Amy Silverstein

Dallas Officials Say Bringing Save-A-Lot to Underpopulated Section of Southern Dallas Will Convince People to Move There

For the past few years, the Dallas City Council says it's been trying to develop a vacant lot on Simpson Stuart and Bonnie View roads, in a section of Dallas south of Loop 12 that is 22.5 square miles but home to just 27,500 people. What the relatively low-population area needs is another grocery ... More >>

Dallas County Jail Telephones Cost Extra If You Pay with a Credit Card. Is That Legal?

Most people don't realize that Texas has had a pretty cool law on the books since 1985 that bars merchants from charging customers extra for paying by credit card. The famously annoying credit card surcharge feels like it's everywhere, and Texas is just one of a handful of states where the credit ca ... More >>

Texas Businesses Starting to Realize Water Is Valuable Resource

In Texas' business-friendly climate, no industry spokesperson wants to be the weakling who admits that maybe water is sort of important. But it appears that some tough guys are finally letting their guard down. Last week, a rice farmer gave an interview in which he wasn't so coy about water, and how ... More >>

Texas Parks Will Have Clear Skies 141 Years from Now Under Half-Assed State Plan

NixBCAfter all of us and our children are dead, Texas will finally get this pesky ozone problem under control. That's according to a state clean air plan that the Environmental Protection Agency just rejected but Texas environment officials are continuing to defend anyway. Texas environment officia ... More >>

Captive Audience: Counties and Private Businesses Cash in on Video Visits at Jails

Kristina Leisey's former fiance sits in jail in Hopkins County on a drug-possession charge, his link to the world outside a telephone and frequent calls to her. "He's trying to call every day, sometimes two or three times a day," Leisey says. "He doesn't understand how much it adds up after awhile." ... More >>

Dallas Tows That Went Horribly So Wrong That Someone Was Maimed Or Killed

A Dallas tow company called Longhorn Wrecker may soon owe the state $88,900 in fines over towing violations. Reached for comment a few weeks ago, a bitter company representative said it was "all bullshit" and that his company had never been in trouble before. He apparently wasn't taking into account ... More >>

Dallas Hero Decides Against Illegally Evicting Poor a Week Before Thanksgiving

There are heroes all around Dallas. Today, let's highlight the work of Ari Nessel, a developer who has decided against suddenly evicting all the residents of a Lake Highlands condo building he recently purchased. "Tremendous progress has been made, and it's because of the pioneers like Mr. Nessel," ... More >>

Highland Park Tells Dallas to Make Our Buildings More Predictable in Katy Trail Development Suit

Rich people, we learn time and time again, do not like living near tall buildings or lowlifes who rent their homes, even if those tall buildings are fancy condos, occupied by lowlife renters who are also rich. Of course, the well-to-do usually come up with a better excuse for why they're fighting th ... More >>

Thirty-Seven White Supremacists Were Running a Massive Meth Ring in North Texas, Feds Say

More proof that the white man is under attack: a bunch of local white supremacists are facing criminal charges for allegedly dealing meth in North Texas and beyond. As far as white supremacist drug gangs go, this one appears to be relatively diverse. Some of the people in the meth ring, the feds s ... More >>

Here's TxDOT's Agreement with the Private Tollway Company That Has Eminent Domain Powers

In January, before many people were aware that a little-known corporation with the powers of eminent wanted to build private toll road through the rural communities east of Lake Lavon and Lake Ray Hubbard, the Texas Department of Transportation was promising in a written agreement to help the compan ... More >>

Dallas County Officials Say Video Won't End Regular Jail Visits. Can We Believe Them?

