Years ago–I don’t remember how many; I was young myself, that’s how long–an old guy pointed a line across my neighborhood with a chopping motion of his arm and told me it was where the creek bed must have been. I have romanticized the memory–a bad habit, I know–but I…
No telling how many Mexican-American kids have seen Walkout, the movie directed by Edward James Olmos depicting a mass walkout by high school students in East Los Angeles in 1968. It just premiered on HBO Saturday March 18. (You can see the trailer here.) But I do find lots of…
To the extent black Dallas is southern Dallas–and I’m not sure how much water that cliché still holds–then black Dallas wants to be known as a solid bloc these days. I see a crack. Southern Dallas did defeat two recent ballot propositions for so-called “strong mayor” reforms at City Hall…
This was the view from Jim Schutze’s front yard Sunday. Expect more of this when the Trinity River Project becomes a reality. We watched Sunday while the streets in front of our house in East Dallas turned suddenly into white-water rapids. We watched cars float away with people in them…
Last week, when the weather was fair, it was interesting to see all these rich-looking white guys with their polo-shirt collars flipped up piled into a Lexus getting off I-35E at Ledbetter Road in the heart of Southern Dallas. I thought, “These guys have got to be French.” But, no…
Let’s assume we have two camps. People in Dallas who love President Bush and would love to see the Bush Presidential Library here. People in Dallas like me who do not love President Bush and would not love to see his library here. Fair enough. But I don’t see why…
Got any extra food at your house? I’m not begging. I have my own extra food. I’m just doing a wacko check on myself. I have extra food. I have extra water. I have extra shotgun shells. No, you can’t have any. They’re for me. And my family. And as…
We received an automated phone message at the home last night from Ron Kirk, urging us to vote for Chris Bell for governor in the primary today. Kirk identified himself at the top of the call as “Mayor Ron Kirk.” I didn’t think anything of it. But my wife, who…
Strange: I drive by graffiti all the time in East Dallas. I don’t even notice. Sergeant Mark Langford of the Dallas Police Department’s gang unit told me the other day: “People just drive by it like it’s a street sign. It’s almost become a part of the fabric of the…
Last week’s column was about the deal to redo the Mercantile Building downtown, and the day it came out (last Wednesday), I went to the City Council meeting and heard the mayor misstate a key element of the deal for some reason. I don’t think she was doing it on…
The first thing that happens to me when I hear about something like the most recent meeting of the city council finance committee: I assume I must not be getting it. I know that grown-up people on the city council of a major American city would not sit there and…
The noose tightens. Keep an eye on the tax incentives the city gives developers and the bickering about it at City Hall. They’ve been giving away the store for years, and now all of a sudden they feel the pinch. I realize the stories about this stuff in The Dallas…
What happens when one of those beat-on-the-car-window street hustlers approaches you while you’re stopped at a traffic light? And he starts fast-talking how he ran out of gas and he needs to get to Shreveport and he lost his wallet and his baby needs a prescription for the hole in…
It’s the race that killed race. You wake up one day, and the city’s not white anymore. First thing we have to say: You sure have been asleep a long time. This didn’t just happen overnight. Must have been some party. But then we have to ask: So what? Every…
Here’s the thing with the Dallas transit police: It’s not that DART cops are totally insane wacked-out Nazi Robocops. But they do have a way of turning absent-minded missteps by otherwise law-abiding people into high-drama scenes. Another damn jaywalker eatin’ some sidewalk! I’m not saying people should jaywalk. But come…
I have waited patiently for the holiday season to expire. Now I’m afraid I must bring up the guy who got caught sprinkling his own dried feces on the doughnut display last summer at Fiesta Mart. For some weeks I have been in possession of new information–a haunting burden for…
Most of the year, I try to live up to the general rule of thumb around the offices of this newspaper, which is: “Every little chance you get, please try to tell the readers something they don’t already know.” Normally I devote more of my energy to reporting than pontificating…
So here is how Dallas ushers in the holiday. Last week an obscure city board meeting in the bowels of City Hall stretched the meaning of available city ordinances in order to evict poor people from an East Dallas mobile home park that has existed since the 1940s. And why…
Michael Sorrell, who was on the city’s charter review commission, wrote an op-ed piece for The Dallas Morning News last week praising the people of southern Dallas for going to the polls this year to help shoot down two “strong mayor” ballot initiatives. I do believe voting is always better…
Let’s do it this way. I will tell you this story a few times from different people’s points of view, and you can make up your own mind. This is about a guy who wound up spending 11 days in jail on what started out as a jaywalking charge in…
Don’t tell me it’s too early to worry about the 2007 Dallas mayor’s race. It’s never too early to worry. And the next mayoral race is going to have everything to do with what’s going on in the city right now. There are two main scenarios for the next mayor…
I figured this for a typical cat caper. One guy takes a strong liking to another guy’s cat. Nabs it. Cops refuse to step in because of an entrenched anti-cat bias. Luckily a crusading journalist–moi–arrives on the scene in the nick of time, and the story has a happy ending…
