Ah, you hate to see it. Ben Sandifer, the bicycling nature photographer, has always exuded a certain purity of heart. But on the way back from a city-sponsored tour of a recently decimated portion of the Great Trinity Forest, a colleague and I speculated about him. We both thought he…
“There’s nothing sure. The rich get rich and the poor get poor. In the meantime, in between time, ain’t we got fun?” “Ain’t We Got Fun,” Van and Schenck, 1921 Hate that lyric. Always did. Don’t think it’s true. The most recent big upward mobility study found that, while mobility…
Transportation projects are like the rest of life. Sure they offer benefits, but they carry costs, as well. Powerful Dallas City Council member Vonciel Hill, chair of both the council’s transportation and legislative lobbying committees, stops meetings to introduce the rich people whose families will have bridges named for them…
All weekend long I was pondering great moments in leadership. And then I thought about Dallas Fire Chief Louie Bright III. Dallas firefighter Stanley Wilson burned to death May 20, 2013, when a building he and other firefighters were searching for survivors collapsed. Surviving firefighters said they were ordered to…
September has been a long one for Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples. At the month’s start, Staples drew some heat for an op-ed he fat-fingered for the Austin American-Statesman. It denounced efforts to get school children to eat less meat and sparked an Internet backlash that preceded Staples’ resignation from…
It was 10:20 on Friday night when I found out. I had just left the Meyerson when I looked at the clock: 10:00. “Just enough time.” The new Aphex Twin album had just dropped and I realized that with the right amount of luck, will and vehicular skill I could…
Here’s a nice little moment when the truth comes home to roost: Yesterday Stephen Young shared with you here a memo sent to Dallas City Council member Scott Griggs by council member Vonciel Hill in which Hill basically called a Griggs a liar. Hill accused Griggs of distorting the facts…
In the coming weeks, you will start to see everything from the sleeve on your coffee cup to the jerseys your wife-beating running backs wear in the National Football League turn a Pepto-Bismol shade of pink. October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. You’ll also start to see restaurant promotions…
Monday, I look at The Dallas Morning News, and I see a headline, “Dallas ISD likely breaking attendance law, former lawmaker says.” So immediately right there in the same headline I see a lawmaker and a lawbreaker. I’ve already got a mental image of somebody at school headquarters in cuffs…
In the fall of 2011, I got a gig as an in-house scribe for 35 Denton. It wasn’t paid, save for a complimentary wristband to the four-day festival (which is damn near a golden nugget for any young music fan). One of our tasks leading up to the festival’s weekend…
With four former City Council persons, the ex-city manager and a loyal philanthropic supporter as members, the mayor’s task force on Fair Park knew before its first meeting where the bones were buried. But how much dirt did they want to get on their hands? Sorry, but the issue was…
The saga of Highland Park Presbyterian Church and gaydom reached another milestone last week when the church agreed to pay its too-gay national church body $7.8 million in order to break away and join a new no-gay version of Presbyterianism, a Protestant denomination which traces its name from the Greek,…
If you haven’t been to the West Village in a while, you might not have noticed LYFE Kitchen, which sprung up recently in the spot that used to house Lemon Bar. The fast-casual restaurant is devoted to meeting your every dietary need while supplying you with plenty of shrubbery. Outside…
You have to take a deep breath first. Anchor yourself. Pinch your nose. Then you might be ready to contemplate the sheer unadorned shamelessness of the Texas Legislature in its confrontation with University of Texas System Regent Wallace Hall of Dallas. See also: Wallace Hall Was Right. Back story: After…
Wow, I am having major cognitive dissonance problems with a story in The Dallas Morning News today under the headline, “Breaking news: Report on fired Dallas ISD investigator Jeremy Liebbe does not find he violated laws or policies.” The first paragraph says, “A report on fired Dallas ISD investigator Jeremy…
We’re busy wrapping up our Best of Dallas 2014 issue, so we’re in a stop-and-smell-the-roses state of mind. No wait. Those aren’t roses. 1. Hiring a horse-abuser to run the city’s new horse park. See: The Cruel and Unusual Making of the Texas Horse Park. 2. Sucking all the water…
Please read Eric Nicholson’s story this week about the city’s incredibly callous treatment of Southern Dallas horse-owners whom City Hall has deemed unworthy of inclusion in that stupid fancy-schmancy run-by-an-alleged-animal-abuser horse park they’re building near the river. And even though I hate sending you there, I hope you will also…
Everybody loves to see somebody from their city or town “make it.” That’s more or less a subjective thing, “making it.” Essentially, whenever an artist manages to get the attention of the New York and Los Angeles tastemakers, they wear this vicarious success like a badge of honor. At The…
This weekend, the Old 97’s take part in Dia De Los Toadies Festival at Panther Island Pavilion in Fort Worth as the Toadies wrap up their 20th-anniversary celebrations of Rubberneck. With the Old 97’s preparing to reissue their first album later this fall, guitarist Ken Bethea reflects on his memories…
Every once in a while, somebody repeats some random anecdote to me, and it all comes together — all this Trinity River toll road, HUD segregation complaint, DISD school reform stuff that I pay attention to. After all, it’s the same ball of wax — life in the city. This…
I really want to be on the side of the cop watchers. I do. Ferguson makes me think the more eyeballs we can put on police incidents the better. But I watched the YouTube video on the people arrested in Arlington over the weekend, and there’s no way they were…
Forgive me if I restate something so obvious you had it figured out days ago without me, but I just want to make sure we all get why the note found by police in the Dhawan case in Frisco is so important. We need to know what the note says…
