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Short-term rental services such as Airbnb and Vrbo are a hot topic in Dallas at the moment due to the noise, traffic, and crime they can produce. The Dallas City Council is expected to vote on regulations or a ban in residential neighborhoods at its June 14 meeting, bringing a nearly four-year process to an end.

But one short-term rental site may be less familiar. Since its appearance on Shark Tank, in March 2020, Swimply has taken off. Co-owner Bunim Laskin began his foray into the amenity rental platform business when he noticed his New Jersey neighbors rarely used their swimming pool and asked if he could rent it for his 12 siblings for a day. His site now allows hosts to rent out all their amenities—pools, home gyms, tennis courts—for an hourly rate. Dallas currently has more than 300 listings on the site. 

Ah, but here’s the rub: renting out your swimming pool has always been prohibited in the city. According to Dallas City Code Sec. 51A-4.217, “No private swimming pool may be operated as a business, except that private swimming lessons may be given under the home occupation use.” So you can bring in a professional swim coach, but renting out your pool is verboten. 

Sitting in the living room of Opal Lee’s Fort Worth home, I count three people who walk in unannounced during the course of my interview. The thought of neighbors entering your home without an invitation may be unsettling, but Lee, the “Grandmother of Juneteenth,” has dedicated her entire life to welcoming in others. Dione Sims, Lee’s granddaughter, puts it best: “I think her lifelong passion is to make sure that everybody in the world is taken care of.” 

Continuing the story of Lee and the holiday she made federal, members of the National Juneteenth Museum board recently broke ground for their new complex, which is scheduled to open on June 19, 2025. Not only will it educate visitors about the history of Juneteenth, but it will also serve as an economic engine to boost the surrounding Historic Southside neighborhood of Fort Worth. 

Designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group, the 50,000-square-foot facility will sit on land previously occupied by the old Juneteenth Museum, a one-story house that was lost to a fire in January, on the corner of East Rosedale Street and Evans Avenue. Its gabled roof will mimic those of the shotgun-style houses in the neighborhood, and its signature design feature will be an open courtyard at its center, around which the roofing will undulate.

When viewed from overhead, the inside tips of the gables will form the outline of a 12-point star, also known as a nova or “new” star. In the middle of the courtyard there will be a five-point star engraved into terrazzo pavement. The two stars combined form the centerpiece of the Juneteenth flag. 

Latricia Trammell only needed 30 years to become a head coach in the WNBA, starting in the high school ranks and working her way up. The Oklahoma native did stints at Denton’s Billy Ryan High School, at UNT, and at TWU. At Oklahoma City University, she won back-to-back NAIA national championships in 2014 and 2015. And now, after serving as an assistant coach for the San Antonio Stars and the Los Angeles Sparks, she leads the Dallas Wings into a season of high expectations.

Who are the first three people who come to mind who don’t call you Coach? Oh, my goodness. Well, when my parents were living, my mom and dad. I’ll just say my family members. It’s kind of funny you ask that, because if they came to a game or a practice, then they actually would always call me Coach.

Robert Kent stops when he sees the bur oak. He stands with his arms akimbo and cranes his neck to stare up at the tree visible through a clearing in the forest. It towers 50 feet above us in a hidden stretch of southwest Dallas. “That’s gotta be 200 years old,” Kent says. A few more paces, and four more bur oaks, standing in single file, emerge. The outdoors seems to set him in constant motion, but he stops again. “That’s just incredible.”

The 36-year-old is the Texas state director for the Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit with branches in 28 states and the District of Columbia. His team of eight does what Dallas’ city government often doesn’t have the money or staff to do on its own: acquire land for parks and preserves and trails before it can be cleared for development. The Trust oversees master plans for ambitious trail projects and does smaller things with big impacts, such as working with Dallas ISD to transform school playgrounds into public parks. 

“Every park that we have has a story,” Kent says. “Every property that is now conserved in a national forest or a national park, it was owned by somebody else before. There’s a history there.” 

The stakes are high, for that history in our region has too often been one of environmental abuse or simple neglect. Weeks before our hike, Vistra Energy allowed a 50-year lease to lapse with the state of Texas so that it could sell Fairfield State Park. Dallas developer Todd Interests scooped up the 5,000 acres an hour south of town—though as D Magazine went to press, in early May, a bill had been introduced in Austin to effectively stop the sale. If the effort proves unsuccessful, land previously open to the public will become a private luxury lakefront community. Kent’s organization works to avoid similar outcomes for Dallas’ remaining natural areas. “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” he says, only half-joking about using the Fairfield headlines to gin up interest in the Trust’s mission. 

