Sucker Punch

Kick ass she did: Wrong title–looking at the picture, it should have been called “A Boy Named Sue.” Having finally gotten past the pic, I discovered what a farce Valerie Mahfood really is (“A Girl Named Suicide,” November 28). One of the best things a good athlete can do is win and lose gracefully, and she did neither. Ms. Ali came to kick ass, and kick ass she did, so there. My mom was an R.N. and I am an R.N., and while I cannot deny her influence in my career choice, I certainly did not “make it” based on her ability as a nurse, and neither did Ms. Ali make it because her dad was/is The Greatest. Perhaps if Miss Suicide would femme it up a bit–you know, add breasts, hair extensions, nails, butt implants and a mask…oh hell, just have someone else pose for her pictures in the future–then she, too, would get the mega-bucks in endorsement $$$.

Marcia Minger

Dallas

Looks and skill: I just wanted to compliment Rose Farley on her article about Valerie Mahfood, as well as the one she wrote about female football players (“She Got Game?” May 9). As a nonathletic woman studying sociology, I nonetheless find sports culture fascinating, and the idea you posed in the recent article that Laila Ali’s accessibility in the mainstream might have to do with her looks as well as her skill is an intriguing one. Congratulations on a great article, and I look forward to reading more of your work in the future.

Giselle Gazda

Fort Worth

I scratch your back: Either the author of the article is playing coy or can’t see the forest through the trees. If Mayor Miller supports Belo with its little downtown real estate venture (“Belo the Belt,” December 5), won’t Belo use its resources to assist the mayor in her re-election campaign? The Dallas Morning News wasn’t pro-Miller in the last mayoral election. Don’t you think that will change if she scratches their back? Please!

Kevin Kunreuther

Dallas

More bodies for downtown: As I understand the downtown problem as explained in a recent Dallas Morning News article, the downtown central business district needs more people. As soon as more people come, property values will increase by more than a billion dollars. This will create about $7 million in revenue to the city, according to the article. All we have to do is spend several hundred million to build parks and new roads, loops, people movers, more light rail and a few other feats of magic, and people will come. Then everything will be fine again.

This may even solve as many of the city’s problems as did paying for American Airlines Center. After all, it created more than 20,000 construction jobs alone, according to city figures at the time. Just slightly more than the place holds. As bad as the budget is now, just think where we would be if we had not paid Hicks and Perot to build it.

Since all we are lacking is more people coming downtown to make this work, according to Miller, I have come up with a list of the five best ways to get more people in the downtown streets:

1. Turn the incoming tollway collection baskets into money dispensers for those driving into downtown. This could be funded by those paying to leave, who would be charged a higher price.

2. Use a “jury duty” system to require people to arrive downtown at a certain time and walk through the pedestrian walkways to the other end. They could also be required to ride a DART train, thereby helping another just cause.

3. Require all companies that occupy downtown office space to divide their work time into three eight-hour shifts with mandatory Saturday and Sunday work. This would help the part of the mayor’s dream of having a 24/7 downtown.

4. Turn Main, Commerce and Elm streets into a pedestrian plaza from Deep Ellum to the West End, and acquire through eminent domain the right to lease all ground-floor businesses. Then lease these businesses to DB Entertainment to turn into topless clubs. This could be funded through the savings in legal fees. Although Mayor Miller opposes topless bars, she may agree if they are smoke-free.

5. Have the fire marshal conduct regular and frequent fire drills in which the occupants of the buildings will be required to wait outside in the brand-new parks.

As soon as the downtown problem is fixed and the needy single-source newspaper publisher has that big increase in his property values, we can all sleep better.

Name withheld

Dallas

Crime central: I, too, was a Laura Miller fan (“Big-Ticket Laura,” November 28). I voted for Laura and got over 50 other people to do the same. Somehow, I felt that she was going to deal with the basics of city government. The basic that I am most interested in is the high crime rate and what it has done to my property value and my quality of life.

Check out my new Web site (www.dallascrime.com) and find out what I’m talking about. My research shows that Dallas has had the highest total crime rate per capita for the last four years among major cities with a population of more than 1 million. It was No. 2 for the previous three years. Why don’t the media in Dallas, including the Dallas Observer, do some crusading and educate the Dallas public on this crime problem?

Calie Stephens

Via e-mail