Barring that, move!
Posted on 04/25/2005 10:17:44 PM PDT by Doctor Raoul
01/25/05 A Day in the Life in North Oak Cliff
I awake to find several urgent e-mails from neighbors alerting me to three separate, serious criminal incidents that occurred in the last couple of days here in North Oak Cliff. I read and quickly dispatch them to neighbors who share my concerns about our rising crime rate, then hop into the car to take my 5 year old to school. I back out of my driveway onto our street, Winnetka Avenue, the street where Oscar Sanchez was kidnapped last week.
I dodge three major potholes on the way to I-35, wait briefly at a malfunctioning red light, then head south to the private school in DeSoto where we enrolled at great financial sacrifice out of concerns about the quality of education on offer at our local DISD elementary. Along our last leg to school, we drive past an apartment complex at Old Hickory and Wheatland Road, the scene of the first quadruple murder of 2005.
My daughter safely in the classroom, I return to Oak Cliff and stop for coffee in the Bishop Arts District, meeting up with friends who relate details about yet another carjacking, this time about 500 yards around the corner from where we live. Coffee in hand, I head back to my office in my restored, 95-year-old home, driving past a mountain of trash bags laying in the street along the curbside of an empty house - bags the City agreed to collect as a "courtesy" more than three weeks ago.
Settling in, I call code compliance for a status update on our block's recent code complaints against my next-door neighbor's conversion of a single-family, historic home into a raucous apartment building. I learn that the officer who initially inspected the premises works for the wrong division of code enforcement - and, even though he's seen firsthand the two kitchens and apartment doors they've installed, the proper code department can't act on his inspection unless it, too, sees the violations firsthand. Not surprisingly, my neighbors refuse to cooperate. This, apparently, takes me back to square one - helping ensure that the overcrowding, 24/7 traffic, holiday gunfire and chest-thumping rap is here to stay.
On my lunch hour, I drop by a local merchant's shop to leave an item for repair and have a friendly mug of tea. As we sip, she tells me that she's taken to clutching a can of tear gas as she leaves her shop because the neighborhood is just too creepy at night these days. Taking her cue, I make a mental note to procure some mace for the car.
My daughter climbs into the car after school, asking to go to Kidd Springs Park to see the ducks. It's a beautiful day - sunny and bright - but we head home instead. (On our last visit to the park, we found used needles and condoms laying by the small kiddie playground, then witnessed what appeared to be a cash-for-drugs exchange in the cul de sac in front of the community center.)
Homework done, I take my kid to ballet - this time, two blocks from the Sanchez kidnapping site. I exchange greetings with her ballet teacher, who tells me that she's getting increasingly scared about keeping her studio open late into the evening - and reports two apparently related armed carjacking incidents that occurred two streets over in the other direction over the last week. As she moves to the barre, she tells me she's thinking of shifting some of her late-hour students to Sunday afternoon because her husband fears her leaving her studio after dark.
After ballet, I realize that I need gas before tomorrow's drive to school -- but it's after dark and I have my daughter with me in the car. Standing at the pump with keys in hand and my child in her booster seat leaves me too vulnerable, I calculate, so I elect to leave my home early tomorrow to fill up in broad daylight. Driving by the gas station, I'm again tempted to fill up and be done with it. While I wait to turn left into the gas station, four young men dripping gold chains climb out of a car at the closest pump, blaring obscenity-laden music so loud I can't hear my own radio and hassling a lone man at another pump. I decide my first instincts were correct and, again, point the car toward home.
Daughter asleep in bed and dishes done, I turn on the nightly news. As I settle into my chair, I hear a couple of shots go off a block or two away. I call 911, exactly as my neighbors and I did repeatedly to no effect on New Year's Eve when tenants of the newly minted apartments next door shot into the air for hours on end.
I return to my chair just in time to catch the latest punches being thrown in the WWF wrestling match the strong mayor proposal has become. Both sides posture, both sides dig in their heels, both sides predict gloom and doom if the other guys win.
As I turn off the set and head for bed, I wonder for the thousandth time how much worse it has to get before the shouting stops and we see real progress on the problems facing us here in North Oak Cliff. Just how many car jackings, burglaries, rapes or shootings will we endure before either side actually does something that results in measurable change?
How many potholes will I have to plunge into before the roads get fixed? How many fresh multiple-homicide sites will we drive past? How low will DISD standards eventually sink before changes are made that would allow us to visit local school campuses without walking through metal detectors or finding teacher misspellings on the board?
How much trash has to pile up before the city actually does make a real-time courtesy collection? How long before the two sides of code compliance can communicate to address basic zoning and code violations? How much time has to pass before I can again take my daughter to our public park without witnessing a drug deal or finding used hypodermics? When will my friends and I again be able to leave our homes and businesses after dark without fear?
As my head hits the pillow, I realize with crystal clarity that our city officials are too busy burning their political capital over their various positions on the Blackwood proposal to attend to actual city business here south of the Trinity. Drifting to sleep, I'm certain that I'm in for a lot more days like today.
UH, I'm not sure???
This women as ISSUES!
Barring that, move!
Has this woman ever thought of moving? I know that I wouldn't be caught in Oak Cliff without an armored car......much less buy a house there. Dallas is a huge city with lots of burbs. Pick one and go! lol
Democrat mayor, Democrat-dominated city council, crumbling city infrastructure, business leaving in droves.
Anyone surprised? This is why I left for the suburbs - lots better here, and I'm less than a minute's drive from the Dallas city limit.
Three word response. Allen, Frisco, Plano.
Also - this woman is trapped in the typical liberal mindset:
"When will the government help me? It's supposed to help me!"
As opposed to, "The government isn't doing its job. We need to throw the bums out of office!"
Richardson, Carrollton, Addison
But but then she wouldn't have anything to write in her diary and complain about
Almost seems like she relishes adversity to make her life complete.
Isn't Oak Cliff a wealthy area, or am I thinking of something else.
Something else; that's the Park Cities you're thinking of.
Better cookie-cutter houses than a crowded, ugly island infested by rats and liberals (hard to tell the difference sometimes) that smells like rotting garbage in the summer and twelve feet of snow in the winter.
We have machine guns and freedom. You have Mo Dowd and serfdom.
I much prefer the Dallas area.
You really think she could sell her house in a neighborhood like that?
I agree she's insane to stay. Why would anyone live in such a hellhole? And to raise a child in such surroundings is horrible.
New York would be an ideal place if it weren't for the confiscatory taxes and gestapo gun laws. I can tolerate pretty much anything else. I'm in Seattle currently which is in a Right to Carry state without an income tax, but it remains the douchebag capital of America. At least the DFW Metroplex has some nice people. If only they believed in zoning laws (although Houston is MUCH WORSE in that regard).
If you have to pass through Oak Cliff, I recommend going through at high speeds - I've noticed that's exactly how the cops patrol the place.
Addison? Not a chance. Most, if not all, of it is in DISD. Parts of Richardson and Carrollton are probably OK, if you watch for school district boundaries. If you want Dallas County and can't afford UP/HP or Sunnyvale, Coppell is probably the best bet.
Zoning laws are often used as a tool of opression by liberals. You should know that, coming from NYC.
Houston is the colon of the US. It is the most liberal city in TX, far eclipsing Austin.
Yes, but she's already decided to send the kids to private schools. Addison has many good private schools in close proximity - certainly nothing as far away as DeSoto.
So this is the...er...woman...who claims an angry John Bolton chased her through the halls of a hotel? What a control freak!
Has she met the other...er...woman in Bolton's life, Lynne Finney (who claims Bolton yelled at her)? Another nutter!
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