This is what it sounds like when a diesel-powered big rig hits the brakes — or, more to the point, the compressed engine brakes that release compressed air stored in the exhaust valves to slow down the vehicle. Got that? No? Try this, then. Or: The Straight Dope! Or maybe…
We don’t need lawyer Steven Riznyk to tell us that the immigration laws in the United States are complex and convoluted, but in stating the obvious, he’s also offering a road map for those those in need with 50 bucks and five free hours. Riznyk, who splits time between his…
Every now and then Friend of Unfair Park PeterK will send me the head-up that someone’s selling on eBay photos from the ’36 Texas Centennial Exposition at Fair Park. Till now, the best set so far was a collection of John Sirigo originals, which started out at $9.99 and, turns…
Yesterday, legendary local video gamer Ben Gold began writing for Unfair Park about his return to Ottumwa, Iowa, home of the Twin Galaxies arcade and the place where, tomorrow night, he will be among the first class inducted into the International Video Game Hall of Fame. In today’s installment, Ben…
After “thousands of hours of discussion and debate,” according to architect Rick Garza, head of the Bishop/Davis Land Use and Zoning Study steering committee, the Dallas City Council will finally vote on the plan Wednesday. Bob Stimson, the former city council member who’s now president of the Oak Cliff Chamber…
We can’t all fly with small children or require special assistance at the gate, but for the last few years, thanks to Neville Aga and his website CheckinSooner.com, we’ve been able to bounce to the general boarding zone of our dreams — for the low, low annual price of $79…
[Update Monday, August 9: The billboard was removed today.]One week ago today we introduced you to the latest downtown Dallas attraction — that Clear Channel billboard that damn near touches the Woodall Rodgers exit that dumps into northbound Stemmons. And while the city said on Monday, well, it appears to…
One week ago today the Texas Education Agency sent word: With significant help from the state, the Dallas Independent School District racked up 63 exemplary schools, while several high schools long on the academically unacceptable list finally get a reprieve. Not all was well, as dropout and completion rates knocked…
Late last night, the missive you see below — in which Dallas County Commissioner Ken Mayfield offers to pitch in $10 mil for that Oak Cliff-to-downtown streetcar line — appeared in the Unfair Park in-box. Mayfield tells Mike Eastland, executive director of the North Central Texas Council of Governments, that…
I guess this is the last time we’ll be running this picture of Tom Hicks in his Rangers cap noshing on a hot dog. But this certainly isn’t the last time we’ll hear from Hicks — he’s still a long way from dispensing with his sports teams, as the Dallas…
As we outlined in last week’s paper version of Unfair Park, the lenders owed approximately $600 million from the default of HSG Sports Group’s loans tied to the Texas Rangers and Dallas Stars had been pissed that around $75 million of the pre-auction bid by the Greenberg-Ryan group would have…
A good Friend of Unfair Park who recalls that creepy Dallas County Sheriff’s Department Squad Car Dashcam video sends along this freshly posted what-the-what: “Sequential Circuits,” described as “a camera mounted on a police helicopter monitored the highways of Dallas” in which we see …”an ambulation of a motorcyclist constantly…
For a guy coping with the dismissal of his long-running challenge to the city’s bike helmet law, Paul Woodfield sounded in awfully good spirits this morning when I reached him by phone.Could’ve had something to do with the 160-mile bike ride through Washington State from which he and his wife…
So, fake pot’s on the fast track to becoming illegal in the city of Dallas — probably within the next couple of weeks, after the city council votes to make it a punishable-with-a-$2,000-fine misdemeanor on Wednesday. But what about making the real thing legal? That’s what Stephen Betzen’s pushing for,…
Landlocked we are, but at 7 tonight at the Dallas Museum of Art, there’ll be a whole lotta surfin’ going on. Continuing the summer-long series of free Thursday screenings of movies set on beaches, DMA and the Dallas Film Society present director Dana Brown’s 2003 totally tubular surfing documentary Step…
No doubt you recall the brouhaha in June over Park and Recreation’s proposal to ask voters if it’d be OK to maybe, some day, sell Samuell Farm and Samuell New Hope Park, neither of which the city has dough enough to tend to. Long story short: The Texas Attorney General’s…
Kinda sorry that I’m in San Antonio covering Dallas Cowboys’ training camp because what happened yesterday in a Fort Worth courtroom was one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments: A baseball team sold via auction. And billionaire Mark Cuban losing a money war. After almost 16 hours of contentious, cuss-filled bidding, the…
Early last week I told you about 43-year-old Ben Gold, who, back when we were kids, was better known as “B-E-N” amongst the video-gamers who hung out at local arcades — like the late-great Game Zone at Preston Road and LBJ Freeway or TILT at Prestonwood Town Center — and…
Back in June, Patrick told you about Paul Woodfield, the Southwest Airlines dispatcher who’s been engaged in a lengthy legal battle with the city over its bike-helmet ordinance — which Woodfield insists isn’t enforceable, since it doesn’t jibe with any existing state law. Woodfield, who’s been ticketed more than once…
Perhaps you saw: Valley View Center has a new owner now, Miami-based LNR Property Corporation — well, actually, its subsidiary LNR Partners, the very same company trying to sell off the former First National on Elm Street downtown, amongst other local real estate. Dallas County deed records show LNR took…
10. Linebacker Anthony Spencer missed practice after getting his foot stepped on in Wednesday’s warm-ups, but it’s a day-to-day thing. No biggie. Second-year player Victor Butler took his place and didn’t look out of place at all. 9. Rough day for the offense. Tony Romo was harassed into several bad throws…
Rarely has a pitcher with only one victory in his first five starts as a Texas Rangers pitcher caused such a positive stir in Arlington. But make no mistake: Cliff Lee is about to make all sorts of history. Mainly, come October he’ll pitch Game 1 of an American League…
