Articles for July, 2010
Manhattan Lounge in Uptown Dallas: A First-Take Review
You know what Dallas apparently doesn’t have enough of? Hip lounges where pretty people, all gussied up to attract the attentions of others of similar pulchritude, can go to escape the obscene mass of humanity that would dare to embrace the comfort of shorts on a July evening.
And so Manhattan Lounge, which opened last Friday, aims to fill the void. Our nightlife editor Christine Sracic has had a look inside the place. You’ve got to read about the restrooms, which have liberated the women of Uptown from the need for stalls.
What to Do in Dallas Tonight: July 28
Want to have something to talk about with your really cool friends? The ones with ironic glasses and hip T-shirts who fancy themselves pop culture experts? Get tickets to see Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier at the Granada Theater.
On an ordinary late-July night in Lakewood, I would probably recommend a dinner of chicken-fried steak and Bob Armstrong dip at Matt’s Rancho Martinez. However, knowing that your show is on Greenville Avenue with its 15 available free parking spaces, you’re best served arriving early and dining closer to the action. Aw Shucks is appropriately casual and fun for this occasion (and the crackers are free!). However, if it’s especially muggy out—and the data gathered from my command post here on the 21st floor suggest it may be—Café Izmir might be a more comfortable bet. Mmm. Tabouli.
The show is likely to induce side-splitting laughter, resulting in acute muscle pain of the torso. Before calling it a night, numb that pain with nature’s most agreeable analgesic, beer, at the Lakewood Landing. Sip your suds, relive the evening’s funniest moments, and impress yourself and others with your selections on the jukebox.
Tom Pauken Blasts “Bush Revisionists”
He lays it all out to Lloyd Grove over at The Daily Beast. One quote:
“The Bush years were a huge failure, both economically and internationally,” he tells me. “On the economy, we’re not doing anything to create private-sector jobs, and we’re losing our manufacturing base, but it didn’t happen overnight. It’s accelerating during the Obama administration, but from 1999 to 2009, we lost one-third of our U.S. manufacturing jobs. Five million good American jobs have gone away…”
Here’s the thing about Pauken. He is right. If more Republicans followed his lead in owning up to the truth, instead of clasping their hands over their mouths for fear of saying something that doesn’t follow the partisan script, conservative principles might stand a chance of revival.
News Readers Are Paying the Freight
Moroney delivered a flurry of figures yesterday in his talk to us, and Belo delivered a flurry of figures in its quarterly earnings report on Monday. Phillip Stone and I agree on the most important of those figures: circulation revenue now comprises 29% of its revenues. That’s the key to survival, as we’ve been telling you — and them — for years.
Final Report From My 19-Year-Old Shadow
I asked John Michel, recent St. Mark’s grad and my shadow yesterday, to tell us what he made of the experience. I think he acquits himself rather well. Pretty sure I’ll be working for him someday.
D is a unique publication (although I say this when the sole basis of my journalistic perspective is my conservative, highly-regulated high school newspaper). Ideas flow freely, none off-limits, and the writers’ language exudes personality. I can’t say I was surprised by the staff’s liveliness and openness, but, not before having seen such an atmosphere in person, I was refreshed; my perceptions of professionalism until today were dictated by visions of straight-laced, 9-to-5, number-crunching and document-devouring business tycoons and corporate lawyers. I enjoy the experiential, humane aspects of journalism, as I did in high school. I’ve always seen myself as a creature of habit and, thus, as someone who would find comfort in a more consistent desk job rather than in the mercurial life of a journalist. Today, however, made me rethink my self-image. Observing, identifying, and drawing one’s own conclusions about local and worldly events seems, to me, almost too recreational – too fun and rewarding – to be a real profession, although I see that the realities of making ends meet for a newspaper or magazine make journalism as difficult as the next job. In other words, my experience at D certainly attracted more than detracted from my interest in journalism, and I enjoyed it heartily.
Lastly, to the cynics who commented candidly on my previous posts: I know I’m idealistic, and I know I’m privileged. I realize I haven’t “had it hard” yet, and I’m well aware (and constantly reminded) that I can’t even conceive the imminent reality I’ll likely be faced with at some point in the next fifteen years: the cold, hard fact of having to work not just to satisfy my own self-worth or to enrich my resume, but to put food on the table. I don’t pretend to comprehend that future, but I recognize it, and I respect it.
And it sounds like I haven’t considered every job option yet – a place with long enough lunch breaks to make snarky comments to teenage bloggers on Tuesday afternoons sounds pretty good.
Stray Dog Stripped of That Status by Lodge Owner
On July 9, I alluded to a dog that kept tying up traffic near LBJ and Marsh by running out on the highway. It took a writer in Baltimore (and a link from Rawlins Gilliland) for me to find out that the story did indeed have a happy ending.
It appears that after radio personality Richard Hunter (who recently adopted one of Michael Vick’s pit bulls) and comedian Hal Sparks caught the dog with help from Operation Kindness, Dawn Rizos – owner of The Lodge – adopted the dog, now named Ace. Ace spends his time at the club well, as you can see from the photos in the story.
I love a happy ending early in the morning.
Correction: One should not post immediately after waking up. Ace is the writer’s dog. Rizos named her dog Alley. Word of advice: Never give up caffeine.
