Four years ago, David Chandler thought himself one of the rarest of breeds–an urban pioneer committed to rebuilding a crumbling Dallas neighborhood. He was the proud owner of the old Southwest Telegraph & Telephone building on the northwest corner of Main Street and Haskell Avenue in Old East Dallas. The…
A teacher put it best in The Dallas Morning News: There’s the real Dallas Independent School District–where kids go to school and learn how to read, write, and do arithmetic–and there’s the surreal district. No doubt about which one has gotten the most media coverage during the last several days…
Gentle musers Great article. I think you nailed exactly what goes on at The Ticket [“Aural sex,” September 4]. I think all the boys do a great job, but I wish The Ticket would fess up about [Chuck] Cooperstein and why he was fired out of the blue for a…
Jasper Baccus couldn’t help thinking to himself how sweet life was beginning to look as the pencil-nosed, chartered Lear 35 lifted from Dallas’ Love Field and headed west. It was early last November, and the 68-year-old owner of Baccus 50-Minute Cleaners in South Dallas was thinking about his future. He…
Last week my husband had an important business meeting. I wanted to make sure it went well, so before leaving for work, I walked through our house and closed the lids to all the toilets. This wasn’t some family tradition handed down through the generations. Nor was I indulging some…
It was arguably the strangest school-year kickoff Dallas had ever seen.Forget all those bright-eyed, backpack-toting first graders bouncing onto their buses–that time-honored, Rockwellian image so dutifully trotted out by thousands of school districts nationwide was not quite what DISD superintendent Yvonne Gonzalez had in mind for the momentous launching of…
Susan Allen came home recently to find city procedures for recalling a city councilman stuffed in her mailbox. As president of the Moss Farm Alliance and Concerned Homeowners Association, Allen saw this as a sign that her neighbors in this northeast Dallas community were very close to declaring war on…
It’s come to this The way Buzz sees it, this running contest between Dallas and its suburbs to decide which will build a new sports arena for the Stars and Mavericks is starting to look like a bunch of drunken sailors chasing the town whore. Who cares that sports arenas…
Legal Upchucking This is in reference to Christine Biederman’s article on the Michael Irvin-Erik Williams-Nina Shahravan-Marty Griffin imbroglio [“Payback time,” August 21]. Excellent article, well-researched with solid background work. This is much better than anything from the fluffy one-size-fits-all approach of your crosstown behemoth rival, The Dallas Morning News. The…
Eight-year-old Veronica Martinez is calculating the cube root of 474,552 in her head. At the same time, she is attempting to devour a cheese sandwich–between gulps of water from a tan-rimmed coffee cup. It takes less than eight seconds to consume the mathematical problem, slightly longer for the sandwich. She…
A hazy orange sun is inching above the Dallas skyline as I dodge through early-morning traffic on Interstate 30. It’s 6:35 a.m. on a Monday, I have a date, and I am miserably late. So I weave between lanes, pushing 80, hoping those stealthy Grand Prairie cops are lingering somewhere…
Problems continue to multiply for management of the Dallas County Community Action Committee, the anti-poverty agency that is big on hiring relatives and even better at making tax money disappear. When allegations of mismanagement, waste, and nepotism first surfaced [“Family first,” July 31], the agency’s director, Cleo Sims, and board…
The McKinney doctor who slashed a man’s throat during a 1996 barroom brawl has escaped a felony conviction, but he is no longer allowed to practice medicine in Texas. The Texas State Board of Medical Examiners indefinitely suspended Dr. John Hargett’s medical license because of Hargett’s “intemperate use of alcohol…
When last we checked with the Friends of Greenwood Cemetery, they were furiously writing letters, making phone calls, and gathering photos, faxes, maps, and traffic studies. Their mission? To convince Dallas City Council that a powerful Uptown neighborhood developer has no business building a tony apartment complex on top of,…
Beguile, bedazzle, be gone Buzz usually gets depressed when some other newspaper or magazine goes belly up. It’s sort of like losing a member of the family. But the demise of Dallas/Fort Worth’s Life Style magazine brings more of a sense of relief, like a merciful death for a long-suffering,…
All Lisa Riley Richardson wanted was a chance to work in a photographer’s studio, to earn a living taking and developing pictures. She thought her childhood dream would have been fulfilled by now. Yet despite training at a Dallas trade school seven years ago, today Richardson is no closer to…
Reprehensible Rose Rose Farley’s article on Bill Simpson [“Mr. Nobody,” August 14] was a classic example of the Dallas Observer’s characteristic writing style: reprehensible. At every word and turn of the page, Simpson was sneeringly portrayed as some sinister and meddlesome “do-gooder.” He was even brazenly labeled a “Mr. Nobody.”…
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed against the Dallas Observer almost two years ago by former Dallas Independent School District trustee Dan Peavy. U.S. District Judge Jerry Buchmeyer ruled last week that the Observer cannot be sued for printing a transcript of secretly recorded telephone conversations in which…
Sand between his ears You might already be of the opinion that Texas Land Commissioner Garry Mauro is a bit daft, having decided he’ll try to dislodge George W. Bush from the governor’s mansion next year. Even Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock–good Democrat that he is–has driven a stake into the…
Mr. Nobody Just when I think the world is being overrun by those so far to the right that they’re wrong, here comes Rose Farley with “Mr. Nobody” [August 14]. What a hoot! People like this Bill Simpson guy live for the spotlight, but only if they can have their…
Rick Duffield is a quiet, understated man, not one to gloat. He claims he hasn’t even been inside a Target store recently. But if he had, Duffield certainly would feel a wee bit of glee at what he saw. Barney, the reigning champion of children’s television, is being supplanted on…
The car is a beauty, no doubt. A 1975 slant-nose Porsche, painted white. Brown leather seats, deep and snug. Its round rear end fitted with a spoiler, creating an image of speed and mobility. Freedom, really. The car’s driver also is a beaut. Robin Cook. A tall, slender man with…
