Melissa Kingston worked late on Tuesday night, finally leaving her office at Friedman and Feiger at 8 p.m. or so. On her way home, she decided to make a quick detour to the Spec’s liquor store at Central and Walnut Hill. She had just pulled up to a stop sign…
Today marks the arrival of our new and improved Dallas Observer app, your pocket guide to the city and direct line to our always fair-and-balanced take on things. It features: – Event listings and concert calendars searchable by date, artist, neighborhood, venue or genre – Restaurant listings searchable by cuisine…
When Mike Edwards opened a Condom Sense at Parker and Independence in Plano last month, he touted it as a way to pump new life into an aging strip center and help reinvigorate local retail. But as CBS 11’s J.D. Miles so, um, artfully put it, neighbors and religious leaders…
Before City Manager Mary Suhm struck a secret side deal with natural gas producer Trinity East to drill on parkland in the Trinity River floodplain, there were two lesser-known gas wells situated in Irving that Dallas stood to collect royalty checks on. According to Railroad Commission of Texas documents, Irving,…
On Tuesday afternoon, shortly after hearing journalist Laura Ling address the Dallas chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women in Far North Dallas, Paul Quinn College President Michael Sorrell was pulled over by Dallas police. We know this because he Tweeted about it: Just got stopped by a Dallas…
Every week, managing editor Patrick Williams disappears into his office and reemerges a cranky, nicotine-addicted, third-person-referring superhero we like to call Buzz. Good news for those of you heartbroken when Big Tex, the 52-foot tall, 60-year-old icon of the State Fair of Texas, burned in a spectacular fire on the…
In 1985, the Dallas Museum of Art accepted one of the largest gifts in the institution’s history: more than 1,400 pieces by Van Gogh, Renoir, Cezanne, Degas, and others from the personal collection of Wendy Reves, collectively valued at more than $400 million. A quarter century later and four years…
Yesterday morning, a man walked into the Victoria’s Secret at Mockingbird Station, grabbed $2,000 worth of shirts, sweatshirts and sweatpants, then ran from the store into a waiting Dodge Durango. It was, the Morning News noted, the fourth such theft from the location in about as many months. They are…
This is day one of the Battle of Texas, which is mostly marked by a website launch. Battleground Texas, the Democratic Party’s efforts to shake the GOP hold on the state, officially starts today. The site comes with a nifty graphic showing a red Texas filling up with blue (it’s…
Pro wrestling and Glenn Beck are in a fight. Apparently this has been news for a few weeks, but we’ve only just learned about it, courtesy of Mediaite, who bring us the delightful video clip you see above, of WWE commentator Michael Cole trying his hardest to storm Glenn Beck’s…
Adrelos Sanchez Waters drew suspicion as soon as the woman at the baggage check-in counter in McAllen, Texas, all of seven miles from the Mexican border, checked in his two pieces of luggage. They were heavy, much too heavy to just contain clothes and toiletries. She contacted McAllen police, who…
In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court answered the question of whether the U.S. Constitution allows the Ten Commandments to be displayed on government property with a resounding It depends. In a pair of decisions handed down on the same day, the court ruled both that a Ten Commandments display at…
Five months ago, Dallas didn’t even register on Forbes rundown of U.S. metro areas with the rosiest employment prospects, losing out to San Jose and Austin but also to Birmingham, Charleston, and Lakeland, Florida. That was a prediction based on a survey of employers’ hiring predictions. Now that the magazine…
When city staff first unveiled their vision to transform Dallas into a “zero waste” city by 2040, there was immediate pushback. No one quibbled with the goal of waste reduction, but pretty much everyone quibbled with the way the city should get there. Environmentalists critiqued the plan for putting off…
Last Sunday, a man was out checking his hog traps in a pasture in rural Erath County, some 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth, when he stumbled upon 43-year-old Ricky Stephens. Stephens was alive, but barely. He had been severely beaten and was covered in severe burns, the Stephenville Empire-Tribune…
Dallas Republican state Senator John Carona wormed his way into beer lovers’ good graces two weeks ago when he cosponsored a quartet of bills aimed at making things easier on craft brewers in Texas. The legislation, which has the support of both an impressive roster of lawmakers from both sides…
The sequester, that “Damocles sword” hanging perilously above federal spending and set to fall March 1, was supposed to be an instrument so blunt, which would cut so deeply and indiscriminately, that the cost of not reaching a bipartisan compromise on debt reduction would become unfathomable. Now, of course, it’s…
In 2006, Kinky Friedman — singer, songwriter, satirist, head Jewboy in charge — ran as an Independent for governor of Texas. Although he ultimately received less than 13 percent of the vote, it was still a memorable campaign, featuring slogans like, “Why the Hell Not?” and “How Hard Could It…
It’s an impressive feat to show up in The New Yorker as a freshman Congressman, and kudos to Senator Ted Cruz for pulling it off. Cruz has been facing widespread criticism for, among other things, his aggressive questioning of Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for Defense Secretary. Jane Mayer joined…
Listeners tuning into ESPN Radio 103.3 this morning and expecting Ben Rogers and Jeff Wade’s irreverent local sports commentary were instead greeted with the nationally syndicated blather of Colin Cowherd. Hosts of the morning-drive Ben and Skin Show, Rogers and Wade Tweeted over the weekend that they didn’t re-sign with…
As Texas’ prison population has declined in recent years and criminal justice advocates and fiscal conservatives alike have questioned the wisdom of locking people up for minor, non-violent drug and property offenses, Dawson State Jail has become a prime target for closure. Last month, a couple dozen sentencing reform and…
Michelle Hickman, a Houston-area mother, became Internet famous in late 2011 when she was harassed by Target employees for publicly breastfeeding her infant. That happened despite Target’s breastfeeding-friendly corporate policy and a 18-year-old state law that gives women the right to nurse “in any location in which the mother is…
