LETTERS

WHAT AN ISSUE!



YOU GUYS kill me. I mean I thought the new Harvard Lampoon parody of People magazine was funny until I saw your December issue. I liked to have died. The “Editor’s Page” with the serious examination of materialism and the hypocrisy entailed right across from the gold watches with available sapphire crystals. What a hoot. Then 257 pages later there’s this scathing, humorously sardonic examination of contemporary Dallas lifestyles based on avarice with advertisements for everything from gold to crystal to mink to champagne to condos in Colorado. What a scream! You guys are right up there with Swift in my book. Keep up the good work.

G.K. Chambers

Dallas



GOOD TIMES



I HAVE JUST read with interest and concern your article “Good Times” in the December 1981 issue. As a recovering alcoholic 1 too have “enjoyed” many good (?) times in some of Dallas’ finest drinking establishments. Even though I am now “on the wagon,” I have no objection to going where bars are active -in fact you can most often get better food in restaurants where liquor is served. Your synopsis of the 100 bars is timely and well-written. But your implications – no, your statements written as truths -that Dallas is a city of “hedonists to the last soul” and that “we don’t just like to party, we live for it” – these I must take issue with.

I have no doubt your figures are accurate as to the amount of money spent in bars, and that many good times are had. But if you are going to spend money (and I assume it was a sizable amount based on your need for research) and space in your magazine for such an “ultimate guide,” will you be willing to spend equal energies for those of us who either choose or need to refrain from drinking? To tell us that the only way to party and have a good time is in a bar is depressing if we cannot or will not indulge in such activities. There was a time when I would have agreed that no fun was possible without alcohol. I have learned that this is not the case.

What about the money that is lost each year in industry, car accidents and medical expenses due to the adverse effects of alcohol? How are our children to know there is any other way to “live” but with bars and booze? Based on your article, there is no other way to live and in many cases this is true -how many people die each year because of drunk driving?

I would like to see equal space addressing these issues and for exploring other ways of having fun besides in a bar. Many people who read your “Good Times” article may desperately need to know that life won’t be dull and boring -that they too can “reward their senses with gratification” and it doesn’t have to come from a bottle.

Name withheld

Dallas

I READ your nightclub reports (December 1981), particularly the report you gave on the club which I own, Rodeo Dallas. First, this club was opened as #3 Lift and changed with the fad to Rodeo Dallas. If 1 judged your reporting as you have my club, the writer would be fired for reporting false information and your magazine sued for slander. However, I might just as well consider the source, for your reputation is getting worse than your false reporting. Since Village Station got such a glowing report, the writer is probably a homosexual, anyhow.

Robert Lamb

Dallas

PEOPLE OF discerning mind will note a couple of interesting points in regard to your article entitled “The Life of the Party” (December).

1. You stated that hedonists seem “deliriously and incessantly happy, completely free,” but then describe four people whoare neither happy nor free.

2. You stated that you wanted us toknow these people exist. We already knowthey exist, we just don’t know in whatnumbers or the details of their happy, freelives. I believe you wrote the articlebecause such topics sell magazines. (Butthen you only give the people what theywant, like TV, right?)

3. Printing articles about such thingsclaiming objectivity is a subtle way of condoning it. People subconsciously assimilate and dwell on such subjects that aresimply identified and condemned but areinstead described in objective detail, thereby very slowly but inexorably fulfilling the old saying, “As a man thinks in his heart, so he is.”

4. 1 realize my preceding statement would be refuted by most people in our society. This refutation brings me to my final point. People of discerning mind realize that most people are not of discerning mind.

Russell Dodds

Dallas

AH AIN’T NEVER.wrote to no editor before, but boy Ah’m doin’ it now. Ah just love D Magazine. Ah got every one since Volume 1, Number 1, in October 1974. But listen, son, why don’t y’all just tell it like it is and change the name from D to DW? Standin’, of course, for Dallas White.

Like that article in the December issue about the 100 white bars. It was great. To hell with them clubs in Oak Cliff like Studio 67, Bernards II, Venus, Page Five, D’Arcys and Pizzazz. They ain’t no part of the real Dallas no how.

Y’all keep that good stuff comin’. More articles displaying closed mindedness and red neck provincialism will make D a honkin’ great magazine.

Y’all withhold ma name now.

Name withheld

Dallas



MORE KNIT PICKING



I HAVE BEEN a subscriber to your magazine for several years; however, I have been a customer of Marie’s Needle-craft for some 10 or 12 years. Contrary to your reporter’s fallacious statement, “Marie’s advertises free instruction with a purchase of yarn, but we’ve heard from one source that that applies only to the time of purchase and not later (when instruction is really needed).” This is absolutely false reporting. I was under the impression that a reporter’s first responsibility is to get the facts. Did Carol Edgar get “facts” from one source, without verification?

The employees at Marie’s are always courteous and helpful. The knitting instructor is patient with all knitters and always offers her expert advice and instructions not only with original purchase, but as many times as a customer needs her services. You have done a great injustice to her.

It would seem that whatever talents Carol Edgar has for reporting would be better suited to the National Enquirer than a magazine of the caliber of D.

Vivian B. ParkerDallas



AFTER READING Carol Edgar’s slanted and obviously unresearched “consumer” article, “Knit Picking” (December), I have concluded that I can no longer trust D’s evaluation of anything. One cannot fault Ms. Edgar for having a favorite shop, but that is no excuse for denigrating others with which she is unfamiliar. She has damned Ellen Harder’s Let’s Knit Shop with faint praise (does she have a grandmother hang-up?) and has told outright lies about Marie’s Needlecraft.

D Magazine owes both these shops and the ladies who work in them an apology and a retraction. As for Ms. Edgar, why don’t you give her a few lessons on unbiased reporting; she is in dire need.

Lee Rehberg

Farmers Branch



Carol Edgar replies: We certainly did not intend to imply that Marie’s does not offer knitting instruction. All knit shops that we know of, in Dallas and elsewhere, offer instruction. As for the complaint about the Let’s Knit Shop: I wrote that, although it’s drawn largely an older, afghan-knitting crowd (implying the uses of more basic yarns), we’ve noticed an increasingly attractive selection of fashion yarns. The implication being that, while the selection of fashion yarns at Let’s Knit is smaller than what you see in several other shops, fashion yarns are sold there. What was intended as a positive statement about a small neighborhood knit shop was interpreted as negative, and this we regret.