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Last week, we published a guide to Dallas’ best cookies. But one of our featured cookie bakeries has a much rarer item on its menu this month: a bond issue.

When Hippos and Hashbrowns, the East Dallas bakery that supplies local farmers markets and stores with cookies, crisps, and biscuits, announced that it was selling bonds, my first reaction was, “what?” I thought bonds were a municipal thing, a safe-but-dull backstop investment used by governments to fund new schools.

But the Securities and Exchange Commission recently greenlit small business bonds, as a “regulation crowdfunding” mechanism passed in Congress’ bipartisan 2012 JOBS Act. It’s an alternative to the more donation-centric model provided by platforms like Kickstarter and GoFundMe. And Hippos and Hashbrowns is giving it a try.

Funeral for Former Police Chief David Kunkle Will Be Today. The family announced yesterday that Kunkle’s funeral will be at 10 a.m. at Sparkman Hillcrest Funeral Home. A procession will travel from Uptown into North Dallas, and the ceremony will be live-streamed for those who cannot make it. Kunkle died on Friday at the age of 72, about four years after being diagnosed with Lewy body dementia. You can find Bethany Erickson’s obituary of the chief here.

Police Investigating Oak Cliff Killings For Connection. On April 22, 60-year-old Kimberly Robinson was found dead with stab wounds under a DART light-rail bridge in East Oak Cliff. On June 24, Cherish Gibson, 25, was found stabbed to death nearby. On Saturday, police found another woman who had been killed and left near the Trinity River on Brazos Street a mile or so away. The women may have “had ties to sex work,” The News reported, but it’s not yet clear whether they’re connected. Police for now have “informed this population of this trend.”

Plano Teen Responsible for 38 Car Break-Ins. The 14-year-old was apparently doing a TikTok challenge that shows a security flaw in Kias and Hundais that makes them easier to steal. The kid was caught breaking into a car, but it sounds like police connected him to the others by looking at what he posted online. Content always strikes back.

Excessive Heat Warning Continues. It feels like 113 degrees outside. The heat advisory is in place through 9 p.m. tonight, and it probably will return until rain drops us into the mid-90s on Saturday. Be careful out there.

Testimony and arguments are expected to begin Wednesday morning in Austin for a lawsuit filed by 13 women who say that Texas’ abortion laws made it impossible for them to receive proper care while pregnant. Seven of the women are from North Texas.

The suit, which was filed against the state in March, will be argued by attorneys with the Center for Reproductive Health at the Travis County Civil & Family Courts Facility. It seeks to clarify the state’s “medical emergency” exception after each of the plaintiffs claimed they were denied abortions when they faced life-threatening pregnancy complications because of a law passed by the Texas Legislature.

“The experiences of the women—all of whom had wanted pregnancies—clearly demonstrate that the state’s abortion bans are endangering the health, fertility and lives of patients facing severe pregnancy complications,” Molly Duane, senior staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. “The court must act to immediately block these dangerous laws and prevent further irreparable harm to even more Texans.” 

The suit is the first brought on behalf of women denied abortions after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision last summer, which overturned Roe v. Wade. The lawsuit is asking the court to more plainly determine what constitutes a medical necessity when it comes to abortion, so that doctors feel safe to continue providing the care they did prior to the Supreme Court ruling.

From the moment Norm Hitzges announced his retirement last month, the biggest point of conversation surrounding The Ticket is who will replace the legendary radio man at a station that has so rarely had an open chair.   

Now there are three, after Jake Kemp and Dan McDowell of The Hang Zone, KTCK’s noon-to-3 show, resigned yesterday. McDowell came aboard in 1999. Kemp joined the station 10 years later. The duo has broadcasted together since 2020, when McDowell’s former co-host, Bob Sturm, moved to evening drive time to replace the retiring Mike Rhyner, and Kemp replaced him in the early afternoon slot.

Here’s where we’ll address the elephant in the room: Jake writes for us at StrongSide and will continue to do so uninterrupted. As far as his other job goes, he can’t say anything just yet. Hopefully we’ll be able to share more later.

In the meantime, all eyes are on The Ticket and how it addresses the most upheaval the station has faced since the station launched in 1994.

“Imagine,” my friend said, in an attempt to contextualize the ocean of flags, whistles, drums, and overall frenzy surrounding us last night in Grand Prairie, “that you’re way into basketball—and your country just got basketball.”

On a basic level, he was describing the biggest selling point of Major League Cricket, whose attempt to bring the world’s second-most popular sport to the United States—and North Texas, in particular—is the subject of my feature in our July issue. North Texas has one of the largest South Asian populations in the United States, and that community is cricket-rabid, with no significant outlet on this side of the Atlantic aside from the Caribbean. What happens when you provide one?

The answer, as we saw last night, is a sellout crowd of more than 7,000 people losing their minds for the better part of four hours as the Texas Super Kings (our new local team) took on Mumbai Indians New York. Our D Magazine contingent—Tim Rogers, Matt Goodman, Brian Reinhart, and yours truly—pegged the crowd to be well over 90 percent South Asian, which is in the ballpark of what every source I spoke with told me represents the national fan base. Per an MLC press release from over the weekend, six matches in the first 10 days reached capacity. A bunch of rich guys are building a cricket league with actual infrastructure, and now everyone is showing up.

But it would also be reductive, and unfair, to describe MLC’s appeal in relation to one group of people. Not everyone in the crowd was South Asian, after all. Take, for instance, the four of us. Tim, Matt, and Brian knew next to nothing about cricket going into last night. (Brian was there for the concessions, which he’ll write about soon enough.) Prior to reporting this story, I was in the same boat—and when it comes to understanding the action itself, still kinda sorta am. And we had a hell of a Monday night.

