Lawrence McBride had reason to celebrate when he met James Halpin for dinner that spring night. With help from his pal Halpin, then chief executive of Dallas-based CompUSA Inc., McBride had just pitched a deal to expand the retail chain south of the border, a project he hoped would one…
Belo Corp. delivered historic preservationists a fait accomplis this week, quietly securing a permit to demolish a historic 10-story building in the West End and then announcing its intentions as the wrecking ball was being hoisted into place. “There’s nothing wrong with the building,” said Ron Emrich, a member of…
Welcome to Monday morning at the corner of Hermosa and Peavy. It’s a mess. Approach the ravaged intersection like a crime scene: There’s one deep wound along the southwest corner, a 3-foot-long, 18-inch-deep pothole half filled with water. There’s a collapsed square of temporary asphalt in the center of the…
Humorless: It’s not that Buzz is getting a big head or wishes to take credit–or blame–where none is due, but we can’t help but feel a little responsible for some of the foulmouthed picketers who gathered outside City Councilwoman Laura Miller’s house twice this week. Last week, writing about how…
A Word From Our Sponsor Right from wrong: The article (“Homefryin’ with Fred Baron”) published last week has so many false statements that I can’t respond to them all in 300 words or less. But an example is illustrative. The Observer trusted information delivered by Ken Treuter. Yet, only six…
“…Persons of humanitarian and reformist disposition often go…to the Balkan peninsula to see who was in fact ill-treating whom…all came back with a pet Balkan people established in their hearts as suffering and innocent, eternally the massacre and never the massacrer.” –Rebecca West in “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon” (1938)…
Sticks and stones: Give ol’ Al Lipscomb credit. The former city councilman may have been on the take, but at least he was always polite, a gentleman, even on his way to the pokey. Apparently he didn’t pass his good manners on to his progeny. Testifying before the Dallas City…
Alex Ramos wants to stop the “shafting” of his community. The long-time resident of Old East Dallas’ Fitzhugh-Capitol neighborhood, who grew up and now lives here with his wife and 6-year-old son, is incensed over 212 public housing units being built near his home by the Dallas Housing Authority (DHA)…
Paul Kerr knows how to assemble a big crowd. As a longtime activist and director of the Center for Human Rights, a Dallas-based immigration advocacy group, he’s credited with organizing the largest street demonstration in Dallas history–a fact he admits has received little circulation outside Spanish-language media. With help from…
Give Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith credit for being honest. “In some quarters, we’ve become a coaster for the leisure class,” he says. Issues of TM, Smith rightly fears, were being bought because of the magazine’s reputation within an aging demographic, not because the publication was working its hardest to…
Perhaps you remember this cheating scandal. Three and half years ago, a junior lawyer from Dallas-based Baron & Budd accidentally handed an opposing lawyer an internal memo that appeared to coach clients to lie about central facts in asbestos liability cases. “With this document, you could almost go down the…
Um, Thanks? Wine and roses: Please give Christine Biederman a dozen roses, a gold star, a bottle of champagne and any other praise we can think of. Her March 15 column “Still Wannabe” was perhaps the most courageous, individualistic, intelligent, perceptive and commendable column on today’s Dallas art scene that…
The winds are changing, and George McMahon can feel it in his bones. His ashen face takes on a pained expression as he peers out the window of his Lake Palestine home, watching the tops of the tall pines bend to the bluster of an approaching rainstorm. It’s not as…
For Cheryl Bass, it all started when she and her husband, Robert, sat down to sign papers for their new house. They were first-time homebuyers, and they had patiently waited about six months for construction on their nearly $200,000 dwelling to be done. The house was beautiful, and they were…
Far from changing his tune suddenly in the last two weeks to accuse the Dallas police chief of wrongdoing, the main witness against the chief has steadfastly told authorities the same story in detail and under oath for more than a year, a legal deposition shows. Dallas police Lt. William…
Java jive: It was a small protest–one 19-year-old girl standing outside a Dallas Starbucks on Tuesday to object to the coffeehouse corporation’s sale of milk products from cows treated with a bioengineered hormone and food and beverages containing genetically modified ingredients. Who says kids today aren’t politically active? The girl,…
On the Money Whose community of interest?: Jim, I agree on one of your points in “Crocodile Tears” (March 8). Increased pay for the city council is a must. We are still probably the largest municipality in the country with a weak mayor/strong city manager form of government. What I…
PORT CHARLOTTE, Florida–It’s early morning in Charlotte County. A brilliant Florida sun peaks from atop the stadium’s right-field grandstand, causing rows of empty, metal bleachers to glisten. The temperature creeps toward 70 degrees. The Executive Office, which lies adjacent to the Texas bullpen, and the team’s indoor batting cages, which…
Everything was dark. Her eyes. Her clothes. The very core of her being. The psychiatrist asked how she felt. “That’s the thing,” said Lauri Sandoval, scrunching her face. “I don’t feel.” That numbness. Sandoval knew its source: the depression that had been her life’s shadow and had led to two…
When the state of Texas in July 1999 unveiled NorthSTAR, an experimental project in which two managed-care companies were hired to deliver health care to indigent mentally ill and chemically dependent people living in Dallas and six surrounding counties, its critics feared the worst: Because of a historical lack of…
Jeanette Lee points to the pepper spray on her key chain lying on the table at St. Luke’s Love Field United Methodist Church. “I have one on each key chain, and I have an authentic police whistle,” she says. “Once I found a bullet in here, but I don’t know…
He wears short shorts: Look, you gearheads can have your Palm Pilot VII, your Franklin Planners, and all the other fancy-pants scheduling systems you can find. Buzz keeps track of appointments the old-fashioned way–by writing them down on a calendar featuring a half-naked Dallas County court commissioner. What? You’ve never…
