STREET TALK

Looks like Mayfest and the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, those traditional Lower Greenville Avenue bashes, are on the rocks-at least for 1986. Police say there have been no special events permits requested for the two dates (which must be submitted at least forty-five days in advance). Not that that makes any difference, because the Lower Greenville Merchants Association, the group that sponsors the event, is in a state of disarray, according to former president Chris Thornton, owner of Fun-O-Grams.

It seems that after last year’s festivities the association of merchants handed the city a $3,340 hot check as payment for use of street signs, barricades, and trash cans required by the special events ordinance. Last | month, Thornton signed a personal promissory note to make good on the debt, but only after city officials threatened to prosecute, says Assistant City Attorney David LaBrec.

“I signed the note because my personal integrity was at stake,” says Thornton. “The reason the check bounced is because three of the merchants stopped payment on their checks to the ’ association. That’s sort of like the dog biting his own tail.”

Thornton says the controver-sy has so divided the Lower Greenville merchants that he has formed a splinter group for merchants with businesses located south of Belmont Street, the Lower Greenville Quarter Association.

Thornton won’t have any part in the celebrations, but he thinks that sooner or later the merchants will revive the Mayfest and St. Pat’s celebrations. “It’s just not fair to inflict all those people on the homeowners down here,” he says. “But I have a feeling that the greed will set in again pretty quick.”



Here we go again. H. Rhett Stein is in the news. In the past we’ve reported on Stein in connection with a mysterious chain of fires at 4514 Rawlins St. that began almost a year ago.

Stein will soon begin serving an unusual federal sentence after he was convicted of a felony-illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. US. District Judge Robert W. Porter originally sentenced Stein to two years in federal prison, but reduced the time to six months on the condition that Stein perform 300 hours of community service work, pay a $10,000 fine, enter a group counseling program, pay all delinquent federal taxes owed, and submit a detailed personal and corporate financial statement, audited by a court-certified C.P. A., during each of the four years he will be on probation.



The figures are in, and the first annual Sports Celebrity Carnival benefiting the Special Olympics held at Reunion Arena last September netted $214,000 for Texas Special Olympics. That’s the largest sum ever raised by a single event in Special Olympics history. The event featured fifty-five athletes and celebrities who assisted a multitude of volunteers, the Dallas Times Herald, 7-Eleven, and forty other local and national sponsors who donated their time and money to the carnival.