The “Standing Wave” is a $4 million-plus kayaking feature that the city recently installed in the Trinity River, and it’s a failure. It’s ugly. It’s dangerous. It’s an insult to the river. The Wave, just south of downtown, was intended to be a whitewater play park, a place with rapids…
The city of Dallas sent out a lovely little notice earlier this week inviting people of the canoe paddling ilk — which would be me — to attend the opening of the Dallas Trinity Paddling Trail, a canoe “path” on the Trinity River, established as part of a statewide system…
Last night Wilonsky and I co-moderated the GLBT Chamber’s mayoral debate forum, a rather tony affair, as these things go, at the Cityplace Conference and Event Center. It so happened the day before I had attended the “A Peep at the Coops” tour in East Dallas, so I had chickens…
Welcome to Local Music ‘Mericans , where we meet some of the people behind the local music scene — those who aren’t necessarily members of local bands, but more the people who make the scene move. KPWR-89.7 FM Power FM jock Adrian Hummel holds a lot of noble titles in…
Last week The Associated Press did a story about the disgust and dismay of black Americans confronting the birther issue. “I find it hard to summarize in mere words the amount of pain and rage this incident has caused,” one man was quoted as saying at the top of the…
Dealey Plaza, subject of my feature story in this week’s paper version of Unfair Park, is a monument to horror, a locus of global grief, a vortex of paranoia and all that stuff. But on a spring weekend when the weather’s good, it’s also just kind of a cool place…
10. When I first heard President Obama was making an emergency announcement at 9:30 on a Sunday night, my first thought was … asteroid. Then aliens. Then NFL lockout. Then Osama Bin Laden. And somewhere along the process I figured it was just a ploy to interrupt Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice…
What is it that people here have against voting? I’m thinking about the item I saw here yesterday about the Dallas City Council clamping down on campaign signs. Right, we need to do everything we can to contain this voting thing. Fewer signs. Voter photo ID laws. Anything we can…
[jump] *For all the Mavs’ fascination and obsession with beating the Lakers, the teams haven’t met in the playoffs in 23 years. It was 1988 when the Mavs — led by Mark Aguirre, Rolando Blackman and Roy Tarpley — pushed the eventual champs to a Game 7 at The Forum. Bad…
[jump] 5. Dumbest moment of the night: Sheen, wearing a CBS — “Can’t Beat Sheen” — T-shirt, bragged that “I got fired because I told my boss to fuck off.” Inexplicably, the crowd cheered. Some stood and cheered. Yeah, ‘cuz nobody’s gonna pay me $2 million an episode for a TV…
Oh, now the city council has decided it needs to revisit its vote weakening the ethics rules on donations to city council members. Maybe they’ve decided to have themselves re-virginized. We pointed out here a thing that seems to have slipped past most media eyes: The council voted two weeks…
Dear Mexican: Why does every Mexican rap/hip-hop song always contain the lines “No paramos,” “Nunca paramos,” or some other logically equivalent statement (e.g. “Siempre avanzaremos,” “No acabaremos de seguir,” etc.)? Can’t you people be more original? I mean, come on! It’s not like you all speak a language that makes…
OK, pretend you have to bet money on this. Here’s the set-up. On one hand, you’ve got these huge natural gas drilling companies coming down the road with their gigantic rigs, tons of money and very expensive haircuts. Where are they headed? Oh, no! They’re headed to Dallas City Hall,…
Did anybody else have a serious gag reflex reading our former mayor’s what-a-good-boy-am-I essay on the op-ed page of The Dallas Morning News yesterday? Does Tom Leppert just assume people don’t remember a single thing about him? Or does he not remember a single thing about himself? His op-ed piece…
What is this crap about the importance of attracting more businesses to the city? They throw it out like a line from the Bible or something — especially mayoral candidates Mike Rawlings and Ron Natinsky. Got to “grow that tax base.” Only way we can grow that tax base is…
Welcome to Local Music ‘Mericans , where we meet some of the people behind the local music scene — those who aren’t necessarily members of local bands, but more the people who make the scene move. You may have seen Ken Evenson’s tall, husky frame towering over the front doors…
No, no, no — not that same old crap again about how we need to get more suburbs to join Dallas Area Rapid Transit, our regional rail system. The suburbs are what’s wrong with DART. Screw the suburbs. Dallas needs to quit DART and let the suburbs go build their…
Whether you’ve reached the end of your rope or merely the end of your week, welcome to Whitt’s End: *And then, after Jesus had died on the cross and was buried in his tomb, some rabbits rummaged through a nearby picnic and ate a bunch of chocolate and candy. Powered by a sugar high, the…
The Dallas Morning News has just endorsed attorney Scott Griggs over incumbent District 3 council member Dave Neumann in the May election. If Neumann were a high school quarterback, this would be like his parents going across the field and cheering for the other team. Switching metaphors, for years Neumann…
Ah, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I call “rubber meets road” on the school district issue in the mayor’s race. Candidate Mike Rawlings has been getting himself some political mileage on the hustings by saying that, as mayor, he will help fix the city’s beleaguered public school system. I…
Dear Mexican: You seem like a smart guy and your input regarding an ethnic phenomenon I’ve observed would be of interest. I live in a tiny, gated neighborhood that I would describe as solidly middle- to upper-middle-class. On each side of me live Vietnamese small-business owners whose kids attend prestigious…
Isn’t it interesting? The one question that seems to bubble back to the top time and time again in the ongoing mayor’s race is the world-class city thing. Why? Maybe it’s just semantics. Maybe what we really mean, when we use that embarrassingly pretentious, transparently insecure term, is that we…
