Journalism is dangerous work. One never knows who — or what — one might encounter. In the case of Fox 4’s Latoya Silmon, it was a rodent. She described her reaction on Facebook: Omg just screamed to the top if my lungs!!! A rat just crawled by us. We are…
The Lewisville City Council voted unanimously last night to redefine the city’s official definition of nudity, thereby outlawing the body paint, gumballs and various other non-clothes occasionally used to cover the lady parts of servers at Redneck Heaven. We covered this way too extensively yesterday. The whole episode was instructive,…
Every so often, Dwaine Caraway or another southern Dallas City Council member will put on a hard hat, head to an old drug house and glad-hand the media while the National Guard demolishes the building. As pure spectacle, it’s quite satisfying. It’s a tangible gesture that showcases the city’s commitment…
When WFAA’s Jonathan Betz announced in May that he was leaving the station after five years to work in New York. The only question was For whom?. “I can’t say exactly where I’ll be working yet, but I’ll still be doing the news,” he cryptically told Uncle Barky at the…
Half Price Books is very good at what it does: selling used books. Since opening its first store on Northwest Highway in 1972, the company has cornered the local used book market and opened more than 100 stores in 16 states, while managing to retain the welcoming feel of a…
Last year, UT Southwestern announced plans to build the Dallas Proton Treatment Center, a $225 million, state-of-the-art clinic and laboratory offering cutting-edge cancer treatment. The “proton” is a reference to the accelerator that fires positively charged particles at 112,000 miles per second. When aimed at, say, a brain tumor, it…
First of all, let’s dispense with a very basic fact: everyone loves fried chicken. With the possible exception of vegetarians — who, let’s be honest, are just lying to themselves — and some remote, yet-to-be-discovered hen worshipers in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, the fact that an individual enjoys…
When The Dallas Morning News announced three months ago that it would be rolling out the most definitive ranking of the area’s neighborhoods in history, I put my money on Frisco. Not real money, mind you; if I had that, I could afford to commute from Frisco. But I was…
Officials at the Dallas Police & Fire Pension System, which owns the Arts District’s shiniest building, Museum Tower, have loudly announced that they have a solution to their glare problem, the one muddying their neighborly relations with the Nasher Sculpture Center next door. They want the Nasher to fix their…
USA Today, of course, broke the news this morning: Gannett Co., the newspaper’s parent, is acquiring Dallas’ Belo Corp for $1.5 billion: Gannett will acquire all outstanding shares of Belo for $13.75 per share in cash, or approximately $1.5 billion, plus assume $715 million in existing debt for an enterprise…
Forgive me if I see not just some irony but a couple red flags in the new right-wing support for a federal shield law for reporters. Oh, now that it’s a way to defend Fox News and get back at Obama, well, sure, we need a shield law. Count me…
Jimmy and Sandy Martin live in a 4,000-square-foot McMansion off Inwood Road in Bluffview. Architecturally, it’s completely unremarkable. The home they recently built in Central Texas, on the other hand, is much more interesting: It’s a 75,000-pound treehouse. The structure, perched on an isolated clump of trees on their ranch…
It’s a long drive to the Omni Hotel downtown from the nearest Waffle House, which is three-fourths of the way to Farmers Branch. It’s a sleepy one, too, when made at the typical Waffle House hour of 4 a.m. Nevertheless, an unidentified gentleman driving a 2004 Lexus SUV decided to…
The Trinity Groves project is still in its infancy. Babb Bros. BBQ and Four Corners Brewing arrived last year, followed by Hoffman Hots. The restaurant incubator hasn’t just started incubating. The stores and apartments are still just a glimmer in Phil Romano’s eye. But backers aren’t letting the preliminary nature…
Tom Clancy buffs are already well-acquainted with the USS Dallas. The 5,700-ton nuclear submarine, a hair longer than your standard football field, was a main player in The Hunt for Red October. Back when the novel was published in 1984, the ship was still young, having joined the Navy’s fleet…
Ever since they parted ways with ESPN Dallas, sports talk duo Ben Rogers and Skin Wade have hinted that they had something else lined up. They’ve just been vague about what exactly that might be. No longer. As Rogers announced a few minutes ago, he and Wade have officially found…
We were pretty sure that Pulitzer Prize-winner Thomas Ricks’ recent suggestion in the Washington Post that America exile Texas in pursuit of a more perfect union was a joke. Blaming the state for the JFK assassination (without Texas, “John F. Kennedy might still be alive”) and the wars in Iraq…
On Sunday, The Daily Show’s Jessica Williams donned a novelty sombrero and festive pink dress and came to Dallas in search of an authentic Cinco de Mayo fiesta. What she found instead was a few thousand disappointingly sober people gathered downtown to march for immigration rights. Instead of drunken debauchery,…
You know the building, even if you don’t know its name. It’s a neon silhouette that juts from the downtown skyline like a radioactive thumb. My 3-year-old calls it The Pickle, because that’s kind of what it looks like, but its official name is the Bank of America Tower. Since…
Pretty much every serious national news organization has at least a skeletal presence in Dallas. The major networks, as well as CNN, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press, all have a Dallas bureau. Partly it’s that Dallas is a thriving commercial and cultural hub, partly…
Obama’s reelection last year prompted a lot of talk over whether Texas should once again secede from the Union. Except for a few die-hard secessionists, though, few considered it a serious proposal, more like an opportunity to make Texas jokes. So the debate just kind of fizzled out. But the…
Reunion Tower will finally be reopening “soon,” with a slew of renovations planned to make it bigger and glossier. Judy Pesek, a partner at the design firm responsible for the project, laid out the planned renovations to a crowd gathered on the tower’s observation deck. The renovations will include a…
