Articles for December 18th, 2009
Destruction of the HP Village Theater
The Park Cities People blog, Overheard, has photos of the demolition of the insides of the Village Theater in progress at Highland Park Village.
Landmark, which runs the Magnolia and the Inwood, is taking over the theater. They’re going to add a cafe that will have seating right up on top of the marquee.
They did a great job with the redo of the Inwood, so I’m looking forward to the new look, which will open in May. I say that even though I once opined that HP Village could have made better use of the space when Regent Entertainment left.
Jaap Sidelined for New Year’s Concert
First it was DeMarcus Ware. Now another Dallas hero has had a run in with the meds. Dallas Symphony Orchestra Music Director Jaap Van Zweden will miss this year’s New Year’s Concert Celebration due to a shoulder injury. British-born conductor James Judd has been called off the bench to step in for the Dutch conductor. A full release is after the jump.
Hank Stuever on the Late Late Show
If you heard Hank Stuever, the author of Tinsel, on Think last month, or have read his book about Christmas in Frisco, there isn’t much new in this interview. It aired last night on the Late Late Show. Craig Ferguson gets in a good dig at Twitter, though, or as he calls it “the tweety birds.”
Dallas Reads the New York Times
An alert FrontBurnervian points us to the below video, created by the smart folks at the NYT. It shows the source of traffic to their website on the day Michael Jackson died. Notice the red hotspot in North Texas.
Starbucks Baristas Strike in Fort Worth
Hey Glenn, so those Starbucks baristas from Hilton Head? Looks like they might need the tips after all. They were on strike this morning (sort of) at one location in Fort Worth:
“We’ve had enough. Baristas should not be forced to expose customers to H1N1 or other contagions and stay sick longer, just in order to be able to make the money they need to support their families and pay astronomical health care costs. We’re making $7.30/hr., that’s a nickel above minimum wage,” said IWW Barista Michelle Cahill.
But all they did was shut down the drive-thru?
Main Street Garden is Better Than a B12 Shot
Sure it’s not all it will be yet. Still, not a bad view while you’re eating a sandwich on a sunny day. The Statler Hilton isn’t as ugly as I remembered.
But. (more…)
Meet Peter Simek, the FNG
You’ve now seen a couple posts from him, so it’s time to formally introduce Peter Simek to the FrontBurner Nation. Peter is a boomerang baby. He used to work at People Newspapers, where he helped launch Oak Cliff People. Then he left us to work someplace where I imagine they made him wear a tie. In his spare time, he launched something called Renegade Bus. What happened was, Wick came to work one day in a foul mood. He wanted to kill something. So I said, “Hire Peter Simek. That’ll be like when they blew up Alderaan with the Death Star. Debris everywhere.” So that’s what Wick did. Peter started work here on Monday. On his first day, he kicked our copy editor out of her desk, using the same philosophy he learned in jail. You know, find the biggest guy and punch him in the mouth. Let everyone know right away that you’re a badass. Ostensibly, Peter will be covering the arts for us, but really he’ll be keeping an eye on my cellphone, which I tend to leave in the bathroom when I’ve been playing poker on it. Peter did not get a B12 shot today. Loser.
Jacquielynn Floyd Needs a B12 Shot
Poor Metro columnist J-Floyd. A couple hours ago, on the DMN’s Metro Columnists blog, she linked to a report that aired on Channel 8 last night. It’s about a guy who was mistakenly declared dead. J-Floyd calls it a “don’t that beat all” story and makes a joke about how this thing could have possibly happened. Problem is, the story shouldn’t be new to J-Floyd. It ran in the Metro section on Sunday.
I’m no expert. But I’m thinking a B12 shot once a month might keep J-Floyd more alert, so she wouldn’t miss such stuff. Too, I suppose she could have been on vacation and not read the paper that day. I know how that goes. You collect it from the front yard. It lies on your kitchen table all day. You keep intending to read it. But then you’ve got to run to the store. A football game starts. On your seventh beer, you realize your vision has become blurred, making it difficult to read the tiny newsprint.
(Note: I apologize to J-Floyd and her legion of fans for this snarky post. Really. I had my first B12 shot today, and I’m not feeling myself. Or, rather, I am feeling myself, and that’s what’s making me feel weird. Is that person staring at me? Why is he staring at me? I need more Funyons.)
