Like I said one long month ago, the kick-off to CityLights 2011 was quite the spectacular-spectacular — though till I saw the freshly minted video above, I had no idea how spectacular. (Like, Vegas spectacular — like everything else of late in this town.) We arrived shortly after Santa zipped…
The real reason I wanted to talk to Dallas Independent School District board president Lew Blackburn last week was about the district’s search for a superintendent — specifically, why it’s expected to take so long and why the district appears to be behind its own schedule. Because according to a…
[Editor’s note: For those who might have forgotten, Michael Corcoran is formerly of the Austin American-Statesman and Dallas Morning News, a one-time Observer contributor and one of my favorite writers in the history of ink. This morning, he dispatches this preview of Saturday night’s Cowboys-Eagles match-up and what it could…
I got the word late Friday: the long-disputed Jose “Joe” May Elementary School, which the Dallas Independent School District had planned to build on Webb Chapel between Royal and Walnut Hill as part of its 2008 bond program, is dead. Far as the neighbors are concerned, it’s an early Christmas…
Colleen McCain Nelson’s doing her part to keep South Dallas clean, going so far as to take Mayor Mike out to an illegal trash dump and getting him to call it in after 10 days’ worth of morning-paper tsk-tsks couldn’t get the jobs done. To which Dallas City Hall says:…
Kim Jong Il will never get to see implementation of the Dallas Bike Plan; neither will Václav Havel. Whether you will remains to be seen: Last we looked it’s going to take 10 years for the city to roll out a maze of bike paths — despite what council members…
Since becoming Mayor, Mike Rawlings has been consistently passionate about a few key things: South Dallas, DISD, pizza, economic development, Halloween, ethics reform — not necessarily in that order. On Rawlings’s issues hit list, ethics reform is perhaps the most high-minded and difficult to pin down, even for the Ethics…
That record you see at right, signed by Warren Zevon, was given to me by Craig DePoi the night Warren played Club Dada — July 27, 1992, to be exact. I remember it like it was yesterday. Craig, then working behind the bar at Trees, knew of my fondness for…
A quick look-see reveals efforts to sell the 1964 Cadillac Hearse that transported President John Kennedy from Parkland Memorial Hospital to Love Field have failed at least once before — in 2007, when Arrdeen Vaughan, the Alvarado funeral-home owner who’d had it for decades, came up $100,000 of the million-dollar…
Back in June, the plot of land near the Cityplace DART station at Haskell and N. Central Expressway was a vacant lot with a big hole and a big plan. It would be the future site of a trolley turntable, a novelty attraction to be sure, but with the purpose…
Back in May, you may recall, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins and commissioners John Wiley Price and Maurine Dickey went before the media to deeply, sincerely and profoundly apologize to all those citizens who may have been evicted without a heads-up in recent years. After a five-month internal audit, the…
In recent days we’ve seen a video in which the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau sells the city to conventioneers and tourists, and a short film in which the Dallas Citizens Council sells the city to … um, the citizens council? But after the jump, here’s a real, honest-to-God pitch…
If you’re planning on traversing Oak Lawn somewhere between Cedar Springs and Maple, don’t. Pictured above is the sedan that plowed into a utility pole not long ago. As I just discovered during the drive into the office, Dallas Police have a huge swath of Oak Lawn completely cordoned off,…
Went to the city’s website to look for something — oh, what an exciting life it is — and came across this freshly minted item: “City clarifies Dallas Bike Plan implementation status and outlook.” Well, now. Looks like someone (cough) would like to rebut a law-practicing council member’s argument that…
Undaunted by last night’s cold drizzle, around 30 Dallas ISD teachers, custodial workers and other support employees held a quiet march and candlelight vigil outside 3700 Ross Avenue. The reason? DISD’s budget-cutting plan to outsource custodial services and HVAC repairs to a private company. Along with the 471 teachers who…
The Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association just dispatched its year-end best-of, the whole list of which follows. Given my retreat from film crit in recent months — though I did review We Bought a Zoo, opening Christmas week, and … not bad — I can’t argue with this year’s list…
Seems like forever ago, but it was just last month that Stephen Benavides spent a few days in county lock-up on charges of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest during that Occupy Dallas protest at the downtown Bank of America. But then, a few days and one YouTube clip…
Speaking of your deep-felt desire for retro arcading …Well, I was going to give Steve Brown the credit, till a quick search reveals it was former Observer-er Merritt Martin (sniff) who actually broke the news two days ago that Austin-based Kung Fu Saloon is due to take over the former…
Meanwhile, back at the courthouse, this just in: Don Carter, last seen receiving the Larry O’Brien trophy as the Dallas Mavericks’ original owner, has sued Tom Hicks over millions Carter says he’s sunk into real estate around the Rangers Ballpark in Arlington and Dr. Pepper Ballpark in Frisco — millions…
No doubt you’ve heard by now that former Dallas Cowboy Sam Hurd’s in federal custody, having been popped by authorities in Chicago last night for trying to buy “five to 10 kilograms of cocaine, at $25,000 per kilogram, and 1,000 pounds of marijuana, at $450 per pound, per week for…
You’ve probably heard that an international contingent of physicists in Switzerland is this close to identifying the Higgs boson, aka the “God particle.” Currently, the Higgs is the theoretical mechanism that explains how matter obtained mass following the Big Bang. The theory is that it imbued the basic building blocks…
Only yesterday we noted the Dallas Area Rapid Transit is ready to go on that final leg of the Orange Line that’ll connect with Terminal A at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The price tag’s steep: $149,750,000 for the third section of the Orange Line, from Belt Line Station to DFW…