In October 2012, Travis County officials promised that bringing video visitation to the local jails wouldn't affect anything else about jail visits. "We're not changing anything else from what we're doing," Travis County Major Darren Long told the county commissioners before they voted to approve a ... More >>

A Mysterious New Landlord Is Making Life Hell for the Residents of an Irving Mobile Home Park

Mobile home parks, at their best, offer community, safety and freedom for people who can't afford to be tied down in a regular house but don't want to be fleeced by a slumlord running a crumbling apartment complex. A Dallas commercial real estate company called Harvest Partners Ltd is doing its sm ... More >>

Dallas Homeowners' Association Turned Off Man's Sprinklers, Threatened Gunplay, According to Strange Lawsuit

At a condominium near Turtle Creek, there is a bitter, strange battle brewing between the building's homeowners' association and the domestic partner of one of the HOA's members. In January, the 3081 Gilbert Homeowners' Association felt so threatened by the man, they filed a lawsuit. The court f ... More >>

Dallas Company Did Such Good Job Towing Cars It May Owe Texas $88,900 in Fines

Say what you will about Longhorn Wrecker, one of Dallas' notorious towing companies, you can at least never accuse it of laziness. This is the same company that during the Dallas Gay Pride Parade five years ago descended on a post office nearby and towed a few dozen cars from the parking lot, even t ... More >>

Texas' Only Natural Lake Is Polluted With Oil, and the EPA Isn't Paying Attention, Activists Say

Texas has exactly one good sized natural lake that we share with Louisiana, and it's totally not getting flooded with oil right now, officials have assured us these last few weeks. On October 13, workers noticed crude oil leaking out of a pipeline and into a Louisiana bayou. The pipeline operator es ... More >>

Frisco Homeowners Association Can't Kick Out Homeless Teens, Judge Rules

You want to live in Frisco's Plantation Resort 2 neighborhood, you better keep your property looking good and fancy. Because Plantation Resort 2 isn't going to put up with your shit. Here are Plantation Resort 2's hardcore summer lawn-watering instructions: Although we are currently under water res ... More >>

Destroying the Cabana Hotel Would Not Be So Bad

Every hour or so, the Save the Cabana Hotel Facebook page reminds its 900-plus followers to SAVE THE CABANA HOTEL. Dallas' luxury Cabana Motor Hotel opened on Stemmons Freeway in 1962, and photographs on the fan page show legends like John Bonham and Robert Plant hanging out. The Beatles, Jimi Hendr ... More >>

Unpopular Toll Road Idea We Said Was Dead Might Not Be Dead

North Texas' regional transportation officials recently announced that they would no longer recommend forcing people out of their homes in the countryside northeast of Dallas to build another toll road, because it turned out that people didn't like the idea. "We thought we had consensus that we sho ... More >>

Some Patients Complain That Parkland Is Filing Exorbitant Hospital Liens For Medical Bills

A little-known perk of being a Texas hospital is that if a broke accident victim visits you for emergency treatment, you get to lay claim to any money the victim wins through the courts later. It's officially called a "hospital lien," legal through a state statute that's been on the books since the ... More >>

City and Boondocks Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose but Sprawl.

Texas Construction Workers Say Aldi, Dallas Subcontractor Ripped Them Out Of $20,000

Aldi was recently crowned "the best grocery store in America" by Slate, the popular yuppy think-piece website, making the discount grocery chain socially acceptable for $30,000 millionaires everywhere. The store's cheap quirks include requiring a 25-cent deposit for a shopping cart, which they say h ... More >>

Plans for Texas' First Private Toll Road Roll On -- and Right Over People in its Path

For the people who live in the countryside east of Lake Ray Hubbard and Lake Lavon, the appeal is in the quiet rural roads, dense trees, wild animals in the woods and bright stars shining in the night sky. To a Dallas company called the Texas Turnpike Corp., all that open space is a sign that not e ... More >>

Dallas Man Sues Former Landlord over Bedbug Infestation; Landlord Says He Planted Them

Marquis on Gaston is one of those faux-luxury apartment complexes plopped by one of Dallas' cool neighborhoods (in this case, Deep Ellum), advertising itself with descriptors such as "gated community," "suburban living in an urban environment," "luxurious pool area," "French patio doors," "distingu ... More >>

Ebola in Dallas: What We Know

Newest updates will appear at the bottom of this post. September 20: Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan arrives in Dallas from Monrovia, Liberia via Brussels. Duncan made an intervening stop at Dulles International Airport near Washington D.C.. September 26: Duncan first visits Texas Health Pres ... More >>

