This is just a reminder to everyone of how vitally important to the health and well being of this city that it is that we all go out and vote "Yes" for MAPS 3. In order to demonstrate the importance of this issue, I have pointed out all that we will get with MAPS 3, and I have outlined the dangers that we as a city face if it fails. What we'll get:
1) A world class Convention Center. Though we already have two civic convention centers and dozens of hotels with convention space, and though convention business is dropping steadily across the nation, I choose to believe a fictional novel when it says "If you build it, they will come." I know that other cities who've built convention centers in the past several years have all seen convention business decline and leave them holding the bills for an unused building, but OKC has one thing these other cities don't have: year round bad weather.
2) A new park: It will be complete with water features that will also serve as free bath tubs for the homeless community that will be displaced when the Salvation Army Social Services Center is torn down to make room for the park. And because it will be protected by a dangerously understaffed police department with an average response time to high priority calls of just over nine minutes, park goers can be sure that they will have an exciting time after dark. Who doesn't like excitement? And though MAPS contains money to build these projects but not to mantain them, the park can be mantained for a mere $3 million dollars (about the salary and benefits for two police officers or firemen for an entire career) a year!
3) A new light rail system: Imagine all the middle class riders that will now only have to pay for parking once in Bricktown and who won't have to walk at all when visiting downtown! And, since the city will surely end its habit of ignoring underserved parts of the city, the rail system will provide a foundation to build a rail system off of that which would actually stretch into inner city neighborhoods so people can come from the projects to work at the convention center. After all, that's the purpose of mass transit anyway, and the city's sterling record of providing quality mass transit speaks for itself.
4) Sidewalks and Trails: Assuming someone picks up the $250 Million dollars of the convention center cost that MAPS 3 does not budget for, money will be left to add much needed sidewalks and trails that will help people lose the weight that they will gain because they don't have to walk around downtown thanks to the light rail system. And what a bargain at only $143,000 a mile!
5) Senior Wellness Centers: because someone has to drive those pesky non-profits like the YMCA out of business!
So, you can see that we have much to gain from MAPS 3, but what will happen to us if we fail to pass MAPS? Our progress as a city will instantly stop! Our investment in Bricktown ended in 2001 when the MAPS tax transferred to the MAPS for kids tax. Nothing has been built in Bricktown after 2001. And just look at neighborhoods that didn't see any MAPS money. None of them have thrived, except maybe Midtown, the Paseo Arts District , the Downtown Arts District, the Plaza District, the Asian District, and the hospital district. Okay, so a few have, but those were accidents of a good economy, while MAPS projects thrived only because we raised the money for them.
If you need an example of how much difference MAPS money makes, just look what MAPS for Kids did. Every school in the Oklahoma City Public Schools has received much-needed money for improvements and upgrades. Now everyone wants to put their kids in OKCPS. No one tries to move to other districts like Yukon, Moore, Edmond, and Putnam City. After all, if you could choose between Edmond Memorial and John Marshall, why wouldn't you choose John Marshall, aside from the gang problem, the under performing scores, and the low graduation rate?
Finally, a "no" vote on December 8th threatens the progress we have made in our city. If MAPS does not pass, the Bricktown Ballpark will be torn down. The Ford Center will crumble. The Oklahoma City native that owns the OKC Thunder will move the team to Las Vegas, and the canal will be filled in with dirt, on top of which will be built a pot-hole filled road. Don't let Oklahoma City move backward! Don't tell the city that you would rather them to invest your money in uselss things like firemen who are just going to slow traffic during the MDA drive or police officers who do nothing but write you tickets anyway.
Vote "Yes" on December 8th.
Monday, December 07, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Who MAPS Forgot
The Oklahoma Gazette published in yesterday's paper a letter I wrote about the MAPS 3 proposal. They kept it pretty much in tact, about which I was surprised and appreciative but, as with any newspaper op-ed, they cut chunks out to save copy space. So here is the complete version:
A couple of years ago, I assigned a class of college freshman writers a chapter of Mike Davis’s book City of Quartz which discusses a crime prevention program in the city of Los Angeles involving the construction of concrete roadblocks in certain parts of the city, supposedly for the purpose of hindering drug traffic between drug infested neighborhoods and neighboring middle class areas. But the roadblocks also had the effect of holding undesirables in certain parts of the city, separating them from better policed, more affluent parts of the city, thereby creating privileged spaces where the upper-middle class didn’t have to fear, or even see, LA’s urban blight.
