Rebecca Levin, a documentary filmmaker based in Paris, arrived in Tent City on a brisk Wednesday morning in early February with a spiral notebook and a knee-length maroon coat. She’d been assigned by a major French TV network, TF1, to shoot a film about inequality in Dallas, and the sprawling…
Like a lone rider on the horizon, a moment is arriving — right here, right now — when we might be able to do something truly revolutionary and life-changing for the city along the Trinity River. This grand opportunity will be easy to miss, however, because it is riding into…
Finally, Exxxotica CEO J Handy has fulfilled his promise of presenting a completed complaint to the city of Dallas over the City Council’s decision to ban his sex expo from the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center. Rather than dropping his suit directly on the city’s head by way of a…
In a dispute over historic markers for segregated parks in Dallas, nobody seems able to hit the broad side of the barn. Of course, that’s because nobody will look at the barn. Last week a local foundation decided to duck. If they’re smart, they’re hiding in the barn. Dallas Morning…
Dallas Police confirm that they were called to the radio station KHVN Monday after Dwaine Caraway and John Wiley Price got into a physical altercation. Price and Caraway were at the station for a debate ahead of their March 1 primary battle for the Democratic nomination for the District 3…
Dear Respected Supreme Leaders of the City: I see what you’re up to. I applaud your motives and the goal you seek to achieve. Your motives are my motives. Your goal is my goal. But I still think you’re kind of retarded. All of a sudden and out of the…
Between now and May 4, Tent City’s 300-plus residents will have to find a new home. The city set the deadline late Thursday after intensive discussions with the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance, neighbors and homeless service providers. The encampment, which sprawls for about a mile beneath Interstate 45 just southeast of…
In Charles Dickens’ novel, Bleak House, written in installments in 1852 and ’53, the central character is not a person but a lawsuit, “Jarndyce and Jarndyce,” which Dickens describes as an endless and bottomless morass of “trickery, evasion, procrastination, spoliation, botheration [and] false pretences.” The suit ensures that “whole families…
Ostensibly, all the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs was doing Wednesday was addressing Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick’s charge that, between sessions, the Texas Senate take a look at protecting religious liberties in the state — something that, it should be noted, means different things to different people. That happened…
For once the typical Texas shoot-first personality turns out to be a plus. We’ve been having a lot of daytime coyote sightings in my part of East Dallas lately, so I’ve been reading up. Robert Timm, a University of California wildlife specialist, has found that coyote attacks on pets are…
The GOP’s 2016 South Carolina primary is doing what primaries in the Palmetto State are wont to do: getting really, amusingly nasty really quickly. The home state of the patron saint of dirty tricks, the Boogie Man himself, Lee Atwater, wouldn’t have it any other way. Monday morning, Texas Senator…
To untrained ears, it can sound strange, sometimes even a little threatening. Ted Cruz or one of his representatives, out on the campaign trail, will say something that sounds a lot like someone pushing for theocracy — like someone who views the constitutional separation of church and state as a…
I don’t know about you, but I want to personally extend my own heartfelt thanks to Dallas city councilpersons Monica Alonzo, Mark Clayton, Sandy Greyson, Scott Griggs, Philip Kingston, Lee Kleinman and Adam Medrano for voting this week to defend the First Amendment. I know it wasn’t easy. It never…
This is exactly what Scott Griggs was worried about. As the Dallas City Council arduously debated whether or not to ban the Exxxotica adult expo from the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center, Griggs told a packed house that the council was giving Exxxotica the best public relations it could hope…
A self-referential anecdote here at the top. I never do this. Indulge me. Several years back I’m starting out on a canoe trip in Canada with a bunch of guys. It’s the part I hate, carrying our canoes on our shoulders and our packs on our backs, stumbling down a…
More or less, the main voices on the Dallas City Council behind a proposal that will bar Dallas City manager AC Gonzalez from signing a contract with the eXXXotica porn expo in 2016 said Wednesday that they didn’t care if they got sued. Protecting Dallas from the convention — Rawlings…
Ray Hunt has done many good things for the city of Dallas. He built Reunion Tower, without which the Dallas skyline would just be a bunch of boring rectangles. He was an early financial backer of D Magazine, without which we would be unable to identify which Dallas women are the most…
Running a third party candidacy is no picnic. Just ask Russell Verney, senior political adviser to H. Ross Perot during the 1992 presidential election and his 1996 campaign manager. Perot headlined the two most successful third-party campaigns in modern U.S. political history. The Dallas native and billionaire received 18.9 percent…
This is very dangerous talk, dangerous for us all. You agree, I agree, we all agree that sexual slavery, especially the enslavement of children for sexual purposes, is an unspeakable evil. But doesn’t that make it all the more important to be careful and precise in what we say about…
Last August, just ahead of the eXXXotica Expo’s Dallas Convention Center debut, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, announced that he was “deeply concerned” about the convention. Seemingly, he was acting in concert with the Dallas Women’s Foundation, which drew a line between a harmless, tacky convention hawking dildos and overpriced photos…
When does escaping from the nanny state become an escape from sanity? Ted Cruz is urging New Hampshire Yankees not to be, in his inimical words, “coddled by a bunch of nanny-state liberals who want to control every aspect of your life, or die.” What if they need a nanny?…
Wednesday afternoon a consultant from Ohio spent more than two hours in a meeting room at Love Field Airport with the Dallas City Council to help them find ways to become nicer people. I went to it, because I was hoping I might pick up a few tips for myself…
