STREET TALK

It’s that time of year again: the Cowboys are in summer training camp in Thousand Oaks and wealthy fans in Dallas are starting to think about Sundays in the Texas Stadium boxes. But our gridiron sources tell us there’s trouble brewing- the downturn in the economy is causing even the rich folks to watch their budgets. Some are choosing not to renew their leases on the much-maligned Crown Suites (the top-tier “Moon Boxes” that opened last season), and even the established Circle Suites seem to be caught up in the Texas real estate nose dive. According to one insider, a suite owner who turned down $750,000 in cash for his suite in 1980 recently sold it for a measly $500,000. Another reason for the decline: the Mavericks have stolen the Cowboys’ thunder, becoming the “hottest ticket in town,” says one source.



What’s this? DeSoto private investigator Bill Dear already thinks he’s James Bond, but can he also become another Ian Fleming? Dear sold the rights to his first book, Dungeon Master, to Disney’s Touchstone Films for $300,000-plus. Now the high-dollar PI claims he’ll be writing one book a year for the next five years. Book number two, Please Don’t Kill Me, is due to hit the bookstores next spring. It’s a nonfiction work about an Akron, Ohio, murder case. Dear’s efforts, he’ll tell you, resulted in the arrest and conviction of eleven people. Guess who’ll be the hero of the story?



Could this be the end of West End restaurateur Richard Chase’s courtship of the Dallas media? Chase has always been pretty chummy with the press, but recently he tossed Dallas Times Herald restaurant critic Michael Bauer out of his newly opened Moline Bar & Grill before Bauer even got a taste of his salad. Says Bauer: “I was sitting at a table with two Times Herald editors and the restaurant’s director of operations came up and said, ’Mr. Chase told me you’re not welcome in this restaurant.’ I’ve never been kicked out of a restaurant before. I thought it was pretty chicken of him not to even face me with it himself.” Bauer labeled the food “inconsistent” at one of Chase’s restaurants, the West End Oasis, in a recent review.

“I just really didn’t choose to serve Michael Bauer,” says Chase, who admits to kicking out the critic. “I don’t have respect for his writing and I didn’t want to be victimized by him. He’s not healthy for Dallas or my restaurant.”



Talking about cool, dark places, surely you’ve heard by now that bartender Louis Canelakes (we called him the “Prince of Pour” in a recent story on Dallas bartenders) can no longer be seen behind the bar at Joe Miller’s, a modest little tavern located at Lemmon and McKinney. He was axed recently because of some philosophical business disagreement with owner Linda Miller, the late Joe Miller’s wife. Canelakes’s exit led to a boycott of the bar by some patrons. We can’t confirm it, but we hear rumors that displaced journalists/lawyers/ judges have formed a task force to search for a new hangout.