I asked my students if Oklahoma City has such privileged spaces and, after considering the question, they inevitably mentioned Bricktown, but they seemed to feel a sense of superiority over LA, since we at least didn’t have concrete barriers. But when we looked at a map of Bricktown, we stumbled across borders just as real as any barrier in LA. To the east, I-235 nicely separates our middle class playground from the long neglected, racially segregated lower east side. On the south, the renamed “Oklahoma River” provides a natural barrier from the poverty stricken south east side, and to the west, the elevated railroad tracks are a literal wall between Bricktown and the transient infested downtown area (of course, with the arrival of the Thunder, we should perhaps move that boundary to the Greyhound station).
To protect this privileged space from the urban blight which surrounds it on all sides, the City of Oklahoma City built a brand new, fully-staffed police station responsible for the five or so square blocks that Bricktown encompasses, leaving four stations to protect the other 664 square miles of Oklahoma City. In a recent radio interview, Fraternal Order of Police President Gil Hensley said that, in order to staff the Bricktown station, officers were pulled from districts serving the rest of the city. While Bricktown has added interest and vitality to the downtown area, it has also increased the workload of the OCPD, and it has not hired more officers to help support this workload. President Henley’s counterpart in the Fire Department’s employee group, Phil Sipe has seen a similar increase in workload and has actually had nearly fifty positions cut from his department so that OCFD now has two empty fire stations. So, while it can certainly be argued that the Bricktown development has greatly benefitted our city, it has done so at the expense of the citizens who live in underserved, less affluent areas of the city.
Now the mayor would like the people of Oklahoma City to pass MAPS 3, an extension of the Maps tax already in place, which has already been extended once with MAPS for Kids. The new MAPS tax will build a third convention center downtown, a downtown trolley system, and a downtown park. So who is left out of this new MAPS? With no funding in the plan for new police, fire, or roads, the manpower needed to protect and maintain these new projects will have to come from somewhere. Likely, it will come from already underserved areas of the city. The projects will be paid for, not just by the Edmond, Norman, and Moore residents who come to the city to enjoy these amenities, but by those citizens who will never be able to afford the ticket prices to the new convention center, the bills in Bricktown restaurants and so on. They will not be able to come into downtown to ride the trolley because the famously bad Metro Transit Authority will not see a cent to improve its slow routes and unreliable service.
Thus, the people who are left out of the new MAPS improvements are the people who are most in need. Those of us in the upper middle class will have another nice party destination and we will no doubt feel safe and protected by the platoons of public servants we will see inside our barricaded safe-haven. But people who live just outside our barricades will continue to live with such dilapidated roads that they cannot drive a car down their street, such as those who live just blocks from downtown in the 2200 block of SW 8th, whose street cannot even be called paved. People in the rural areas of the southeast side will still have no fire hydrants, and the police station that serves them will still be twenty miles away. People who live in less desirable neighborhoods in the city will see the police and firemen transferred away to fill the needs of visitors downtown, leaving them unprotected, because the tax that built these new downtown projects didn’t provide for the manpower needed to protect them. Without a doubt, the new projects proposed in the new MAPS are worthwhile projects, but if the primary responsibility of government is to protect its citizens, then the new MAPS neglects its primary responsibility. It neglects those who most need protection. It robs the poor to give to the rich.
A couple of years ago, I assigned a class of college freshman writers a chapter of Mike Davis’s book City of Quartz which discusses a crime prevention program in the city of Los Angeles involving the construction of concrete roadblocks in certain parts of the city, supposedly for the purpose of hindering drug traffic between drug infested neighborhoods and neighboring middle class areas. But the roadblocks also had the effect of holding undesirables in certain parts of the city, separating them from better policed, more affluent parts of the city, thereby creating privileged spaces where the upper-middle class didn’t have to fear, or even see, LA’s urban blight.
