Ted and Shannon Skokos are heavy hitters on the Dallas philanthropy scene. Their names are engraved most prominently at the AT&T Performing Arts Center, into which they poured more than $2 million, but their largesse is wide-ranging, and they give grants that, per their foundation’s website, “positively impact society by,…
Danny Kirk, the founding pastor of Greater Sweethome Missionary Baptist Church in Forest Hill was inside the church this morning with his secretary and a janitor when car crashed through the side of the building. The precise details of what happened next are trickling out. A man exited the wrecked…
Say you’re a Republican activist hoping to woo black voters, but you’re faced with the inconvenient truth that the opposing party elected the country’s first African American president. What do you do? You put the one African American figure who more iconic than Barack Obama on a billboard above his…
Yesterday, about an hour and a half before the Cowboys game kicked off, neighbors and passersby in the 1600 block of Kiest Boulevard in East Oak Cliff became alarmed when they saw a man walking down the sidewalk carrying a machete. Police arrived shortly thereafter to chat. The man didn’t…
Eleven years ago, the City Council set aside an enormous, 3,700-acre tract of land surrounding Fair Park and put in place detailed zoning restrictions stipulating what types of homes and businesses could go where. It was an attempt to promote positive development and fight the economic decay that has taken…
Johnny Guerry and Gary Guion met five years ago, and after striking up a friendship, they became business partners of sorts, with Guion setting up shop at Clover Partners, the small hedge fund Guerry runs. Their relationship lasted until Guerry received a tip that his friend was embezzling money and…
Shirley Ison-Newsome is a survivor. The longtime DISD administrator, currently assistant superintendent, has managed to stay afloat at the district even as administration after boss after boss, administration after administration, have sunk to the watery depths. That she has managed emerge unharmed even as she has been caught up in…
It was back in July that transportation planners with the North Central Texas of Governments first floated the idea of upping the threshold for vehicles using HOV lanes from two occupants to three. The proposal was then taken to the driving public to see what they thought. They didn’t like…
If you were to put money on which Republican politician in Texas would publicly express support for gay rights, John Carona, the state senator from Dallas, would be a good bet. He’s always been about as pragmatic as Texas Republican come. But it was still a surprise when, earlier this…
Burglars are typically a harried lot. There’s only so much time between a window being smashed and police or an angry, gun-wielding property owner arrive to see what’s up. See also: The Librarians of America Just About Destroyed Wild Salsa on Saturday Night The person who broke into Wild Salsa,…
Yesterday afternoon at around 3 p.m., Dallas police were sent to check out a silver Pontiac sedan parked suspiciously in an Oak Cliff alley. Officers waited for the driver to pull away, then performed a traffic stop on the 2400 block of Brooklyn Avenue after the car made an illegal…
Some relatively recent efforts to market the city of Dallas to would-be visitors may have mistakenly given the impression that we really don’t want them here. (How else to explain this?). But that’s not really the case. The city does want visitors, along with the money they drop at its…
On Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, in a bit of international chest-pounding, sent a strongly worded letter to the head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe threatening criminal charges if the group carried out a hinted-at plan to show up in Texas come November 6. Today,…
On Wednesday evening, at about 7 p.m., 35-year-old James Lowell Evans walked into the Tom Thumb at 315 Hampton Road, in Oak Cliff. He wandered around the store for a while before meandering over to the personal care aisle, where, according to the store’s loss prevention manager, he slipped seven…
There’s been a lot of talk this election season about the specter of voter fraud, the idea that the polls will be flooded by illegal immigrants, household pets and dead people (all left-leaning constituencies), thereby cheapening real Americans’ votes. There has been relatively little concern expressed about the accuracy of…
The Mavericks’ announcement today that the Mavericks have indefinitely suspended guard Delonte West isn’t exactly a surprise. He never seems to make it long without a suspension of some sorts. Just last week, he was on the outs with the team for a day after a locker room tirade. But…
It’s safe to say the entire country is drooling over Texas’ Autobahn, the new; $1.5 billion highway near Austin with an 85-mile-per-hour speed limit, the nation’s highest. Even the New York Times is jealous. Driving 85 mph is nothing new for Texans, who already go that fast on normal roads…
Last June, the Carrollton City Council passed a measure aimed at cleaning up apartment complexes in the city that had become magnets for crime. The ordinance set out a number of very specific requirements on things like fencing and landscaping, but the crux of the measure was the crime index,…
It’s hard to forget Alan Todd May. He’s the Texas con man who, until his phone privileges were revoked, used to sell spaces in made-up trade shows from his Harris County prison cell, not to mention any number of more pedestrian financial misdeeds. His boldest scheme started in 2008, when…
Homeless people often get a bad rap, but when you’re about to get your ass kicked by a PCP-crazed attacker, an unemployed former Crip living on the street can be handy to have around. Dallas police officer Billy Taylor learned that first-hand last Tuesday in front of The Bridge homeless…
In 2006, a developer announced plans to transform the century-old Butler Brothers building, the warehouse-turned-vacant eyesore across the street from City Hall, into condos. Then the economy tanked, the development went bankrupt and the historic structure was left to rot. That was where things stood until earlier this year when…
If you live in Texas and have health insurance, chances are your coverage is through either Aetna or Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, and it’s about twice as likely to be the latter. The insurance giant covers 7.7 million Texans, controlling roughly 40 percent of the market. Some…
