The last mechanic standing on Ross Avenue is taking his final bow. Dallas City Council voted Wednesday to deny Hinga Mbogo’s request for another two-year extension, citing, with a heavy heart, that he had broken his promise given two years ago to close down his auto repair shop in the 3500…
After a very bad night’s sleep, I felt I owed it to you, the reader, to revisit the pothole in my alley yesterday morning. The day before I had posted here what I now realize was an alarmist and poorly reported piece suggesting there might be people living in it…
For the last two months, the city of Dallas has been pumping about $4,000 a day into a case that outside observers and many members of the City Council view as an obvious loser — the city’s fraught attempt to ban the Exxxotica adult expo from using the Kay Bailey…
Bridget Turner emerges from her tent and shuffles slowly but purposefully across Tent City’s southernmost section. She’s halfway across the sandy dirt when she stops short and looks around, face scrunched up in bewilderment. Lee Cadena, a street preacher who moved to Tent City two and a half months ago…
Why does it suck so much to ride DART? Anyone who’s tried to get from point A to point B in Dallas using public transit (with the possible exception of 9-to-5 commuters who live near a rail stop and work downtown, for whom the system works fairly well) has asked…
I think someone may be living in a pothole near my house. Usually I eschew using this space to pursue private matters, but today I think this particular problem may rise to the level of general public interest. If you are reading it, that means my editors must have agreed…
State troopers and Dallas County sheriff’s deputies will help the Dallas Police Department serve domestic violence and drug warrants, Dallas Police Chief David Brown and Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings announced Thursday. The goal is cutting off the source of a recent increase in violent crime in the city. Last week,…
The easiest takeaway from the revised plan for the private takeover of Fair Park is that it isn’t going to cost the city quite as much as was initially thought. In November, when Ray Hunt buddy and “father of DART” Walt Humann first told the City Council how much the…
Congratulations, Dallas citizen, on your recent decision to examine the nuts-and-bolts operations of your local law enforcement agency(s)! A well-informed citizenry is vital functioning of democracy and, as we all know, crime stats is a particularly dusky corner of local government. Your thirst for knowledge and community spirit are a…
The deadline, May 4, set by the city to clear the Dallas homeless encampment known as Tent City was not hard and fast. That much is clear after Wednesday’s Dallas City Council meeting. Adam Medrano desperately wants to get rid of Tent City. His district — which covers the Cedars…
Jeffrey Handy, the guy promoting Exxxotica porn conventions under the name J Handy, says in a new court filing that Dallas knew exactly what it was getting into when it allowed the porn convention to come to the city’s convention center last summer. Nevertheless, the City Council banned Handy and…
Is there another Dallasite who has made the national news as often as Dr. Robert Jeffress this year? The 60-year-old pastor of 12,000-member Dallas First Baptist has become the most prominent evangelical leader supporting Donald Trump, earning him rebukes from other church leaders, such as when he commented last month…
If we ever needed proof, we got it when Donald Trump opened his mouth at Liberty University and made his infamous reference to “2 Corinthians.” After wiping off the drool from laughing so hard, evangelicals knew with certainty that he was not one of us. Every American evangelical spanning the…
On the surface everything always looks so sober and important at City Hall, following a solemn script as if every subcommittee meeting were a medical school graduation ceremony or the funeral of an important person. And then you get these bizarre little windows on what’s really going on. Yesterday I…
Neil Emmons, Dallas’ District 2 plan commissioner who died last week, was way deep in the woods on some big development deal many years ago, on the side of the neighborhood and giving the developer grief, of course, when a guy I knew who worked for the developer gave me…
Needs shutterstock: 312342893 Wednesday, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and Leander Johns, the head of Uber Dallas announced a plan to add 2,500 new drivers for the app-based ride hailing service in southern Dallas. On the surface it looks like an easy win. Dallas south of I-30 needs jobs and is under…
It’s almost enough to make you think we had racial segregation in this town. First, three years ago, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a finding that Dallas was violating federal law by using desegregation money to promote segregation. The city denied it, of course, but…
Unless they happen to be the city of Dallas’ paid defense attorneys, it’s hard to find a lawyer who thinks the city of Dallas has a shot at winning the lawsuit brought by Three Expo Events following the City Council decision to ban the Three Expo’s Exxxotica sex show from…
Monday, Dallas police Chief David Brown had a plan to stem Dallas’ ongoing spike in violent crime. He told the City Council’s public safety committee he would shuffle hundreds of officers’ beats and schedules to deal with a 75 percent jump in murders so far in 2016 over the same…
With its monolithic columns at the entrance and pictorial windows of art glass, The First Presbyterian Church of Dallas in the 1800 block of Young Street is a cultural and visual landmark. One of its early homes was the first brick church in Dallas, and it grew from a single…
The Dallas Police/Fire Pension Fund, still trying to dig itself out of the billion-dollar financial hole it dug for itself by making stupid investments, is going to meet Friday to consider “censuring” board member Philip Kingston for speaking candidly and intelligently to the public about the pension fund’s problems. And,…
Pasties, whipped cream and an oversized dildo, not the First Amendment, are the real issues at the heart of the Dallas City Council’s decision to ban the Exxxotica sex-expo from the city-owned convention center, according to the city’s response to a lawsuit filed by Three Expo events, the company that puts…
