Over the holiday weekend I spent a few very enjoyable hours on the Trinity River with Trinity Rivers Expeditions outfitter and canoe guide Charles Allen. We paddled from Trinity River Mountain Creek Preserve near the intersection of Walton Walker and IH-30 in Irving to the Sylvan Avenue Bridge in West…
I’m afraid Rick Perry will evaporate soon from the presidential coverage, and I won’t get to say my little piece about him. So just in case, here it is. Months ago I was asked by the company I work for to produce a piece about Perry’s so-called economic miracle in…
At the beginning of the month, I had a column in the paper talking about a study saying the Dallas area is in much better shape than many of the nation’s big metropolitan areas in terms of water supply. Now it turns out we’re betting the farm and risking the…
Former Dallas Morning News star reporter Olive Talley has a piece in the paper today saying Walker Railey killed his wife and got away with it. Not in so many words. Forgive me if you’re under 100 years old and this is all Greek to you. Railey was a certain…
Welcome to Local Music ‘Mericans, where we get to know the people behind the scenes in Dallas/Fort Worth music. Josh Baish is the head honcho at Denton’s Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios, perhaps one of the most important venues in DFW’s music scene since opening in 1997. Baish owes its success…
Tale of two cities on today’s front pages: Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic at The New York Times, presents a big-canvas panoramic of Rio Park in Madrid, Spain, where they entombed a highway to bring a river back to life. Linking Madrid’s vast and wonderful new park to trends in Europe…
This morning I finally read the late Paul Crume’s 1967 newspaper column about angels, reprinted in today’s Dallas Morning News, according to their annual custom. When I told my wife I had never read it before, she reacted with shock, dismay, disenchantment — the usual. She’s a Dallas native. She…
Here’s something scary. There’s a guy I have bumped into several times who looks like the artist’s rendering of the suspect in the sorority rapist case. I mean sort of. It’s not like, “Oh, look, it’s the guy!” But it could be. When I saw the picture in the paper…
Dear Readers: In between your 15th tamale and sixth spiked cup of ponche, you’re going to have to buy regalos for Christmas or whatever pinche holiday you celebrate. OK, you don’t have to, but you should, to support all those great indie businesses suffering during this Great Recession. Behold, then,…
City Hall starts off last week giving one of its typical bureaucratic blow-offs to plans for bike lanes throughout the city. At a briefing before a city council committee, staff experts tell the council members that bike lanes would be hugely expensive. Sorta can’t be done. Big legal headache. Maybe…
Man. I cannot believe it. Just got back in the house. Catching my breath. Had to wade into the crowd out there on the street. Major neighborhood squall. We’ve been waiting 20 years for the city to patch our street. They have big crews out there now doing it –…
Welcome to Local Music ‘Mericans, where we get to know the people behind the scenes in Dallas/Fort Worth music. Annie Karundethu runs a small but passionate organization called Local Euphoria, comprised of a couple folks who want to expose local talent and contribute to charity at the same time. She’s…
Figured it out. I can tell you why the Republicans keep assassinating their own nominees. It all goes back to the Trinity River levees. What? You think I can’t connect those dots? Stand back. Right now the GOP rivals are reducing Newt Gingrich to road-kill in Iowa with Super-PAC attack…
I’m having particular trouble this year with Toys for Tots. Put it on me for being a grinch. But, look. I see this big smarmy hoopla on the TV news every night with the weatherman and a bunch of shiny-eyed volunteers in North Face parkas handing out useless plastic Big…
Am I in the happy-news business? Does a bear use air freshener in the woods? Look, I’m just bringing it to you like it is. As bad as the situation with the Trinity River levees may look locally, you should see what it looks like when you put it in…
Maybe we need some context for this week’s debate on Wal-Mart Stores Inc. vs. the tree canopy. After a not-very-uplifting debate yesterday including the line, “Trees do not vote,” our esteemed city council voted to allow a developer to decimate a vast swath of the urban forest for a new…
Dear Mexican: Much has been said about the terrible things happening to the United States and its citizens at the hands of Mexican drug cartels. But what’s the difference between the modern-day cartels and the Big Four of the period between 1492 and 1775? I refer you to the kings…
Dallas Police Sergeant Preston Gilstrap, recent former president of the Black Police Association of Dallas, has made serious allegations of financial wrongdoing against his own organization in reports he has taken to the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, the Texas Attorney General’s Office and the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office…
The Dallas city council today is locked in a dispute today over paying a contractor $8.3 million to help City Manager Mary Suhm straighten out a huge mess with the city’s computerized billing system. Unable to resolve it this morning, they will come back to the question this afternoon. Watch…
Welcome to Local Music ‘Mericans, where we get to know the people behind the scenes in Dallas/Fort Worth music. Vince and Dawn Barnhill have been running Universal Rehearsal since 1987, five years before they tied the knot. Over that time, they’ve hosted rehearsals by Erykah Badu, The Dixie Chicks, Miranda…
Sometimes I think city staff may be demon-possessed. I’m sorry, I know it’s a very weird thing to say. But I can’t come up with another explanation. One day they’re so bouncy and positive and totally can-do. The next day they’ve been taken over by the negativity goblin. I attended…
Damn. I almost forgot. Other things intervened. Please don’t let this year get behind me without my taking an opportunity to say what I think of the White Rock Marathon, a foot-race carried out in my part of town on December 4. Let me relate to you just one of…
