At about 4 a.m. on March 4, Dallas police responded to a 911 hang-up call at an apartment complex in Lake Highlands. They found the front door ajar and inside, on the floor of the bedroom, the dead body of 43-year-old Gary Hashaway. He had been strangled. Two days later,…
Elected officials, as a rule, should not call a detractor, no matter how vicious, a “jailhouse bitch,” but the typically profane and intermittently profound John Wiley Price had his reasons. The object of his anger, Darryl Blair, had torn the longtime Dallas County commissioner into a million little pieces in…
Last fall, the Dallas Observer ran a cover story (“Money for Nothing,” November 17) about the South Dallas/Fair Park Trust Fund’s sordid history of making lousy loans to business owners who wind up making busy work for folks in the City Attorney’s Office. Since the fund’s inception in 1988, the…
Trifecta: First the FBI comes snooping around City Hall, looking for council members and others sharing wallets and cars with real-estate developers. Then the Department of Justice starts banging cell doors at the Dallas County Jail to find out whether the county’s giving its prisoners proper treatment. Now, it seems,…
Defiling the Star T.O. means B.S.: Magnificent article (“Eyes Wide Shut,” by Richie Whitt, March 23). A friend asked me how I felt about the T.O. signing. I simply said, “Winning has become more important than honor.” Yes, I am still a Cowboys fan, but I will NEVER be a…
For once, Wednesday night is completely and totally loaded with quality concerts. Three great shows were already previewed in last week’s music section: Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, Percee P and some old Dinosaurs. Jenny Lewis is sold out (though I just got confirmation that 15 tickets will be…
Courtesy of David Border Alex Magocsi behind the bar at Club Dada, circa 1990 Sorta drummer Trey Carmichael just e-mailed with some sad news: On Friday, former Dallas Observer music editor Alex Magocsi was found dead in New Mexico, where he had lived since leaving Dallas in about 1997. He…
Calhoun (Fort Worth): In February, I wandered into Bass Propulsion Labs in Dallas to visit its house producers; I had time to kill and was trolling for ideas for Unfair Park entries (the blog would launch a few weeks later). Nobody answered the door, so I let myself in, and…
I used to think that Dallas County and City of Dallas had ugly, hard-to-navigate Web sites because they were just pumped about bringing the government tradition of bureaucratic hassles from the real world into cyberspace. Now, I guess they just had bad designers, because both the city and the county…
And so the conspiracy theories begin about just who was behind the immigration rallies that took place this week, not only in Dallas but across the country. Me, I tend to shy away from any Web site that employs Tammy Bruce as a columnist, but feel free to check it…
The Terrell Owens gamble notwithstanding, the Dallas Cowboys quietly are taking small steps to make big improvements next season. First, Dallas cured its chronic kicking cancer by signing Mike Vanderjagt. Despite being labeled an “idiot kicker” by Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning for running his mouth, and being nicknamed “Vandershank”…
If you happen to find yourself in Vermont any time soon–and especially the lovely town of Barnard–whatever you do, do not tell the townspeople up there you’re from Dallas. You can thank Herbert Hall McAdams III and his wife Letty for that. According to two stories that have appeared in…
On Tuesday, the City Council voted 13-1 to fund Central Dallas Ministries’ rehab of a downtown building in which it intends to house low-income and homeless residents. Only council member Mitchell Rasansky voted against the project, which was no surprise; the guy was intensely vocal about the subject at a…
Or close to it. It seems the Cleveland-based developer behind the Mercantile Building redo downtown is about to take over about 130 acres of Frisco, after snapping up land in Mansfield and, apparently, Grapevine. The Frisco folks are happy-happy-joy-joy over this; says James Gandy, president of the Frisco Economic Development…
Not every kid down at City Hall dunno why he or she’s there. I just got back from downtown and saw kids from Woodrow Wilson and Bryan Adams high schools being herded, field trip-style, into school buses so they could get hauled back to their respective campuses after today’s immigration…
According to this Associated Press story, coming out of Harlingen (got me), Dallas is among a handful of cities about to receive some $250,000 for a pilot program geared toward bringing the arts into the public school classroom. This money’s coming from the New York-based Ford Foundation, which makes sense:…
OK, so now this is getting ridiculous. About five minutes ago, some 50 kids walked past the Observer offices, at Maple and Oak Lawn avenues, heading south on Maple toward downtown. They were being escorted by Dallas County constables, who surely have better things to do. Turns out they came…
Sadly, this Next Generation weekly series is going to take a turn for the worse–no, worst–once they dig their claws into 3D Realms. The Garland company behind ’90s super-seller Duke Nukem 3D has been developing that game’s sequel, Duke Nukem Forever, for nearly 10 years (in 1997, the game’s title…
It’s no secret that Dallas is a hotbed for video-game creators; we’ve done a number of pieces on the subject, most recently this story on SMU’s gaming program. In recognition of our estimable position amongst the pale and pasty, all this week gamer Web site Next Generation is running profiles…
Put the Southwest Division race with the San Antonio Spurs on the back burner. Press pause on their pursuit of a franchise record 61 wins. And momentarily disregard Dirk Nowitzki’s push for the NBA’s Most Valuable Player nod. Tonight in Detroit, the Dallas Mavericks are after one thing and one…
Don’t think that DISD is allowing its newly politically aware student contingency to get away with protesting immigration legislation again today. In fact, the district isn’t even letting them get away with protesting yesterday. DISD spokeswoman Yvette Weiss tells me that anyone who left class to march on either day…
As we explained earlier this year, the FBI investigation into bribery at City Hall and beyond had everything to do with how affordable housing developers needed to garner political support at all levels before they could receive millions of dollars in tax credits from the state. With elected officials able…