Kent was hired to reopen the Trust’s Texas office here in 2014, after the outfit cut operations following the 2008 recession. Under his leadership, the Trust has saved 407 acres of green space in Dallas and more than 3,400 statewide. Since 2008, it has acquired land that now holds three new parks in Dallas, with another three in development. The Trust’s goal is for a park within a 10-minute walk from every home in America. In 2014, 54 percent of Dallas residents checked that box; nine years later, that number has grown to 73 percent, in large part due to the work of Kent and his colleagues. 

“There are people every day working to shape the way that the city is built and the way land is conserved and protected,” he says. 

Let’s give Garland some shine, shall we? In the May issue, we bring you reports from some of our favorite Dallas suburbs. That story is online today. You can read it here. That Garland did not make it into the feature should not be viewed as a snub, though I’d forgive Garlanders for seeing it that way. They are accustomed to getting snubbed. If I had taken the sort of shots that have been lobbed their way, I’d be defensive, too. Far as I can tell, Garland has been maligned onscreen more mercilessly than any other Dallas suburb. 

Red Oak and Waxahachie served their roles well in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde. McKinney did fine in the 1974 movie Benji. Maybe you could say Irving didn’t look great in 1999’s Office Space. And if you don’t dig standing around and drinking beer with your neighbors, then King of the Hill makes propane sales and several Dallas burbs look less than idyllic. It’s not entirely clear which burb gets hit hardest in that cartoon, given that its fictional setting is a portmanteau called Arlen.

But there’s no question about Garland in Woody Harrelson’s Zombieland, from 2009. Jesse Eisenberg’s character, Columbus, opens the movie in a dreary gas station at night. He says in a voiceover, “That guy down there is me. I’m in Garland, Texas. And it may look like zombies destroyed it, but that’s actually just Garland.” 

In 1982, the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture published a 95-page book titled Imagining Dallas, which contained eight essays about our city written by notable Dallasites, including Wick Allison, the co-founder of D Magazine. In his contribution, reprinted below, the great Bill Porterfield wrote about the city’s unemotional march into the future.

In conjunction with a series of talks about the city on May 25, the Dallas Institute is revisiting Imagining Dallas. Porterfield’s piece was originally titled “Man and Beast in the City: Twain or Twin.” At the time of publication, in 1982, Porterfield was a columnist for the now-defunct Dallas Times Herald and a creative writing teacher at SMU. When he died at the age of 81, in 2014, his son Winton told the Austin American-Statesman: “He was a force of nature really, kind of a walking thunderstorm. He was very creative, he was passionate, he was tempestuous, he was profane, he loved ideas, and he loved words and books. Obviously, he loved women; he was married six times. He loved whiskey and dogs and cheeseburgers. He was a really good dancer and he didn’t wear underwear. He was a short man but a man in full.”

Below, we present his thoughts on the city, from 1982.

About five years ago, I picked up my new F-Type Jag. It came with an app called InControl and all sorts of spiffy tech and connectivity. I didn’t care. I just wanted the latest Jaguar sports car, the spiritual successor to the car of all cars, the E-Type Jaguar. I didn’t need a glorified laptop on wheels. 

In any event, one day outside my studio, I was trying to attach my cardboard parking pass around the rearview mirror stem, which is thicker than it should be since inevitably it’s carrying a bunch of tech and is attached to its own console of cameras for lane assist, parking sensors, rain sensors, and stuff I’ve probably yet to discover. 

As I fumbled with the parking tag, I accidentally touched the SOS button that sends an alarm to a central scrutinizer who sends ambulances and fire trucks and the sort of extra Towering Inferno mayhem that make big American cities what they are. But I didn’t realize I’d pressed the SOS button. Next thing I knew, a woman’s sonorous voice filled my car on its 15-speaker surround sound system, louder and fuller than a real person and very resonant, making the woman sound like a giant from another planet. Her voice entered my whole being as if my ears weren’t hearing it. More like she was inside my soul and all my organs, like I’d been taken over by a much greater, possibly benevolent force. 

“Are you OK?” she said, massively, authoritatively, definitively, reassuringly. 

I didn’t know what had happened. I just sat there not knowing what to do. I thought I might be dying. 

Then: “Are you in distress? Do you need assistance?”

