Driving East

I’ve got a secret. This is just between you and me. If word of this gets out, I could get into trouble for divulging a confidential conversation. It’s our secret. Okay?

A facelift will come to Dallas’ Five Points neighborhood in the foreseeable future.

That’s right. The same process that turned Oak Lawn from a string of funky rock ‘n blues bars into a strip of new and used car lots will soon transform Five Points. The developers who turned the West End from a pocket of exotic restaurants set amid red-brick warehouses into a gaudy tourist attraction will work their magic on an existing enclave of taquerias, pasterias, and ethnic grocery stores. The politicians and bureaucrats who chased the beatniks, bikers, hippies, and artists out of Deep Ellum want now to rid Five Points of its hoodied blacks, colorful costumed immigrants, and struggling bootstrap entrepreneurs.

Park Cities matrons, trophy wives, and old-money businessmen want to drive to Abrams Street and points east and north without sullying themselves with a drive through sights of turbans, saris, street vendors, brown skins, and mysterious storefronts with signs in unknown languages.

We’re going to be the new Uptown.

The tiny masonry-block building down on the corner at Park Lane—the one that the English-only crowd disdains because they can’t figure out what kind of business is conducted there? It, and similar storefronts on the corner, will make way for the trendy boutique culture. The abandoned Walmart and neighboring enterprises with the expansive parking lot where day laborers find work? That will serve as an extension of the swank Park Avenue drive-thru mall. The cluster of ethnic food stores and eateries will become sushi bars suited to the refined Anglo palate. The restaurant that advertises an incongruous menu of Chinese-Mexican food (breakfast served ‘til 11:00 AM)? No doubt, you will soon find there the latest gee-whiz gadgets from Multi-National, Inc.

Soon, the Uptown, Southlake, and Park Cities driver can access the manicured Richland suburb without the burden of a drive through brown-skinned aesthetics or the daily 3:30 crush of thousands of high school and middle school students who make the streets their own.

Soon, bohemians, immigrants, artists, and the “Other” will find themselves pushed once again deeper into pockets of resistance, only to be moved again when city hall finds them and turns their funky outposts into gleaming high-rise towers, tourist traps, and trendy boutiques.

But don’t tell anyone. Developers and bureaucrats want to keep it a secret in order to keep speculators out and land costs down. This is just between us. Okay?