STREET TALK

It doesn’t look as though we’ll return to those days of yesteryear when sleazy massage parlors opened up on every Harry Hines corner, but while everybody was looking the other way, our state legislature made heterosexual massages legal again.

As of September 1, a new state law rescinds all city ordinances banning such massages, but here’s the rub: The law also carries with it some stringent regulations that promise to keep the pseudo-masseuses from offering, uh, optional services for a fee. Massage therapists must have proper training and be registered with the state health department. Dallas vice control officers say they haven’t even heard of the bill, but the city attorney’s office says the new law will still permit the city to regulate the massage business. Now massage therapists like Muriah Peterson, who runs Massage Referral Service in Dallas, won’t be embarrassed to tell people what she does for a living. “Most of the legitimate female massage therapists I know have been giving massages to men despite the ordinance,” she says.



By now, you’ve heard dozens of Delta Flight 191 stories, but we’ve got just one more we thought was worth mentioning. It seems that the evening the jumbo jet crashed, Dallas Morning News city editor Stuart Wilk, a man we named one of Dallas’ toughest bosses in our June 1984 issue, was in Baltimore recruiting candidates at a national conference of black journalists.

When Wilk heard of the crash he immediately called in and said he would head back to the paper. But Assistant Managing Editor Bob Mong told Wilk to stay put and to go ahead with his planned vacation in Wisconsin the following week, saying he could handle coordination of the coverage himself. Can you imagine The Trib telling Lou Grant they didn’t need him for such a big news story?

“A lot of people are still scratching their heads about that one,” says one staffer. “The crash was regarded in the newsroom as the biggest news event in Dallas since November 22, 1963.”



The sign said, “Eat at Joe’s,” but apparently not enough people followed the command. It’s history now, but Joe’s, Shannon Wynne’s futile attempt to revive the old Nostromo location on Travis Street, has now reopened as Rio Bar and Grill. Mike Powers, president of Nostromo, Inc., won’t talk about rumors that the gangly Wynne was dumped by the investor group, but he does admit that Wynne’s involvement in Rio will be “minimal.”

“That location is a good one; it’s just going to take awhile to find the right concept and niche,” says Powers. “There were just some internal problems and headaches. It wasn’t really Shannon’s fault that Joe’s failed. He did everything he said he’d do.”

But some Wynne-watchers say the man with the golden touch is on the downslide. “He’s losing altitude,” says one observer. “He’s made it a little tough for people to believe in him. But he’s still talented and creative in many ways.”



Yet another big New York department store is opening its doors at the Galleria this month. They won’t be bringing any parades with them, but Macy’s is celebrating its gala grand opening October 8 with a benefit performance by singer-songwriter Raul Anka. Anka will be playing center stage on the Galleria’s transformed ice rink at 8 p.m. The free concert can be seen from the Galleria’s rink level and Level I.