Articles for October 29th, 2012
Obama’s Ahead in 7-Eleven Coffee-Cup Poll
If “recently collected data” from Dallas-based 7-Eleven holds up, President Obama will beat Mitt Romney soundly next week. That’s according to data, of course, from the convenience-store chain’s coffee-cup poll. 7-Eleven calls the poll “unabashedly unscientific.” But The New York Times points out that it’s been right in three straight presidential elections, even predicting the popular vote within a single percentage point.
Spend Election Night With D Magazine at the Granada: Music, Entertainment, Live Coverage of Results, and More
Join us Tuesday, November 6th at the Granada Theater to celebrate or commiserate with cocktails, live election coverage on giant screens, and live music from Burning Hotels, AiR DeeJay of Track Meet, and Paris Vidal. It’s called D Election Night Live, presented by Chevrolet.  Tickets are only $5. It all goes down from 8:30 p.m. – 11 p.m. Get your tickets right here today.
Museum Tower-Nasher Sculpture Center Situation Provides Grist for Mill of Halloween Costumes
Paul Devereaux’s Halloween costume
In addition to the Klyde Warren Park opening festivities over the weekend, Halloween was being celebrated early in Uptown and all over town.
At Saturday’s 7th Annual Dallas Bones Bash Gala benefiting the Arthritis Foundation at the Fairmont, imagination was let loose. Emma Nichols came as the New Jersey Tanning Bed mom, Kevan Wong and Paul Rook stopped traffic as red “satyrs with big horns,” and Paul Devereaux was a standout with his sandwich board promoting the Nasher Sculpture Center souvenir shop.
Three Observations About Klyde Warren Park
I was out of town this weekend and had to miss the big Klyde Warren opening. (Side note: thank you to everyone in Norman, Oklahoma, for your hospitality. Especially the defensive line of the Sooners, which was very accommodating to Cierre Wood.) So today was my first chance to see the park in operation. Three observations:
1. On the first weekday that the park was open, there was no food to be found. Zac and I had to hoof it over to the Winspear to find some food trucks. There were a couple dozen folks or so there. Meanwhile, a few hundred were over at Klyde Warren. I know, I know. Permits and so on and forth. Don’t care. I was hungry.
2. The place was lousy with school-age kids. What the heck? My kids are in school today.
3. North Olive is a jaywalker’s paradise. That’s the road that cuts through the park, between the side with the performance pavilion and the side with the ping-pong tables (which were both being used). You’re strolling through the park, enjoying yourself. Across the way, you see some people playing catch — and then there’s a road. No one is going to walk to the corner to cross. Not this guy. Even Zac, who is often frustrated by my wanton, unrepentant jaywalking, joined right in without saying a word.
At First, Owen Wilson Didn’t ‘Get’ Midnight in Paris
It won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Woody Allen, who also directed it. Quentin Tarentino called it his favorite movie of 2011, and it became Allen’s all-time top-grossing flick. But Midnight in Paris star Owen Wilson says at first he wasn’t sure the film would work at all.
“When I read the script, I didn’t quite get it,” the Dallas native told interviewer Gary Cogill last night, before a screening of the movie for several hundred people at Klyde Warren Park. “I remember talking with Wes [Anderson] and saying, ‘Geez, I dunno. It has a time-travel element, and I don’t know how that’s gonna work. Who do you get to play Hemingway, Fitzgerald, all those iconic figures?’
“I think that ends up being one of the most successful parts of the movie, all that stuff. You just go along for the ride, literally …” said Wilson, pictured here on the big video screen in the park’s Muse Family Performance Pavilion. “All the actors [Allen] cast for those guys, it just kind of works. … And even when I saw the movie, I was, ‘Well, you know, it seems, I dunno.’ I have a hard time judging stuff I’ve worked on. When it did come out, some people really seemed to love it.”
Dallas City Councilwoman Angela Hunt Wants 100 Miles of Protected Bike Lanes in the Next Decade
On her blog, Dallas City Councilwoman Angela Hunt writes that the city needs to commit to building 10 miles of physically separated bike lanes every year for the next 10 years.
Dallas’ current, half-hearted approach to making our city bike friendly is going to doom it to failure. In a couple of years, the city will determine that bike ridership hasn’t increased in Downtown or on the bike lanes to nowhere (surprise!). This will then be cited as proof that there is no bike culture in Dallas, that we can’t transition to a bike-friendly city, and that bike infrastructure is a waste of money. The city will paint over the “sharrows” and wash its hands of this silly experiment.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We can go all-in on bike infrastructure and get it done. We can dramatically increase bike ridership in our city. We’ve seen what can Dallas can do when it sets its heart on Big Ideas. That’s why Dallas’ remarkably meek approach to bike infrastructure is so frustrating. We pride ourselves for taking on extravagant, bold initiatives – the Calatrava Bridge, a park over a freeway, a city-owned convention center hotel, a massive toll road in a floodway. Let’s apply that same laser-like focus to making Dallas the best bicycling city in the country.
