For the longest time, Jim Collier held to the thinnest filament of hope. He would hear a rustling sound from the back yard, or see a dark speck on the far-off horizon, and his heart would pound. He’d run to the tidy pigeon loft in his back yard, buoyed by…
The weed-choked, two-acre vacant lot on East Ledbetter Drive was once ground zero in South Oak Cliff’s crack cocaine epidemic. In the late 1980s, drug dealers peddled their cheap, potent rocks in the shadows of towering live oak trees. The Johnson grass grew so tall and thick it was a…
In Far North Dallas, just up from the Whataburger and the Just Brakes and the Blue Star miniwarehouses, Jeffery Smith is wandering with his putter among the plastic zebras, dreaming little dreams. Sure, his sport holds about as much cachet as indoor roller-skating, or bumper pool, or lawn darts. “It’s…
Hey, wanna paddle your boss? Are we the only ones who look around the office sometimes and ponder the relative mental stability of our co-workers? Buzz doubts it. You’ve done it–checking for suspicious bulges under jackets, or wondering why the guy at the next desk is plotting shotgun spread patterns…
Carol Klein was driving down Shorecrest Drive near Bachman Lake three weeks ago when she saw four dead ducks. The smashed carcasses were another insult to Klein, who has spent more than a year begging city officials to do something about speeding drivers who keep killing wildlife near the congested…
Big bore I was truly offended by your article on the Tomorrowpeople [“Hasta manana,” April 10] and the comparisons Richard Baimbridge drew between them and Big Star, and particularly Chris Bell. The “ethereal and emotive” energy that I was shown recently at Rick’s Place was more that of a remarkably…
Someone must have said something really funny. Or maybe the photographer strode into the DISD boardroom trailing 10 feet of toilet paper. Whatever the case, he caught Kathlyn Gilliam smiling–an open-mouthed, toothy grin so jolly it looked as though she’d just burst into uproarious laughter. Needless to say, there is…
Every seat in the meeting room of the Mansfield Historical Society was filled with uneasy occupants. Tension suffused the tiny space. The people jittered and shifted like popcorn kernels just about to explode. Around the walls, the faces of Mansfield’s white founding families looked on, gazing serenely from a series…
The teeming masses turned out in record numbers, a quarter-million strong, for last weekend’s Byron Nelson golf tournament, lining the fairways and craning for a glimpse of rookie phenomenon Tiger Woods. The fans will rise early again this week to stake out spots at the Colonial, the second round in…
Federal investigators, an outside counsel, and an internal auditor are all conducting parallel probes into allegations of misconduct and overtime fraud at the Dallas Independent School District, so it’s no surprise that the long corridors of the district’s creaky old administration building literally reek of fear. “You can see the…
On April 1, Chewy, a rare Asian leopard, bled to death after being bitten in the neck by Sikio, a cougar with whom Chewy had shared a cage for 13 years. Chewy’s violent and untimely death makes him the latest casualty in the bloody, protracted war being waged for control…
Tiny bubbles Buzz is stumped. Peter Applebome, a perfectly affable fellow, is riding the promotional circuit peddling his book, Dixie Rising. From what we hear, the book is a “thoughtful and provocative” examination of how the South “has today become America itself, defining all the key qualities of the country.”…
Fricked off Spotting Ed Frick’s name and confused rantings in your Letters section [May 15] brought back painful memories of when he published a rag called Oak Lawn Today in the mid-’80s. As the unrestrained putative editor, Frick subjected the Oak Lawn area to his exclamation-point-laden gushings, outrageous fluff pieces,…
It would be easy to overlook the plain, black-and-white fliers stuffed haphazardly onto a display shelf at the headquarters of the Dallas Independent School District. “Are you aware of any wrongdoing?” the handbill asks. If so, tipsters are invited to call the superintendent’s hot line, which will gladly accept anonymous…
In the fall of 1994, independent oilman Sanford Dvorin cracked open a Dallas County Yellow Pages and sent a letter to every person connected with the oil and gas industry. Sounding like every piece of over-the-top, too-good-to-be-true, direct-mail investment scheme literature ever written, Dvorin’s letter boasted: “History is about to…
For several years now, Clebo Rainey has been called “poet emeritus of Dallas” or “the father of Dallas poetry” or–most recently in these pages–“the Papa Bear of North Texas poetry.” From hosting poetry nights at Club Clearview, the Dark Room, and the McKinney Avenue Contemporary to organizing virtually every reading…
The hail you say Buzz is periodically amused by the fumblings of clueless journalists who arrive in town and try to strut their stuff. (Like the New York Times reporter who came to Texas several years back and wrote about being served a mysterious local dish, an “unidentified breaded cutlet”…
For years, Irma Janicek knew little more about Greenwood Cemetery than that her ancestors–many of them powerful businessmen from Dallas’ earliest days–were buried there in a neat family plot. Occasionally she visited the cemetery, at the intersection of McKinney and Oak Grove avenues in the Uptown neighborhood. And each year,…
Rocky Mountain sigh I just wanted to say I left Dallas for Denver in 1990. I have missed the Dallas Observer terribly. It is wonderful being able to get on the Internet and read it weekly. Keep up the wonderful work (and quality). Very comparable to our Denver Westword, but…
When I first saw Dalton James, he was eating the entrails of a dead baby. It was July 1996. The Magnolia Lounge in Fair Park played host to the Open Stage production of New York playwright Nicky Silver’s Fat Men in Skirts, the first and possibly best of three Silver…
At 10 o’clock on a Friday morning, Jesse Enloe is downing his usual breakfast—three eggs, sausage, biscuits with extra gravy–at his customary spot, JoJos in southwest Fort Worth. Amidst clanking dishes and shouted pancake orders, the 50-year-old vice president of the Republic of Texas is talking affairs of state. It’s…
When Paul Fielding stepped down from the Dallas City Council, abandoned his reelection bid, and pleaded guilty to federal charges of extortion and mail fraud, his abrupt departure seemed to bleed away what little drama existed in this year’s council elections. But councilwoman Charlotte Mayes, who won reelection Saturday, at…