Ebola in Dallas: Day 3

Newest updates will appear at the bottom of this post. Yesterday's updates can be found here: Ebola in Dallas: What We Know So Far October 2: Morning Links: Emily Mathis on the atmosphere at Texas Health Presbyterian. From Vox, "How a Dallas hospital failed to diagnose the Ebola patient" and "The ... More >>

NCTCOG Seems Pretty Enthusiastic about Letting a Dallas Company Build Texas' First Private Toll Road

A few years ago, a private, Dallas-based corporation announced it would like to build a private toll road, all with its own money, connecting northeast Dallas County to somewhere around Greenville, running basically parallel to the Interstate 30 and passing near Lake Lavon and Lake Ray Hubbard. The ... More >>

Demolishing Old Buildings in Dallas Is Easier Than Saving Them

Tim Headington, the oil billionaire behind the Joule Hotel, has a weird relationship with local preservationists. On the one hand, Preservation Dallas honored him with an achievement award last May for his work on the hotel, which sits in a restored 1927 building. On the other hand, Preservation Dal ... More >>

Green Oaks Hospital Is Retraining Staff, Presumably to Stop Discharging Recovering Homeless Patients to Boarding Houses

Before Parkland placed a patient named Todd Arko in what the feds described as "immediate jeopardy," nearly costing the hospital its Medicaid funding, there was another, lesser-known hospital that the feds say also placed a patient in immediate jeopardy. Green Oaks is a private psychiatric hospital ... More >>

Texas Judge Backs School District That Suspended Boy for Refusing Handshake

A kid who was suspended 10 days from high school is super awesome, according to a federal lawsuit filed by his parents. "He is currently taking honors classes and a higher level math class than most of his peers," says a suit filed by his mother, Tiffany Macklin. The boy, identified in court docume ... More >>

If We're Not Going to Reform Immigration, Let's Make It Fun

In 2006, hunters generated $2.63 billion in retail sales for their sport in Texas, paying nearly $284 million in state and local taxes and supporting more than 44,119 jobs, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. That doesn't include the millions spent by birdwatchers, photographers an ... More >>

McKinney PD Accused of Destroying Damning Video, But Maybe Their Dash Cams Just Suck

Squad Car Footage from Amy Silverstein on Vimeo. The allegations against the former McKinney Police Department officer are serious: He was driving too fast, with no siren lights on and making a dangerous lane change before crashing into the car of a man who is now suing him. But there's no footage ... More >>

Dallas Library Advocates Take Control of the Budget Debate with a Seussical Funding Plea

In a recent chat with our Amy Silverstein, Dallas City Councilman Philip Kingston described the outcry over proposed cuts to Dallas Animal Services -- and the public jockeying among departments for additional funding -- as "absolute theater." But c'mon. An online petition and a get-together at Lee ... More >>

4 Driving Tips For Surviving Dallas

Ever tried driving around Dallas? We assume you have, as otherwise you'd have been stuck in the same quarter-mile or so for your whole life. We're not a city that likes to build anything that would be easily accessible by non-cars. Sidewalks are an afterthought. Pedestrians are treated with suspicio ... More >>

Feral Hogs Still on the Loose After Dallas Has Second Thoughts About Hired Trapper

Last fall, the fate of Dallas' destructive, hyper-sexual feral hog population rested in the traps of just one man, Osvaldo Rojas, who runs a feral hog business called City Trapping. He'd been hired to capture hogs on some city property before, but September was when he got the big contract, a three- ... More >>

DART Will Open its Long-Awaited DFW Airport Train Station in August

When intrepid Observerer Amy Silverstein recently took DART to DFW Airport, she missed her hypothetical flight and narrowly avoided being devoured by coyotes. She ultimately discovered that there was a bus that took her to the terminal, but the trip was long, arduous, and complicated. That problem ... More >>

Adventures in a Car-Free Dallas: I Want My Damn Car Back

The revelation last year that Dallas City Hall, in an effort to help its benefactors at Yellow Cab, was quietly working to put Uber out of business sparked a massive public outcry. Transportation hearings have turned into a referendum on the taxi industry. Uber has been called racist. And it's all w ... More >>

Adventures in a Car-Free Dallas: Which Transportation Alternative Is Right for You?