I asked my students if Oklahoma City has such privileged spaces and, after considering the question, they inevitably mentioned Bricktown, but they seemed to feel a sense of superiority over LA, since we at least didn’t have concrete barriers. But when we looked at a map of Bricktown, we stumbled across borders just as real as any barrier in LA. To the east, I-235 nicely separates our middle class playground from the long neglected, racially segregated lower east side. On the south, the renamed “Oklahoma River” provides a natural barrier from the poverty stricken south east side, and to the west, the elevated railroad tracks are a literal wall between Bricktown and the transient infested downtown area (of course, with the arrival of the Thunder, we should perhaps move that boundary to the Greyhound station).
To protect this privileged space from the urban blight which surrounds it on all sides, the City of Oklahoma City built a brand new, fully-staffed police station responsible for the five or so square blocks that Bricktown encompasses, leaving four stations to protect the other 664 square miles of Oklahoma City. In a recent radio interview, Fraternal Order of Police President Gil Hensley said that, in order to staff the Bricktown station, officers were pulled from districts serving the rest of the city. While Bricktown has added interest and vitality to the downtown area, it has also increased the workload of the OCPD, and it has not hired more officers to help support this workload. President Henley’s counterpart in the Fire Department’s employee group, Phil Sipe has seen a similar increase in workload and has actually had nearly fifty positions cut from his department so that OCFD now has two empty fire stations. So, while it can certainly be argued that the Bricktown development has greatly benefitted our city, it has done so at the expense of the citizens who live in underserved, less affluent areas of the city.
Now the mayor would like the people of Oklahoma City to pass MAPS 3, an extension of the Maps tax already in place, which has already been extended once with MAPS for Kids. The new MAPS tax will build a third convention center downtown, a downtown trolley system, and a downtown park. So who is left out of this new MAPS? With no funding in the plan for new police, fire, or roads, the manpower needed to protect and maintain these new projects will have to come from somewhere. Likely, it will come from already underserved areas of the city. The projects will be paid for, not just by the Edmond, Norman, and Moore residents who come to the city to enjoy these amenities, but by those citizens who will never be able to afford the ticket prices to the new convention center, the bills in Bricktown restaurants and so on. They will not be able to come into downtown to ride the trolley because the famously bad Metro Transit Authority will not see a cent to improve its slow routes and unreliable service.
Thus, the people who are left out of the new MAPS improvements are the people who are most in need. Those of us in the upper middle class will have another nice party destination and we will no doubt feel safe and protected by the platoons of public servants we will see inside our barricaded safe-haven. But people who live just outside our barricades will continue to live with such dilapidated roads that they cannot drive a car down their street, such as those who live just blocks from downtown in the 2200 block of SW 8th, whose street cannot even be called paved. People in the rural areas of the southeast side will still have no fire hydrants, and the police station that serves them will still be twenty miles away. People who live in less desirable neighborhoods in the city will see the police and firemen transferred away to fill the needs of visitors downtown, leaving them unprotected, because the tax that built these new downtown projects didn’t provide for the manpower needed to protect them. Without a doubt, the new projects proposed in the new MAPS are worthwhile projects, but if the primary responsibility of government is to protect its citizens, then the new MAPS neglects its primary responsibility. It neglects those who most need protection. It robs the poor to give to the rich.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Why You Should [Loudly] Support Your Local Police
As any of you who have followed my writing lately know, I have very closely watched the Gates case in Cambridge, MA. I am intensely interested in the case because 1) my grandfather grew up in Cambridge and I still have family there so I have spent much time there and the city is close to my heart, 2) I was once a big fan of Professor Gates and assigned his writing to the freshman I taught at UCO and 3) I have an obvious professional interest.
As I have followed the story in the Boston Globe and Boston Herald, one of the things that has pleasantly surprised me has been the incredible outpouring of support for the Cambridge Police Department by people commenting on the websites of both these papers. Over the past several days, I have seen hundreds of comments that support the police in general and the involved sergeant specifically, but almost none condemning them. People have hung signs of protest in Professor Gates's front yard, yet Sgt. Crowley's yard has gone untouched. This, to me, has been an impressive -and rare- show of public support.
