The flood of names of people offering to leave The Dallas Morning News is numbing. Every update makes me jump out of my chair. The editorial cutbacks over there will change the basic nature of the newspaper forever. I can’t believe some of the people they’re losing. But I’m just…
Dear Mexican, What’s with Mexican-Americans who live in New Mexico claiming they’re Spanish and not Mexican? Many actually get angry and combative if you ask them if they’re Mexican. But if you look at them, they look more Indian than Spanish! Why have so many developed a deep-seated embarrassment of…
Lee Hancock’s recent series in The Dallas Morning News, “Mary Ellen’s Will,” introduced us to Mark McCay. He is a partner in a used furniture store in Deep Ellum called Deco-Dence who went to an old lady’s death bed in order to convince her to sign a new will cutting…
Andrew Young, the former U.N. ambassador, said he doesn’t really dig Jews, Koreans and Arabs who own stores in black neighborhoods. Then he apologized. Good luck with all that. Wilonsky’s piece on South (not “Southern”) Dallas in this week’s paper version of Unfair Park is full of hope and commitment…
Domingo Garcia said 10,000 Latinos registered to vote after April’s mega-march. Uh, not so much. Sorry, my colleagues over in the youth wing at the Dallas Observer may pooh-pooh, but I think Lee Hancock’s series on the Mary Ellen Bendtsen story (old lady on Swiss Avenue exploited by vultures) has…
Dear Mexican, Why do Mexicans forget about great beers like Tecate, Negra Modelo and Bohemia and start drinking swill like Bud Light when they come to the United States? I always remember John Steinbeck’s immortal line–“Ah, Bohemia beer and the Pyramid of the Sun; entire civilizations have created less”–yet if…
The Santiago Calatrava signature suspension bridge across the Trinity drainage channel to Ray’s Sporting Goods–a gun shop–will be put out for new bids soon, City Manager Mary Suhm told me yesterday. That hasn’t been public yet. You read it here first. Last time it was bid, the lowest bid was…
On the one hand, I’m afraid to call anybody, because everybody I call tells me he or she is thinking about running for mayor. The field of people considering the 2007 Dallas mayor’s race is starting to look like the Turkey Trot, the city’s annual Thanksgiving Day run. If this…
Dear Mexican, What’s up with the bull stickers on the truck doors? Is this a secret business, something earned at some unmentionable contest south of the border or a brotherhood of sorts? I thought about taking Spanish lessons so I could politely ask one of these guys. –Native California Whitey…
Don’t let him fool you: Within 10 years, Jim Schutze will be living at the Azure, working on his tan and his book about high-rise living called The Accommodations. This is not me eating crow. This is more like me barely sniffing a small crow. From several inches away. A…
Dear Mexican, The last two movies I attended were rated R. Sitting around me were Mexican families with very young children. Why do Mexicans bring their 8-year-old kids to see a movie like Hostel? Do Mexican parents just not give a shit, or can they not afford a baby sitter?…
They’re gonna save this old house on Bryan Parkway after all. Now the neighborhood can go find something else to destroy. On a street where every barking dog is heard by pointed ears and every ambling pedestrian shrewdly watched by beady eyes, the first clue that the 6015 Bryan Parkway…
Dear Mexican, The Mexican presidential elections have been a freaking mess. I voted for the conservative candidate, Felipe Calderón, who almost everyone agrees won the election. But the leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador is making a mess out of this by claiming electoral fraud. Does the Mexican have an opinion…
Strange stuff struts across the stage of life every once in a while. There just isn’t time to stop and figure it all out. Like the oddly recurring story in Dallas every two to three years: “Proposed WRR Frequency Swap.” Proposed what? It’s like clockwork. Every few years somebody wants…
This old house on Bryan Parkway’s gotten a lot of attention lately. And to think, it came out of a catalog. In 1925. Look it up, Byron. It’s a fact. As I predicted yesterday, WFAA-Channel 8’s Byron Harris did a story last night about 6015 Bryan Parkway, the much-disputed historic…
Dear Mexican, I just don’t get Mexicans and their grooming. The men slick their hair with baby oil, gel or Vaseline or just shave it all off. The women wear it in a ponytail with a neon green hair band or in pig tails or wear bangs created with the…
Here’s the thing. People call me up. They abuse me. They ask if I’m an idiot. No. Frankly. I am not an idiot. They ask, “Don’t you think it’s worthwhile for the city to offer developers tax breaks if doing it encourages development?” Here’s the thing. I don’t know. It…
Look for a story tonight on WFAA-Channel 8 about 6015 Bryan Parkway, one of Dallas’s 11 most endangered dumps…oh, I’m sorry, I meant to say historic sites that I blogged about yesterday. My snitches tell me Byron Harris was down there this morning interviewing folks. I blogged about how somebody…
I was watching CNN this morning and spotted my son’s Woodrow Wilson High School classmate and fellow alum, George Hale, being evacuated from Beirut. Called the Hale house, and George’s mom, Clare, told me the kid will be on with Larry King tonight. George’s father, Harlin D. (better known in…
This historic home on Bryan Parkway is either a landmark or a teardown. The courts are deciding now. The neighbors too. And not in a nice way. Oh boy. The Hatfields is loaded up, and them McCoys got blood in their eyes too. This is when I really love my…
What’s uglier: Dallas City Hall or the nonsense that takes place inside its walls? Jacquielynn Floyd has a great column in today’s Dallas Morning News, in which she shares letters from readers about Mayor Laura Miller’s announcement she will not seek re-election. As is often the case for some reason,…
Calatrava Trust Why are we getting the Calatrava bridges (well, maybe not)? Because they’re pretty. That’s it. When Mayor Laura Miller and I spoke about her decision not to run for reelection, we covered a lot ground, politics and policy, all that stuff, and finally I sensed we were about…
