- Shawn Williams looks at the crime stats that show the three most crime-ridden neighborhoods in Dallas are, in fact, north of the Trinity and not in South Dallas. There may be other legitimate reasons developers shy away from South Dallas — income demographics, lack of infrastructure — but crime isn’t a good excuse anymore.
- Surprisingly good story on zoning and development in Dallas for a TV report, and it includes a nice little swipe at the doomed-to-fail convention center hotel that will cost Dallas taxpayers out the wazoo.
- Am I just a bastard for not having much sympathy for people who are homeless and not suffering mental illness? Maybe. But what about this guy, who made himself homeless and 10 months later had a job, apartment, a car, and $5,000 in savings? Here’s his website.
- Been there, done that, left my mark on the westernmost corner. (Security is not so tight as they’d have you believe.)
The Tramp
Eagerly he took my dime,
Then shuffled on his way,
Thick with sin and filth and grime,
But I wondered all that day
How the man had gone astray.
Not to him the dime I gave
Not unto the man of woe,
Not to him who should be brave,
Not to him who’d sunk so low,
But the boy of long ago.
Passed his years of sin and shame
Through the filth that all could see,
Out of what he is there came
One more pitiful to me:
Came the boy that used to be.
Smiling, full of promise glad,
Stood a baby, like my own;
I beheld a glorious lad,
Someone once had loved and known
Out of which this wreck had grown!
Where, thought I, must lie the blame?
Who has failed in such a way?
As all children come he came,
There’s a soul within his clay;
Who has led his feet astray?
As he shuffled down the hall
With the coin I’d never miss,
What, thought I, were fame and all
Man may gain of earthly bliss,
If my child should come to this!
The Path to Home, 1919
Do they allow voting up there?
I live in Southeast Dallas which includes eight neighborhoods. (Including Pleasant Grove, which is mistakenly used as the generic name for 30% of Dallas rather than what it is…a 2X3 mile neighborhood therein, just south of me.) And our area…according to the Deputy Police Chief Patricia Paulhill of the Southeast Division (headquartered at I-175/Hawn Frwy and Jim Miller Road) was, in 2008, the second LOWEST crime area (you heard me correctly) of the city despite being the city’s largest police division.
Bottom Line: A lot of my Dallas friends are paying a ton of money to live in expensive areas of town that are far less ’safe’ than where I live, which they think is ‘iffy’. Meaning; it costs a lot of moolah to be taken to the realtor marketing machine cleaners.