Many officers today feel under attack. I think it's safe to say that, across the country, morale on our police departments is extremely low. Officers feel unsupported, and unprotected. They feel that people are slow to act on their own, but quick to criticize, eager to sue, and indefatigable at second-guessing. Officers, I think, feel like they are constantly placed in no-win situations. After all, don't ask for an ID, and later you'll find out that the person you had contact with was a burglar. Ask for ID, and you'll get accused of racism by the homeowner that arrogantly thinks you should know him. Because of situations like these, many officers feel that they work to protect a public that doesn't appreciate, and perhaps even hates them.
Of course, I honestly believe that this is not the case, and I think that the support from the Boston community following the Gates debacle shows that. I think, by and large, an overwhelming majority of citizens appreciate and respect police officers and the sacrifices they make. But they are not called the silent majority for nothing. Arrestees and malcontents call police departments and send letters all the time railing about what officers have done wrong, but very few ever call in or write in to say thank you to the officers who served them or to congratulate officers on a job well done. Officers routinely find themselves being investigated after a formal complain, but rarely get to stand in lineup to hear a letter of appreciation about them being read in front of their peers. Instead, officers only hear complaints and accusations. But officers deserve to, and need to, hear audible public support.
And if there's any doubt that officers deserve praise, consider this: since September 11, 2001, 667 American soldiers have been killed in the war in Afghanistan. In that time, 1,157 police officers have been killed on the streets of America. Officers are giving their lives in a war that is being waged all around you. Yet, though it would be unthinkable to accuse an American soldier returning from Afghanistan of going to war only because he hated Arabs, we give an open ear to people who accuse officers of racism without a stitch of evidence to support the claim. When a convicted felon accuses an officer of excessive force, we drag his name through the mud on the nightly news. I'm not suggesting that we turn a blind eye on actual police malfeasance, but we owe to men who are sacrificing their lives at least the same benefit of doubt that we allow to felony suspects - the assumption of innocence until proven guilty.
And it isn't just their lives that officers are sacrificing. If most people were to watch a person aspirate on their own blood until they die, were to see a thirteen year old child floating dead in a swimming pool, or to see children who have been given cigarette burns by their mother's boyfriend, the person would be effected and haunted by these sights for the rest of their lives. Yet these are all things that officers can to expect to see numerous times through the course of a twenty five year career. After each of these events, the officer will not be offered psychological treatment, or days off to process the event. Instead, he will write a detailed report and go back in service, the event being added to a bank of such mentally destructive memories. The officer can't arrive on the scene of a brutal murder and fall into the street sobbing the way the witnesses around him are. Instead, he must somehow cope with what he is seeing and perform the work his profession requires.
Officers subject themselves to these sights so that the citizen will not have to. He runs into situations that others run away from. He doesn't do these things so that he can harass those he hates, or so that he can get the power and force the respect he didn't get in high school. These rewards would not be worth the sacrifices. And, because you pay his salary, you know he doesn't do these things for the meager pay.
So, when you are being stopped by an officer, and you find yourself quick to think that he's a jerk, remember that he may have just helped pull the lifeless body of a kid from a swimming pool, or he might have been called a racist by someone he was trying to help. So, if it seems that he's having a bad day, remember that a bad day for you means getting lectured by your boss for not getting your TPS reports in on time. A bad day for him involves being bitten by a mentally ill homeless man with god knows what diseases. Instead of telling your officer that he has better things to do than pull you over, say "sorry sir; I'll pay better attention next time." When you see an officer in a restaurant, take the time to go by and say, "thank you." And when a rich man with a home on Martha's Vineyard calls a good officer a racist, respond with a resounding and public, "shut up."
As I have followed the story in the Boston Globe and Boston Herald, one of the things that has pleasantly surprised me has been the incredible outpouring of support for the Cambridge Police Department by people commenting on the websites of both these papers. Over the past several days, I have seen hundreds of comments that support the police in general and the involved sergeant specifically, but almost none condemning them. People have hung signs of protest in Professor Gates's front yard, yet Sgt. Crowley's yard has gone untouched. This, to me, has been an impressive -and rare- show of public support.
