It looks like Okon Metals, a fourth-generation-owned scrap recycling company, may have found safe haven after all. If nothing else, at least Okon’s proposed move to a site even more isolated than its current address on an island between downtown and the river will put it out of the prying…
Dear Mexican: You have defended illegal immigrants by arguing that they will do the jobs gabachos won’t do for the same wages. I agree. I have a white-collar job, so I’m totally content to benefit from the low prices brought about by an uneducated underclass unprotected by American labor laws,…
Wait. Take five. That’s all I’m asking. As we approach mosquito season in Dallas, the conversation about aerial spraying for West Nile once again begins to sound like free beer day at the ballpark. Last week The Dallas Morning News published a story with a triumphal tone saying, “Aerial spraying…
A new court order in the federal corruption probe into John Wiley Price tilts the case in the county commissioner’s favor, maybe just a little, maybe quite a lot. We all recall that in 2011 the FBI seized $229,590 from a safe in the Dallas County Commissioner’s Oak Cliff home…
She worked the room with a certain kind of magic. A blonde, tiny slip of a thing, she walked from table to table greeting each guest. Sometimes offering a small token, sometimes complimenting a patron, and generally just being effusively charming. I knew she didn’t own the place because she…
Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins started out with one question to answer. Now that he has defied a subpoena, he’s got at least a couple more. Last week Watkins was ordered to appear in the court of state District Judge Lena Levario to answer an accusation that he brought…
Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to…
Over the weekend I have been chatting with people who were all counting on their fingers. Does City Manager Mary Suhm take a powder over this month’s gas drilling revelations? No. They were counting their fingers secretly and spoke to me only off the record, because they know they can’t…
Every once in while I can’t resist inflaming the tri-cornered hat don’t-tread-on-me set out there by saying nice things about Detroit. Whenever I sing praises to my hometown of many yesteryears, I get such a nice bounce out of the people who need Detroit to serve as their 21st century…
If you recognize Kaia Bellanca Beggs, it’s most likely been from walking through the door at recent Deep Ellum casualty La Grange. Handling the door, and other La Grange duties, was just one of her jobs. Kaia is quite immersed in the local music community and has her own small…
Dear Mexican: I’m 39. My stepdad — who raised me — just died. This freed my mother to tell me (Stepdad always forbade it) that the man I thought was my biological father all this time was not. The man who IS my biological father is Mexican. What does finding…
Welcome to Alice Column, in which Alice Laussade writes stories about things on the same day of every week, making it a column. Got an idea for a column? Start your own blog and write it up, you lazy shit. Whoa, Valley View Mall. What happened? When I was a…
Who says wishes don’t come true? Last year, as I thought what could I do more of in this town in the new year, a few things came to mind. A Riff Raff live performance. Check, thank to March’s South by So What bill. A late-night coffee option where I…
Don’t scramble the county air force just yet. We need to do some serious reading and talking before the Dallas County does a repeat of last year’s aerial spraying for West Nile disease. I have a copy of the final Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on last year’s…
Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to…
Some stuff won’t spin. Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm is trying desperately to spin the story of her side-deal with Trinity East Energy. But that story is stuck in the ground like a tree. The Observer reported yesterday that Suhm signed an agreement five years ago with a gas drilling…
Those end of the weekend blues. As the sun sets on a Sunday night, a Super Bowl Sunday in this case, you take inventory of your successes and failures at the 48 hours of free time you may have been granted this week. Maybe there was a birthday, or a…
Welcome to Alice Column, in which Alice Laussade writes stories about things on the same day of every week, making it a column. Got an idea for a column? Start your own blog and write it up, you lazy shit. Oh awesome! You’re single on Valentine’s Day?! You are about…
Dear Mexican: The pinche Republicans are making a gigante ruido about their “Hispanic” senators in Congress. Wachale! Let’s call a pendejo a pendejo. Please discuss with tu audienca what Mexicans really think about Cubans in these Estados Unidos. El Güero Tejano (no Cubano) As a recent transplant from Miami to…
The Trinity toll road is undead. It walks in the night. Forget garlic. It is coming. It’s a fundamentally crazy idea. But it lives. If anything, the idea is protected by its basic craziness. It’s so crazy, it never quite comes together in people’s heads, and that’s how the powers…
Maybe Dallas has a shot at stepping out from under the redneck yoke of Austin after all. In today’s news we see that a Dallas judge, Eric Moye, has tossed out a lawsuit by the usury industry in which payday lenders claimed the city had no right to protect its…
This isn’t the first time the Observer has reached out to “VideoBob” Moseley. If memory serves, he popped up in the City of Ate blog when he took over Reno’s Grill for a spell, with a pretty visionary menu of barfood taste sensations, lots of self-designed movie props (Moseley does…
