Dallas Observer | The Leading Independent News Source in Dallas, Texas

Texas Nationalists See Secession Looming. Does Anyone Else?

By Patrick Strickland

Apr 21, 2021

State Rep. Kyle Biedermann filed a bill to allow Texans to vote on independence from the U.S. The Texas Nationalist Movement sees an opportunity to push secession.

How Collin College Became the Center of a Months-Long Free Speech Debacle

By Simone Carter

Apr 14, 2021

A handful of teachers spoke out against Collin College over COVID-19 and free speech disputes. In response, the school fired several female professors.

As Doctors Decry Gun Violence, Texas Republicans Push Lax Restrictions

By Simone Carter and Patrick Strickland

Apr 7, 2021

When Dr. Sue Bornstein called for gun policy reform, she quickly attracted backlash from guns rights advocates, including the NRA.

In Small-Town North Texas, Some Confederate Monuments Still Stand Tall

By Patrick Strickland

Mar 2, 2021

While Confederate monuments are coming down in larger cities, they still stand tall in many small towns across North Texas.

Pianist Scott Danbom, who used to play to crowds at Dan's Silverleaf, misses life pre-pandemic. He struggles with mild forms of anxiety and depression.

Pandemic Has Reshaped North Texans' Mental Health

By Simone Carter

Jul 20, 2020

Scott Danbom slides behind the ivories and takes a seat. During any given summer, the former Centro-matic pianist might be sharing the stage with the likes of Sarah Jaffe or Alejandro Escovedo. They could be playing any number of sold-out festivals in New York City or Europe. In normal times,...

Salon owner Shelley Luther adjusts her hair while listening to a question after she was cited by Dallas officials for reopening her Salon A la Mode in Dallas on April 24.

Is Shelley Luther a Hero or Villain? Why Not Ask Her Wallaby?

By Richie Whitt

May 25, 2020

Scratch below the surface — beneath the cavalcade of supporters, piles of cash donations, President Donald Trump’s approval and Sen. Ted Cruz’s cameo “mullet” — and Dallas' pandemic martyr has herself an optics problem. Even for Shelley Ann Luther, defiant owner of Salon à la Mode and America’s viral “hero”...

As the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Texas ticks higher and higher, inmates and criminal justice reform advocates are worried about outbreaks in jails and prisons across the state.

As COVID-19 Hits Jails and Prisons, Texas Inmates Call for Action

By Tyler Hicks

Apr 28, 2020

The French M. Robertson Unit, a maximum-security state prison, is located off a dusty farm-to-market road about 20 minutes from Abilene. A couple of tiny hamlets dot the dry West Texas terrain near the prison, but for the most part, its population of about 3,000 inmates is surrounded by nothingness...

McAlister’s cotton plants didn’t produce enough to be financially worth harvesting and selling this year. He will instead depend on insurance money to make ends meet.

Growing Pains: Stress Is Killing Farmers, But These Texans Keep Plowing Ahead

By Meredith Lawrence

Jan 21, 2020

Farmers across the country are struggling to make ends meet. In Texas, the stress weighs on farmers who sometimes struggle to figure out how to scrape together the next bill payment.

Flat Earth model builder Chris Pontius converses with guests at the Flat Earth International Conference held in November at the Frisco Hotel and Convention Center.

Discworld Is Real! Dive into Flat Earth Culture at their Global, Sorry, International Conference

By Danny Gallagher

Dec 10, 2019

"Be nice." That's the text message my mom always sends when I'm heading into a situation that's controversial or ridiculous. A Twilight film marathon, a Logan Paul concert, even Fyre Festival II — it doesn't matter. She'll still send the text because she's sweet and concerned for her first born...

Residents of other countries fleeing persecution are free to seek asylum in the United States.

Red Tape, Government Mistakes and an Endless Wait: One Man’s Struggle to Gain U.S. Asylum

By Meredith Lawrence

Dec 2, 2019

One Texas man's long trip through the U.S. immigration system.

Joshua Ray Walker warms up at sound check for a show at the Granada Theater

Willie, Waylon and Them: North Texas Songwriters Put the Story Back in Country

By Meredith Lawrence

Oct 9, 2019

Across the nation, country music with a more classic sound, often labeled “Americana,” is making a comeback. Americana has come to describe a rising class of country musicians with an unornamented western sound and a penchant for storytelling and character-driven lyrics. In Dallas, that resurgence has many young faces.