Many officers today feel under attack. I think it's safe to say that, across the country, morale on our police departments is extremely low. Officers feel unsupported, and unprotected. They feel that people are slow to act on their own, but quick to criticize, eager to sue, and indefatigable at second-guessing. Officers, I think, feel like they are constantly placed in no-win situations. After all, don't ask for an ID, and later you'll find out that the person you had contact with was a burglar. Ask for ID, and you'll get accused of racism by the homeowner that arrogantly thinks you should know him. Because of situations like these, many officers feel that they work to protect a public that doesn't appreciate, and perhaps even hates them.
Of course, I honestly believe that this is not the case, and I think that the support from the Boston community following the Gates debacle shows that. I think, by and large, an overwhelming majority of citizens appreciate and respect police officers and the sacrifices they make. But they are not called the silent majority for nothing. Arrestees and malcontents call police departments and send letters all the time railing about what officers have done wrong, but very few ever call in or write in to say thank you to the officers who served them or to congratulate officers on a job well done. Officers routinely find themselves being investigated after a formal complain, but rarely get to stand in lineup to hear a letter of appreciation about them being read in front of their peers. Instead, officers only hear complaints and accusations. But officers deserve to, and need to, hear audible public support.
And if there's any doubt that officers deserve praise, consider this: since September 11, 2001, 667 American soldiers have been killed in the war in Afghanistan. In that time, 1,157 police officers have been killed on the streets of America. Officers are giving their lives in a war that is being waged all around you. Yet, though it would be unthinkable to accuse an American soldier returning from Afghanistan of going to war only because he hated Arabs, we give an open ear to people who accuse officers of racism without a stitch of evidence to support the claim. When a convicted felon accuses an officer of excessive force, we drag his name through the mud on the nightly news. I'm not suggesting that we turn a blind eye on actual police malfeasance, but we owe to men who are sacrificing their lives at least the same benefit of doubt that we allow to felony suspects - the assumption of innocence until proven guilty.
And it isn't just their lives that officers are sacrificing. If most people were to watch a person aspirate on their own blood until they die, were to see a thirteen year old child floating dead in a swimming pool, or to see children who have been given cigarette burns by their mother's boyfriend, the person would be effected and haunted by these sights for the rest of their lives. Yet these are all things that officers can to expect to see numerous times through the course of a twenty five year career. After each of these events, the officer will not be offered psychological treatment, or days off to process the event. Instead, he will write a detailed report and go back in service, the event being added to a bank of such mentally destructive memories. The officer can't arrive on the scene of a brutal murder and fall into the street sobbing the way the witnesses around him are. Instead, he must somehow cope with what he is seeing and perform the work his profession requires.
Officers subject themselves to these sights so that the citizen will not have to. He runs into situations that others run away from. He doesn't do these things so that he can harass those he hates, or so that he can get the power and force the respect he didn't get in high school. These rewards would not be worth the sacrifices. And, because you pay his salary, you know he doesn't do these things for the meager pay.
So, when you are being stopped by an officer, and you find yourself quick to think that he's a jerk, remember that he may have just helped pull the lifeless body of a kid from a swimming pool, or he might have been called a racist by someone he was trying to help. So, if it seems that he's having a bad day, remember that a bad day for you means getting lectured by your boss for not getting your TPS reports in on time. A bad day for him involves being bitten by a mentally ill homeless man with god knows what diseases. Instead of telling your officer that he has better things to do than pull you over, say "sorry sir; I'll pay better attention next time." When you see an officer in a restaurant, take the time to go by and say, "thank you." And when a rich man with a home on Martha's Vineyard calls a good officer a racist, respond with a resounding and public, "shut up."
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Why Gates is off My Reading List.
As a former university English instructor, I have always been an admirer of Henry Louis Gates's work. He has produced some of the most enlightening scholarship into African American literature and the African American experience. However, as a current police officer, I am very disappointed in Professor Gates's actions regarding his arrest.
Every police officer has experienced countless situations in which a person of a race different than the officer has accused him of taking enforcement action against him based on his race. However, I expect better of Professor Gates. Professor Gates fails to see that what he has done to officers of the Cambridge PD is exactly what he has been preaching against his entire career. He assumed immediately upon meeting these officers that he knew what they were and what they were about. Since they were police officers, Gates seems to think, they must be racists. This is the exact type of rush to judgment that racism is made of.
