Industries

Texas Cities Follow Dallas' Lead and Stand Up to Payday Lenders. Is the State Next?

In Dallas, the political atmosphere for payday lending reform is optimistic. After three years of ordinances limiting lending practices, the local movement has spread to 17 other cities across the state. Today, Dallas City Councilman Jerry Allen went before the Amarillo City Council to try and recru ... More >>

Dallas Cracks the Top 10 in Dog-on-Mailman Attacks

For decades, doubtless dating back to the advent of home mail delivery, the dog-bites-mailman trope has provided cartoonists and joke writers (and now meme creators) -- with an easy source of cheap humor. The U.S. Postal Service, whose employees were the victims of 5,581 dog attacks last year, is n ... More >>

Atmos Has Dallas Over a Barrel, Is Raising Your Gas Bill Again

It's a wonderful time to be an Atmos Energy shareholder. The gas distributor's profits -- and dividends -- keep going up. It's much less wonderful to be an Atmos Energy customer, who is fueling those profits through increasingly large bills. Despite its profitability and despite getting six rate h ... More >>

Adventures in a Car-Free Dallas: Cabbies Find Ways to Survive in a Tough Business

For all the complaints about taxi service in Dallas -- drivers often refuse to take credit cards, they dislike short hauls and sometimes they're slow to arrive -- making a living driving a cab in Dallas can be an iffy proposition. For our look at living car-free in Dallas, Amy Silvertstein talked to ... More >>

Behind Texas Electric Grid Emergency Alert, a Power Plant Failure, Not Demand

Grid managers at ERCOT, the manager of Texas' electric grid, issued an emergency alert Saturday. Apparently, a single power plant malfunctioned, went offline and single-handedly cut into the 2,300 megawatts of extra capacity we keep on reserve for just such occasions. To keep that number from plun ... More >>

Oil Industry Might Not Be Correctly Labeling Train Tank Cars Carrying Crude, Senators Say

After a frack job is complete, can we be certain that the energy industry is taking care to ship the oil as safely as possible? Two United States senators are gently questioning that as a series of crude oil train explosions have made the news. On December 30, a crude oil train operated by Fort Wo ... More >>

A Play On Pixar

Trains Carrying Oil Keep Exploding, but Will the Energy Lobby Allow More Regulation?

Freight trains are the little engine that could of the transportation industry, really janky-looking and slow but refusing to die. In fact, the freight train industry is doing better than ever in states sitting on top of shale, enjoying a massive increase in business thanks fracking. There are over ... More >>

Payday Lenders Are Using Texas Prosecutors to Collect Their Bad Debts

The payday lending industry in Texas has managed to wrap its tentacles around just about every level of government there is, repeatedly killing any move toward meaningful regulation on the part of the state legislature, skirting rules set up by municipalities, Dallas included, aimed at curbing its w ... More >>

The Yellow Cab Emails that Spurred Dallas' Uber Crackdown -- "We Are Bleeding!"

An NBC5 report last night shows just how desperate Yellow Cab Co. was to run Uber, the rider-summoned, smartphone-app car service, out of its territory. In emails dating as early as May, a lawyer for the biggest taxi company in North Texas hectored the city manager's office about citing Uber drivers ... More >>

Here Are the 60-Plus Breweries That Will Tap Kegs at Dallas Observer BrewFest

Remember last year's BrewFest? Yeah, it's a little foggy for me, too. I do remember large quantities of humans drinking large quantities of good booze, though. Beer snobbery was in full effect, too: The lines for the craft breweries were significantly longer than those that lead to the conventional ... More >>

Governor Signed New Craft Beer Legislation That Allows Breweries to Expand Operations

If you're a craft beer fan, you may want to charge up your cordless drill. On Friday Governor Rick Perry signed off on a five-pack of bills relating to the craft beer industry that will, in part, allow them to expand brewery operations. For over a decade the Texas craft beer industry has been push ... More >>

State Senate Passes Craft Brewing Bills That Would Allow Expanded Sales

Earlier this week, the Texas Senate approved a family of bills dear to the heart of Texas craft brewers. The legislation lets brewpubs sell a limited amount of beer through distributors, while craft breweries will get to sell their products to consumers on-site. See also: - Public Hearing Set for C ... More >>

Craft Brewers Say People Really Like Craft Brews. Especially Canadian People.

