Sean Anderson wanted to throw an intense, all-night rave featuring the pulsating electronic dance rhythms of techno music–plus his favorite DJs and friends. So last March, the 21-year-old promoter and turntable jockey rented the Forest, an old movie theater near Fair Park that regularly holds concerts ranging from rap to…
Channel 4 investigative reporter Becky Oliver makes it look easy. The ambush, that is. But ambushing somebody is harder than it looks, especially for a first-timer like myself and especially if the target is Becky Oliver. On paper, Oliver is the winner of countless awards for investigative reporting. On TV,…
Mike Carter Field sits off Front Street, just past the convention center and the rose garden. Across the way is the football field where Earl Campbell played during high school. Earl’s old haunt, much like Tyler, Texas, has seen better days, idling in a state of disrepair, a fading memory…
As a boy growing up in postwar Vietnam, Lai My Truong was different. At school in a peasant village near Ho Chi Minh City, teachers and other children harshly ridiculed him, causing him to drop out by the fourth grade to work in a rice field. Because of Lai My,…
It wasn’t as though she asked for much: a warm bed, a full belly, a squeaky chew toy. Of course, she had needs. What dog didn’t? But Missy the Chihuahua never complained. She had a good home, a big back yard and the unconditional love of her two parents–Karen and…
Administrators at Trinity Medical Center in Carrollton just wanted the grackles out of the pear trees. The sometimes annoyingly loud crowlike birds were defecating on the cars in the parking lot and sidewalks. It wasn’t a health issue; the falling poop was just a smelly nuisance and a mess, says…
Digging in: To Buzz, it doesn’t look like much–the tunnel on Good-Latimer Expressway on the northwest corner of Deep Ellum. It’s dim, the traffic lanes are narrow, and the mural art lining it…well, it may be good for all we know. It’s just hard to see it when you’re whizzing…
Vote Cheaters Keep reading: Basically, I think you guys are a bunch of knuckleheads, and then out comes an article like Jim Schutze’s piece on Dwaine Caraway’s run for a seat on the Grand City Council of Knuckleheads (“The Real Cheaters,” June 7). It’s what keeps me reading. Lee Fischer…
On a table inside the offices of the Latino media organization Grupo Vida, a modest shrine with candles is dedicated to a man named Arturo Partida. Two photos of Arturo stand next to each other. On the left side, he’s a teen-ager in a tuxedo who resembles a shaggy-haired Matthew…
“The murderer of Miss Florence Brown may be caught within the next five minutes, he may be arrested during the next six months; he may never be deprived of his liberty…” –The Daily Times Herald, 1913 The cemetery caretaker was at first reluctant, concerned about the disturbance he feared the…
NACOGDOCHES–Joe R. Lansdale’s days of busting his butt at the nearby aluminum-chair factory or toiling in the brain-baking heat of East Texas rose fields are far in the distance now, faded memories he resurrects only to assign to an occasional character in one of his novels or short stories. Gone…
Last November, inmate Erik Indian stood before the latest group of candidates to enter the InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI), the faith-based prison program operated at the Vance Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, just outside of Houston. “I have been here 14 months straight, and I have never…
Fighting fire: On June 5, a long-running lawsuit against the Dallas school district hit a wall. Now the people who filed it may have their backs against one. The case began March 10, 2000, after the school board voted 5-4 to hire a private company, Edison Schools, to run up…
Pave the Damn Street Forget those Calatrava bridges: What an interesting article about Dallas City Council members Elba Garcia, Laura Miller and Mitch Rasansky and the changing political landscape in Dallas (“Brave New City,” May 31). My analysis of Dallas politics is quite similar. I think most middle-class taxpayers are…
Moments before stepping to the podium in an august New Orleans courtroom, defense attorney Billy Ravkind jotted a few more notes on his yellow legal pad. The pad–and a plastic pen–were all Ravkind carried with him Tuesday while appearing before a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of…
The conference room at the Hyatt Regency was hot. The meet-your-new-bosses assembly had been called so hastily that the air conditioning hadn’t been turned on when the staffers of The Dallas Morning News filed in. Not that it mattered. The reporters and editors at the Morning News, where hope springs…
Too much fund?: In the just-trying-to-help department–the Rev. Zan Holmes, pastor of St. Luke “Community” Methodist Church, has expressed fervent hope that the perpetrators of a vandalism attack on his church (“Mystery of St. Luke,” May 17) will be apprehended, no matter who they may be. The need for the…
Bombs Away The good fight: Regarding your movie review “Bora! Bora! Bora!” (May 24). Number One: How should one make a movie about Pearl Harbor? Number Two: My dad was a Marine in World War II, and my mother was a teen-ager during the war years. Their view of the…
Jan Bynum stands at the center of her daughter’s room in Bynum’s Farmers Branch house and looks around. On one wall is a University of North Texas calendar from the 1997-1998 academic year. Other parts of the room are filled with her daughter’s furniture, makeup and knickknacks, much as the…
Ted Marules’ new bathroom is neither subtle nor cheap. “We had visions of grandeur,” he says of the $20,000 renovation to his Houston-area home. “We planned to have some wonderful moments in there.” Marules and his wife sprung for all the frills: special-order Spanish tile, marble floors, gold faucets and…
On a lonely industrial road in West Dallas, Bobbie Patience stood her ground for two years. A dogged organizer for the American Postal Workers Union, Patience was often a fixture outside the chain-link fence of Pat Salmon and Sons, one of the nation’s largest Postal Service contractors, waiting for truckers…
Several Dallas Observer staff writers were honored in recent journalism competitions. Jimmy Fowler has been named a finalist for the prestigious Livingston Award, which honors the work of young journalists. Fowler was cited for his June 22, 2000, feature story “Firestarter,” which chronicled his experiences as an eyewitness in a…
