Our Oak Cliff
When I moved to Dallas more than 15 years ago my first apartment was in a little duplex a block off Greenville Avenue, just down from the Blue Goose. I had a friend that lived in the area and he spoke highly of it, so on his recommendation I checked out the area. At first glance it seemed like a great neighborhood — a collection of well loved older homes with sidewalks leading to a collection of shops and restaurants. But it didn’t take long after moving in to feel like something was missing. The community seemed overly transient, or maybe just not that friendly, and I never got a sense of strong community on the block I lived for a year.
As my lease was set to expire, another friend recommended that I drive across the river and check out Bishop Arts. I had lived in Dallas for nearly a full year at that point and had never been to Oak Cliff, so I asked for directions and drove over on a Saturday afternoon.
If you are new to the area it was a slightly different Bishop Arts then. Hattie’s was still a few years away and Tillman’s Corner hadn’t gotten the ‘roadhouse’ update. Vitto’s was on one corner and Gennie’s Bishop Grill was still serving the best chicken fried steak in Dallas on another corner. Oak Cliff Mercantile occupied the entire building that now houses Brass Tacks barber shop and the electric bike shop, and it was one of the few spots open on a quiet Saturday afternoon in the District. Owners Henry and Tom were inside the store that day and greeted me like I was a regular.
I spent the next hour soaking up Henry and Tom’s insight and experience on living in Oak Cliff. They were working on fixing up a house in Winnetka Heights at the time and they recommended that I take a drive down Davis and check out the second largest historic district in Dallas. As I got in my car to explore I knew instinctively that I had found something unique. Henry and Tom’s hospitality and openness was exactly what I was looking for. I was so attracted to their optimism for the neighborhood and their enthusiasm to share it with someone who had just walked in off the street.
A week later I was trying to convince an East Dallas realtor that I really did want to look at homes in Oak Cliff, and a few months later I had purchased a fixer-upper of my own in Winnetka Heights.
Thus began one of the best decisions of my life. I felt so lucky to find a neighborhood filled with folks just like Henry and Tom. People who were smart. And curious. And open minded. And friendly. And interested in avoiding conventional thinking just because it was just too conventional. And in the 15 years since I’ve lived in Oak Cliff I’ve met many of my closest friends. And fallen in love. And am raising a family of four young ladies who I want to be smart, curious, friendly, open minded and willing to think differently.
And I believe those values are what makes Oak Cliff special. Sure we’ve got the only hills in the city and a beautiful canopy of trees that compliment great streets running through great neighborhoods. But if you took out the people and the times we gather together on a warm June night for the Symphony at Kidd Springs Park, or the ‘I Bike Rosemont’ ride that ends with root beer floats in front of Eno’s, or our Mardi Gras parade, or Bastille Day celebration or drinks on your porch with neighbors or any of the other thousand reasons we’ve come up with to justify us spending time with each other… well I don’t think Oak Cliff would have the same magnetic draw that it has today.
Some say we’ve done too good a job spreading the word. Some complain about the cars and the restaurants and the ‘bridge and tunnel’ or ‘johnny come lately’ crowd. And I understand where that comes from. There is a fear that someday we might lose what makes Oak Cliff unique.
There is an effort underway right now to make our neighborhood a better place to live, and the focus is on slowing down the cars on two streets so that it is safer for folks to walk and bike around the neighborhood. And this effort has some neighbors genuinely scared. And a few even angry.
At a community meeting tonight led by our Councilperson Scott Griggs, there was an overflowing room of passionate people. And many of them stood up to explain how in their minds Tyler and Sylvan ‘ain’t broke’ and so we don’t need to fix them. They came armed with anecdotal evidence of why this plan will lead to traffic jams, or why they don’t think it will be any safer for those of us on foot or bike. But through it all you could hear a sincere fear — that their neighborhood is changing and they are afraid of what is to come.
I believe this change, this effort to increase the quality of life for neighbors of all ages, is absolutely in line with the values of our neighborhood. But I think we’re all going to have to come together and remind each other that we are a community that is curious, friendly, open minded and willing to think differently. And just because “we’ve never done it that way before”, or because “nobody rides bikes in this heat” — we’re willing to forge a new path.
Oak Cliff has an opportunity to become a model of how an urban neighborhood can survive a transition (part of a much larger global shift of people back in to cities) and still maintain our values. We can lead the rest of Dallas by showing that you don’t become ‘world class’ by building a tollroad or a fancy bridge, but by investing in your neighborhoods to make them better serve the neighbors who live there. As another wise man in the neighborhood once said, it is prioritizing people over pavement and community over cars.
We can’t avoid change. Stasis is not an option for organisms or for neighborhoods. And there is no doubt that we have some significant challenges facing Oak Cliff that will require us to come together to form a cohesive vision for our future. But this proposed road change isn’t one of them.
This is smart neighborhood planning. This is putting our values in action. And this is showing the rest of the city what world class looks like.
