As The American Independent reminds this morning, there have been myriad bills proposed in the Texas Legislature in recent years that would allow for the creation of so-called sobriety checkpoints. And last year’s S.B. 298 — submitted by state Sen. John Corona and co-authored by, among others, his colleague from…
Over the weekend, a local TV-bizzer sent to Unfair Park this TV Guide piece about the future of TNT’s Dallas reboot and whether or not it’ll include one J.R. Ewing. Late last week, there was a report that Larry Hagman was out on the Cynthia Cidre-penned relaunch — something to…
On the other side, the Dallas Mavericks square off against the worst Christmas song of all time. They do not win…
(With Richie Whitt on vacation for the next two weeks, Dallas Observer staff writer Sam Merten has graciously agreed to pitch in. Commenters, on your mark…) Long before the Cowboys’ playoff chances were officially toast, this season felt doomed from the beginning. The devastating 13-7 loss to the Redskins on…
A nuke-free Friend of Unfair Park forwards this morning this just-released add-em-up from Texans for Public Justice, which asks: Can anyone seriously believe Governor Rick Perry or his appointees on the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission are going to do a damned thing to stop Harold Simmons…
A week ago Sunday, the Dallas Police Department sent word that officers had lost James Huffer Jr., who was arrested earlier that morning near Cedar Springs and the Dallas North Tollway following a family violence call. Huffer, as you’ll recall, managed to steal a Dallas PD squad car while wearing…
The Dallas Police Department sends word this evening: The Humane Society of the United States shot some undercover video of what sounds like a mammoth cockfighting operation in Southeast Dallas — where, the release says, “cruel cockfights were reportedly occurring in a large run-down structure on a regular basis.” As…
A couple of years back, in his Echoes & Reverberations piece about the Longhorn, Jeff Liles ran the picture you see here — good God, that must have been quite the back-to-back. But that’s from January 1978. This week’s offering comes later, in February 1982, when Merle Haggard and the…
Ladies and gents, you may have noticed: We have a new commenting system. Sure, we’re going to miss the hell out of Captcha’s bizarre word combinations, and that hypnotic voice to soothe you with phrases like “booger humans” or “gladly tectonic.” Today, we’ve got something we think is more interesting:…
I said it was coming, and sure enough, it’s here: the new Unfair Park comments courtesy Disqus, which promises “a higher quality of conversations” (we’ll see about that). I know, I know — and just when you’d gotten used to Captcha, which has provided the Friends of Unfair Park with…
The boy and I were listening to Tom Waits’s rendition of “Somewhere” the other day — over and over and over again, my bad. Still. A personal favorite, has been for years. There’s a reason Stephen Colbert gushed over the Broadway great earlier this week — because there are few…
I’ve introduced the Friends of Unfair Park to Joe Manning before, but to refresh: He’s the Massachusetts historian who, from far away, has spent the better part of this year tracking down the descendants of the children captured in those Lewis Wickes Hine photos taken in Dallas in 1913, five…
OK, so Oak Cliff lawyer John Barr doesn’t want to be called the graffiti czar. Fine. Not the point. This is: Scott Henson, who serves Grits for Breakfast, penned an item this morning in which he writes that much of what Barr told Sam on Wednesday sounds pretty danged good…
Swear, this is the last item about the wet-dry legal fight you’ll read here for the rest of the year. (Maybe.)But yesterday, reps from the City Attorney’s Office, the attorneys fighting to overturn the results of the November 2 election allowing for the citywide sale of beer and wine and…
At present, the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau is HQ’d out of the Republic Center on N. St. Paul. But the city just sent word: The DCVB late yesterday signed a deal (amount undisclosed) with developer Jack Matthews to move into a yet-to-be constructed office complex next to the convention…
You remember Shannon DeMerse, right? No? She’s the former Ivy Jane employee who somehow managed to steal $1.9 million from Ivy Jane, the clothing company that, at the time, was owned by council member Dave Neumann and his wife Frances (though now it’s all Frances’s following the couple’s divorce). Anyway.Allen…
[Update: Cheryl Potashnik was given two years probation and has to pay $50,000 to the U.S. District Clerk within seven days. Brian was sentenced to 14 months in federal prison and will be on probation for two years following his release. He also was ordered to pay $1.25 million to…
The Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association just released its year-end best-of list, with David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s Facebook film The Social Network coming out on top — just as it had in the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, New York Film Critics Circle and National Board of Review polls…
To begin the day, some housekeeping …A happy ending to yesterday’s story about the kidnapping of Eileen Loskot: She was found dehydrated but otherwise unharmed in New Mexico, and one of the three young men involved has been arrested. Her husband is heading to Amarillo to get her. …Lee Harvey…
Worries about groundwater contamination from hydraulic fracturing around the Barnett Shale got a fresh wave of attention yesterday — first with a pair of federal suits filed in Dallas, and then with the Town of Flower Mound’s denial of a request to drill near to Grapevine Lake. Keystone Energy was…
On October 17, as the Texas Rangers were smack-dab in the middle of the American League Championship Series, The News ran a very nice story about Charles Wangner, who, more than most, knew what it was like to be a long-suffering fan of the ballclub. Wangner, you see, had worked…
Put down your Angry Birds Seasons, it’s time for the City Plan Commission public hearing! Today the big item on the agenda is the rezoning of Lower Greenville into a Planned Development District that would require businesses to obtain specific use permits if they want to remain open past midnight…
