If you were planning to bundle-up and head to the Dallas Contemporary’s opening celebration for their new space on Glass St. this Friday, start making other plans. The gallery hasn’t been able to secure its certificate of occupancy in time for the opening (the holidays delayed setting up the phone lines which means no fire monitoring yet, DC Director Joan Davidow reports. You know how that goes). If you’re curious about the changes at Dallas’ contemporary, wait for the March edition of the print product. For now, Davidow and company are trying to figure out how to open James Gilbert’s show, which is installed and ready to be seen in the design district warehouse, in the next few weeks.
It was bound to happen: the cheesy mayoral bet over a big sporting event. It used to be that these things happened when two cities’ teams made it to the championship. But considering recent Cowboys history, I suppose a first round playoff game against a wild card team is worth a bet. So Mayor Tom supports his Cowboys in this friendly wager with Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter. At stake: a catered lunch, Texas BBQ vs. Philly cheesesteaks. One question: did anyone call the mayor of Arlington? (Release after the jump.)
After outgrowing the space at Dallas Market Center, where it was held for years, the mother of all Texas hunting-and-fishing expositions is set to open tomorrow at the Dallas Convention Center. But right from the get-go, the Dallas Safari Club’s First Light 2010 show ran into some rough sledding at the DCC.
Charles Snider of Argentina’s Estancia Alicura, one of 1,100 exhibitors, said he and three employees were stuck in line at the DCC from 12:50 p.m. yesterday until 4:30, waiting to unload their truck and trailer and set up their booth, before finally giving up for the day in frustration. At Market Hall, where there were just two loading docks–the DCC, by contrast, has 30 to 35–the process typically took 30 minutes max, Snider says.
Frank Poe of the Dallas Convention Center says the Dallas Safari Club, not the DCC, is in charge of loading and unloading. (We’ve traded phone messages but not talked yet with the DSC). Poe also said the club apparently has made some “modifications” to speed the process along. Must have; Snider says he and his crew returned today and it (only) took them three hours to get ‘er done. Twenty thousand people are expected to attend First Light, which will be spread across 300,000 square feet of space during its four-day run ending Sunday.
UPDATE: In a voicemail, DSC executive director Ben Carter says he’s surprised the DCC is blaming the “inefficiencies” on the Safari Club. The club was promised enough loading docks to get the job done, he says, yet wound up Tuesday with only four. Despite the “limitations that the convention center failed to tell us about,” Carter says, the issues were resolved today and “next year will be a lot smoother.”
Mark it on your calendars: Saturday, February 20. That’s when the University of Texas at Dallas and their artists’ residency, Centraltrak, will host Kinetics of Urban Sprawl: Cybernetics and the City in the 21st Century. If that drool-worthy title isn’t enough to get this on your calendar, then check out some of the works by the heavyweights they’re bringing in for the symposium. Robert Bruegmann, you suburb-dwellers will be happy to know, defends the lifestyle of the car and garage in Sprawl: A Compact History. Peter Hales has written about the architectural and social structures of atomic testing towns. Me, I’m going to read Mitchell Schwarzer’s German Architectural Theory and the Search for Modern Identity as a primer because I think that title contains six of my eight favorite words. See you there sprawl lovers. (Release after the jump.)
Someone in the comments of my latest broadside on Mario Tarradell asked for something a little more formal from me. So, if interested, it’s after the jump. If you aren’t, here is a short clip of a 1990 pilot that featured Peter Boyle as a cop reincarnated as a talking bulldog.
Garbage ain’t sexy, but it does tend to get people heated up. At least it did last night at the Ridgewood Recreation Center near White Rock Lake, where about 60 people turned out to hear about the city’s new OneDay Dallas program. That’s a slick way of saying that, starting March 1, all Dallas trash will be picked up just once a week, and you’re going to have to start using a blue recycling bin–and using it right–in addition to your grey bin. Currently grey bins in most parts of the city are picked up twice a week; the blues, twice a month.
Will every nonprofit agency in Dallas eventually sport T. Boone Pickens’ name? First they slap it on the new Senior Source headquarters building, where my wife works. Then he takes over the YMCA downtown. Now a press release comes reminding me that he’s got his own Hall of Fame with Big Brothers Big Sisters. (If Mr. Pickens would like to have me tattoo his name on my body in exchange for monetary considerations, I’m open to talks.)
Though it launched in January 2008, the T. Boone Pickens Mentoring Hall of Fame will induct its first member next week. The honor goes to Don Carty, the chairman of Virgin America, at the end of an event discussing the future of our nation’s economy at the Tower Club on Jan. 12.
Along with Carty and Pickens, attendees will get to hear speakers from the Federal Reserve, Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert, and Frisco Mayor Maher Maso.
Who doesn’t love the Snuggie, that wonderful invention of a blanket with sleeves? Whether you actually find the thing useful or just enjoy the product’s kitschy advertisements, there’s little not to like.
Well, Plano-based JCPenney is going one better — they’ve added legs to the slanket. It sells for $24.99, though they claim it was originally $60.
But Japan has its own contender. Oh, please, god of television commercials, let it reach our American shores.
With the female-friendly DailyCandy pulling out of Dallas last month, a new daily e-mail tip sheet thingy has launched here, and now it’s just the guys who are getting serviced. Surely you subscribe already to Thrillist. Well, now you can hook up with UrbanDaddy, also based in New York. How do I know it’s based in New York? Because of all the delicious chestnuts contained in their announcement about their new Dallas edition:
You know what they say: everything’s bigger in Texas.
Now we can’t officially, scientifically confirm this sentiment much beyond the size of the Cowboys cheerleaders’…hair. But we figured that when we made our debut in the state, we had to go huge or else go home.
