Dear Mexican: Our grandparents came from Mexico. The entire next generation spoke Spanish. However, what my cousins and I and most of our kids know of Spanish is what we learn in Spanish classes. It’s clear we lost our language treasure. What do you know of this loss on a…
A family chore last night prevented me from attending a big community meeting about a proposed restaurant at White Rock Lake, but stories on Channel 8 and in the daily paper this morning gave the flavor. The community is looking at the idea of building a commercial restaurant on parkland…
Some forms of Dallas City Council recusal may even be based on the ancient naval art of semaphore. Everybody’s an expert on something. I happen to be an expert on Dallas City Council recusing styles. One of my favorite all-time recusers quite a few years back was the late James…
It’s a long way from here to Minneapolis. About 14 hours, in fact. I know because I made the trip myself last weekend, having packed everything I own into a U-Haul and hopping on Interstate 35, which I followed virtually from one end of the country to the other. When…
Dear Mexican: One thing I find a little antagonizing is the use of the term “Latino” as a synonym only for “Hispanic.” I’ve noticed that you tend to favor Hispanic quite a bit more than Latino; thank you. The Latins as a people, a culture, a language, a tribe, came…
In preschool, they decide when school happens because they have you by the toddler balls. They don’t follow a regular school calendar, because fuck you, they do what they want, this isn’t real education yet. The “pre” in “preschool” does stand for “pretend,” after all. This isn’t to say that…
The Pulitzer Prizes just came out. Once again I scan the list, searching for yours truly. Not a mention. But next year it will be different. Next year my early work on the Trinity River toll road is going to win me the Pulitzer and possibly also the Nobel and…
The Dallas City Council is reopening the question of whether the underground tunnel system beneath the buildings downtown is what killed downtown street commerce in the 1990s. Apparently now that downtown is on the rebound, some people suffer from a superstitious fear that reopening closed portions of the tunnel system…
Even though throughout the years since I came to the U.S. 20 years ago I have seen it happening with less frequency, the use by Mexicans of the expression ¿Mande? (Command me) has always struck me. I personally see it as a symbolic legacy of submission probably originating from the…
One day in 2013 Hannah Hargrove stopped being a kid. She had been out of college a year, working in the family business. On the day her father, John Hargrove, was killed in a bar fight, the business became hers to run. She was 23. One of the first calls…
Imagine you’re on a date and you’re telling a story. It’s a long one, but you know it’s a winner. Everyone always loves this story. Three quarters of the way to the punch line, you notice a shift in your date’s behavior. They’re glancing at the door, bouncing their leg…
The people who love and defend White Rock Lake Park are not idiots and nutcases. They went to war two years ago against a plan to mow Winfrey Point meadow and turn it into a commercial parking lot, because they did not want a commercial parking lot in a beautiful…
Dear Andrew, My entire family are teetotaling religious types who never tasted a drop of liquor or tried a single drug. They even find dancing offensive. Well, I drink, and just last week they had an intervention on my behalf. Now they’ve got me thinking I may have a problem…
Last week I was telling you how the city’s so-called “white water feature,” the fake kayak rapids they built in the Trinity River three years ago, is still there and still stupid, sitting out in the middle of the river like giant petrified elephant poop that nobody knows what to…
This morning, Eric posted an item here with a particular quote that I just could not let pass. Eric saw through the quoted statements immediately, so I guess I’m just piling on. His story was about remarks made recently to The Dallas Morning News by a powerful regional transportation planner…
All right, please allow me to take care of some inside business here and use this space to respond to all of you who were kind enough yesterday to inquire whether I am turning into Steve Blow or Steve Blow is turning into me. Yes. It’s a natural part of…
Next month the “White Water Feature” on the Trinity River just south of downtown will be three years old. This ugly chunky mound of concrete, built at a cost of $4 million and intended to be a man-made rapids for canoeists and kayakers, was so ill-conceived, poorly designed, badly made…
“So — what’s it like in there?” He was a young medical intern from Baylor University Medical Center and he was in line at The Slip Inn with a group of guys celebrating a bachelor party. “I take it you aren’t from here,” I replied. “What have you heard?”…
Dear Mexican: I’m a second-generation Orange County-raised pocho. Both sides of my family have been civil rights activists since the 1940s. My mother’s family took part in the landmark case Mendez, et al v. Westminster, et al. in 1946. My father was a Chicano activist in the 1960s and 1970s…
In the smoke, din, blinding flashes, screams, roars, flying body parts, weird music and scarily bad odors blasting out from Mayor Mike Rawlings’ enormously maladroit public school takeover campaign, there has been a silver lining. It is a very thin silver lining, kind of like a kitten that survives an…
Monday I said Mike Rawlings was about to announce a pause — a tapping of the brakes — in his public school takeover campaign. I was a little off. Instead it turns out he has been meeting with three really old guys. I guess that could have the same effect…
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 help you stop doing it wrong. Send your problems to her –…
