For the past three years or so, the city has been actively seeking a private developer to take the Farmers Market off its hands. It finally found one last summer, but details were kept tightly under wraps as a final deal was hashed out. Those details were released, very quietly,…
George Martin and Marty Harrell used to be friends. They live 800 miles apart but swim in the same professional circles, the former heading Corsicana-based Navarro Pecan Company, one of the world’s largest pecan-processing companies, and the latter in charge of the Harrell Nut Company, which shells and sells pecans…
Last week, Unfair Park got its hands on long-hidden proof of what a lot of people already suspected: that Mary Suhm had cut a secret deal to help Trinity East Energy drill on city parkland while telling the City Council the exact opposite. Suhm’s initial response was to downplay the…
Abe Spear came to Dallas on September 20 to back Nashville musician Josh Thompson at a gig at Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill. The 30-year-old Spear is a veteran banjo player who’d tasted modest success as part of the bluegrass group King Wilkie before joining up with…
If there is one thing I hate, it’s talking about morality with people who agree with me. But this has been one of those weeks. I’m your basic anti-gas-and-oil-fracking-in-parks type of guy. Call me soft. I’ve just always been against major petro-chemical operations where the children play. So generally speaking…
The way she tells it on her website, Delsa Thomas decided to launch her own investment firm after Citi Smith Barney, where she worked, merged with Morgan Stanley. She left in February 2011, taking a decade’s worth of experience as a stockbroker and financial advisor to her new outfit, The…
In October, Turkish developer Mike Sarimsakci unveiled his plan to transform the long-vacant Butler Brothers Building at 500 S. Ervay St., caddy-corner to the library and directly across the street from City Hall, into a large mixed-use development complete with 250 apartments, a 200-room Hilton hotel and 25,000 square feet…
Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration released a list of all the city and state entities who have applied for a license to fly unmanned aerial drones. That list was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF), an organization that champions…
At 8:15 last night, Uthit Worawut and a friend were walking toward DART’s Hatcher Station in South Dallas when police say Traymill Cherry walked up to them pointing a .40-caliber handgun. Worawut, whose is listed on police reports as a resident of The Bridge, was carrying $230 cash, but Cherry…
Melba Ketchum has by now established herself as a voice in the scientific wilderness, proclaiming, loudly and often, that Bigfoot is real. That role was cemented in November when Dr. Ketchum — she’s a Nacodoches veterinarian-turned DNA researcher — announced that her “Sasquatch genome study” had found conclusive evidence that…
Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins was scheduled to testify this morning at a hearing on whether he abused his office to perform a favor for a political donor. As you know by now, he didn’t show up, explaining through a proxy that, though he was at work, he was…
When we last left the beleaguered members of the City Plan Commission, they were opting to once again delay a vote on energy company Trinity East’s application to drill for natural gas in the floodplain along the Trinity River. This morning, the CPC was subjected to a four-hour workshop on…
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. This week, Buzz has a familiar villain in his sights. Oh, man, Buzz is so depissed©. No, that’s not a typo. It’s our own neologism, a combination of…
A hearing to determine if Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins committed prosecutorial misconduct was postponed today after Watkins refused to appear in court. The allegations were brought by attorneys of Al Hill III, who was charged with mortgage fraud by the DA’s office shortly before a legal dispute with…
Soon, travelers stranded at DFW Airport be forced to pretzel themselves on uncomfortable seats or sneak away to an isolated corner of carpet for a few minutes of shuteye. That’s because the airport is getting nap rooms. The rooms — more accurately, a nap hotel — are planned by Minute…
In the early hours of November 16, 2012, Leroy Dukes was making his nightly rounds as part of the nighttime custodial crew cleaning American First National Bank in Arlington when he glanced inside one of the trash cans behind the teller counter. There, according to a criminal complaint filed recently…
It was intended as a creative way of showing seventh grade history students at Schrade Middle School in Rowlett how cowboys would corral wayward steers during cattle drives. But somehow, astonishingly, the teacher’s decision to actually lasso his students ended badly. It went like this, according to a WFAA report…
Last month’s unveiling of American Airlines’ new logo and livery (er, paint job) was a prelude to this: the long-awaited, full-blown merger with US Airways. The airlines are making it official this morning after their respective boards approved the $11 billion deal yesterday. US Airways CEO Doug Parker will head…
Those of us who were not born rich — and those who were born rich but cursed with a work ethic anyway — have a sort of ongoing assumption about what it takes to survive. We may believe that if our resources ever dip below a certain line, we may…
It’s been a decade since the Supreme Court, in Lawrence v. Texas, struck down the state’s law banning sodomy and “homosexual conduct” as an unconstitutional violation of privacy. Texas has since stopped enforcing the law, but not everyone got the memo. In 2009, two men were kicked out of an…
Last October, in a particularly brutal and senseless act of violence, Derrick Birdow crashed a Mercury Grand Marquis through the side of Greater Sweethome Missionary Baptist Church and proceeded to fatally bludgeon its 53-year-old pastor, the Reverend Danny Kirk Sr., with an electric guitar. Police weren’t sure why Birdow murdered…
The current iteration of the debate began when Larry McMurtry, writing in Texas Monthly, ranked Dallas well below Fort Worth among Texas cities, dismissing it as “a second-rate city that wishes it were first-rate.” That sentiment wasn’t particularly surprising. Anyone who’s read his books knows that McMurtry’s sensibilities tend more…