Beer-drinkers across the globe are growing ever more thirsty for American craft brews, and more craft breweries are opening as a result, according to two not-remotely-unbiased reports from a craft-brew trade group. On Monday, the Brewers Association, which represents small and independent crafter b ... More >>

Craft Beer Bills On Their Way to Senate Floor, The Good and The Bad

Craft brewers had one week to reach a compromise with the Wholesale Beer Distributors of Texas (WBDT) regarding five pieces of legislation recently introduced through Senate Committee on Business and Commerce. Senate bills 515, 516, 517 and 518 were a set of bills carefully crafted after a year of w ... More >>

ERCOT Says There May Not Be Enough Juice in the Power Grid To Prevent Rolling Blackouts This Summer

Just in case all this temperate whether has lulled you into the perception that the Texas power grid doesn't have the thinnest margin of safety between lights on and lights out anywhere in the country, here's a reminder: Summer is coming. ERCOT, the grid operator for most of Texas, says the odds th ... More >>

Dallas Senator John Carona Files Bill that Would Close a Tap for Craft Brewers

Recently we wrote about four bills Republican state Senator Kevin Eltife of Tyler introduced that would open new revenue opportunities for craft breweries around the state. As the law stands now, Texas requires a clear separation between those who make, distribute and retail beer in Texas. None of t ... More >>

A Texas Lawmaker Filed Four Bills Yesterday to Make Life Easier on the State's Craft Brewers

State senator Kevin Eltife, a Republican from Tyler, filed four bills yesterday that could breath new life into the craft beer industry in Texas. The legislation "will modernize laws that unfairly advantage out-of-state beer producers over Texas' small businesses of the beer industry -- craft brewer ... More >>

Cabbies Say There's a Taxi Monopoly in Dallas, and They're Fighting to Break it Up

Jack Bewley and Jeff Finkel have spent the last several years methodically strengthening their position in the Dallas taxi market. Their company, Irving Holdings, was established with the merger of five local cab companies. In 2007, they brought Freedom, Eagle, and Jet taxi companies. Earlier this y ... More >>

U.S. Postal Service's Slow Demise Looks Suspiciously Like Deliberate Homicide

Not that we could know anything here at my house about a matter so remote and complex as the looming budget crisis at the U.S. Postal Service, subject of an editorial in today's New York Times. We did notice and observe here last March that it was way more difficult for us to get the postal service ... More >>

A Day in the Life of a Doc's Records Clerk

Adventures In The Vinyl Trade: Doc's Records' Dave Howard

Every so often, we get to wondering what people in the local music community do all day. So, we asked them. Today, Ken Shimamoto checks in with Doc's Records employee Dave Howard, and learn a little about the life of a record store clerk in 2012. I grew up in record stores: from the musty, dusty s ... More >>

The Inland Port Can Still Win the Race for Jobs If We Don't Let Fixers Screw Us

Atkins: Inland Port is Two Years Behind, Will Be Four if Nothing Changes

The Inland Port, the sprawling warehousing and transportation center meant to be an economic boon for southern Dallas County, has never really taken off. It opened in 2005 and has seen some development, but the project was stalled by a rocky economy and the bankruptcy of its largest property owner, ... More >>

All of the Arguments About Digital Music, Summarized

Piracy is theft. Piracy isn't theft because nothing physical is being stolen. You are taking money out of the hands of artists. Artists were already being ripped off by labels. Artists can make the money back by touring. Kickstarter. Here is a bulleted list of numbers showing how much it costs ... More >>

Two Months and Counting: Affidavit Outlines Price Case and Sets Clock Ticking on Indictments

Summer Movies 2012: The Season Brings a Crop of Films Suitable for All Ages -- Including Adults

Southwest Airlines' Herb Kelleher: Energy Independence, As You Understand It, Is A Myth

Southwest Airlines co-founder Herb Kelleher and a gaggle of other titans, from former U.S. Spec Ops commanders to Sam Gilliland, chief executive officer of Dallas-based Sabre Holdings, reject outright the idea that we can drill our way to energy independence. In an Energy Security Leadership Council ... More >>

Pink Slime Economics: A Local Cattleman on How Beef Prices will Rise, and Why That's OK

Yesterday the farming trade publication Farm Futures carried a story on the potential rise in beef prices after the recent uproar over pink slime, or LFTB (lean finely textured beef). CattleFax, a beef industry research group, estimates the pink slime news cycle "is costing the U.S. beef industry $1 ... More >>

Texas' Biggest Power Supplier Wants to Blame the EPA for Future Blackouts

Neither Snow Nor Rain nor ... Oh, Screw It. The Post Office is a Dead Letter

At a Time When Texas Electricity Is Scarce, Does It Make Sense To Export It To Mexico?

A company that supplies electricity to Texans called American Electric Power filed to renew its application to export electricity to Mexico with the U.S. Department of Energy back in December. It operates a 720-megawatt coal-fired power plant near Vernon, and apparently it has been supplying our so ... More >>

The U.S. Postal Service Has Decided to Shutter Dallas's Main Processing Center After All

​We've known for months that the United State Post Office might shutter the Dallas Processing and Distribution Center on IH30; the USPS has been talking about doing it since, oh, 2009, for that matter. But today it's official: The postal service has announced that it's moving the Dallas Processing ... More >>

Keeping the Lights On In Texas is Really Starting to Scare State Lawmakers

We watch a three-hour House State Affairs Committee hearing so you don't have to! Seriously, though, the future reliability of the Texas electrical grid is really starting to freak state legislators the fuck out. The watchword these days is "resource adequacy" -- bureaucrat-ese for "Remember those o ... More >>

