A day after WFAA-Channel 8 spread the word that the enormous Ultimate Super Bowl party planned in the Southwest Center Mall parking lot was no more — folded at the last minute amidst dirty politics and safety concerns — council member Tennell Atkins held court this morning in the atrium…
Before the Dallas City Council voted to back Dave Neumann Wednesday and wait till October to vote on XTO Energy’s gas drilling proposals, we did get a little more insight into where the council stands right now. Angela Hunt, for instance, mentioned why she was for extending the city’s leases…
We’re back in not-so-executive session, breezing through the rest of the council’s agenda so Mayor-For-Now Tom Bailey Leppert can hop a flight for his swan song at the US Council of Mayors. First, though, Dave Neumann apologizes for his last motion to defer the gas drilling applications till October 12…
I’m wedged into the corner of the briefing room at City Hall — no complaints, because really, Brad Watson needs his legroom. The council’s running through its various opening proclamations — Delia Jasso just introduced Oak Cliff’s Better Block Bunch right now, including Jason Roberts and council challenger Scott Griggs,…
A little more than a month ago — and before the Environmental Protection Agency assumed control of Texas’s greenhouse gas permitting — the EPA looked to be drawing a line in the sand over water contamination from gas drilling in the Barnett Shale, with an emergency order for Fort Worth-based…
Just rode up to the briefing room with Tennell Atkins, who — and I’ll try not to take it personally — seemed awful anxious for those elevator doors to open on five, and we’re shooting the breeze in the gallery as the rest of the Economic Development Committee trickles in…
If you’re a fool for the latest in trailer technology, you probably heard the sad news: THOR won’t be here to defend us next month, after all. But before tonight’s Stars game, a flash of hope: If you want to see a 3D movie trailer inside a trailer — if…
Today, Burger King’s staking its claim to the title of “World’s Most Batshit Crazy Food Engineer,” kicking off a national TV ad campaign for its new BK Stuffed Steakhouse Burger, sporting a patty peppered with gooey cheese explosions and jalapeño bits. It’s just one more step down the trail first…
Maybe you’ve heard: Dallas is going to be crawling next month with fans, good-timin’ party lovers and the elitest of the elite pro athletes the country has to offer.Not Arlington. Dallas. Because Major League Eating is bringing reigning hot dog champ Joey Chestnut and a slate of other top competitive…
When U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reps dropped in last August to hear the public’s thoughts on new gas drilling regulations, it was a ¡Three Amigos! sort of moment, the townspeople pleading for help wrangling with Governor Guapo and his jefes at the TCEQ. Now that the EPA’s muscled them aside…
As advertised, Brent Brown, Larry Beasley and the rest of the Dallas CityDesign Studio crew welcomed 100 or so friends, neighbors and urban planning devotees to chat about their latest “Urban Structure” plan, meant to put a walkable, complete-street face on the development explosion everyone seems to expect once traffic…
If you were all revved up yesterday for a few solid hours of public debate on the environment, only to be abruptly denied, well, take heart — at the Crowne Plaza Hotel tomorrow, the Environmental Protection Agency’s holding an all-day hearing on its proposals for regulating greenhouse gases. From 10…
This week’s feature in the Paper Version of Unfair Park recounts the story of Victoria Peterson, a 40-year-old woman who’s been accused by a handful of old men in Dallas of pretending at romance while she slowly bilked them out of their life savings.According to court docs and police reports,…
Robert Whiteside was sitting in his yard, working on his sprinklers when the car pulled to a stop at his curb. Inside was a dark-haired woman in her mid-30s, looking for a little help finding Preston Road. He gave her the directions, and she drew out the conversation, gathering information…
It’s not often I get to say so, but I wish I’d been in Amarillo last night. That’s where the Big Texan Steak Ranch kicked off its two-month team rib-eating tourney, where one of 32 four-eater teams will try to gorge their way to glory, and a $1,000 grand prize…
The Dallas City Council kicked off the afternoon with a few minutes in executive session, and it didn’t take long for Mayor Leppert to bring up the SUP application for XTO Energy to drill at Hensley Field — the one we expected Dave Neumann to push for deferring for a…
Fans of music and mimosas huddled up in the Meyerson Symphony Center foyer for a very special mystery announcement this morning — and with Roger Staubach and Mayor Tom Leppert slated to make an appearance, and with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra still short a CEO, you could guess where this…
Robert already alerted us to that item on tomorrow’s council agenda regarding XTO Energy’s proposal to drill at two of the sites it leased from the city back in 2007 — along with the newsworthy note that city staff in Sustainable Development and Construction recommended approving the applications, cutting against…
From John Kramer at the Institute for Justice — and it’s funny, I was just staring down the barrel of my “Litigating for Liberty” hip flask — comes the story of Dallas tech entrepreneur Thane Hayhurst, the “entrepreneurially driven David,” and his battle against heavy-handed innovation-stifling regulations from the “government…
It’s been a rough, off-road kind of journey through the courts for helmet-free bicyclists’ rights activist Paul Woodfield, who, you surely recall, has spent years fighting the constitutionality of the city’s law requiring bike helmets. When we last checked in with him back in August, he’d just seen his federal…
Last we checked in with the Jubilee Parkers fighting the Dallas Independent School District’s attempt to snatch up their homes to make room for a new O.M. Roberts Elementary building, the controversy looked to be finished. State Rep. Eric Johnson intervened on the residents’ behalf, you’ll recall, and shortly thereafter,…
Tony Fiorillo curates the Dallas Museum of Nature and Science’s paleontology collection, and he’s spent every summer since 1998 in Alaska, studying dinosaurs’ tracks and bones. It wasn’t till last year that he seriously considered all their crap. Fiorillo’s also an adjunct professor at SMU, and his work’s been featured…