Meredith Ellis and her father, G.C. Ellis, in the barn on their ranch.

Can Raising Cattle Be Environmentally Friendly? These Texas Ranchers Say Yes.

By Meredith Lawrence

Sep 17, 2019

Thigh-high grasses and plant stalks thwack the sides of the all-terrain buggy as Meredith Ellis maneuvers it down a faint double track through a dense pasture. Grasshoppers launch out of the way, whirring past bright purple, thistle-like Leavenworth's eryngo that poke up alongside creamy milkweed flowers. Yellow and purple wildflowers...

Steakhouses feel like a vintage throwback experience.

The Dallas Steakhouse Needs to Join the 21st Century. But Does It Want To?

By Brian Reinhart

Sep 10, 2019

Dallas has a growing bounty of diverse, interesting places to eat, but the iconic Dallas restaurant is an institution that hasn’t changed much in the last 30 years: the steakhouse. In almost every affluent neighborhood in town, steakhouses serve big grilled cuts of beef and big tannic bottles of cabernet...

Chad Withers and Rob Houdek move Gloves in a new direction.

Rubber Gloves Bounces Back: Iconic Denton Music Venue Is Reborn; Not Everyone Is Happy

By Diamond Rodrigue

Aug 7, 2019

Just a few feet from the train tracks that run through Denton’s industrial district is a club that recalls the college town’s rough-and-tumble early days of DIY music venues. Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios was a place that welcomed the experimental, the eccentric, the talented and the uninhibited. In its heyday,...

Dallas Activist May Be First Labeled ‘Black Identity Extremist’ by FBI

By Jacob Vaughn

Jul 31, 2019

Rakem Balogun and his son were asleep in their apartment early one December morning about two years ago when they woke up to the sound of a crash. Balogun, a North Texas activist, got out of bed and walked into his living room. From where he was standing, he couldn't...

When writer and poet DeeDee Roe saw that Sparrow wasn’t supporting Ekemini Uwan, she wrote an essay about it that went viral.

Sparrow Falls: ‘Whiteness’ Brings Down Dallas’ Biggest Christian Racial Reconciliation Conference

By Julie Lyons

Jul 17, 2019

Women were getting up and walking out in twos and threes, and at some point I realized they weren’t all taking a potty break. With eye rolls and grumpy looks, they trudged up the stairs to the balcony exit in the Music Hall at Fair Park. We were here on...

The fabulous fashion of the door staff at the Starck Club

Starck Reality: Reappraising Dallas’ Most Controversial Nightclub, 30 Years Later

By Jeff Gage

Jun 12, 2019

Under a sweltering midafternoon sun one day in late May, a backhoe digs at the earth where Dallas’ Brewery Building once stood on the edge of Victory Park. Traffic snakes along the nearby Woodall Rodgers overpass, circling the parking lot and rail yard at its far end. A dull, gray...

Julie Dobbs in her radio studio at The Ticket

A Positive Outlook: More Than a Girl in Sports Media, Julie Dobbs Is a Survivor

By Kelly Dearmore

Jun 5, 2019

On Oct. 25, 2018, seemingly out of nowhere, it was as if a bomb had been set off in the Victory Park studio of 1310 The Ticket. BaD Radio, the highly rated sports station’s popular midday show starring Bob Sturm and Dan McDowell, was winding down its noon to 3...

Here Lie Bonnie and Clyde: 9 DFW Places To Get the Truth Missing From the Movies

By Caroline Pritchard

May 30, 2019

Eighty-five years after their deaths, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are inescapable. They’re in The Highwaymen, released this year on Netflix. Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson star as Frank Hamer and Maney Gault, former Texas Rangers who helped bring the Barrow Gang’s gruesome, two-year spree of 13 murders and numerous...

Bearing Scars of War, Former Soldier Answers Call To Serve Wounded Vets

By Richie Whitt

May 7, 2019

It wasn’t getting shot in the head by a sniper that made the worst day of Rick Turner’s military career. Getting shot while cradling a fellow soldier in 82nd Airborne wounded by the same sniper didn’t either. Watching him get shot again — and killed — made it the worst...

Longform

Californian Tangled in a North Texas Network of Alleged Psychic Fraud

The Foot Soldiers: Neo-Nazis in 1980s Dallas

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