John Wiley Price, West Turn Up For Tense Forum on Fate of Dallas's Main Post Office

Photos by Anna MerlanDallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price attended, but did not speak at, last night's town hall. He sorta mailed it in.​Technically, the U.S. Postal Service hasn't yet made a decision about whether it will close the processing center at the main post office near Sylvan ... More >>

A "Very Concerned" Mayor Mike Sends Letter to U.S. Postmaster General Over Possible Closures

​As it turns out, the United States Postal Service is looking at shuttering several post offices in the city -- not just the main processing facility on IH-30, but also its locations in the Earle Cabell Federal Building (known as "Station C"), the Belmont Finance Station on Greenville Avenue and t ... More >>

On Wednesday, Public To Be Told USPS Study Recommends Closing Dallas Main Post Office

​Here we go again.Ever since I read this last month, I've been trying to nail down whether the United States Postal Service intends to shutter the Dallas Main Post Office on IH30. I went so far as to contact Eddie Bernice Johnson's office; two weeks ago her spokesperson said, "We are going to hold ... More >>

The Inland Port Is Still Screwed. Score One for the Perots.

​I guess if you took a pickax and a fire hose to it, you could have dug out a little bit of the truth from this morning's City Hall briefing on the inland port, but you needed to have your tall rubber boots on. Before we wade into the bullshit, please allow me to tell you what's really going ... More >>

Stomp Then Sip

Your Water Bill's Going Up This Year. And the Year After That. And the ... Well, You Get It.

Click to embiggen ... or just go to Page 29 in this budget briefing.​I mention this in the comments below, but the 5.91 percent increase in our Dallas Water Utilities bill comin' this fall won't be the last one any time soon. Matter of fact, per this morning's council briefing, this is but the fir ... More >>

Price Investigation's Royal Pains

"Queens for a day" could be a sign that feds are getting really ambitious.

As USPS Looks to Shrink Service, Three Dallas Post Offices Are in Danger of Being Closed

The Haskell Avenue post office in danger of being shuttered following USPS's study​This morning the United States Postal Services announced it's looking at some 3,700 retail offices that may be in need of shuttering to save dough. Because, per the release, "As more customers choose to conduct thei ... More >>

Talking Trash With the City Manager As She Looks At Ways to Generate Additional Revenue

​In a few weeks, Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm will present to the city council some revenue-generating brainstorms she hopes could offset some of this year's $60-million-and-maybe-more budget shortfall. Among her proposals, she tells Unfair Park, will be one familiar to anyone paying attention la ... More >>

Feds Roll Out $15 Million to Begin Studying Feasibility of DFW-to-Houston High-Speed Rail

​About a month back we looked at docs the Texas Department of Transportation submitted to the Federal Railroad Administration in the hopes of landing some federal money dough for that loooooong-discussed Dallas-Fort Worth-to-Houston high-speed rail line. Long story short: The state wanted $18 mill ... More >>

Rawlings Responds to Caraway's "Payday Loan King" Ads, Discusses Tenure on Lender's Board

Photo by Mark GrahamMike Rawlings​Mike Rawlings called this evening to discuss, sort of, those ads in which Mayor Dwaine Caraway blasts the mayoral candidate as the "Payday Loan King," a reference to Rawlings's six-year stint on the board of directors of Ace Cash Express -- the very sort of high-i ... More >>

A Piece of the Record Pie

A Store-by-store Breakdown of this Year's Record Store Day Events Around Town

Texas Wineries Ask "What Do Hispanic Wine Drinkers Want?"

​Hispanics represent a growing share of Texas' wine drinking population, but wineries are still grappling with how to pitch their products to them. "No information is available about the Hispanic wine market," Natalia Kolyesnikova, assistant director of the Texas Wine Marketing Research Insti ... More >>

Catfish Industry Fighting for New Labeling Laws in Texas

​The catfish industry is targeting Texas as the next state to adopt country-of-origin labeling legislation. The Catfish Institute's president Robert Barlow is now in Texas, rallying support for a bill introduced by state Senator Glenn Hegar. The proposed law, modeled after similar legislation ... More >>

AMC Grapevine Converting Theaters for Dine-In Movies

​The nation's second-largest theater chain is opening a dine-in theater at Grapevine Mills tomorrow, suggesting the movie world's major players aren't ready to cede the "watch and eat" model to smaller operators. Grapevine is the sixth entry in AMC's growing Dine-In Theater concept; a seventh ... More >>

U.S. Department of Transpo Forks Over $5.6 Mil to Study OKC-to-DFW High-Speed Rail Line

U.S. Department of Transportation​This morning, as expected, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood passed out $2.4 billion in funding to 54 high-speed rail projects in 23 states. Among the recipients: the Texas Department of Transportation, which'll take home $5.6 million intended to allow a fu ... More >>