Honest question. Are you even aware there is a race going on now for mayor of Dallas? Honest answers only, please. It’s OK. Especially in the early phase, the mayoral election is a boring thing. I don’t expect you to be on the edges of your seats clicking updates every…
Check me on this. In an atmosphere of federal, state, county and city funding crises, where we may even see the defunding of federal health care reform, the gutting of the Environmental Protection Agency, an absolute decimation of support for public schools and impoverished children, drastic cuts in Medicaid and…
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. As a talent buyer at the House of Blues, Brian Lowe’s kind of the definition…
I’m all for pay walls. Pay walls r me. When newspapers like The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times put up pay walls, charging readers for access to news content, I figure they’re trying to get ink-stained schlubs like me paid. I know there are people out there…
Maybe the biggest problem with the fracking issue is that it involves the deadly, mind-numbing and sleep-inducing phrase “parts per billion.” Otherwise I might have cracked the case long ago. Fracking is deep-well drilling for natural gas in which drillers inject water and chemicals into a layer of underground shale…
Whether you’ve reached the end of your rope or merely the end of your week, welcome to Whitt’s End: Plaaaaaay baaalllllll! My prediction: Your Texas Rangers will finish second to the Anaheim Angels in the AL West and miss the playoffs. Hey, repeatin’ ain’t easy. For most teams in baseball losing…
Who loans two hundred grand to a college kid from a poor family? There’s just a whole lot about the Dez Bryant stories that does not smell right. Dallas Cowboys receiver Bryant is being sued for the better part of a million bucks he borrowed to buy jewelry and sports…
Dear Readers: Rather than me punk ustedes with a prank, I give you the cruelest joke of all—ex-congressman and eternal Know Nothing Tom Tancredo! In return for his graciously allowing us to debate in Denver last year, I’ve allowed him to answer two questions of my choosing, with no editorial…
You needed to be there. Last week, moments after Dallas Mayor Dwaine Caraway lost his attempt to suppress an embarrassing police voice recording, he strode out into the courthouse corridor loaded for bear. A large crowd of press had been waiting, meek as scolded third-graders in the principal’s outer office…
All of the candidates for mayor say the city’s falling apart but we can’t raise taxes. If both of these things are true, something’s got to give, and I think I know what it will be. Me. First, I’m downtown in the Allen courts building covering a case about a…
Who says the four Dallas mayoral candidates haven’t distinguished themselves from one another? Last night at that forum at Thomas Jefferson High School, the first question they had to answer (and the best question of the night) was why they wanted to be mayor. Dallas city council member and entrepreneur…
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.The thing with beautiful “rock chicks” that dance onstage is that most of them stop far…
Two experiences over the weekend have given me hope. One was watching a documentary on the catastrophic 1911 Triangle Waist Factory Fire in New York, and the other was a seminar I attended on the state budget crisis. Debacles can be good for us. The documentary made an argument that…
So-called regionalism is a rip-off, a scam and a hoax designed to neuter cities and sell them down the river to the damned suburbs. A few weeks from now the Dallas City Council will take up the issue of fracking, the kind of natural gas drilling in which drillers pump…
The Reverend Gerald Britt Jr. of Central Dallas Ministries (now called “CitySquare” for some unfathomable reason) had an op-ed in The Dallas Morning News yesterday that made my heart ache. Britt, a good guy deeply dedicated to southern Dallas, recited all the recent population numbers that show an immense outflow…
Whether you’ve reached the end of your rope or merely the end of your week, welcome to Whitt’s End: *Like me, do you think the Texas Rangers are kinda getting caught with their pants on the ground with their pitching staff exposed? The time to go get a reliable closer…
I’m just curious. You tell me. Is public service automatically a bad thing? I’m serious. Is any and every kind of experience in government automatically a black mark on your résumé? At Tuesday night’s Dallas mayoral forum, candidate Mike Rawlings, a former corporate chief executive officer, described his rival, former…
Dear Mexican: I often pick up the Albuquerque Alibi to read your babosadas. Now, let me get this straight: You appear to be a bright guy who claims to have the Mexican people all figured out, right? To you, we are all 5 feet 6 inches tall, medium-complexioned and we…
The city of Dallas website has a “frequently asked questions” thing about gas well drilling. It reminds me a lot of TEPCO, the company whose nuclear reactors are melting in Japan. Like TEPCO, the city believes that good news is better than the truth. Here is a sampling. A frequently…
Let’s revisit 90s hip-hop through one-hit wonders.
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. Back in 2004, Mike Schoder took over ownership of Greenville Avenue’s Granada Theater. But, unlike…
We had a nice little chat here yesterday, didn’t we, about South by Southwest in Austin and all the attention Austin got and all the attention Dallas didn’t? I thought it sparked some really interesting comments about what is and isn’t and ought to be in our fair city. The…