Cowboys to Fans: Cheer Better
The reason the Cowboys lost yesterday, despite coming back from a 23-point Giant’s lead? You probably thought it had something to do with the six turnovers, right? No, turns out the Cowboys probably lost to the Giants for the same reason they lost to the Bears: the fans.
After several Bears players thanked their fans for being so loud in Arlington, and after noticing a rather mediocre home record (14-12 since the stadium opened), the Cowboys organization sent out an email to season-ticket holders, explaining how to cheer better. The email, part of the “Stand Up and Shout” campaign, reportedly suggests: “When you see the video graphic playing on the video board, get on your feet and get LOUD! Together, we can make opposing teams dread coming to Cowboys Stadium.”
Snark aside, this is a real conundrum for the team. The stadium is so big that the sound disperses. It’s also filled with distractions (especially if you’re the kind of person who might be distracted by women’s underwear). Tickets are expensive, and the people who can best afford them aren’t exactly the paint-your-face-and-scream-your-lungs-out types. Some barely follow the game. Also, the players and coaches seem to regularly make the kinds of small mental mistakes that make fans want to claw their own eyes out. (And sometimes the players have the cops called on them after they hit their moms, which doesn’t help.)
But, yes, fans could probably cheer better.
D Magazine Gladly Accepts Undeserved Credit For Klyde Warren Park Opening Celebration Fireworks
No, D Magazine Partners didn’t actually help pay for the fireworks that were part of the big Klyde Warren Park opening festivities Saturday night, but we agree that the display couldn’t have been launched in a better location (as you can see from this screenshot of WFAA’s coverage.)
Things To Do In Dallas Tonight: Oct. 29
A pumpkin how-to.
After a weekend in Maryland and witnessing major meltdowns at the Baltimore Airport while flights were being cancelled like crazy, I’m feeling pretty lucky to have made it out. Meanwhile, in DC, there’s Hurricane Horse. Staten Island-based friend Pam, who lives on the water, says her house is shaking and the ocean is “cray cray.” She’s also watching The Dog Whisperer instead of the news, which may mean she’s either in unreasonable denial or there’s some hope. Still, probably not a bad time to think about donating to Red Cross.
With Halloween nipping at our heels, Libertine Bar hosts their annual pumpkin carving contest this evening. Sign up at the bar before 7 p.m., pay your ten bucks, get a free beer, and get to carving. Winners take home pretty decent bar tabs, which will stretch even farther for folks who don’t have a horrible addiction to French 75s. Judging starts at 10 p.m.
Also this evening, Lauryn Hill and Nas make a stop at Palladium Ballroom on their “Life is Good/Black Rage” tour. As opposed to the sold out Justin Bieber/Carly Rae Call Me Maybe madness at American Airlines, you can still get tickets to this concert (and honestly, if you’d rather be at Justin Bieber, I don’t know if we can be friends). Here’s “Ex-Factor” for your listening pleasure. Finish off the evening at Ten Bells Tavern in Oak Cliff, a laid back, enjoyable place to hang out just about any night, but especially nice tonight for Diamond Cut Mondays with DJ Big J (and a hat tip to FrontRow’s Christopher Mosley for the tip about it last week). The special guest is George Quartz, and you’ll hear disco, funk, soul, and old school as you sip a beer on the patio. Bundle up.
For more to do with your evening, go here.
Leading Off (10/29/12)
As Austin Mulls Council Districts, Dallas Displays Pros and Cons of System: The capital city is considering switching away from citywide council representation, and Dallas shows that district-elected representatives can lead to more responsiveness and greater diversity in city government, while also creating a tendency towards a fiefdom-like system. One interesting stat sticks out: over the past two decades, three Dallas council members have been convicted of criminal charges stemming from the abuse of power, while in Austin during that time there have been no such charges.
Will Tougher Zoning Produce Better Businesses in South Dallas? That’s what council member Caroyln Davis hopes. A revised Planned Development District will try to weed out car washes, check cashing businesses, and other non-desirables, while opening the doors for community gardens and other warm and fuzzy ideas like that. But city staff fears some of the new ordinance is unenforceable and say it may discourage new small businesses.
Another Falling Death in Downtown Dallas: Last month when a 25-year-old woman accidentally fell from the 19th floor of a downtown building, we wondered what the deal was with the sudden spike in falling deaths downtown. Tim said he thought it was because Dallasites aren’t yet used to living in high rise apartments. Krista and I wondered if it was a statistics thing. Zac Googled-around trying to find the percentage of New Yorkers who fall every year. This highly speculative conversation will likely continue today now that another man has fallen to his death from a downtown Dallas building.
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