Back Talk Lakewood/East Dallas

East Dallas daily crime updates

A few months ago, the Dallas Police Department made all its crime and arrest reports accessible online to the public. You might remember reading about this in last month’s magazine when we asked Deputy Chief Jan Easterling to fill us in on the new feature.

Now, East Dallas resident and neighborhood activist Avi Adelman has taken that public information one step further. He’s just launched a new website that will e-mail you daily updates about crime in your neighborhood.

The privately owned and operated website sorts police data, and then filters it to subscribers via e-mail. The service is funded by advertisements (or at least it will be) so it’s totally free to subscribers, unlike some of its competing websites.

The website is still a little rough around the edges, but a revamped version is expected this spring. The goal is to eventually have at least 50,000 subscribers—and one day subscribers may be able to sign up for crime updates via cell phone or PDA.

50 inches of rain

Actually 50.05, according to the National Weather Service. That's the fifth rainiest since the weather service started keeping records in 1898. The wettest was 1991, with 53.54 inches.

Normally, we get 34.66 inches. We got 29.75 in 2006 and just 18.97 in 2005.

And I promise, now that the year is over, not to post any more rain items or pictures for a while.

It was a very good year

A few blog highlights from 2007:

• The number of visitors increased four-fold in the past 12 months (and no, we didn't start with a single-digit base). That's pretty impressive, given that we stumbled in the dark for so much of the year.

• The most-read posts were the obvious ones: the mayoral elections, the Trinity referendum, and the Lakewood Whole Foods. But three Casa Linda items were in the top 10, including the opening of the Casa Linda cafeteria, the renovation of the Casa Linda shopping center, and the Casa Linda overlay. Also in the top 10 were Liz Simmons' Christmas lights, the Albertson's parking lot shooting, and Hamm's tire store.

• Yes, that's only nine, but that's because the 10th deserves a paragraph of its own. On May 29, Rick Casner posted an item about coyotes attacking pets in the Carruth Terrace area near Mockingbird, Skillman and Abrams. Since then, it has been a steady draw, and is still attracting comments -- including one on Saturday from a fellow who took a photo of a coyote near Buxhill Drive just north of White Rock Lake. (Dan, email the photo, and we'll put it up.)

• We have had visitors from Pakistan, India, Finland, France and Great Britain. Reading the coyote item, perhaps? We have also had visitors from the U.S. military and the state and federal governments.

• My favorite visitors? The people from Brinker, who checked out the item about the company's decision to close its original store on Greenville Avenue. Hopefully, they learned a thing or two, though I wouldn't bet on it. In addition, 2 percent of our traffic was generated by visitors from belo.com, the sixth highest total for a domain name and just below aol.com. I will let you draw your own conclusions (as well as make your own witticisms) about that.

Thanks for stopping by. Most of the changes we have promised -- and that you have asked for -- should be in place by the end of February. (The Advocate web site will be new and improved as well.) That means the the blog will be more fun to read, more fun to visit, and even more in tune with what's going on around here. That is, after all, the Advocate's reason for being.

Coming soon: Bungalow-style townhomes on Gaston

Braden Power first pointed out the site to me more than a year and a half ago, when a friend of mine was moving to town and looking for an apartment. It just so happened that one half of the Power brothers' developing company, PowerProperties, was the person who showed us around.

Most neighbors would know Braden and his brother, Craig, from their renovated apartments along Gaston, like The Verandahs and Stardust. But that day, Braden Power told me that on the vacant land across from PowerProperties' leasing office at Gaston and Glasgow, the brothers planned to build townhomes that reflect the architecture of the neighborhood. I've occasionally driven by since then, wondering what happened to their plans, until reading a press release today stating the City of Dallas has given them the green light.

Construction will begin in January, and according to the press release, their homes will be the first new construction along Gaston in 20 years.

Everywhere you look, it’s green

I knew that going green was in, but apparently neighborhood private schools have jumped on the bandwagon simultaneously.

Right after running our profile in January's Launch section on St. Thomas Aquinas’ efforts to make its school more environmentally friendly, Lakehill Prep posted news on our website that it recently began a recycling program, with a bin placed strategically along the lower school carpool line. If you wait until the soccer moms clear out, you can drive though to drop off any and all paper without ever leaving the comfort of your car.

How does a Wal-Mart/Sam's Club combination sound for Timbercreek?