Unable to speak or respond, I contemplated her question. Yes, I am in distress, I thought. I’m in existential pain. I need a maid, someone to help around the house, sweep up the leaves. A proper handyman, a really good electrician, a plumber. Cumberland sausages, smoked haddock from Grimsby. So many things.

Then: “Has your airbag deployed?”

I finally realized what was going on. But unsure which button on which console to push for “reply” or “send,” I meekly cleared my throat, leaned politely forward in my sienna tan bucket seat, and said, “Hello?” 

She said, “Hello. Are you in distress or injured? Have you been in an accident?”

Still debating whether I was mid aural hallucination and losing touch with reality, I said: “Er, no. [Hugh Grant-ish bumbling] I was trying to attach my parking pass, but it’s surprisingly hard to get it around my rearview mirror. I now see the button is lit up. I must have pressed it by mistake?”

Her voice was full and God-like, unwavering, confident, like Dame Helen Mirren or Dame Judi Dench played through the AMC NorthPark big-screen sound system: “I see. So long as you’re in no distress or involved in an accident?”

“No, I’m fine. But thanks. [pause] What do I do now? How do I turn my SOS button off?”

The woman’s voice, the Goddess Athena: “We’ll do it.”

Me: “You’re sending someone out to turn off my SOS button?”

Athena: “No, we do it remotely.”

Me: “OK. Got it. I knew that. Sorry about that. Thanks.” 

Athena: “Thank you. Goodbye.” 

Me: “Thank you. Goodbye.”

And it came to pass, as they say in the Bible, that my SOS was remotely disengaged, the light went out, the car fell silent. Panic over. Athena seemed very nice. I wondered what she looked like, how old she was. I felt faintly foolish but somehow quite good about it all, like she was a giant reclining woman floating up in the actual clouds a mile or so above my head in baroque-styled Italian robes and a goatskin breastplate, like a painting by Botticelli or a ceiling by Raphael. It was good to know she was there, as with your appendix, one of those things you’re not sure you’ve ever used or needed, but handy to know it’s working properly.

That one ended happily ever after. So far, so good. 

Which brings me to a more recent and far less lovely and poetic modern experience: dealing with that multiheaded hydra-like monster of a company called AT&T.

Lanny Wadkins has done commentary for the Golf Channel’s coverage of the PGA Tour Champions for 10 years. He designed the most spectacular public course in Texas, Black Jack’s Crossing, in Lajitas. And he’s a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame. With the first major championship coming to Frisco this month, we wondered what he thinks of the course. Keep reading for his assessment and to learn why he didn’t sign up with the controversial Saudi-backed LIV Golf.

Being a woman is the greatest. We get to wear sunhats in tulip fields. We get to ride wicker-basketed bikes on sandy beaches. (“Look! No hands! Ha-ha-ha-ha!”) If we get paid equally to our male counterparts, we get to be super surprised. (Are you kidding? You know we love surprises.) And our reproductive organs only wreak havoc on our entire physical and emotional systems all the time, guaranteed. The only thing better than being a woman is being a woman in Texas! 

If you haven’t struggled with getting pregnant, had a full baby ripped through your six-pack, or spent your entire adult life explaining why you don’t want to have children, you’ve gotta try this. There’s truly nothing better than being a woman.

Then there’s the moment we hear that we are going to need a hysterectomy. A life-bomb goes off, followed by psychic shrapnel. Frustration, pain, grief, sorrow, fear. Maybe you’re suffering from incredible pain from endometriosis or fibroids. You’ve tried everything, and you’re told that, for your health, your uterus needs to be removed. Perhaps they tell you they’ll also need to remove your cervix, fallopian tubes, and ovaries. You will not be able to bear children. It’s all very final.

No matter the reason for this surgery, the results will be life-changing. This isn’t like getting a nose job—when you remove these pieces of a person, hormones shift. To say that this process is emotionally complex and sensitive is an understatement. It’s a last resort. And yet, it’s the second-most performed surgery for women, after cesarean section, in the United States. 

For something this serious, you want access to the best surgeon and the newest technology. Now, right here in North Texas, you’ve got access to both. 

Dr. Thomas Heffernan, gynecologic oncologist at Medical City Plano, is a huge proponent of minimally invasive gynecological surgeries. “Innovating has always been part of my drive,” he says. “I was lucky enough to be starting my career before robotics had been adopted in the community. And so I was able to be really kind of instrumental in getting robotic surgery established in the Dallas-Fort Worth market.”

