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Jim Schutze

Jim Schutze has been the city columnist for the Dallas Observer since 1998. He has been a recipient of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies’ national award for best commentary and Lincoln University’s national Unity Award for writing on civil rights and racial issues. In 2011 he was admitted to the Texas Institute of Letters.

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Mitchell Says No

So what about the dogfight on the Trinity River Project?

By Jim Schutze
Dec 21, 2006

A portrait for the museum. A Rembrandt. I'm looking at Mitchell Rasansky in a pool of light at the back of a darkened office, staring back at me glumly. Here on Walnut Hill Lane across from Presbyterian Hospital, winter evening has fallen. The secretaries and administrative assistants of the world...
SAFE as Hell

Cops ignore rampant drug trade, crack down instead on squeegee guys

By Jim Schutze
Dec 14, 2006

I don't want you to imagine this scene. It's not imaginary. I want you to see it. Picture this. South Dallas at night. Jim's Car Wash, corner of Myrtle Street and MLK Boulevard. Right across Myrtle Street a dope house is doing a land-office business. Behind the car wash on...
My Brain on Crack

Wick Allison. The Trinity River Project. Have I gone mad?

By Jim Schutze
Dec 7, 2006

OK, now I'm mad. Do you hear me, Wick Allison? Yeah, scary, isn't it? Let me tell you how I feel about the big project to build parks, lakes and roads along the Trinity River downtown. I love it. We need more Austin here, less Waco. It costs money. We...
The Zac Factor

Why the Dallas County tsunami could make Crain an important mayoral candidate

By Jim Schutze
Nov 30, 2006

Steve Blow, a metro page columnist in The Dallas Morning News, wrote a column last week about the mayoral candidacy of former Dallas Observer music editor Zac Crain. I sometimes enjoy Blow's stuff, which has a comforting kind of good-old-boy twang to it, like a mouth harp on a hay...
Going to the Dogs

At least three canines say the Lower Greenville bar scene is nothing to sniff at

By Jim Schutze
Nov 23, 2006

How to begin? Well, that's what I'm writing about, isn't it? Where to begin, how to end. I put up with this stuff from my dogs every day. I walk three of them—Otto, my 900-pound Weimaraner; Skeeter, my son's seriously bloated toy fox terrier; and Dottie, my mother-in-law's 900-year-old border...
An Open Letter to Craig Watkins

By Jim Schutze
Nov 16, 2006

An open letter to newly elected Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins: Dear Mr. Watkins: Give me a minute. A few minutes at most. What can you lose? First of all, congratulations. Everybody says you're the first black district attorney in the history of the county. I'm sure it's true...
Tone Deaf

On the Trinity, Laura Miller sounds a lot like any other old-time Dallas pol: bad

By Jim Schutze
Nov 9, 2006

First, the big news, the part that has to do with you. In 1998 you were told the Dallas taxpayers' share of the Trinity River Project was $246 million and would never go higher. What I don't think anybody has told you since then is that under Dallas Mayor Laura...
Forget Why

Knowing where crime happens is enough to do something about it

By Jim Schutze
Nov 2, 2006

I hated giving this kid rides home, not because I was afraid of his neighborhood—maybe I was a little—but more because after we put him out of the car and drove off, my heart sank, as if we had just left a naked infant alone on an ice floe. It...
When the Levee Breaks...

...It'll be too late to ask why

By Jim Schutze
Oct 26, 2006

Maybe Katrina will save Dallas. All we need is a leader willing to put human lives and safety ahead of real estate deals and decorative bridges. Please let me know if you spot anybody like that within 10 miles of City Hall. Last Friday in Chicago, a panel of engineering...
Dunce Cap

So? Maybe I left something out. Nobody's perfect. Wanna fight?

By Jim Schutze
Oct 19, 2006

So once in a while I don't get something just perfectly right-on, 100 percent gold-plate correct. So, sue...uh, cancel that. In a case where I have been less than totally right I need to provide...well, I'm still not going to call it a correction...elaboration. I'm not talking about actual factual...
Check the Bill

Fine print on bond package includes $120 million more for Trinity project

By Jim Schutze
Oct 5, 2006

On the evening of Friday, September 29, an eight-page, single-spaced memo went out from the office of the Dallas city manager to all members of the city council warning them about inquiries into the Trinity River project being made by "members of the media, mainly print reporters who have closely...
Country Hillary

Tell me she wasn't trying to sound like Ann Richards. Please.

