What’s it like to end up in prison as a teen-ager? Edwin Debrow Jr., Bill Everett and Brittany Pollard all committed violent crimes that found them on the wrong side of Texas’ get-tough juvenile justice laws. They tell their stories here for the first time–how they got in trouble, how…
The Real “Goofball”God help us: Christine Biederman, you ass hole, prick bitch!! I just read this past March 7-14 Observer!! You M.K. whore what right have you to make an unnecessary quote in your article on and about Mr. Ron Kirk (“Selling Ron,” March 7) our city of Dallas TX…
The winter darkness was fast approaching, normally the signal to Dallas’ street people to begin seeking safety and shelter. Their retreat would have to wait, though, as people like Sundance and Sweetie Pie, Big Chief and Lonnie began to gather with a hundred or so others in a parking lot…
The German shepherd’s fur bristled. Sniffing the air, his nose twitched and his black body stiffened. From ears to tail the dog froze, silently alerting the platoon to the approaching enemy. Armed with a superhuman sense of smell, the dog sensed strangers 1,000 yards away. Any chance of being ambushed…
Phil Romano may be the Steven Spielberg of the restaurant industry, but he’s more than just a crafter of little entertainments made on budgets bigger than those for the Pentagon’s toilet seat allotment. Phil Romano is a showman in the vein of P.T. Barnum; or better, Walt Disney. Like Walt,…
Last week, Buzz was surprised to find an acknowledgement in The Dallas Morning News of a fact the paper has seemingly long ignored: Food can be sensual. The paper, which engages in honest discussions of mature sexuality as often as it examines the Trinity River plan, surprised us in a…
Pass the PablumLame columnists: From what I’ve read and watched, I think a lot of columnists are afraid they won’t be invited to the caviar and truffle parties if they are outspoken or critical. At the same time, they’ve lost touch with the Limburger and onion crowd. One reason I…
The spotless white Lincoln Navigator with “Bail Me” license plates and custom chrome wheels shines like a comet in the rough constellation of Korean grocers, car-repair garages and tiny, burglar-barred houses that make up the neighborhood around the corner of Beckley and Saner streets. It is parked in front of…
ALPINE–Out in the heart of the sand-blown Trans-Pecos region of Texas where, as an ancient cowboy poet once wrote, “the rainbows wait for rain,” things literary generally take a backseat to the dreary essentials of survival. There’s just not much time for leisure reading when a well needs digging, fences…
For what was billed as the site of a major guns-a-blazin’ showdown, the setting was bizarre. The lights were dimmed, the doors locked. For weeks, lawyers had been expected to converge in U.S. District Judge Ortrie Smith’s courtroom, ready to duke it out over a controversial settlement that Plano-based Rent-A-Center…
The e-mails say it all. Rick Casey, metro columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, apologizes for not responding more quickly to an interview request but says he’s been very busy. “I’m covering a trial of a cop accused of selling drugs,” he writes. Steve Blow, longtime metro columnist for The…
Kirk’s RaceCampaign grind: Christine Biederman’s profile of Ron Kirk (“Selling Ron,” March 7) is one of the finest pieces on politics and the daily grind of campaigning that I have read in some time. I attended the AFL-CIO convention, and she got it right on the mark. An excellent job…
First it was her identity; now it’s her status as a victim that has been stolen. In December 2000 we told you how thieves stole Ronnie Wilson’s wallet, which she accidentally left at a Tom Thumb store, then used her identification to rack up some $10,000 worth of goods–everything from…
Ron Kirk insists he is neither optimist nor pessimist, cynic nor Pollyanna. “I’m a realist,” he explains during a quiet break from campaigning in deep East Texas. “I’ve had to deal with life as it is.” Because he’s a realist, he recognizes some harsh truths. Kirk knows, for example, that…
The thin, attractive blonde stood up before a room of Rent-A-Center’s top execs–the only woman in a sea of white shirts, dark suits and ties–and began delivering her report on the company’s tax situation. She didn’t get far. Before Leigh had completed two sentences, Ernie Talley, crimson-faced and ready to…
Lucano Transports, the Oak Cliff bus company that stirred up such a fuss for Mayor Laura Miller last summer, is gone. Neighborhood homeowners, whose complaints about congestion and the stink of bus fumes prompted then-City Councilwoman Miller to try to shut down the Davis Street bus depot, should be happy…
Feeling SmallCity Hall is normal: In regard to the story by Jim Schutze titled “Laura and the Little People” (February 28): Oh, Jim, I think you are getting a little too paranoid. The way things work at City Hall is normal; Laura Miller does argue about a lot of issues,…
Charlotte Scott remembers being in the kitchen preparing for a barbecue when her husband’s stepfather, Kerry Quinney, walked in and scooped up her 3-year-old son Matthew for a visit to the tigers. “Kerry said, ‘OK, let’s go.’ I said, ‘What are you doing?'” Scott recalls. His adult daughter Nikki, who…
Royce Ring attributes much of his success to DNA. Not the genetic material he inherited from his parents, but a kind of sloganeering process he applies to all his restaurant projects. Ring says DNA (a strained acronym derived from “differentiators, nuances and attitudes”) is a process of reducing a restaurant…
Note to self: Federal appeals court decision in D.C. last week now allows for huge media companies like AOL Time Warner or Viacom or Knight Ridder to buy more media companies. Consider column on one of these companies buying Belo. Do research. Consider hiring research assistant. “Many of the most…
It’s time for another Buzz pop quiz. The topic this week is citizenship. Suppose some shady character offers to sell you a brand-new 40-inch television for 100 bucks as long as you aren’t too particular about where it came from. Do you: A) Ask him if he’ll take a check;…
BoomNew London tragedy: Carlton Stowers’ article about the New London school explosion (“‘Today, a Generation Died,'” February 21) that killed 294 people in that small East Texas town in 1937 was very moving. Like many Texans, I had forgotten about that terrible incident from our history. Thank you, Carlton, for…
