A thing of beauty is a joy forever, but affronts to architectural pulchritude live in infamy on Kate Wagner’s blog McMansionhell.com. McMansion Hell highlights a certain type of enormous, aesthetically baffling dwelling constructed across the country in recent decades. Wagner wants to unveil the worst offending home in Texas, her…
On Tuesday morning, the music section of the Dallas Observer published an article on local musicians talking about addiction following former Colleyville resident Demi Lovato’s recent drug overdose. The writers of the article (myself and Stephanie Salas-Vega) shared the article on our personal Facebook pages, as writers normally do in…
The first thing to say about the announcement of a deal to privatize Fair Park, the city’s 277-acre Art Deco albatross in South Dallas, is that everybody on every side of this endless bloody debate is utterly stunned. The deal, which would turn over Fair Park to a private operator…
As the lights go down, the curtains open and the band reveals itself onstage. Phones and cameras show up in the audience, too. Lit screens swerve back and forth, and instantly, there are hundreds of recordings of the concert on social media. More artists are encouraging camera-free experiences by banning…
Sexist service is bad service. I hope that we can all agree on this. A server who treats a woman with condescension is doing his job badly. More broadly, a server who treats customers differently based on sex, sexual orientation or race is failing the basic standard of hospitality. I’m…
Half a billion people scroll through Instagram daily. And to some of those peoples’ dismay and others’ envy, a small percentage of Instagrammers have made a career out of it. They are a select class of mostly millennial model-types whose interesting lives and devoted followers have made them attractive allies…
My editor has been encouraging me to ride one of the new motorized versions of a child’s kick-scooter being offered for rent all over the city, so that I can write a story about it. (Editor’s note: No I haven’t. Much.) Some years ago, the same editor sent me to…
The internet has brought the world closer together — so much so that we’re finding ourselves lacking personal cyber space. Every day, people add millions more photos, tweets, comments, videos, gifs, memes and various other forms of content to the web, where it can be collectively sorted through by whoever…
The Garland City Council voted this week to close Windsurf Bay Park on Lake Ray Hubbard for the Fourth of July because Garland police were afraid too many people would show up for holiday picnics. That’s one approach. Of course, another strategy would be to make it a better park…
Four white crosses projected on thin silk curtains draped in front of the stage slowly began to turn upside down. An eerie electric guitar riff echoing through massive speakers behind the curtain acted as a soundtrack to the descent into hell that awaited the sold-out Slayer crowd Tuesday evening at…
It’s about time that we got something new out of Sealion. Although the band has frequently played shows around town over the last few years, for the first time since its 2014 release, Heavy Fizz, the Dallas “art punk” quartet is set to release a new EP, titled Nothing Nowhere…
Outback Steakhouse was an odd choice for my dad’s birthday dinner last Friday. It’s one of those restaurants we, the millennial set, pass all the time but never think about unless we grew up eating there. It’s not a trendy restaurant of the month but a pretty typical casual dining…
Want money? I’ve got some for you. You can double your income — possibly even quintuple, octuple, septendecuple it — depending on how fast you can read, simply by reading my articles. No, really. You know I wouldn’t scam you. I just came across this. I was looking at an…
The Byron Nelson golf game — golf match? no, golf tournament, that’s it! — starts tomorrow at Trinity Forest Golf Club, and, as you can tell, I’m not up to speed. But I might at least get interested. This will be the most rich white people in southern Dallas ever…
Dear Paul, This isn’t easy for either of us. I just want to write about delicious food and where to find it; you just want to enjoy a lucrative public career without the media reminding diners that you allegedly once got high and slammed a woman into the wall in…
Boys. Really. C’mon. Be real. I am addressing myself here to the boys — the mayor, the private Dallas Citizens Council, the board of directors of the State Fair of Texas. I know. Some of you are girls. But, face it. You’re the boys, too. So, boys. Listen to me…
Sometimes you make a huge impression when you least expect to. Such was the lesson learned by Dallas indie rock band Motorcade when it ventured down to SXSW in Austin last month. The band’s performances didn’t go as well as its members had hoped — “We thought we were dreadful,”…
David Wilson, sound engineer, venue manager and talent buyer for Double Wide, has always joked about teaching a class on stage etiquette. Hopefully, enough people will read this, and he won’t have to. “Don’t piss off the sound guy.” It’s a pretty common mantra in nearly every music scene. Most…
Jack White, who has two upcoming shows at The Bomb Factory, is one of the few musicians implementing stricter phone policies in their live shows through the services of Yondr. Yondr, a company based in San Francisco, uses mobile cases to lock the phones of audience members as they enter…
Titus Andronicus has been specializing in punk solutions since 2005, but an entirely different punk rock experience is in store for listeners Friday night at the Ridglea Room in Fort Worth. At the beginning of the year, Titus Andronicus surprised fans with the announcement of a new album, A Productive Cough,…
If you ever find yourself drunk in a tattoo parlor, just stop. Take a moment and stop what you’re doing. Or if you ever find yourself at the mercy as a newbie tattoo artist with an at-home tattoo machine, walk away. Please. Just walk away. These Dallas musicians know a…
Jim Schutze, Dallas’ beloved accommodation artist and Observer staffer of approx. 47 years, will take your questions live on Facebook today at 3 p.m. He was ambivalent at first, but then we offered soft lighting and a makeup artist. Editor in chief Patrick Williams is moderating again so try to make…
