Granny Geek

If you don’t live in Oak Cliff, perhaps your local taqueria doesn’t provide a table that’s decorated with an angel, a Santa, the Virgin of Guadalupe, poinsettias, sunflowers, lights and a snow globe. You’re probably eating your tacos at a plain, picnic table. Pity.

Please note that this table is not covered with some cheap, plastic tablecloth. It’s real cotton, thank you.

La Esquina is at 2800 Clarendon.

And, if you don’t live in Oak Cliff, your gargoyles probably do NOT have appropriate millinery for the season.

But, if you don’t live in Oak Cliff, you’re probably not surrounded by dead Santas, either.

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Happy Holidays, from the Heart of Oak Cliff.

The Peace Symbol dates from 1958. This lovely home in our neighborhood here in Oak Cliff dates from 1948.

Nice.

Cliffies, fair is fair. Anytime Fitness in Bishop Arts had no part in the trashing of Oak Cliff last weekend with a couple of hundred signs. The guilty parties are from Anytime Fitness on South Illinois. See their address at the bottom of the sign?

According to Renee Reed, co-owner of Anytime Fitness in Bishop Arts,

While we are part of the same franchise, we are independently owned and operated and have no connection to the club on Illinois Ave. At our location, we strive to obey all ordinances and be well respected in the community. In fact, we won the Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce award for Best Business in Oak Cliff 2009, largely because of our passionate involvement in so many neighborhood organizations and events. We invite all our Oak Cliff neighbors to come experience a free week at Anytime Fitness and let us show you our customer service and commitment to being a good neighbor.

Thanks, Renee, for speaking up. Your point is well taken. I’m happy to make the correction.

One of the wonderful things about living in Oak Cliff is how we work together to improve our turf. Neighborhood Associations, civic organizations, churches and everyday folks work together to revitalize and preserve our part of Dallas. We plant trees and flowers, we promote the arts and preserve historic homes, we fight graffiti.

In the midst of all our hard work, we get a dose of urban blight, on steroids.

Anytime Fitness has blanketed Oak Cliff with signs on medians and at intersections.

Anytime Fitness is breaking the law. Every sign that we have seen is ILLEGAL. They’re on public rights-of-way and medians, a violation of the city’s sign ordinance.

Signs (Section 3, 7A-16 and 51A)
It is a violation of the City code to post any signs (notices, posters or other paper devices) on a utility pole, lamp post, shade tree; public structure or building or on the City’s right-of-way or median except as may be authorized or required by law. This includes garage sale signs.

Saturday, Gentle Ben and I drove to the grocery store and then to Staples at Chalk Hill before returning home, a distance of about 6 miles. We counted 42 of these butt-ugly signs from Anytime Fitness. At Westmoreland and Fort Worth, six signs cluttered the intersection.

Today, we drove to church and encountered more signs: they’re all along the medians and sidewalk areas of Westmoreland from Clarendon to Kiest. Same thing on Cockrell Hill Road. What a mess.

We’ve reported the violations to Code. Here’s hoping they do a sweep and remove every one of these signs. And wouldn’t it be nice if they could collect removal costs from Anytime Fitness? Perhaps we could lobby our City Council for such an ordinance. Those who mess up our neighborhoods should pay to clean them up!

BTW, the corporate headquarters for Anytime Fitness is in the town of Hastings, Minnesota, where there’s a very strict sign ordinance. The signs that are cluttering our neighborhoods would NEVER be allowed in Hastings!

Signs can create traffic hazards, aesthetic concerns and detriments to property values, thereby threatening the public health, safety and welfare.

The city’s  zoning regulations have, historically, included the regulation of signs in an effort to provide adequate means of expression and to promote the economic viability of the business community, while protecting the city and its citizens from a proliferation of signs of a type, size, location and character that would adversely impact upon the aesthetics of the community and threaten the health, safety and welfare of the community.

Cliffies, perhaps you’re going to give someone the gift of a membership in a fitness center for Christmas this year. Or perhaps you’re thinking of joining a fitness center in January to work off the holiday pounds.

Please remember to patronize fitness centers that are GOOD NEIGHBORS. Don’t spend your money in places that dis our hood. Pass the word, OK?

Anytime Fitness forgot to post their phone number on their signs. Imagine that. The number here in Oak Cliff is 214.331.5331.

A call to Anytime Fitness Corporate Headquarters is toll-free: 1-800-704-5004

Cliffies, you’ll have to cross the river for this pizza, but it’s worth the trip. We were running errands yesterday and our travels took us to Restaurant Depot. We heard that Italia Express, located at 111 Continental Avenue, has good pizza, so we decided to give it a try. It’s located in a strip mall beside the Valero gas station at the intersection of Riverside and Continental.

Italia Express can be described in one word: delightful. Good pizza, friendly service, reasonable prices.

When we entered, we found that several pizzas were on a mini-buffet, but we’ve never been hungry enough to eat anything that’s been sitting under heat lamps. I’m guessing that individual slices are popular with folks who are stopping for gas at Valero and want to grab a quick bite. Call us weird, but we believe that life is too short to eat while in the car.

The menu at Italia Express also includes pasta and subs, but we ordered a basic, pepperoni pizza.

Good choice. One of the cooks started tossing the dough for our pizza as soon as we placed our order. And the crust is GOOD. It has crunch, but is easy to fold. Those of you who grew up (or spent time) in the Eastern US will understand. Pizza FOLDS. The crust can’t be “thin” or “thick.” It has to be “foldable.” Yes, “foldable” is a real word. And real pizza folds.

Plenty of pepperoni. Good cheese. We like the sprinkling of Italian herbs on the topping, a touch that’s almost always ignored by pizza makers here in Dallas.

A small pizza with two soft drinks was about $12.

We’ll be going back soon. We love eggplant, and eggplant and pasta is on the menu at Italia Express.

Buon appetito!

Rats! We liked their chickens, the broiled ones as well as the big guy outside the place.

Gentle Ben and I ride DART rail frequently: to the movies, to restaurants, to museums and special events in downtown Dallas, to the State Fair. Yesterday, we rode the Red Line to the Green LIne just for the the fun of riding the Green Line on its first full day of operation. Trains were crowded: there was standing room only, and not much of THAT.

Hats and antlers were the order of the day for those attending the Christmas Parade downtown.

We roamed around Fair Park for awhile, early in the day. Admission was FREE to all the museums at Fair Park, including our favorite.

Rather than eat corny dogs from one of the vendors at Fair Park, we reboarded the Green Line, heading north for a good lunch. We love the lotus blossoms at the Royal Lane station. In Buddhism,

The lotus is one of the most poignant representations of Buddhist teaching.

The roots of a lotus are in the mud, the stem grows up through the water, and the heavily scented flower lies pristinely above the water, basking in the sunlight. This pattern of growth signifies the progress of the soul from the primeval mud of materialism, through the waters of experience, and into the bright sunshine of enlightenment.

Though there are other water plants that bloom above the water, it is only the lotus which, owing to the strength of its stem, regularly rises eight to twelve inches above the surface.

One of our favorite Asian restaurants, Korea House, is a 5-minute walk from the station.

Beer and a Bento Box. Life is good.

Steamed rice, BBQ chicken and Bulkogi, roasted potatoes, broccoli, California roll and rice noodles.

After a leisurely lunch, we took the Green Line back to West End and connected to the Red Line to get back to Westmoreland Station.

Total cost for transportation for two people: $4.00. We each bought a DART Day Pass for Geezers, commonly referred to as the Reduced Fare All-Day Pass.