Gazing south from the upper floors of City Hall, the first thing you’ll probably notice is the shell of the old Plaza Hotel rising 12 stories just across Interstate 30. The second thing you notice is how ugly it is. The beige monolith was charmless when it opened as a…
Saturday, The New York Times reported that Chinese real estate investors, frustrated with prices and a lack of available property in areas in which they typically invest, are turning their eyes to the United States’ interior. Specifically, they’re looking at Corinth, of all places. Zhang Long, a Beijing businessman, is…
We spoke here yesterday about really big really tough issues – education, mostly — and whether anybody has the stomach or the stamina to keep working on them. My own personal fallback position usually is to hope somebody else does. So today another one: the chronically homeless mentally ill. Between…
The biggest problem facing the city of Dallas isn’t Tony Romo’s left clavicle. It’s not the Trinity toll road. It might not even be, despite a compelling case that can be made for it, the city’s crumbling infrastructure. The biggest problem facing the city is a massive looming shortfall in…
Dallas attorney and City Plan Commissioner Bobby Abtahi had a bumpy trip home from New York City Monday afternoon. He arrived to his gate at LaGuardia on time, check in to his Virgin America flight and stood in the corner of the boarding area with his headphones on, waiting to…
For the briefest of moments over the weekend, it seemed that Ted Cruz might show a little humanity when it came to assessing the shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic that left three people dead. “We don’t know … what those motives were, but whatever they were, it’s unacceptable,…
The hardest thing about talking to Roger Stone about his latest book, The Clintons’ War on Women, is figuring out how to write about anything that’s in the book. The stuff that the ex-Richard Nixon aide and all purpose Republican campaign operative has come up with is so inflammatory and insubstantially…
Every so often, city officials descend on a particularly dismal corner of southern Dallas, say a few words about the neighborhood’s bright future and then gaze appreciatively while hulking construction equipment tears apart a decrepit house or apartment complex as TV cameras roll. It’s an attention-grabbing and even useful spectacle. Far…
Back in 1977, ExxonMobil’s senior scientist told the company’s management committee that humans are probably causing the planet to warm through all our burning of fossil fuels. Months later, Exxon launched a massive program to further examine the link, research that included spending over $1 million on a tanker that could…
Thankful is what I am. But being thankful always worries me. Maybe something terrible is about to happen. I am truly thankful that Dallas right now is pretty much at the forefront of the national school reform movement because of its comprehensive merit pay system for teachers. The Dallas Independent…
It was fitting, the way the 2015 Cowboys were taken out behind the barn and put out of their misery by the Carolina Panthers, who administered a 33-14. The team that dumped Greg Hardy after he was convicted for beating his ex-girlfriend took out the team that took Hardy on…
Every year, sometime around Thanksgiving, local media will trot out a list or two celebrating the Cowboys’ Thanksgiving successes. While remembering Clint Longley’s “mad bomber” game or Jason Garrett’s win against the Packers in 1994 subbing for an injured Troy Aikman is fun, we’re not here to do that. In…
Note: Gavin Cleaver, the Observer’s former web editor and acolyte in the Church of Pete Delkus, WFAA weather god, had to leave us and return to his home in England last year. We miss his funny accent, his terrible taste in barbecue, his adorable insistence that soccer is a spectator…
Crime and more cops in the Oak Lawn neighborhood weren’t the only things on the minds of demonstrators who rallied outside City Hall this weekend. Somewhere near the end of the gathering in front of Dallas police headquarters, the demonstrators, there to protest 12 violent attacks near the Cedar Springs…
Last year, flying out of Love Field during Thanksgiving week was a disaster. Before most people were settling down to dinner Thursday, each of the airport’s 4,000 parking spaces had been filled, leaving many passengers hopelessly circling the airport or heading home to take DART back to the airport. This…
Oops. Caught myself again. Hate that. Just yesterday I wrote about brave people who face down mobs, reaching all the way back to Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn for a case study (Colonel Sherburn, Chapter 22.) But then I’m sitting at my desk counting dust motes, and I think, “Wait, before…
Late Sunday night, The Dallas Morning News posted a banal piece announcing that Mayor Mike Rawlings had raised $30.5 million for a southern Dallas investment fund, a cornerstone of his GrowSouth initiative. The most controversial thing in the article was that the fund — which doesn’t involve tax money, just the…
Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas did what’s been inevitable for a couple of weeks and sued the state of Texas in federal court Monday. The suit comes after Governor Greg Abbott and officials at the Texas Office of the Inspector General said in October that they would stop any Planned…
Dorothy Newton knew she and her unborn child were going to die. The sense of doom forced a frigid clarity of mind. So first, she stopped at her best friend’s house and drafted a letter to secret away, to open in the event of her murder. It named her killer…
Lawyers for the family of Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old kid who made the clock, have notified the school district and city government in suburban Irving (see below) that the family intends to file civil rights lawsuits if they don’t get $15 million in damages. Hold your breath for one second…
Although you are already well aware, either because you are one of the 66 percent of Dallasites who rent your home or because you’ve wondered at the bewildering number of luxury apartments sprouting up around the city’s core, the point bears repeating: The rent is too damn high. This is true…
Generally speaking, zoos are in the business of selling tickets. If they can help conserve and protect the animals they display along the way, that’s nice too, but to exist, zoos need to put on a show, and that means they need animals to fill what is, let’s be honest,…