By Jim Schutze
Sep 28, 2006

So what do you think Yankees should talk like when they come to Texas? Does it do them any good to try to talk like Texans? No, I didn't think so either. Especially when they're Hillary Clinton. If we know anything at all in Dallas, it's about Yankees. This is...
Cash Money

When we least expected it, a real opportunity in southern Dallas

By Jim Schutze
Sep 21, 2006

History has this way of throwing bean balls at us. Just about now, the city finally has escaped its South Dallas guilt complex. People no longer feel obligated to sluice money into boondoggle rip-off scams that do nothing to relieve poverty and only benefit the same six people. For a...
The Lone Mitchell

Rasansky's way out on his lonesome about those bridges

By Jim Schutze
Sep 14, 2006

Ever since the 1998 bond election when the city got its hands on $246 million in tax money for the Trinity River Project, City Hall has done everything it could to keep the public out of it. Now, thanks entirely to council member Mitchell Rasansky, the lone wolf of the...
The Rip

When does an evacuee cease to be a guest and become a pain?

By Jim Schutze
Sep 7, 2006

All last week the media were doing their year-after-Katrina stories. Whose fault was everything? What have we learned? I'm reading this stuff, and it occurs to me I'm not really interested in group lessons. What have I learned? What do I do, here in Dallas, Texas, next time this rolls...
Eye Candy

It's overpriced, it's gaudy and we have to put it on a credit card. Yep, that Calatrava bridge says Dallas all over.

By Jim Schutze
Aug 31, 2006

What kind of boring, unromantic soul could fail to see the wonder of Dallas' plan for new bridges across the Trinity River? Where now a row of dirty concrete slabs crosses a river that looks more like a drainage ditch, instead a majestic procession of fancifully modern suspension bridges would...
Black and White

By Jim Schutze
Aug 10, 2006

A world-traveled photographer of street scenes and people, Paul Greenberg has prints in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth and other institutions. Greenberg shoots black and white pictures with a Widelux panoramic, a camera used on NASA...
Rock Star

The smart money wants a mayor with sex appeal

By Jim Schutze
Aug 10, 2006

On the one hand, I'm afraid to call anybody, because everybody I call tells me he or she is thinking about running for mayor. The field of people considering the 2007 Dallas mayor's race is starting to look like the Turkey Trot, the city's annual Thanksgiving Day run. If this...
Don't Touch That Dial

So we're supposed to maim WRR in order to protect it?

By Jim Schutze
Jul 27, 2006

Strange stuff struts across the stage of life every once in a while. There just isn't time to stop and figure it all out. Like the oddly recurring story in Dallas every two to three years: "Proposed WRR Frequency Swap." Proposed what? It's like clockwork. Every few years somebody wants...
The Allure of Azure

Harwood builds a fancy condo tower without a nickel in handouts from City Hall

By Jim Schutze
Jul 20, 2006

Here's the thing. People call me up. They abuse me. They ask if I'm an idiot. No. Frankly. I am not an idiot. They ask, "Don't you think it's worthwhile for the city to offer developers tax breaks if doing it encourages development?" Here's the thing. I don't know. It...
Swing Low

So we heal the north-south rift by electing Colonel Sanders mayor?

By Jim Schutze
Jul 13, 2006

Oh, please. Give me a break, willya? If I hear one more word about how all these old white guys running for mayor of Dallas are going to "heal the racial divide," I'm gonna blow lunch. Or, on the other hand, one more word about how all the old preachers...
Eat This

A million here, a million there--shoot, it's not the council's money

By Jim Schutze
Jul 6, 2006

Fine. Go ahead. Vote for it. Swallow it down whole. But you better keep some Tums handy. Next fall the entire City Council and all of the heavy-hitters in town will be all over TV and billboards barking at you that you better vote "yes" on a record-setting bond issue...