Dathe Street, Death Street

So, here's what I do on most Saturday mornings. I drive to some hellish part of Dallas to look at real estate, hoping to find some undiscovered neighborhood full of cheap restorable houses on a street with potential.

Sadly Dathe Street does not have potential. I want it to, seeing as this house is on Dathe Street in a historic South Dallas neighborhood called Queen City. This three bedroom Craftsman is exactly what I'm looking for. It has a fireplace with built-in book shelves next to it with glass front doors, a great front porch and a bathroom with original tile. All of this comes with a $32,000 price tag.

The downside to Dathe Street, as I observed while down driving the length of the block where this one is located, is that at least three of the houses have been abandoned so long that the roofs on them have caved in. Not kind-of-caved-in, but there's-no-roof-left-caved-in. That's one of the many perplexing and frustrating things about South Dallas is that when people die there, most of them don't have wills, so nobody inherits the house --- except crackheads and rain water. So the houses go to hell and nobody can do a damn thing about it. And why would you want to live on a street where a significant portion of the once cool houses there are so F'd up from neglect that they have to be plowed down? Not only that, a guy walking down the middle of Dathe Street gave me the two-finger wave as I was driving by him. I saw his fingers go up in my rear view mirror as he was looking straight at my truck. I don't think he was being friendly. I'm pretty sure he was signaling to me that he had some smokeable illegal products for sale.

Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, The Granada 4-6-07

I like that between 1967 and 2007, rock bands have always had bass players with hair like this guy's.

Framed

It's been a good 10 years since anything related to rock & roll has hung on a wall in my residence. In my late 20's, I thought it would be more adult to frame a rock poster --- that way it would pass over from anti-authoritarian wall paper to real art if The Clash's London Calling poster was shielded in something I bought from Target.

But photos are different --- especially if they are from a memorable event and the shot turns out better than expected. This was the case for this picture of the Hoodoo Guru's David Faulkner. I was close up and wasn't using a flash. The shutter speed was slow so the parts of his body that are moving turned out a bit blurry. But the photo looked really cool when I looked at it on the computer (not so much in the posting below). So off it went to an online photo place for reprinting. And 11 bucks later --- 13 more for the Target frame --- and it's on my wall, marking my re-entry in to rock and roll wall coverings. The set list I grabbed off the stage got the same treatment. So every morning when I look at this wall while brushing my teeth, I'll be reminded of St. Patrick's Day 2007 when I went home hoarse from screaming with excitement over how good this show was.