Leona Allen, deputy managing editor of The Dallas Morning News, who is black, has an interesting piece up on the paper’s opinion blog and also in the print edition yesterday, worrying about a fight between two top black Dallas officials last week. She wonders if black people in Dallas are especially…
Alexis Bortell stands behind the podium, atop a stepping stool, addressing a packed house at the Southwest Cannabis Conference & Expo in downtown Fort Worth. She doesn’t look like the face of decriminalization. She’s not even old enough to buy the glass pipes being sold just a few aisles over…
Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court is going to get a taste of the fight that’s been ringing in Texans’ ears for almost three years — the battle over the passage and implementation of House Bill 2, Texas’ latest in a long line of laws that have severely limited access to…
There is, as The Washington Post reported a couple of weeks ago, a new normal in the American housing market. Nationally, the homeownership rate has dropped by about five percentage points since peaking in 2005 just before the country’s real estate bubble burst. In the decade since, an increasingly large percentage…
Marco Rubio is late. The Florida senator, the guy best positioned to take a run at Donald Trump and save the GOP from itself, had a late night in Houston on Thursday, teaming up with Ted Cruz to take repeated swings at Trump in a debate at the University of…
Denton County Sheriff William B. Travis is losing endorsements faster than blood pouring from a bullet wound. A state representative, Denton county officials, mayors and mayors pro tem from several cities and a couple of Denton County constables have withdrawn their support, and the future of the sheriff’s campaign is…
Chrissy Perez wrestles with an American flag in the middle of a woods that borders a middle-class neighborhood in Denton. She’s been struggling with it for several minutes, trying to position it in front of her tent encampment, one that is not filled with trash like some of the other…
Donald Trump floated the proposal two-and-a-half months ago with all the careful deliberation of a Fox News comment section troll: Maybe, in the wake of husband-and-wife jihadists shooting up a holiday party in San Bernardino, California, the United States should just ban Muslims. The suggestion was so unapologetically xenophobic and so…
Former Texas A&M star quarterback and future vagabond Cleveland Browns-ex Johnny Manziel has, at least for the time being, dodged assault charges after being accused of rupturing his ex-girlfriend’s eardrum. Manziel’s case has been referred to a Dallas County grand jury by the Dallas Police. The investigation of the domestic…
There’s a lot of people and turf in North Texas, and that means a lot of politicians. We watch closely and it’s hard to keep track of ’em all. Here’s a field guide to those elected officials who, ostensibly, work tirelessly for you. Or whatever agenda keeps them in office. …
After issuing a warning to Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings yesterday, Exxxotica has sued the city of Dallas, Rawlings, City Manager A.C. Gonzalez, the director of Dallas Convention and Event Services Ron King and each of the seven members of the City Council who voted to ban the sex expo from…
To hear Texas’ longest-serving governor tell it, the single biggest reason he struggled so much to get his 2016 presidential campaign off the ground was the indictment that hung over his head for the 90 days or so he was in the race. He just couldn’t shake the stigma of…
The Standing Wave — the $4 million Trinity River white-water feature for kayakers that was deemed too dangerous to traverse almost as soon as it opened in 2011 — will stay in the river for now. The City Council voted against removing it Wednesday, choosing instead to weigh other options,…
Award-winning columnist Jim Schutze has been with the Dallas Observer since 1997. Here, he welcomes you to your new home with some solid advice. Some time back back there was a guy from Dallas, a native Texan, who married a French-Vietnamese woman. His sophisticated and reserved mother-in-law lived in Paris. Finally, she…
Rebecca Levin, a documentary filmmaker based in Paris, arrived in Tent City on a brisk Wednesday morning in early February with a spiral notebook and a knee-length maroon coat. She’d been assigned by a major French TV network, TF1, to shoot a film about inequality in Dallas, and the sprawling…
Like a lone rider on the horizon, a moment is arriving — right here, right now — when we might be able to do something truly revolutionary and life-changing for the city along the Trinity River. This grand opportunity will be easy to miss, however, because it is riding into…
Finally, Exxxotica CEO J Handy has fulfilled his promise of presenting a completed complaint to the city of Dallas over the City Council’s decision to ban his sex expo from the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center. Rather than dropping his suit directly on the city’s head by way of a…
Dwaine Caraway against John Wiley Price for the District 3 county commissioner seat was always going to be a fantastically entertaining election — as long as you’re the type who enjoys zero-sum political theater and doesn’t care too much about policy or people maintaining a minimal level of decorum. During…
There are a handful of things (death, dismemberment, Houston) that are worse than getting a traffic ticket. That said, getting a traffic ticket sucks. A lot. In Dallas, going one mile above the posted limit can cost a driver $201.10 in fines and fees, to say nothing of the headaches…
In a dispute over historic markers for segregated parks in Dallas, nobody seems able to hit the broad side of the barn. Of course, that’s because nobody will look at the barn. Last week a local foundation decided to duck. If they’re smart, they’re hiding in the barn. Dallas Morning…
Denton County Sheriff William B. Travis sits in his office, surrounded partially by confiscated weapons, clinging to a folder of old court documents. Inside are details of a case that has haunted him since the late ’90s and may well ruin his chances for re-election this March. He’s spent weeks…
Leonys Martin might not be a Ranger anymore — he was signed early in the 2015/2016 offseason by the Seattle Mariners — but the Cuban center fielder’s saga continues to be one of the most interesting things about the team. Friday morning Martin’s former agent Bart Hernandez was arrested on…
