Posted on 09/14/2010 10:02:59 PM PDT by UncleHambone
Dallas police Officer Cat Lafitte is only 31, but she longs for the 1950s, when the nostalgic public image of law enforcement was the friendly neighborhood patrol officer. "Now," she said, "people just absolutely hate us." So when she spotted artists painting pillars under the freeway at Deep Ellum, she asked for her own pillar on the street corner to paint the portrait of a police officer with the message "Dallas Police Department Welcomes You to Deep Ellum." Lafitte, who had an art/science major in college, intends it to be a positive public-relations gesture but plans to cover it with an anti-graffiti clear coat to be able to wash off any vandalism. She hopes that won't be necessary. "I know the law-abiding people don't hate us, but just dealing with the criminal element, we get a lot of hate," she said. "If I could plant one little seed in someone's head that the police are the good guys, I would consider myself to be successful in this deal."
(Excerpt) Read more at eastdallasblog.dallasnews.com ...
We used to love Deep Ellum. Used to love to go to breakfast on Sunday at Cafe Brazil. Best coffee and empanadas! OOOOO man now I’m hungry. I don’t know if it’s still there. I heard it got more dangerous over the years after we moved, but when we were there (in the mid 90s and we still went there after we moved to East TX when we went to Dallas for whatever reason) we loved to people watch and usually the cops were in there eating too. I even recall once the mounted police had their horses trailerd in the parking lot while they ate.
We used to love Deep Ellum. Used to love to go to breakfast on Sunday at Cafe Brazil. Best coffee and empanadas! OOOOO man now I’m hungry. I don’t know if it’s still there. I heard it got more dangerous over the years after we moved, but when we were there (in the mid 90s and we still went there after we moved to East TX when we went to Dallas for whatever reason) we loved to people watch and usually the cops were in there eating too. I even recall once the mounted police had their horses trailered in the parking lot while they ate.
So it’s okay to deface public property is you are a cop?
Deep Ellum is still a place you can find superb food, music, and conversation.
Cafe Brazil is still there, BTW, and doing well by all indications.
Oh- and I have never felt uncomfortable or threatened in any way in Deep Ellum. I doubt if it is any more or less dangerous that Uptown, for example.
DEEP ELLUM — As part of the Deep Ellum Beautification Project, The Deep Ellum Foundation would like to introduce Pillar Park. The objective of this project is to add artwork to 30 of the TxDOT highway columns under I-75 along Good Latimer Expressway, Canton Street, and Commerce Street. The mural images on the columns will be 11 feet high and will represent the unique work of local mural artists. All of the proposed mural images are free from representations of hate, sex, and violence. The artwork will incorporate images that display the musical, industrial, historical, artistic, and futuristic elements of Deep Ellum, as well as a special mural by the Dallas Police Department painted by a Dallas Police Officer.
You are assuming they have permission from the state/county/city to do this. If they do, then fine.
How dum /goofy could this be after I moved here from Beantown?This is really getting stupid and goofy and I’m thinking American’s have really lost their sense of who they even ARE.
Another Yankee with a U-Haul?
We need to remember to stop and eat there the next time we are thru Dallas on our yearly trek. Thanks for the info. I haven’t thought to ask my son who lives in Plano. The past 3 or 4 years we are always in a hurry and just driving thru.
I recall a number of years ago it seems that there were some stabbings in the news. I can’t remember any details tho, I just remember thinking it was a shame that they had let things get out of hand because it was such a fun place to go with lots of different sorts of people and different things going on all the time. I remember taking my oldest son and his girlfriend to see They Might Be Giants at a club there in the 1990s. Good times!
It will not help that there is going to be a video released today showing cops beating a black guy on a motorcycle. Even cops that were interviewed are saying it is pretty bad.
This story happens over and over in Dallas. An area becomes popular. Then the criminal element moves in. A couple of crimes make s the front page of the Morning News, and TV stations, people stop going there, mostly due to the media, not the actual crime, and the area dies. Then the same media does stories lamenting the “fall” of the area, that they helped bring about. The city offers tax breaks to get people back to the area, and usually it stays dead. Deep Ellum may be different because it has some history and character, and it’s very close to downtown. We’ll see.
BTW, my friend has reopened the Green Room in it’s old location in Deep Ellum, and they are doing fine so far. The food is fabulous, the ambiance is like no other place in the city, check it out.
You have lost your mind if you think one can compare Deep Ellum to Uptown. Uptown is home to classy upper class white folks with the associated gorgeous women and high end bars Deep Ellum is a crime ridden cesspool full of thugs and thug lovers.The high class set of Dallas and in my case Plano would not set foot in Deep Ellum. Malcolm X Boulevard is enough of a warning for most of us. Back in the day Ellum was safe and had a few high end clubs. Now The upper class goes to Knox Henderson or Uptown. Deep Ellum please I would rather go to Lower Greenville its closer to get my ethnic experience on. whoo whoo cheap drinks and ethnic people fighting over “turf” also known as land they will never own whoo uh no thanks idiots stay on your side of Big D f-ing trash.
My only comparison was with regard to general safety of visitors.
I was certainly not making a general comparison and on that point you can understand why I chose Uptown as a neighborhood that is generally far more upscale that Deep Ellum - no argument there. And I do NOT include in what I generally think of as Deep Ellum any area south of I30 despite the likelihood that in years gone by (pre-freeway days) Deep Ellum may have been thought to extend as far as present day Martin Luther King Blvd.
I also do not make any claim that the night life scene in Deep Ellum is anywhere near as vibrant as in the other neighborhoods you mention - such a claim would be ludicrous.
I don’t know what Malcolm X Blvd. was called in times past, but whatever it was, the name should have been left alone. As you intimate, the name alone is enough to guarantee further years of delayed development and progress.
I make no apologies for being an attractive white successful male who has no race guilt or tolerance for lower class people perpetuating the cycle of degradation to my countries Anglo-protestant culture. The street name was included to illustrate the mentality and socio economic class of people that frequent that area. The words I wanted to use would have been flagged and censored. I make no illusions to the fact that I am a Red Blooded American if you know that that means good if not your behind the power curve.
I don’t know what gave you the impression that I was expecting an apology. But the Deep Ellum you describe as frequented by a “socio-economic class” that I believe to be the same as that which you referred to in your previous sentence as “lower class people”. The Deep Ellum I know is “frequented” by doctors, nurses and staff from Baylor Medical Center, many of whom live in the numerous new condominium developments in the area, and by other generally attractive, often white, predominantly successful, males and females who come to Deep Ellum for the food or for music.
Breakfast at the Allgood Cafe on Main - try the South Austin Migas; fantastic. The Mexican at Pepe’s and Mito’s on Elm is very good and a favorite with folks from Baylor. The pizza at Mama Mia’s is good and cheap- even if not quite up to the standard of Grimaldi’s on McKinney. Cafe Brazil needs no recommendation by me.
By the way, I am also very successful white male and while I can’t offer up a self-appraisement as flattering as yours appearance-wise, I am assuredly as red-blooded as any American can be, including you.
While there are neighborhoods in Dallas that I always avoid - Deep Ellum isn’t one of them.
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