Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings: Fix I-345 First, Talk About Teardown Later

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings is still officially on the fence about tearing down I-345, the two-mile stretch of freeway between downtown and Deep Ellum. He’s spent the last several months meeting with, in his words, “local business leaders, concerned citizens and the Texas Department of Transportation.” Even after meeting Tuesday…

Rangers Fans Honor Fallen Firefighter With Impressive Beeramid

You’ll remember Shannon Stone as the 39-year-old Brownwood firefighter and father who tumbled to his death while reaching for a ball during a July 2011 Rangers game. Kind of hard to forget. He and his 6-year-old son, Cooper, are immortalized in bronze outside Rangers ballpark. A fitting tribute, the two-year-old…

Southern Dallas Is Getting its First Dog Park

It’s kind of crazy that Oak Cliff doesn’t have a permanent dog park. There are more than enough hipsters there to support one, what with their dual love of rescue dogs and community gathering spots. Way more, certainly, than Far North Dallas, which boasts Dallas’ two newest dog parks. That’s…

Live Blog – Phillies 14 Rangers 10

Hello everybody, from The Ballpark With the New Name. We’re here at Rangers Opening Day, and will be documenting the thrills, the spills, and the silliness. Apologies for any mistakes – your live blogger is British, and thus totally unfit to document America’s national pastime, no matter how much he…

Your 2014 Texas Rangers Nicknames

Our 2013 Best of Dallas award winner, and Observer writer, Michael “Grubes” Gruber, is renowned for nicknaming Rangers players. In fact, if you follow him on Twitter (@tweetgrubes) like thousands of other people do, then his Diamond Tweets covering the Rangers games are largely incomprehensible without extensive knowledge of the…

Texas Won’t Have to Identify Its Execution-Drug Supplier After All

The last time the Texas Department of Criminal Justice secured a cache of pentobarbital, the drug it uses to execute prisoners, the Houston-area compounding pharmacy that supplied it had second thoughts. “[I]t was my belief that this information would be kept on the ‘down low,’ and that it was unlikely…

Dallas 2014 Mosquito Plan Lazily Defends Controversial Adulticide

Dallas thinks it’s really great that some of you people are interested in environmental bullshit. That’s the clear message we’re getting from the city’s 2014 Mosquito Plan, a report that makes a few lazy attempts to appease the environmental folks who have argued that Dallas’ current mosquito-killing methods are bad…

Dallas’ Plastic Bag Fee Will Bring Dire Consequences, Kroger Warns

If the Dallas City Council thought its baby-splitting compromise on single-use shopping bags (a $.05 cent fee, not a ban) could stave off the bagpocalypse of free market prophecy, they were sorely mistaken. As Kroger rep Gary Huddleston eagerly explained to WFAA on Thursday, the consequences once the new ordinance…