North Dallas state Representative Jason Villalba has been taking a certain amount of heat lately for courting the California hot-sauce-maker, Huy Fong Food Plants, trying to sell them on the idea of relocating to North Texas in order to escape local environmental complaints in the company’s hometown of Irwindale, California…
I have a piece in the paper this week about D Magazine publisher Wick Allison and his turn-around on the Trinity River toll road — now he’s against it — for which I genuinely admire him. I have been around people his age in the past, and my impression is…
Today we have a lead editorial in The Dallas Morning News, our city’s sole and only daily newspaper, which starts off with a certain mistake that wounds my heart every time I see it. Again today they say, “There’s a troubled neighborhood along South Lamar where residential property has suffered…
Whoa. I’m in the checkout lane at Tom Thumb reading the May issue of D Magazine so I won’t have to buy a copy. Oops, smudged the cover, sorry. Tore a page, sorry. Then I see this story by Tim Rogers: “The Trinity Parkway Is Dead.” On the way to…
A career as a rough-and-ready entrepreneurial job creator just ain’t what it used to be. I’m thinking about Cyrus McCormick sweating his brow off at the smithy on his dad’s farm in Virginia where he eventually banged together the first horse-drawn reaper in 1831, or Henry Ford 65 years later…
By Thierry Peremarti A pop singer who has enjoyed a 50-year career and sold more than 100,000,000 records shouldn’t need an introduction. But Johnny Hallyday does. The French singer, who will close his 13-date North American tour with a nine-piece band at the House of Blues this Thursday, has never…
When I saw the big news yesterday from New York about the Dallas billionaire Wyly brothers — a federal jury found them guilty on all counts in a $550 million tax evasion case — I had to go back to Joe Guinto’s excellent story last year in D Magazine: I…
Congratulations. You’ve been married for more than one year! That means you get to start celebrating your success at staying married or failure at divorcing once a year every year! The Internet says that there are traditional anniversary gifts for each year of marriage. But the traditional list of anniversary…
If there was ever a window for the Dallas schools home rule initiative to reach some reasonable outcome, it may just have closed. Mark Melton, a lawyer and education activist, made a good faith effort last week to bring about a compromise people could live with, but people told him…
Yesterday afternoon was scary. True story: I was at home. I go to the kitchen to watch the rain lash the driveway. I can hear the tornado sirens. Well, sirens. Then, the rain stops. Sirens stop. Silence. Suddenly, I hear the dreaded “sounded like a freight train” sound — a…
I have a column in the newspaper this week about drinking water fluoridation and a controversy that kicked up recently when three Dallas City Council members responded politely to an anti-fluoridation activist. Dallas Morning News columnist Jacquielynn Floyd was acerbic, choleric and apoplectic, invoking the Red Scare, Howdy Doody and…
During a recent city council meeting, Regina Imburgia, a 58-year-old homemaker and self-described anti-fluoridation activist, walked to the microphone to talk about why Dallas should stop putting fluoride in its drinking water. She had spoken to the council several times before, and also to the television reporters who cover City…
You maybe know by now that a some-kind-of-a-whatever-committee at City Hall has been kicking around the idea of giving the Dallas City Council a big pay raise, from $37,500 to $60,000 a year. Eric Nicholson here pointed out last month that council members would make more than rookie cops and…
Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist and is the author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to…
What do you think? Should Dallas Judge of Criminal District Court #6 Jeanine Howard, now at least nationally famous if not internationally for her “You Ignorant Slut” ruling in a rape case, think about returning to private law practice? Or run for president? It’s so hard to know these days…
Last week somebody called me and asked me to go back and listen to Krys Boyd’s April 29 Think program on KERA radio, in which Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and Dallas school trustee Bernadette Nutall debated “home rule,” a proposal that could radically change the way we govern Dallas public…
Confession: I have not only attended Scarborough Fair, but I have shown up in costume. Multiple times. Sober. Not on a dare. During college. With a choir group, and we totally sang period-appropriate tunes without being asked to and without being paid for it. Because we were nerd rebels. I…
You know what the one good thing is about a bad school system? It’s a great excuse for everything else. Mayor Mike Rawlings stirred the pot earlier this week by telling KERA that Dallas lost out on a recent huge corporate relocation, Toyota’s American headquarters, because of our bad school…
Dear Mexican: Is there a pecking order at the places where day laborers wait to be hired? Are all those dudes Mexican or are some Central and South American, and if so who has priority? Also, after they make a bunch of loot, do they go back to Mexico and…
In recent weeks we have seen repeated serious indications that the bitterly divided camps on school reform may be getting a tad less bitter and a smidgeon more inclined to engage in semi-civilized conversation than whop each other in the head with 2-by-4s. A couple weeks ago when Dallas Superintendent…
There was an op-ed in The Dallas Morning News this week talking about the damage Republicans suffered when Cliven Bundy, the racist rancher from Nevada, “wandered off script.” Off script?…
Over the weekend I received a long, thoughtful email from Susan Cantrell Holloway, a downtown resident worried about a recent story in The Dallas Morning News by Robert Wilonsky. He was waxing rhapsodic about plans to tear down an old tower and eliminate a city park at the north end…