These officers did not see a black man walking down the street and jump out on him. They were called to this address. The only thing officers did to provoke Professor Gates was to ask him to identify himself, something that the courts have been clear officers have the right to do, and something that officers routinely do to most everyone they contact, no matter what race. If Gates would have produced an ID, something he no doubt has, this matter would have ended immediately. Officers would have seen his address on his ID and gone back into service (we are, after all, a bit lazy and love calls that last two minutes instead of the two hours it takes to book someone into jail). Instead, Professor Gates unleashed a string of tired accusations of racism and self-important language cops hear everyday. Perhaps Professor Gates should consider what would have happened had someone really broken in.
Would Dr. Gates have wanted the officers to have checked the burglars ID, or would he have liked them to take for granted that they were telling the truth when they said they lived in this home? Did Dr. Gates feel that the officers should have known who he was, as if police officers routinely keep abreast of preeminent literary scholars?
Gates has claimed that he did not behave in a disorderly manner, as police reports by two seperate officers claim, and that he was unfairly arrested at his own house. But a picture published by the Boston Globe on boston.com shows Gates with his mouth wide open, looking suspiciously like he is yelling at a police officer who is walking in front of him. Additionally, the photo shows him handcuffed with his hands in front of him, a courtesy that is against nearly every department's policies, as this is considered unsafe for officers. So, not only does it not appear that he was treated poorly, it appears that he was in fact treated preferentially. Professor Gates is now talking about filming a documentary on racial profiling. Perhaps he should first learn a proper definition of that term. If Gates had been stopped by police walking down his own street after police had driven right by a white person a block down the road, his claims of "racial profiling" might have some legitimacy, but officers were only at Gates's house because they were called.
Whether Professor Gates really believes all cops are racist, or whether he is arrogantly offended that people outside of academia don't know who he is, much of what Gates has taught me has been undermined by his behavior. He teaches racial equality, but he seems to be asking for preferential treatment.
Update: The Plot Thickens
I once had a gay bar owner accuse me of responding slowly to a call to his bar because he was gay, a hilarious supposition to anyone who knows anything about my career background and politics. I love that Gates seems to have also chosen the wrong guy about whom to make racist allegations.
Every police officer has experienced countless situations in which a person of a race different than the officer has accused him of taking enforcement action against him based on his race. However, I expect better of Professor Gates. Professor Gates fails to see that what he has done to officers of the Cambridge PD is exactly what he has been preaching against his entire career. He assumed immediately upon meeting these officers that he knew what they were and what they were about. Since they were police officers, Gates seems to think, they must be racists. This is the exact type of rush to judgment that racism is made of.
These officers did not see a black man walking down the street and jump out on him. They were called to this address. The only thing officers did to provoke Professor Gates was to ask him to identify himself, something that the courts have been clear officers have the right to do, and something that officers routinely do to most everyone they contact, no matter what race. If Gates would have produced an ID, something he no doubt has, this matter would have ended immediately. Officers would have seen his address on his ID and gone back into service (we are, after all, a bit lazy and love calls that last two minutes instead of the two hours it takes to book someone into jail). Instead, Professor Gates unleashed a string of tired accusations of racism and self-important language cops hear everyday. Perhaps Professor Gates should consider what would have happened had someone really broken in.
Would Dr. Gates have wanted the officers to have checked the burglars ID, or would he have liked them to take for granted that they were telling the truth when they said they lived in this home? Did Dr. Gates feel that the officers should have known who he was, as if police officers routinely keep abreast of preeminent literary scholars?
Gates has claimed that he did not behave in a disorderly manner, as police reports by two seperate officers claim, and that he was unfairly arrested at his own house. But a picture published by the Boston Globe on boston.com shows Gates with his mouth wide open, looking suspiciously like he is yelling at a police officer who is walking in front of him. Additionally, the photo shows him handcuffed with his hands in front of him, a courtesy that is against nearly every department's policies, as this is considered unsafe for officers. So, not only does it not appear that he was treated poorly, it appears that he was in fact treated preferentially. Professor Gates is now talking about filming a documentary on racial profiling. Perhaps he should first learn a proper definition of that term. If Gates had been stopped by police walking down his own street after police had driven right by a white person a block down the road, his claims of "racial profiling" might have some legitimacy, but officers were only at Gates's house because they were called.
