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Bad news for previously legal Dallas poker rooms. Civil District Court Judge Eric Moye last week ruled that the city was within its rights to revoke a certificate of occupancy for the Texas Card House, reversing a decision by the Board of Adjustment that allowed the poker room to legally operate. The Texas Card House plans to appeal, and a spokesman says it will be allowed to continue operating through the process.

This was a winding path through a gray area: Texas Card House gets around the state’s gambling ban by not taking any rake of the pot. Texas law has a carve-out for gambling so long as three things happen: the gambling must occur in a “private place,” the organizer can’t benefit economically from the game itself, and all the players must assume equal risk.

The Texas Card House operated as a social club with membership fees, and basically provided a place for its members to play poker and others to watch. Founder Sam Von Kennel believed the model met the letter of the law, and began opening card rooms across the state in 2015. The Dallas location in question, located in a strip mall off Harry Hines near the Sam Moon, opened in 2019. There are now around three dozen operating throughout Texas, and Dallas is the only city in the state that has pursued legal action against them.

Architect Andrew Meckfessel’s favorite thing about the AIA Tour of Homes, which returns in-person this weekend, is chatting about design with all the visitors. “It’s exciting to talk about architecture to non-architects,” he says. 

The annual tour showcases the best of Dallas architecture as chosen by the architects themselves. Unlike other Dallas home tours, AIA’s event is an eclectic collection of what the city’s architects can do, says Meckfessel, this year’s co-chair. “It fits all the molds,” instead of being pigeon-holed into a specific neighborhood’s style. 

It’s popular, too. Meckfessel says they typically have 1,000-plus visitors across the weekend. However, numbers dwindled in the pandemic. Given the rapidly changing state of the pandemic, homeowners and architects were hesitant to show their houses to the public. The tour went virtual in 2020 and hybrid in 2021. But people still like seeing a place physically, he says, and now “we’ve seen definitely a resurgence of people willing to open their homes.” Meckfessel says they’re expecting more than 2,000 visitors this year.

This year’s tour is back fully in-person November 5–6. We chatted with Meckfessel about what folks should know about this year’s event and how it all works. 

[Editor’s note: Michael Friebele is a senior associate with Perkins Eastman. He used to live in Dallas and has previously written for D Magazine. After reading a FrontBurner post about the new Hertz-only Mustangs, he offered to review one during a business meeting in Dallas.]

About the same time Tim shared his thoughts on why Hertz shouldn’t rent a 950-horsepower car, I received the same email he did from Hertz and figured “Why not rent it?” I did so with many of his sentiments in mind.

As some readers have already noticed, the GT500-H with all its 900-plus horsepower is not available in Dallas, even though the counter at DFW Airport flashes its image behind the desk with its “Rent the Car. Own the Road.” slogan. To get that one, you will need to visit Fort Myers, Las Vegas, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, or Tampa; all cities with access to the open road or a strip to act a fool on. If you are at all worried about Tim’s fear of a tourist blasting down Central Expressway, putting everyone in danger, you can feel relieved.

If you are flying into DFW, you must settle with the 450-horsepower GT-H, the same base specs as a standard Mustang GT. There are, however, some reasons why I think you should and why I did.

While there are many options for a sports car in the rental world, even offered by Hertz, the GT-H is the benchmark and design that kicked off why we have sports rentals in the first place. Since the first “Rent-a-Racer” was released in 1966, there have been five iterations of the GT-H Mustang along with other makes, models, and variants from different shops and namesakes. The Shelby versions are the most important and iconic of them all.

This is the point where I should preface that I am not a fan of the Mustang or anything remotely similar. The whole muscle car thing is a matter of preference, of course, and to me they often feel heavy, floaty, at times sluggish, tired in design, and quite frankly there are too many of them. As the Mustang has been sitting on its current S-550 platform for the past eight years, it feels a bit behind the times, though that is to change in 2024, electric-SUV aside.

Six individuals who currently work or have worked in the Collin County District Attorney’s office filed a federal civil suit Monday, alleging that they were sexually harassed, discriminated against because of their gender, and faced retaliation after reporting the allegations about their boss and his top lieutenant.

The suit names Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis, his first assistant Bill Wirskye, Collin County Judge Chris Hill, and county commissioners Susan Fletcher, Darrell Hale, Cheryl Williams, and Duncan Webb. The suit was filed by the district attorney’s chief investigator, Kim Pickrell; deputy chief investigator Keith Henslee; former misdemeanor prosecutor Fallon LaFleur; prosecutor VyKim Le; and two plaintiffs identified as Jane Doe. 

The suit alleges that Willis sexually harassed female employees then retaliated against them. It says he repeatedly made sexual comments and inappropriately touched them. The lawsuit also alleges that Willis propositioned the women for sex during work trips and during regular closed-door meetings. It also claims that Wirskye routinely hazed female employees. 

Le said that Willis had touched her inappropriately on at least two occasions, and the two unnamed plaintiffs recounted instances of unwanted touching and propositioning. After Pickrell and Henslee went to Wirskye with their concerns, the lawsuit alleges he retaliated by complaining about their performance.

Duncanville Stripped of 2022 6A Title. The UIL state executive committee stripped the boys basketball of its title for using an ineligible player. Coach David Peavy got a one-year suspension, and the program got a three-year probation period. The player in question is a five-star recruit named Anthony Black, who had transferred from Coppell.