A few weeks back, I took a little road trip to Fannin County, an hour and a half north of Dallas, to see something crazy. It’s 120 billion gallons of water puddled on the Blackland Prairie—or it soon will be. Bois d’Arc Lake, the first Texas reservoir built in nearly 30 years, to keep Frisco and Plano hydrated, still has about 10 feet to go before it’s full. So I wanted to see the lake—this engineering marvel and monument of hubris—but I was also curious to meet those few folks who were lucky enough to own land on a new shoreline. Your family runs a hay farm for a hundred years, and then you suddenly have a lake house. Just imagine.

Then imagine how dumb I felt standing on FM Rd. 1396, staring at where the road disappears into the lake, surrounded by a whole bunch of nothing. No disrespect to the citizens of Fannin. There aren’t any lake houses yet. I drove around on some dodgy gravel roads and found some farmhouses not far from the water, but notes left in about a dozen mailboxes did not produce a single phone call to your intrepid correspondent. I know. Shocking.

What I did find, near a bridge on the west side of the lake, was a gleaming new building for the North Texas Municipal Water District and the lake manager for Bois d’Arc, Jennifer Stanley. I would here like to formally apologize to Stanley for showing up without an appointment and thank her for being kind enough to talk with me anyway about water impoundment and fishing and where to find a good hamburger.

That’s the one bit of useful information I can offer from my road trip. The Bois d’Arc General Store at Nana’s Place (4831 E. FM Rd. 1396; 903-664-4004) is the only place to eat anywhere near the water, which is not to suggest it is on the water. Not even close. But when the lake is full and they start selling lots, if you head up that way to check out some property, don’t miss Nana’s Place. You’ll find an American flag flapping in front of the tiny turquoise roadhouse and Nana herself at the grill. If it’s Friday, consider the catfish. Otherwise, you won’t be disappointed by the burger. And onion rings. Get the onion rings.  

Unlike the land around Bois d’Arc Lake, there are plenty of lake houses scattered around North Texas. In our April issue, we spent a few pages highlighting them: Cedar Creek, Lake Texoma, Lake Cypress Springs, Lake Athens, Possum Kingdom Lake, and the aforementioned Bois d’Arc Lake. That story is online today, and you can read it here.

On February 5, Mayor Eric Johnson wanted to share some good news about crime numbers in Dallas. In his weekly email newsletter and in a post on Medium, he included a photo of himself hugging police Chief Eddie García. The chief was seated at a desk, looking down at crime data. The mayor, standing behind García, was leaning in to hug him, draped over the city’s top cop like a shawl. 

Along with the photo, Johnson included a chart created by the Major Cities Chiefs Association, a police organization that García serves as president. The chart presented Dallas as the only large American city where all types of violent crime had declined over the previous two years. Johnson wanted to show people that the two public officials are so aligned in their efforts, and so successful in getting results, that the mayor had to hug the chief. 

The image itself was inelegant. Hugs are better when both people are standing. But the message was clear. Yet six days elapsed with no local news coverage of the rankings. So Johnson took to Twitter. 

“Our local media have no interest in reporting on this data, which is why you haven’t heard about it,” he wrote. Reporters with the Dallas Morning News, WFAA, Fox 4, KRLD, and NBC 5 responded with links to stories about Dallas’ declining violent crimes—but they didn’t mention the other nine cities in the chart.  

Johnson then tweeted an adage about defensiveness he’d learned from his grandmother: if you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that gets hit will yelp. “Them hit dogs still hollerin’,” the mayor wrote. He added that journalistic “quality has fallen off a cliff” and called it “pathetic.” 

Here’s the thing about that chart: the ranking was bogus. Comparing one city’s crime numbers to another’s is a reductive exercise that ignores how data are collected and fails to tell the real story about how things are going. Plus, the FBI recently modernized how it collects data. Its new system does away with what it called the “hierarchy rule,” where departments were basically allowed to juke the stats on a technicality. Meaning, if a robbery goes bad and someone ends up dead, police departments filed only the most severe charge—murder—and ignored the others. Now every crime in an incident is tracked and submitted to the feds. Dallas follows this process, but four of the 10 cities in the mayor’s chart do not. 

Promoting that ranking was political boosterism that obscures what we should be analyzing and discussing: what about Dallas’ new approach to curbing violence is working and what is not? Because the department’s data do indeed show progress.