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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Last week the Mavericks came close to winning an NBA championship, and the W, an elegant new hotel, opened in the development surrounding the city’s new sports arena. So now we hear a certain drumbeat: Dallas Mayor Laura Miller and the people who opposed city subsidies to the arena have…
I can predict the future. No, not of everything. I never said that. But of City Hall. I can tell you exactly pretty much partially what will be going on with Dallas City Hall five years from now. For example, I see in my crystal ball that the entire city…
Dallas is right on the knife’s edge between maybe finally about to become cool and maybe finally not. Believe it or not, the city council will decide. Yikes. Maybe this week. I’m scared. If anything is cool about Dallas, what? Everybody says Uptown, meaning McKinney Avenue, West Village, the Cityplace…
This is all about priorities. Isn’t it? Last week when bids were announced for the first “signature” bridge over the Trinity River, the reaction at City Hall was understandably distraught. City leaders had hoped to erect three suspension bridges over the Trinity designed by famous Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. But…
The only way to understand government money is to think of it as your own. Which, by the way, it is. So let’s pretend. There’s this guy you don’t owe any money to, but he’d like some money from you. Couple grand. Imagine yourself thinking this: “I don’t really owe…
Sometimes I bring a lot of bad news to you. Much of what I see makes me angry, and then I tell you about it, and maybe I make you angry too. So I owe you one. I need to tell you about something wonderful I watched at City Hall…
Hey, hey, an eviction party. Poor people got their stuff on the curb. Let’s all run over there and see if we can grab a pork chop. Everybody grabbed a chop two weeks ago when the Dallas City Council voted to kick the families out of the Timbercreek Apartments at…
On the other hand, what’s good about Dallas? There has to be something cool. Otherwise, you know, let’s just go. I know, I know. I told you City Hall was going to hell in a hand basket. But did you ever stop and ask yourself, what exactly is a hand…
Can I tell you the worst part in this whole exercise the Dallas City Council and the mayor are going through about adopting a so-called “comprehensive plan” for the city? Forget what’s in the plan. Whatever’s in it, it’s irrelevant. In fact, that’s the worst part. This deal about adopting…
How many people in those beautiful houses on deep lots along Forest Hills Boulevard near White Rock Lake want to see a Blockbuster Video store on their street? Who knows, maybe a tanning salon. Or a couple nice big apartment blocks. Because it could happen. Believe it. There’s a political…