Best Statler Hilton Option: Student Housing
We’ve wondered before in this space about what we need downtown, and my old online haunt once ran a piece with a similar mental exercise. It always struck me that many of the small ideas – bookshops, cafes, grocery stores, laundry – would follow if one big idea was brought into the downtown mix: a university. That’s why when the rumblings began last week that momentum may be building behind the Statler Hilton redo (emphasis on the maybe, via Wilonsky), the first idea that popped into my head was student housing. Here’s why: as I wrote in this D CEO piece some time back, one of the big obstacles facing a Statler redo is its inflexible floor plates and cramped room designs. Without massive interior demolition (which never makes it easier to pencil out a project – c.f. Lake Cliff Towers), you can’t easily pull off a condo / apartment / hotel project that fits today’s tastes – tall ceilings, large open living spaces. But with a UNT law school potentially opening cattycorner to the former hotel and UNT’s main offices moving into the building on the opposite side the park, perhaps the city should focus part of its efforts on encouraging one more university program downtown (an architecture school, anyone?) to help build a critical mass of students that could support the Statler – and the bookstore, laundry, and beer garden.
About That Henry S. Miller Commercial Property Auction This Week…
Sources are telling our real estate doyenne, Candy Evans, that the dirt won’t exactly be flying anytime soon.
Update: Silly me. I am Candy Evans and posting this for the first time on FrontBurner (!!!), so I guess I didn’t have to ID myself. Blonde moment.
The Tipping Point: Starbucks v. McDonald’s
Talking about tipping yesterday Candy Evans mentioned Starbucks, which raises a whole other can of worms. How come you’re expected to tip the help there–the big glass jars are a not-so-subtle hint–when you’re never asked to do the same at a Taco Bell or a McDonald’s? No offense, but my McDonald’s server (Irma from El Salvador) probably needs the dough a lot more than barista Biff from Hilton Head.
B12 Is the Drug of Choice at Local City Magazine
Maybe it’s because we recently moved our offices downtown. But now many people in our office are behaving like Hollywood actors. They’re all getting B12 shots. Awhile back, the announcement went out that every month someone would come to the office to dole out the vitamin (I pronounce it “vit-uh-min”) for $15 per prick. A guy in a white lab coat (so official!) occupies a conference room, and a steady stream of saleswomen parades in to see him (in sales, they can afford it).
So what’s the deal? Does your office do it, too? Should I tie off and put the spike in? Is it worth $15?
Update: I guess we’ll find out. I succumbed to peer pressure. I mean, if Zac is gonna do it, then I’m sure as hell not going to not do it. Question: should it worry me that the injector’s nametag identifies him as “director of business development”?
Update: This keyboard is the most amazing thing I’ve ever touched in my whole life. God, I want to touch it more! And these people I work with! Man, I LOVE them. [grinding teeth]
Fort Worth Opera Features Bad Singing
The Fort Worth Opera has launched a campaign against bad singing, so that blogs like ours will raise awareness for them and net some more donations. How many of the “local celebrities” in this video can you name?
(H/T: Art& Seek)
Mark Cuban Offers Advice to College Kid
Mark Cuban last night posted an e-mail he received from a local college student. Something about what the kid writes rings false. Isn’t sending a message like this to Cuban the equivalent of saying “My biggest weakness is that I’m too much of a perfectionist” during a job interview?
I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced addictive behavior before, but I’m sure you’ve got an idea of what it would be like. Now I want to specify that I’m not addicted to drugs or alcohol or any of that junk. I’m addicted to adventure. Of pushing physical boundaries and experiencing new things.
But man, it’s killing me right now. I can’t focus on anything that I need to do. I’m a full-time undergrad and real estate agent (among other things), and this desperate search for adventure is not driving me toward my goals; it is crippling me. Before you had the freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want, how did you maintain focus on the things you needed to do?
Thing is, Cuban isn’t necessarily the same kind of thrill-seeker, “pushing physical boundaries,” that this student seems to think he is. The one time I watched Cuban’s failed reality show, The Benefactor, I remember him refusing to do some sort of bungee-jump-type thing over at the Speedzone when the contestants took him there.
(H/T: Pegasus)
State of the Arts at the DMA: A Recap
Last night was the second installment of the State of the Arts lecture series at the Dallas Museum of Art, a four-part series of conversations between local artists and art administrators, hosted by KERA’s Jeff Whittington. What is ingenious about the series is that it pairs guests from different spectrums of the arts scene and asks them the same questions. Part 2 featured Charles Santos, executive director of TITAS, which programs dance and music performances at the AT&T Performing Arts Center, and jazz musician Arlington Jones. Some choice quotes from the discussion and a few thoughts can be found after the jump.
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