Well, we’re not going home…
Welcome to UrbanDaddy Dallas, your new guide to the latest and greatest in what’s happening in the Big D.
In a town built on oil, hard work and Roger Staubach’s grit, our hats are overflowing with 10 gallons’ worth of cutting-edge scoops. Once a day, you’ll get a quick tip from us about the coolest thing happening right now in the Big D—a secret whiskey saloon in West Village, great new BBQ in Deep Ellum or the next place Tony Romo will be spotted with a young starlet.
It’s the kind of critical, need-to-know information on about-to-open nightspots, sexy dinner date options and the occasional members-only BBQ pit that could get a person killed back in the oil-prospecting days.
And is now only slightly less dangerous.
That’s the way people in New York see Dallas: like it’s 1973. They don’t understand that people in Dallas now think of Staubach as a businessman as much as a former football player. A “secret whiskey saloon”? Seriously? References to 10-gallon hats? Really? And it might be “the Big Apple,” but around these here parts, we call it simply “Big D,” no article needed.
Good luck, pardners!
After yesterday’s item about Woodrow’s football greats, an alert Frontburnervian sent along a link to a New York Times story about Sergio Kindle, another Woodrow Wilson High School grad who will be playing for the Longhorns in tomorrow night’s college national championship game:
Kindle grew up in a 900-square-foot house in a crime-infested part of Dallas known as South Oak Cliff. Calvin Walker recalled routinely seeing drug raids and hearing gunshots on the family’s street.
“It’s a rough neighborhood if you let it be,” Kindle said. “There are things going on around you that shouldn’t be happening or you wouldn’t want to be happening around you.”
But Kindle’s house was a haven for family members who routinely spent the night, often causing Kindle to sleep on the floor. “I’m used to it as long as you’ve got a blanket and some carpet,” Kindle said.
When Kindle was in middle school, his house was robbed at least six times by football players at South Oak Cliff High School, Calvin Walker said. Because of those incidents, Kindle’s father refused to send him to the school.
Instead, he enrolled his son across the city at Woodrow Wilson High School. To get to Wilson High, Kindle rose at 6 a.m. to make a 50-minute commute on city buses.
I was saddened to read that the DMA is ending free Thursday nights. It’s not that I don’t understand the financial pressures of the times. It’s not like the DMA doesn’t still offer free admission on the first Tuesday of every month. And students will also still get in free in the evenings.
But Thursday night was when I went to the DMA. It had become habit. And while I’ll become a museum member now (something I should have done some time ago), what saddens me about the end of free Thursdays is the thought that for many years before I could become a member, thanks to a meager income from a collection of odd jobs, my girlfriend (now wife) and I could still count on a Thursday night date: some food from the Atrium Café, catch part of a jazz performance, and visit the work – every week, again and again and again and again. Growing up in New York, museums were expensive and a train ride away. They were the subject of annual trips. But because of free Thursday nights at the DMA, I began to experience museums in a new way. They housed, not exhibited works. I did not look at pieces, I visited them. For some works – an exhibition of Thomas Struth photographs comes to mind – I began to look forward to revisiting particular works each week, to enjoy their charm, to let them bemuse in new ways. It was the closest thing a young, penniless recent graduate could come to the experience of having a great work hanging in one’s living room and enjoy that continual discovery of the personality of a work that only comes when you live with it. It also changed my relationship with the museum. The DMA became familiar ground, a comfortable public space, a place to gather and feel part of the throbbing life of the city. I know if it wasn’t free I wouldn’t be there – or at least as often, and I’m sure the same could be said about many of the other faces in the crowd.
As a museum member, I will preserve this experience. But it is a shame that those who are now in the position I was in will not get to live in the museum every week. How will they be able to cultivate the love of the place that will drive them to eventually become members when they can? Because, as Jerome Weeks reminds us, museums matter.
Patricia Viramontes was DISD’s chief technology officer until she was shown the door last month. District gadflies had been making noise about nepotism for some time because Viramontes’ husband is Arnold Viramontes, the chief of staff and superintendent Michael Hinojosa’s right-hand man. But that’s not the reason Patricia was fired. The DMN got ahold of her personnel file, which makes pretty clear why she no longer has a job. I’ve talked to someone at 3700 Ross who remarked that she needed to go.
But here’s the thing: what’s Arnold Viramontes going to do? I’ve worked with married couples before when one was laid off. That’s no fun. But layoffs are one thing, and firings are another. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to picture the scene at the Viramontes homestead the day Arnold came home from work after Patricia was very publicly fired. I suppose it is possible that Patricia told her husband, “Today was a rough day for me, but I still love the district and believe in its mission, and I’m glad you still have a job there so you can make a difference” — but I doubt it.
I should point out that I’ve never met the Viramonteses. I’m just working through a thought experiment here. But it’s my understanding that Arnold is a big asset to the district. So here’s hoping that his wife’s employment with DISD doesn’t cost the district any more than it already has.
Here’s an interesting story about a family that owns what amounts to a large parking space in downtown Dallas, smack dab in the middle of where the city wants to develop the convention center hotel. The city has offered the family some serious coin for the tiny plot — $119 per square foot — but the family isn’t budging. And I swear I’m not bringing up this story so that I can point out that it contains the grammatical boner in the following sentence: “It sits on Young Street, just west of Lamar Street, and is surrounded on three sides by walls protecting the construction site of the city’s convention center hotel.”
I’m really not into this sort of thing, but if you’d like to vote in Avid Golfer’s Cart Girl of the Year 2009 contest, you can do that here. Also, I’m not partial to Angie Law, middle column, third one down.