Texas Super Kings Victorious. Playing at home last night, your Super Kings beat MI New York by posting 154/7 in their 20 overs while limiting the opposition to 137/8. No doubt the home team performed their best because I was in attendance. So was Mike “The Looch” Piellucci, who wrote about Major League Cricket for our July issue. He’ll be along on StrongSide in a bit to give you a few words about our field trip to Grand Prairie.

Remains of Woman Found in North Oak Cliff. The unidentified body was found Saturday in a field in the 800 block of Brazos Street, near East Jefferson Boulevard. The medical examiner has ruled the woman’s death a homicide.

DART Increases Security. The agency is stepping up police presence on buses and trains. In addition to its own force of 220 cops, DART is contracting 90 officers to combat what Fox 4 says is a “surge in crime.”

Hot. You know the drill. Dallas will hit about 106 today. Fort Worth will be even worse, at 108. The National Weather Service has issued an excessive heat warning. Please be careful.

The ransomware attack that resulted in just about every one of the city’s systems being taken offline is still lingering at Dallas City Hall. Servers were slowly and painstakingly brought back online as the city’s IT department determined what had been compromised. But there is progress.

Among the casualties in the long, arduous reboot was the city’s development services department, which issues building permits. By June 30, staff reported 870 “trade” permits sitting in a queue because the department was playing catch up. Two weeks later, the city reported the queue had been reduced by 818, down to 52, and those permits are now being issued over the counter again.

These are permits for things like fences, roofs, foundation repairs, demolition, and small structures, rather basic construction projects that most often affects Dallas homeowners. Assistant City Manager Majed A. Al-Ghafry informed the Council of the news in a memo on Friday. He didn’t mention how long it’s taking to get more complicated permits issued.

The backlog came as the department was finally getting a handle on how to speed up the permitting process, which had rightfully taken a lot of criticism over the past two years as builders reported lengthy delays in getting city approval for their projects.

One of the innovations the department enacted was a pop-up permitting day, where contractors and DIYers could walk in and pick up permits for less complicated jobs like fences, roofing, and swimming pools. Speeding up the process for those would mean that staff would have more availability to work on the thornier permits that came across their desks.

Rev. Frederick Haynes III Becomes President of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. He succeeds the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the longtime leader of the civil rights organization. Haynes has been pastor at Friendship-West Baptist Church since 1983. I had the opportunity to talk with him in 2020.

Rangers Sweep Cleveland. Maybe I need to start watching games??

Six Proposals For DMA Expansion Are Unveiled. They are all pretty dramatic. Mark Lamster weighs in here. What do you think?

FC Dallas Earns Draw. Bernard Kamungo leveled just before half after the squad went down to an own goal. FC Dallas is still eighth in the Western Conference.

Still Hot! Hydrate! Stay inside! Hydrate again!

I swung by Bishop Arts today to grab some repaired jeans and then popped in to Bishop Exchange for a beer, and I saw this dude. He was sitting at the bar, wearing a cycling shirt. And in that shirt he had two baguettes. Because.

So to this man I snap a smart salute.

Très bien, Monsieur!

Former Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle has died, WFAA reports, at least four years after being diagnosed with Lewy body dementia. He was 72.

Kunkle was hired as the 27th chief of Dallas police after the 2003 firing of Chief Terrell Bolton, whose tumultuous four years left the department reeling from a scandal involving officers planting fake drugs on Hispanic residents, rising crime, and controversial promotion practices. Kunkle began his career as a Dallas beat cop and served as chief in both Grand Prairie and in Arlington before accepting the Dallas job in 2004, which he held until stepping down in 2010. He ran for mayor in 2011, but lost to Mike Rawlings in the runoff. He spent the twilight of his career consulting and teaching at the University of North Texas.

In 2021, Kunkle and his wife, the lobbyist and former broadcast reporter Sarah Dodd, told Dallas Morning News columnist Robert Wilonsky that he had been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia in 2019. The disease is a common type of dementia, second only to Alzheimer’s disease, and occurs when protein deposits called Lewy bodies develop in the brain, hitting the regions that make it possible to think, remember, and move.

But before the disease ravaged his mind and body, Kunkle was the police chief respected by even the most experienced police reporters.

“…there has been only one chief in my experience who talked the transparency talk and walked the transparency walk and his name is David Kunkle,” WFAA’s Tanya Eiserer once wrote. Eiserer was the longtime police beat reporter for the Dallas Morning News prior to joining WFAA.

You know what’s fun? A sports moment so unbelievable it leaves you giggling like a big ol’ dummy.

You know what’s even more fun? When said giggling is not, in fact, idiotic because Actual NBA Stars are just as dumbfounded as the rest of us.

Luka Doncic delivers a lot of those—to us in Dallas, as well as Paul George (the Clippers’ eight-time NBA All-Star wing) and Tyrese Haliburton (the Pacers’ 23-year-old All-Star point guard who was the apple of the Mavericks’ eye during the 2021 NBA Draft). George recently had Haliburton on his podcast, Podcast P, and the subject eventually turned to Doncic, who they in no way, shape, or form pretend to understand:

For those needing a refresher, the pass Haliburton is referring to was this one, which will go down as one of the best passes in league history:

The takeaway, beyond appreciating Doncic’s seemingly panoptic court vision—“Luka sees shit that’s like, bro, how?” George sighed—is not to feel bad the next time you try and fail to piece together something spectacular he does on the court. His peers don’t get it, either.