Photos above: Arcadia Theater on Greenville Avenue was built in 1926 as a vaudeville and silent movie house, seating about 900 people. On June 21st it was destroyed by a catastrophic fire. The tower with the "A" remained aloft.

Unfortunately, the ground of my sanctuary has shifted. The city has allowed an entertainment district to take root here, only one block away from me on Greenville Avenue. For many years, the Avenue was known for its antique shops, vintage clothing stores and restaurants. These businesses created a mellow atmosphere on the avenue and were harmonious with the surrounding residential area. Then the owners of the properties on the Avenue realized how much more money they could make if they rented to bars instead. That realization brought the guillotine down on the long-established businesses in the area, and spawned the infestation of about 40 bars into a scant 4-block area. The crime exploded, as did the noise, traffic and litter.

We've been under siege since about 1998, and the only good thing about it is that it has brought me into focus as a citizen and an activist. On the invitation of former city councilwoman Veletta Lil, I served on the Lower Greenville Land Use Study Group, meeting with other residents, business owners and developers every month for two years at Dallas City Hall. We built a careful plan for the development of the area that showed signs of being approved by the city council, until a resentful force within one of the neighborhood associations decided to oppose it. The monarchy in charge of this reigning neighborhood association didn't want to help us with the problems we were having or to initiate any changes, which is why they were left out of the planning group to begin with. Why should they help? While the "entertainment district" was destroying our peace and damaging our properties, four blocks north it was improving their property values.

So we had to deploy our own forces. Those of us living in the buffer zone of Lower Greenville became activists. We started several of our OWN neighborhood associations, among them the Belmont Neighborhood Association. We methodically started taking back our neighborhood from the bars and from the elitist neighborhood association that likes to claim it represents us at City Hall. To read about some of the battles we are entrenched in here, have a look at the much-publicized website of the vicious Barking Dog of Lower Greenville.

The bars owners and patrons don't appreciate the neighbors defending our property. As fast as we can install Resident Only Parking signs (which we have to pay the city for), the bar people yank them right out of the ground, concrete and all. The oppressive neighborhood association has even worked against us to prevent the installation of Resident Only Parking, because if bar patrons aren't allowed to park in front of OUR houses, Heaven Forbid: it will push that parking down into THEIR neighborhoods instead.

Our calls to the police and the city barely create a blip of interference for the bars, though. Citations and fines for noise violations are simply considered part of the cost of doing business. The bars pay the inconsequentially low fines and every single weekend the volume is up as high as ever. They know that the laws tend not to be enforced, and that the chances are good of getting away with whatever they want to do. Many of these bars shouldn't even exist, because they're operating under illegal Certificates of Occupancy, claiming to be restaurants, not bars, even though they don't have any kitchens. Most of them have outdoor speakers too, which are illegal. The few remaining restaurants (real ones) say that the bad bully behavior of the bars is ruining business and running them out of the neighborhood. And guess what's going up in their place? More bars.

As the problems escalate, the press starts circling in to have a look. Finally, the City of Dallas starts acknowledging that there's a section of the city that's getting out of control. And that's where it stands now. We have a defender in our current impassioned city council representative, Angela Hunt. There have been signs of hope shining from her direction. Recently, Ms. Hunt has been making personal appearances late at night on rowdy weekends to interface with bar owners and police sergeants herself. I have had the pleasure of accompanying her on a couple of these descents into the scumbar zone lately, which you can read about here. On one of those occasions we were joined by an audacious news reporter from the Dallas Observer, Andrea Grimes, who writes a blog for the Observer called Girl On Top. Read Andrea's appealingly quirky report on one of our neighborhood meetings here.

On the Saturday night of Halloween weekend, someone found out that our city councilwoman intended to spend the evening with me among the throng of inebriated hobgoblins expected on lower Greenville, and the next thing I knew, TV reporters started calling me in hopes of setting up an interview on the streets. This was such an unprecedented anomaly in my otherwise quiet life that I include for you here the evidence of this peculiarity:

We were never actually intercepted by these predatory television news crews. I did get a few good snapshots of the evening, though. At this point, we are waiting to see what the city has to offer in regard to long-range initiatives for stabilizing our neighborhood. A good start would be to enforce the laws already in place. If the laws aren't enforced, this raises far bigger questions for the city. Other cities have resolved problems in situations exactly like this one: why not Dallas? In the long run it will be easier to do something about our problems than to have to eventually answer the question: Why Not?

Meanwhile, the residents who try to keep civilization intact over here have a reputation as renegades. It's not a flattering profile for people who are just trying to protect their property and their peace. The fact that we defenders of the neighborhood are a curiosity to the press is in itself a statement, suggesting that we're antagonists who just don't appreciate a good time. The good time isn't ours, but it's happening right in our front yards. Some of us can even tell you the set list being played on nearby rooftop patios, song by song, without leaving our living rooms.

Only fashion and transportation seem to have changed since the days of the wild west saloons here in Texas. The majority seems to want to allow an "Anything Goes" policy when it comes to entertainment. Greenville Avenue, for now but perhaps not for much longer, manages to self-righteously sustain a prevailing mood of "lawless frontier" even in the middle of a residential section of the city.