Fair Park Bidding Process Is One Big Screwed-Up Cat Fight From the Get-Go

The whole question about Fair Park, our 277-acre albatross that everybody thinks should be turned over to a private entity, is whose entity. Seriously down-at-the-heels but still shabbily beautiful in its own way, this vast “exposition park” in South Dallas is going to become somebody’s baby. Please note quotation marks…

Dear President of Mexico, Please Don’t Give Trump a Victory

A letter to Enrique Peña Nieto, president of the United Mexican States, from a newspaper columnist in Dallas, Texas. Dear President Peña Nieto: Please don’t pull the rug out from under us. We need your help, and the world needs your help. If you temporize too much with the regime…

The 10 Worst Things We Ate in Dallas in 2016

We’ve already celebrated some of the best tacos, best burgers and best food in general that we ate in 2016. But not every meal was so happy. As cosmic payback for having the coolest job on the planet, food writers occasionally have to eat things that are truly terrible. From overcooked…

Namedropper: The Time My Dad Fixed Ray Charles’ Teeth

Bucks Burnett has met most of his music idols. In this monthly column he shares tales from the front lines and backstage. I’m known for having numerous what-the-truck stories about unlikely encounters with the greatest heroes of the day. I used to have an ego about it. Who could blame…

No, Chili’s, You Did Not Invent the Fajita

If you’ve found yourself in a Chili’s dining room, hopefully you took the opportunity, first, to reevaluate the string of life choices that led you to your seat at the wobbly high top or in the sinking seat in a booth. Then notice that the restaurant chain is involved in…

Leading a Wild Life on Swiss Avenue

Editor: Jim Schutze is away from Unfair Park briefly to work on a cover story for us, but we snared this from his Facebook page because we liked the writing and because we didn’t know four-legged coyotes make it down to Swiss Avenue. Beautiful encounter with a coyote on Swiss…

The Fair Park Plan is Dead! Long Live the Fair Park Plan

The battle for Fair Park is the story of the city right now. It’s a window on what the old leadership doesn’t get, but it also offers us glimpses of a smarter future. And that’s all before we even get started on fixing Fair Park, our sadly decaying 277-acre art…

Maren Morris is the Perfect Star of the Future for Country Music

When Maren Morris walked out onto stage at Austin City Limits Festival last Friday, she did it in perfect fashion: with Janis Joplin’s “Mercedes-Benz” playing as her entrance music. That one song choice brought so many of the right pieces together for the up-and-coming Arlington native: a nod to a…

Why the Dallas Observer Music Awards Won’t Be Starting a Hall of Fame

From rock ‘n’ roll music to country music to virtually every major professional sport, the United States houses a hall of fame for just about everything — even though, for most of the rest of the world, it’s literally a foreign concept. Americans just love picking favorites. Earlier this week,…

UT Admissions Case Goes to High Court, Journalism Goes to Hell

Just perusing some of the financial disclosures for the “nonprofit” online news service based in Austin called The Texas Tribune. And this, by the way, is a column about my own craft, journalism, which I will try to make as painless as possible because I know many of you did…