“Hi,” the woman says, in a voice that isn’t friendly. “What are you doing?” It’s a pitch black night in mid-August in Southeast Dallas. Marina Tarashevska wields a camera as she approaches the back of a black pickup. A man wearing a cowboy hat opens the driver’s door to get…
Last week without any prior public discussion, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings announced (see below) he was unilaterally turning over the planning process for the Trinity River Park downtown to philanthropists Rusty and Deedie Rose in exchange for a gift of $1 million. The mayor did say, “We must also continue…
On August 10, a soccer mom and dad say, a Dallas parks employee destroyed their league’s goal posts and then threw them into a creek that feeds into White Rock Lake. Members of the Dallas Park Board, meanwhile, maintained last week that they don’t know whether that’s true. In the meantime,…
Rick Perry is quitting the 2016 presidential race. The former four-term Texas governor, who also ran in 2011 for the 2012 nomination, never saw his campaign get off the ground this cycle. He performed better on the trail than he did in 2011, but wasn’t able to overcome the taint…
Hey, Mr. Jensen. I’m so ashamed. I feel terrible. I wrote all those stories about the city screwing you out of your home and warehouse in West Dallas and how Monica Alonzo, the City Council member for your area, ignored your repeated pleas for help. You kept saying, “I don’t…
Can’t shake it. Worried. I still think something scary could be going on with Dallas County District Attorney Susan Hawk. After I read a story about her in the Saturday edition of The Dallas Morning News, I was even wondering if I should call 911, but then I thought, “Oh, wait,…
Senator Ted Cruz went to Kentucky on Wednesday to get in on the spectacle. Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis had been tossed in jail for contempt of court after refusing to perform her legal duty — issuing marriage licenses to gay couples in this case — and dadgummit, Cruz was going…
Few days ago I told you the City Council and mayor of Dallas were headed for some kind of group therapy at this week’s meeting because of knife-play going on behind the scenes about the annual budget. Yesterday’s meeting was a little bit disappointing for me because no one jammed…
Back in March, The Dallas Morning News introduced us to Pam Mueller. Mueller, we learned, is a mild-mannered M Streets resident who has taken to renting out the other side of her small duplex on Airbnb, the short-term rental website that has, along with Uber, become synonymous with the “sharing economy.” “It’s more fun…
Last week HUD Secretary and former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro was on MSNBC Live disarmingly fending off flattering suggestions by host Melissa Harris-Perry that he may be tapped as Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate: “I learned in life,” Castro said, “that if you want to have a great future you…
Couple weeks ago, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings gave City Manager A.C. Gonzalez and his top staff an unusual if very velvet-fingered push-back for showing the council a video presentation about how the next city budget will fix the streets when in fact it won’t. Uh-oh. It’s not nice to tell the…
Dallas Animal Services, the city’s animal control agency, is under-funded, its managers and supporters say, and has just over 100 full-time people on staff. Among people who follow such things, the general impression is that 101 people actually work full time for DAS, since the city gave the agency a budget…
Dallas City Hall X-Files. OMG. I am so ready. Wednesday Eric Nicholson had a story here which seemed to confirm at least in part a conspiracy theory I have touting for about 50 years. It’s about a secret under-the-radar City Hall effort to steer major resources into land at the southwest corner…
There has long been fevered speculation in certain circles that a cabal of rich businessmen are conspiring with high-level city staffers to funnel taxpayer dollars into the southwestern corner of downtown Dallas in a massive secret real estate play. As evidence, these conspiracy theorists point to the strange confluence of public…
Despite his campaign being so low on cash it’s no longer paying staffers, former Texas Governor Rick Perry reiterated Wednesday that he’s in the 2016 GOP presidential race for at least the medium-haul. In Austin to watch his successor Greg Abbott posthumously award the Texas Legislative Medal of Honor to “American…
The white pit bull with no collar charged toward Charlie Howell as his wife restrained their own dogs behind him. Howell felt he had no choice but to tackle the animal. “I made the split-second decision that I was not going to let it get past me,” Howell says. As…
Tanya Ragan made her first foray into Downtown Dallas’ neglected southeastern corner in 2007 when she bought a piece of commercial property there. The Bridge, the city-funded homeless shelter, opened in 2008. In the seven years since, Ragan, who lives in a town home near the Farmer’s Market, has established…
Jan Mickelson should be radioactive. Just last week, the conservative Iowa radio host issued a ringing endorsement for enslaving undocumented immigrants who refuse to leave the country. Mickelson thinks the United States should give any resident without the appropriate paperwork two months to leave. If they don’t, Mickelson says, they…
Don’t know what was going on at the beloved Lakewood Theater in Old East Dallas when I stopped by this morning – either a very serious remodeling or the first stages of demolition. When I went inside, workers seemed to be ripping out the stage and a bunch of interior…
Maybe we need to accept a certain bottom line here and prepare to deal with it. Dallas is becoming a much cooler city — almost more cool than it has a right to be — because of the coming change in who’s in control. But the change-over is not here…
Dallas streets are bad. It’s axiomatic at this point. When the city asked residents what it should prioritize in its new budget, the resounding first choice was road repair. The city’s awkwardly beautiful video explaining next year’s budget touts the extra $16 million to be spent on “improving streets.” Everyone…
A couple of weeks ago, we told you about a push led by Downtown Dallas Inc. to bring more cops into Dallas Central Business district to combat what DDI sees as rising nuisance crimes. The meta-culprit for many of the crimes — like panhandling, public sleeping and public urination —…