Modest Rogers, R.I.P. The Venezuelan-inspired restaurant in Oak Lawn has closed. Chef-owner Modesto Rodriguez told SideDish: “We literally just ran out of money. We just never had good funding.”

People Not Flocking to Polls in North Texas. The first week of early voting shows a big dropoff in ballots cast compared to the 2018 midterm. In Dallas County, about 211,400 voters cast ballots as of Sunday, which is a 35-percent decrease from the same period four years ago (more than 323,500). With 140,800 ballots cast, Collin County is down 23 percent (182,100). Bear in mind that we had a couple of rain days that probably drove down numbers this year, and 2018 saw huge turnout. Early voting ends Friday.

Pecan Tree Gets Historical Recognition. Cool story by Sharon Grigsby about the 175-year-old West Dallas Gateway Pecan Tree. It stands at southeast corner of Beckley Avenue and the Commerce Street Bridge, and on Friday it will get official recognition from the Texas Historic Tree Coalition.

On Saturday afternoon, Votebeat’s Jessica Huseman said she had a story that had “everything—contempt, FBI informants, an alleged poisoning, drug cartels, right-wing social media, communists.” The story began, according to court documents, in a Dallas hotel room months ago.

Her piece involves a chaotic day of testimony regarding the organization True the Vote, and why it ended in two of its leaders jailed after being found in contempt of court. 

Huseman said that the civil suit filed by poll worker management software company Konnech concerns “depending on who’s describing it—a right-wing elections group allegedly defaming a small technology company, or a small technology company whose alleged security flaws were exposed by a right-wing elections group.”

Last month, we reported on the existence of Dallas sauce, a beloved condiment in Belgium that purported to bring the bold taste of our city’s food to European fry shops and condiment shelves. But Dallas sauce had never actually been served in Dallas, Texas. Until now.

Cowboys Win. The oddly orange-clad Bears made it a game for a brief period of time, cutting a 28-7 lead down to just five at one point. But the 49-29 final was representative of the game as a whole, which featured Tony Pollard going for 131 yards and three touchdowns, Dak Prescott’s best game of the season, and even a Micah Parsons fumble return for a score. Mike has more over on StrongSide.

Booker T. Washington Celebrates 100 Years. A good report on what sounds like a great day for the historic school and its alumni yesterday. Yes, of course, Erykah Badu was there.

Good Weather For Trick or Treaters. It’s also good for keeping all of your lights off and hanging out in the back of the house until you’re fairly certain everyone has gone home, even the teens with no costumes and plastic Walgreens bags.

It’s basically been raining in Dallas since 8 a.m., the type of slow and steady downpour that soaks deep into our soil and helps to bust the drought. (By the way, North Texas is now in the weakest drought condition, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. That’s great news.)

Rain alone can make it miserable to be outside on two feet, but downspouts spewing runoff onto the sidewalk seems especially cruel. The photo above this post is on the Ervay edge of First Baptist Dallas. And while it’s absolutely in no way the only downspout that is relieving itself of water in downtown, it seems to be depositing far more of it than its brethren. There’s so much water that it’s pooling on the sidewalk instead of making it down the drainage gate.

Anyway. Just another day on two feet in Dallas. Enjoy your weekend. Stay dry.

I’ve been meaning to mention something for the past week. Now that we’ve finished some work on our “print product,” I have a moment to say: you need to read this special report published by the Morning News and helmed by its architecture critic, Mark Lamster. “Reinventing Dealey Plaza” is a major piece of civic journalism that deserves lots of attention and maybe even a community presentation and panel discussion at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 15, at the Sixth Floor Museum (sign up here).

Major aside that I almost certainly should have resisted the urge to include: I wasn’t sure how best to share the report with you. The News just reported its dismal third-quarter results, and they indicate a dwindling number of you will encounter the printed Arts & Life version of Lamster’s work. The paper lost $2.6 million in the three-month period that ended September 30, on revenue of $37.7 million. Revenue from digital-only subscribers rose by $1 million, but print subscription revenue dropped $900,000. The paper has 144,631 total subscribers, adding in the third quarter 1,484 digital subscribers but losing 2,918 print subscribers. Anyway, “Reinventing Dealey Plaza” lies behind a paywall. This is one of the reasons you should subscribe to the paper if you can afford it.

Still with me? Here’s how Lamster begins his report:

“The time has come for Dallas to redesign Dealey Plaza and the Triple Underpass, which together represent one of the city’s most profound urban failings.

The City Council voted 14-1 Wednesday to approve an ordinance that makes standing in the median a $500 fine. But questions about the constitutionality of that ordinance could land the city in court.

Cities can’t ban panhandling outright because of a Supreme Court ruling that considers the act protected speech under the First Amendment. When the plan to ban people standing or walking in medians less than 6 feet wide was first introduced months ago, the measure was offered as almost a workaround to the SCOTUS ruling. In an interview, ACLU Texas attorney Savannah Kumar said she believed the vote could open the city of Dallas to a legal challenge.

“It treats the constitutional rights of Dallas residents as expendable, and it does threaten the First Amendment rights of all Dallas residents,” she said.