My commercial real estate guy passed this one along  -- he says it's a solid tip, though it's just that. Nothing has been confirmed yet.

He has been told that Wal-Mart and developer Trammell Crow want to put a Wal-Mart on top of a Sam's Club on the 44-acre apartment complex property. Timbercreek is located at the intersection of Skillman and Northwest Highway, and was the subject of a contentious 2006 zoning battle between Crow and the apartment's residents.

If this is true, it raises several disturbing questions:

The good news about home prices

My column in the January issue, which should start appearing on doorknobs this weekend, surprised me. I expected to find that our home prices have held up. What I didn't expect to find was that they have held up remarkably well, especially given the blood-letting in the rest of the country. Plus, the news earlier this week that DFW-Arlington prices fell .1 percent annually (from the respected S&P/Case-Shiller index) makes our success that much more amazing.

The complete chart for the eight ZIP codes in East Dallas, Lakewood and Lake Highlands is here. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that we've benefited for two main reasons: First, foreclosure rates around here have remained low. Ron Burch of Coldwell Banker, who helped put the numbers together, reported an uptick in foreclosures in December, but that may have been an aberration. Second, since our home supply is limited, it's almost impossible to overbuild. And overbuilding has caused many of the problems elsewhere in the Dallas area and in the rest of the country.

My hunch is that home prices here in 2008 won't hold up this well if the rest of the economy continues to slow. But we should be able to avoid the 1980s-style meltdown that those of us who have lived here since then remember with fear and trepidation.

Restaurant review: Baker Bros.

I can't make up mind about Baker Bros. Is its Old Town location a decent alternative for salads or sandwiches that just happens to be a chain, or is it just another chain serving more chain food?

Part of the problem is that the food isn't consistent. The last time I was there, the Santa Barbara salad tasted like it had been made first thing in the morning and left out to wilt. At other times, if you can overlook the industrial canned olives and food service boiled lunch meats, the salads are fresh and interesting.

Plus, since I long ago gave up hope of finding real delicatessen in Dallas, I can enjoy the Reuben and pastrami sandwiches at Baker Bros. without too much guilt.

Wine review: Chateau Bonnet Blanc 2006

Curse the weak dollar. Otherwise, this white blend from Bordeaux would be $8, which it used to be a couple of years ago. Then I'd have a case of it in the wine closet and I'd have no worries about what to drink for dinner when I needed some everyday white wine.

Sadly, however, the Bonnet is $13. It's still worthwhile -- just not a bargain. But the wine is very Bordeaux-like, and in that respect is still a value. There is a  hint of sauvignon blanc citrus, some semillon to take the edge off, and muscadelle for fruitiness. Plus, unusual in a wine at this price (and even more unusual at $8), it has a wonderful mineral finish that hints at what you'll find in the sauvignon blancs of Sancerre.

Serve this chilled with any kind of seafood (raw oysters or steamed mussels come to mind) or by itself. And keep careful watch, in case your local retailer puts it on sale. It's available at Pogo's, Central Market and Centennial.

A couple of other wine notes:

• I'll post pointers, tips, and suggestions for sparkling wine for the New Year's holiday here on Friday. And, in keeping, with the spirit of the celebration, there are quite a few on the list that cost more than $10.

• I'm going to teach the introduction to wine class at the Cordon Bleu school in Dallas. I start Jan. 7, and I'm quite looking forward to it. I'll post updates as the three-week class progresses. I'm especially curious to see what cooking students know about wine. And no, I don't have to wear a chef's outfit.

PJ's in public? C'mon, James...

In the "you're starting to sound like an old man" vein, James Ragland takes on pajamas-in-public-wearing young women in today's DMN column, equating that particular fashion trend to the "disrepectful" kids waddling around with their pants near their thighs. Ragland postulates that perhaps the young women who wear pj's everywhere and then, when they bend over, their "pj's don't make the whole trip" are simply people who have lost all sense of public decorum. Maybe he's right, or maybe he's just getting his knickers in a knot about something that is just the current fashion-trend equivalent of rolling cigarettes into a t-shirt sleeve or covering a body in tattoos or wearing those garbage-can-sized bell-bottoms in public. In fact, I don't support the pj's in public trend, it does provide a less-permanent alternative (as far as trends go) than having tats all over a body.