…
