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.
Which would make it the most conservative city in New York were it magically transplanted.
It IS an armpit. It must be great for Houstonians to live in a city where you have a refinery, next to a housing development, next to a strip club, next to a Church, next to a junkyard.
Don't forget that about once or twice a year, one of the local refineries or chemical plants manages to explode....
"A refinery blew up today!" "Let me guess, Houston?" "Yeah." "Welp, they haven't had one go yet this year, guess it's about time."
And therein lies the problem, eh? Gladys Kravatz for sure. *chuckle*
No, it is third. Austin, El Paso, then Houston.
Last I checked, I think they were actually starting the condemnation process when the condo complex suddenly decided to pay for some upgrades to their units.
I hadn't thought about the marketability aspect to a good school district. I don't have kids, so that's not something I tend to think about. Of course, there's also The Colony and Frisco if we're talking about the northern Dallas suburbs.
Houston banned gun shows. Austin did not.
Houston currently has the lead by a razor thin margin, followed by Austin, then third is a tie between San Antonio and El Paso.
Ummmmmm .....ya'll New Yorkers are what made Colleyville, Flower Mound and Plano famous. *chuckle* Pay $1m for your 2bdrm flat in the city. We'll keep our 5000sq ft. rathole cookie cutters with the swimmin' pool in the backyard for $450k. Not to mention......No State Taxes. BTW, I live in the country with lots of fresh air, sunshine and a pleasant commute to Big D for work, fun and visitation rights. :)
Yup.
Yeah, they need some real estate for the crack houses and meth labs that are moving in down there.
Q: What passes for therapy in Texas?
A: "Wanna go to a t-tty bar?"
;-)
I like the Hill Country and San Antonio. I even had a blast in Alpine. To each his own I guess.
It's cheaper and more effective than some stupid liberal NY pshrink who thinks that your mother is the root of all your problems. Far cheaper, and far more effective.
And the interesting part is that such facilities often have excellent food, created by famous chefs - for a very low price.
No kidding. *chuckle* I stayed with a friend in Downtown Dallas after working a long shift and not wanting to make the drive home. Listening to the night sounds of uzzi's and gangsta music pounding....cured me of the "convenience".
Holy cow. Talk about sprawl. Last I knew ('87 or thereabouts), The Colony and Frisco weren't suburbs of much of anything - they were pretty much in the middle of nowhere. ;)
I found out the hard way when I was young. Nice house, nice neighborhood, lousy schools made for a slow sale.
I had Frisco on my original list. I don't know that would rank The Colony that high. Lewisville is like Richardson (and Plano, for that matter). It depends on what part of town you are talking about.
I just returned from the Hill Country a couple weeks ago to see the bluebonnet. They were a bit sparse this year....but beautiful. We always make a detour into SA for dinner on the Riverwalk at some point. Luckenbach was filled with bikers when we stopped in there for a long-neck. Bluegrass band was playin' and I was in heaven!
sprawl it is! You can drive from Red Oak to the other side of McKinney, from Terrell to Weatherford and you never leave city development. Its unbelievable. Not the sweet little Dallas of 500,000 were I grew up. Now there are 5,000,000 here.
There's always Flower Mound, too.
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