Whether Professor Gates really believes all cops are racist, or whether he is arrogantly offended that people outside of academia don't know who he is, much of what Gates has taught me has been undermined by his behavior. He teaches racial equality, but he seems to be asking for preferential treatment.
Update: The Plot Thickens
I once had a gay bar owner accuse me of responding slowly to a call to his bar because he was gay, a hilarious supposition to anyone who knows anything about my career background and politics. I love that Gates seems to have also chosen the wrong guy about whom to make racist allegations.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Clandestine Cool OKC
When I was a kid growing up in Moore, I thought that being from Moore meant that I was from Oklahoma City. And, since I knew that there was nothing to do in Moore, that meant that there was nothing to do in Oklahoma City. But when I moved back from Memphis, I actually moved into the city (we're now the stuck-up Northsiders we were supposed to hate).
Since moving back, we have travelled a lot, but we have also occasionally stuck around for in-town vacations. If you have never pretended to be a tourist in your own town, no matter how big or small it may be, I suggest that you do so. Go all out. Get a hotel room in a nice hotel, carry a camera around, and go to the places you see on the free tourist maps you get in Bricktown.
Since coming home and getting out and visiting my own town, I have discovered how cool home is. Today we went into midtown. In OKC, midtown includes the area around St. Anthony Hospital, Automobile Alley (NW 10th/Broadway area), an the Mesta Park neighborhood. We ate at McNellie's Pub in Crown Plaza (a historic three sided building that sits on one of the city's few roundabouts). We sat at a table with a view of downtown, ate traditional Irish dishes, and had a pint of Guinness (well, Charissa didn't). We then walked across the roundabout and had a gigantic banana split at the Grateful Bean Cafe which inhabits the old, classic Kaiser's Ice Cream building, just down the street from St. Anthony's.
And this was just one example of decidedly cool, big city afternoons we've had here. No more am I the teenager who thinks there's "nothing to do" here. I've lived in Memphis, spent considerable time in Boston, and visited most of the major cities in the U.S. and I've finally discovered that OKC belongs among any of these cities.
We've stayed in the Skirvin Hotel, walked around in the underground (a part of this city many residents don't even know about), hung out in the wonderfully strange Paseo Arts District (NW 3oth and Dewey), and eaten every kind of ethnic food.
I've patrolled districts that are primarily Mexican where all the businesses have signs in Spanish, and another that is primarily Vietnamese where all the signs are in their language. I've eaten in Mediterranean restaurants owned by Iranians and pizza parlors owned by New York Italian-Americans. I even have a German Deli (significant to me) a mile from my house.
Okies, this place is cool! And the secret is getting out. If you haven't noticed, then get out of Moore, get a room in the Skirvin and become a tourist in your own town for a couple of days. It just may change your mind about our clandestine cool city.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Officers Down
If it seems like there have been a lot of police officer killings in the news lately, it's because there have been. According to the Officer Down Memorial Page thirty-four officers have been killed in the line of duty so far this year. That number is equal to the number killed through the end of April last year, so we are only slightly ahead of where we were to date one year ago. The staggering numbers, however, are the number of officers killed in the last two months. After a slower start to the year (ten this January compared to fifteen in 2008, and seven in February compared to seven in 2008), March and April have been extremely deadly. Twelve officers were killed nationwide in March -up from five in March of 2008, and six have been killed through the first seven days of April. Four were killed in the entire month of April last year.
I have heard pop-sociologists blaming economic conditions for the recent upswing in violence in the US (the AP reports that 57 have been killed in mass shootings in the last month). I have even wondered (along with others who have always wondered this) if news reports about violence in fact perpetuate violence. Whatever the case, my brothers, now is a time to be extra-vigilant. Watch out for each other.
I have heard pop-sociologists blaming economic conditions for the recent upswing in violence in the US (the AP reports that 57 have been killed in mass shootings in the last month). I have even wondered (along with others who have always wondered this) if news reports about violence in fact perpetuate violence. Whatever the case, my brothers, now is a time to be extra-vigilant. Watch out for each other.
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