Only one month after Stephen Elsaesser accepted the position of president of the board of the Deep Ellum Center for the Arts, he found himself helping his fellow board members draft a statement announcing the center’s impending closure. At the troubled DECA’s regular monthly board meeting May 3, Elsaesser says…
Mr. Conflict Give credit to Don Venable, the gadfly-turned-trustee-turned-gadfly again. He may have been out of public service for a while, but the former school board member still knows how to toss out a good sound bite. Venable, who is suing the Dallas Independent School District to block its plan…
It couldn’t get worse. No way. Even if it did, so what, he could take it. Kevin McCarthy — longtime Dallas talk-radio host, winner of five Katie awards from the Press Club of Dallas, known for his wit and humor and interviewing style not to mention his smooth-voiced wooing of…
Kevin Cubed An addendum to the Kevin McCarthy column you have/will/may slog through (see big-ass story, this page): In an e-mail exchange, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban says that my e-mail requesting comment from him was the first time he’d heard that his firing of McCarthy helped contribute to his…
Man with a mission Jonathan Fox, the reporter who wrote “Epistle to the Jews” (May 4), was very courteous and is obviously very competent as a journalist. In fact, I found the article to be extremely well-written. Nevertheless, the article as edited is not without problems. It didn’t bother me…
Randy and Sandy Magg’s retirement party was not supposed to be controversial. The husband and wife, both police officers, had logged a combined 50 years of public service, and to honor them, their bosses at the Dallas Police Department planned a party for the first week in April. At the…
The call to a Dallas evangelist came from Cincinnati, Ohio. On the line was a Jewish man seeking spiritual answers — of the Christian variety. The Reverend Jim Sibley, a missionary for the Southern Baptists’ North American Mission Board, took the call from the Hebrew soul searcher, who got Sibley’s…
Eileen Sanchez cradles her 2-year-old son in one arm and her set of blueprints in the other. “This was going to be our dream home,” she says, unrolling the plans. Unfurled, the blueprints reveal a two-story house with four bedrooms and a three-car garage. Sanchez envisioned each of her three…
East Dallas’ second-story men, smash-and-grab specialists, and plain old-fashioned burglars can breathe easier now. Willetta Stellmacher has hung up her little pearl-handled .25. For 26 years, until her retirement earlier this year at age 83, Stellmacher reigned over The Square apartments with a gun, a rigid — some would say…
Settling himself into the witness stand in the Dallas County courtroom, burly and bearded Johnny Bonds makes no attempt to hide his ear-to-ear grin as he catches the blank gaze of defendant Michael Lee Davis. Technically, Bonds is present only to provide a judge with his insights into a man…
Taking sides We suppose it might be wrong, ethically speaking, for a newspaper person to help raise money for one side in a heated political issue. But when the issue is raising money to help keep public swimming pools open for poor kids, who in their right minds could be…
There’s nothing unusual about the small brick house on Legend Drive. Nothing striking or noteworthy, except its owner, M.T. A’Vant, the Garland man once widely regarded by the press as a prominent black militant. His place looks just like the next house; the trimmed lawn blending into a suburban scene…
Dale Wamstad, operator and manager of the enormous III Forks restaurant in North Dallas, has sued the Dallas Observer and staff writer Mark Stuertz for libel. In his suit, filed last month, Wamstad claims that the Observer’s March 16 cover story, “Family man,” misrepresented Wamstad’s relationship with his ex-wife Lena…
Rock bottom Jim Schutze’s article regarding the closing of the pool at Arcadia Park (“The shallow end,” April 27) hit home with me like no other. Long have I spoken to others outside this city about the ills that are inflicted on it by a city council with a personal…
Studio portraits of the mayor and 13 council members decorate a side wall in the cavernous, glass-and-concrete atrium at Dallas City Hall. There should be 14 council photos, but behind a strategically placed fig tree, there’s only an empty spot where the smile of District 8’s longtime councilman, Al Lipscomb,…
With Christmas just 10 days away, the petite blonde sat at her computer screen, engaged in her night-owl habit of checking e-mails and responding to chat-room questions posed by a growing collection of fans she’d never expected to have. True-crime author Barbara Davis, at 49 a latecomer to her profession,…
WACO — Standing at the top of the slight rise called Mount Carmel, it is almost impossible to imagine a tank charging up its slope. The windswept hill grants a serene view of the rugged landscape, the normally quiet Double E Ranch Road, and two small ponds so tranquil, they…
Lewis Wood was — and is — a hell of a fighter. A hard-hitting bruiser from Houston, his combination of stone hands and quick feet saw him rise in the ranks of the amateur boxing world. In June 1992, many thought he was bound for the Olympics, save for a…
All he wants to do is sue OK, let’s be up-front. Buzz is not what you would call a fan of The Eagles. In our cosmology, hell’s radio station plays only two songs: “Hotel California” and “Lyin’ Eyes.” Given a choice between hearing them perform a reunion concert or getting…
Lee Hancock was flushed and furious as she stomped through the Jasper courthouse early last year. The Dallas Morning News reporter, in Jasper to cover the murder trial of one of the young racists who dragged a black man to his death, had just come from a meeting with the…
I love boldfacing random words Nationally syndicated cartoonist Ted Rall wasn’t talking about the Fort Worth Star-Telegram when he recently said, “Daily newspapers [are] totally wussified,” but he might as well have been. Rall made the point that “Daily newspapers are really chickenshit. They live in dire fear of cancellations…
Dallas Observer writers — an eclectic bunch themselves — recently won honors from various organizations for reporting on issues ranging from thuggishness in education to slumlords, criminal injustice, and hurricane victims. Observer columnist Jim Schutze won the Texas State Teachers Association’s School Bell Award for education reporting for “Da thug,”…