Get Your Groupon On With a $9 Subscription to D Magazine
Surely you’re familiar with the greatness of Groupon. The one-deal-a-day site uses “collective buying power” to get low, low prices on all sorts of stuff — including, today only, a subscription to D Magazine. Normally you’d pay $18 for a year’s subscription to that fine, full-color magazine. Today, you can get 12 issues for half that amount. You won’t regret your purchase. Probably.
Leading Off (7/28/10)
1. Yesterday DMN publisher Jim Moroney said the paper will soon announce its iPad app (which kinda means they already announced it). It can’t come soon enough for me, though, because on my iPad now, I can’t watch their video of the hot Russian (alleged) smuggler from Plano because of that whole Adobe-Apple pissing match. Seriously. The smuggler might need an app all to herself. I’d download that.
2. Speaking of how technology can make our lives more awesome, Dallas Police Chief David Brown told a group of homeowners that we need to use social media to bust bad guys. You can start by getting on the Facebook wall of the mom in item No. 3 and telling her to get her act together.
3. A Pleasant Grove woman whose children were found swimming unattended in a pool yesterday faces five counts of child abandonment. I’m unfriending her right now.
4. The autopsy reports were released on the Coppell mayor who killed her daughter and herself. Nothing surprising, really. Just tragic. That it appears so premeditated makes me think angry thoughts that I’m really in no position to have.
4. But let’s end on a high note, shall we? The Rangers and A’s were locked in a 1-1 tie last night when, in the bottom of the 10th, Nelson Cruz knocked one out of the park. Do you believe yet?
Rumors Circulate of Jim Moroney’s Defection to the D Empire
They have, of course, no basis in fact.
DMN Publisher Jim Moroney Taunts D Mag Staff
Dallas Morning News CEO and publisher Jim Moroney was kind enough to keynote our third-quarter company-wide meeting. He’s talking to us about the state of his industry and how a 300-person newsroom, though half the size that it once was, is sufficient to cover the city — and necessary, because he promises us that in the next five years, another city official WILL do something illegal and be sent to jail. He dropped that the DMN is about to announce their iPad app (oops, guess he just announced it).
But my favorite part was when he was talking about the importance of differentiation, which is something columnists provide. Columnists like, oh, Evan Grant, the guy whom we hired away from the News and proved the value of on the dearly departed InsideCorner — and the guy whom the News then stole back from us. He was happy to point that out.
ABC Approves New Rules for Counting Subscribers
And that’s about all I got out of this. Listen, I’ll be honest: I have tired head. I’ve cut out caffeine, and now 2:30 rolls around every afternoon, like clockwork, and all I want to do is beat my score on Minesweeper and write dirty haiku. And nap. I want a nap.
But the ABC approved some new rules for counting subscribers that allows newspapers to also count subscribers to digital content, and apparently somehow they’ll be able to count some subscribers more than once. Or something. Basically, the Dallas Morning News‘ circulation just increased by 24,000 percent or something. The end.
TI’s Templeton Sees Bright Tech Future … If
Rich Templeton says he’s as optimistic about the future of technology as he’s ever been, and not just because Dallas-based Texas Instruments enjoyed 42 percent revenue growth in the latest quarter. TI’s chairman, president and CEO says global markets are ripe with tech opportunity, and North Texas companies are well-positioned to benefit from that. But to really do so, he told the Dallas Regional Chamber’s 10th Annual State of Technology luncheon today, the area needs to keep “investing” in the likes of education and infrastructure.
Specifically, Templeton told the big crowd, DFW needs to: promote more funding for university research efforts; make education in general a higher priority; embrace open trade; improve the area’s transportation/power infrastructure; and keep costs–including federal, state, and local taxes–low. He pointed out that the U.S. corporate income tax rate is the second-highest among 32 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development–one of two times he drew spontaneous applause from the tech-savvy business crowd. (The other came when he mentioned the importance of doing a better job on education.)
St. Paul United Methodist Church Returns to the Arts District
For our August issue, we had Walton Muyumba write about the renovation of St. Paul United Methodist Church’s historic building and how Highland Park United Methodist Church served as an unlikely partner in helping make it all happen. Today, Dan Koller of Park Cities People writes about the church’s return to its refurbished home. Give it a read.
What My 19-Year-Old Shadow Thinks of the Publishing Game, Ctd.
When an alert FBvian pointed out to me that BP’s new chief is an SMU man, I asked John to give me a few words. His take:
BP’s imbroglio is hitting even closer to home than the murky, oil-ridden waters tainting Texas’s southeastern coast: the oil magnate’s new CEO, the 54-year-old Robert Dudley — just named this morning and scheduled to take the reins October 1 from the much-maligned Tony Hayward — earned his MBA from SMU’s Cox School of Business. Aside from lawsuits galore and seemingly irreparable losses in the company’s morale and public image, gargantuan explicit costs, estimated between $30 and $60 billion, face the new CEO. Despite BP’s British roots, public sentiment seemed in favor of an American candidate to repair the damaged incurred on American soil. It’s hard to imagine what sort of advantage an American owns over a Brit in this situation — the task seems just as overwhelming for one guy as the next, regardless of nationality — but maybe his American pride gives him a patriotic incentive to succeed. Either way, let’s pray Dudley brings his A-game. He’ll need it.
Dallas Gets Its Own Hot Russian Smuggler (Allegedly)
Forget hot Russian (alleged) spy Anna Chapman. Put your peeps on Plano’s Anna Chapman, a 24-year-old Russian expat who was arrested for (allegedly) smuggling military-grade night-vision scopes into Moscow. Quite a bust for a graduate of the Ogle School of Hair Skin and Nails.
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