News

This morning there’s a story in Newsday about a certain lawsuit brought against a certain South Side of Lamar coffee shop-performance space. Guess that now makes Pascale Hall a national news story and her Standard & Pours Coffee and Stocks a famous hang; no way McGraw-Hill’s gonna get her to…

Larry James is a good guy trying to do good things for the city. Which is why he will never, ever be mayor. This week on his blog, Central Dallas Ministries’ president and CEO Larry James ponders what he would do were he Dallas’ mayor. The Willie Nelson fan who…

Three weeks ago, this plot of land in Crawford was covered in trees and brush. Today, it looks like the circus grounds. A giant white tent draped with colorful banners has been erected. Four people in elaborate costumes parade in circles outside to a cheering crowd. They are dressed as…

Pickup trucks haul yapping mutts in crowded trailers through the woods in a long, tedious procession, taking an hour to travel seven miles of cratered red-dirt road. Homemade signs posted on trees point the way to a large grassy field where a woman wearing high-waisted Wranglers, scuffed cowboy boots and…

Queso the cat, known to lap up cheese outside a Taco Cabana in Waco, was well known to students at Baylor University. The scrawny stray later went on to gain national attention when two students brutally killed it, then got off scot-free. Texas has some of the weakest animal protection…

Inside the gymnasium, a handful of kids play basketball–try to, anyway, their short arms tossing up bricks that carom like pinballs all over the hardwood. It is, as it always is these days, unrelentingly hot outside, and these boys, none older than 10, have taken shelter in the Juanita J…

At first glance, it would seem as though Dallas County Judge Margaret Keliher was vindicated. After she questioned why the county was funneling millions of Homeland Security dollars into a flawed computer database, the state said the same exact thing last month in an audit of the county’s emergency preparedness…

Indulge Buzz in a childhood flashback: We were around 10 when a buddy got his hands on some discarded window counterweights–about a dozen bars of iron, weighing roughly a ton. (Maybe it only seemed that much.) A local junkyard paid money for scrap, so we dragged the bars about two…

On Top of Her Game The wittiest, the most observant: I would just like to say that it is such a pleasure to see that Andrea Grimes has finally been given a permanent spot in the “Boy’s Club” pages of my favorite free weekly. Andrea is one of the wittiest,…

For the record, we wrote about this dangerous bridge in June. We’re just sayin’. DART has finally made a decision: After taking out another 18-wheeler on Tuesday, the killer bridge at Garland Road near the White Rock Lake spillway has got to go. Morgan Lyons, DART spokesman, tells Dallas’ Only…

Because Unfair Park likes to be helpful, especially toward our fellow indie-rock dorks and alternanerds, we’d like to inform you that today is a very special day: Tickets for both Sufjan Stevens’ September 13 show at the Lakewood Theater and Wilco’s October 12 concert at the Will Rogers Auditorium in…

Yesterday, we posted the story about how Robert Hoffman–local philanthropist, art collector and the civic leader behind The Dallas Plan–helped start National Lampoon when he was in his early 20s. Hoffman, as you know doubt know by now, died Sunday at the age 59 from acute myelogenous leukemia, with which…

Who do you think the jury’s long deliberations bothered more: Bishop Terry Hornbuckle or Andrea Grimes? Choose one. Maybe I jinxed it last Wednesday morning when I told my mom, “I think we’ll have a verdict before noon.” If that really was my fault, I’m sorry. I caused a lot…

On April 4, 2006, Netflix Inc. was granted U.S. Patent No. 7,024,381 B1 three years after “inventors” W. Reed Hastings, Marc B. Randolph and Neil Duncan Hunt filed their application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The patent, titled “Approach for Renting Item to Customers,” is an elaborate and…

The state’s Health and Human Services Commission report, titled Hurricane Katrina Evacuees in Texas, is available online now; go here to see what we’ve been referring to this afternoon. There’s also a story in today’s Christian Science Monitor about the strain the 251,000 Katrina evacuees are beginning to put on…

Most of the folks who wound up at Reunion Arena almost one year ago remain in Dallas: There are 66,000 Katrina evacuees still in North Texas, says the state. Before I get to the specifics of the Health and Human Services Commission’s report Hurricane Katrina Evacuees in Texas, let me…