Don't have a car but the bus isn't your style? As part of our look at car-free Dallas living, Amy Silverstein weighs the pros and cons of other ways to get there from here. Taxi Pro: Even if you're partying in a sketchy part of town, calling Yellow Cab guarantees that the operator will say, "We'll ... More >>

Adventures in a Car-Free Dallas: Catching a Ride Where Cabbies Fear to Tread

Critics of Uber say that without the heavy hand of city regulation, the app-based limo dispatching company won't serve residents in poor neighborhoods. Critics of Yellow Cab complain that's pretty much how things often work now. For our look at living car-free in Big D, Amy Silverstein pitted Yellow ... More >>

Adventures in a Car-Free Dallas: You Can Take DART to the Airport, but Beware the Coyotes

As part of our look this week at what it means to live in Dallas without a car, Amy Silverstein put DART to the test to see how well it could get her from our offices at Oak Lawn and Maple avenues to D/FW International. There's a United Airlines flight leaving Dallas at 6:33 p.m. on a Wednesday. G ... More >>

Unarmed Teen Shot by Dallas Officer Had Two Taser Marks, Two Gunshot Wounds, Autopsy Shows

Shortly after a Dallas Police Department officer shot an unarmed teen last summer, there was a fairly simple explanation. The officers "responded to a burglary in progress," police said. They found 19-year-old Gerardo Pinedo Jr. inside the house and ordered him to come outside and lie on the ground ... More >>

Why Are Dallas Hospitals Short on Treatment for Rape Victims?

Local officials had a big celebration last month when a hospital in southern Dallas finally started offering forensic exams for rape victims. "Unfortunately, Dallas has a perceived -- and maybe a real -- impression that individuals from the southern sector don't receive services like those in the ... More >>

A.C. Gonzalez Pitches a Change-up

New city manager promises transparency. Here's where he can start.

Deion Sanders Demanded a Raise, Threatened to Break Prime Prep CEO's Neck (Audio NSFW)

Throughout the public collapse of Prime Prep Academy, the charter school co-founded by Deion Sanders, the former Cowboy star has been accused of bullying and even attacking school employees who failed to cow to his demands for more power and more money. Those allegations have largely been hard to ... More >>

Judge Orders Marlise Munoz to Be Taken Off Life Support

Finally, after nearly two months being kept on life support, Marlise Munoz will be allowed to die. Just after 4:15 p.m., a Tarrant County Judge sided with Munoz' family, declaring her legally dead and ordering her removed from support. The decision came after less than an hour of debate. Fort Wort ... More >>

Uber Dallas Added $150 Charge to Woman's Credit Card for "Repairs" She Says Are Bull

[UPDATE, 3:44 p.m.: "I just got an email from Uber saying the charges are being reversed," Kimberly Alexander wrote to us this afternoon, about two hours after we had gotten off the phone with Uber's Leandre Johns, who had insisted that the damage was legit. We've left him messages and will post ano ... More >>

Denton Residents Angry as EagleRidge Continues to Frack Near Homes

Earlier this year, the city of Denton approved regulations that would supposedly stop gas companies from drilling new wells near homes. Yet recently, residents in the Vintage neighborhood began noticing some suspicious noises and vibrations. They were coming from an old gas well site nearby. Denton ... More >>

How a DFW Towing Company Uses a So-Called Safety Group to Troll Your Apartment's Lot

Pretend you busted your checking account and fell behind a few days on your rent. Would you feel safer if your landlord let a towing company take your car away? That's the gist of an organization called the Texas Association of Safer Apartment Communities, a safety association landlords can join. A ... More >>

Deion Sanders Meets With Us so We'll Stop Saying Mean Things. There's Even a Form to Sign. Guess What.

"You look nervous," is how Deion Sanders greets me, loudly, as we meet me for the first time. I am not nervous. "That's just the way my face looks," I respond. He says that I look fine but definitely nervous. I am confused. We are standing in a fancy indoor practice field, one of several nice wo ... More >>