AFTER DARK, DOWNTOWN BECOMES CITY OF WALKING DEAD

By Juan Montoya
It appears that having a bunch of cyclists come and ride in a deserted downtown once a month is someone's idea of downtown revitalization.
The designer-bike-outfits-clad suburbanites and their like-dressed kids cruise down the empty streets in their expensive bikes, mill around for a while at Washington Park while those with business downtown have to skirt the barricades and park at a distance from their destinations to get their chores done.
Restaurants and bars owners watch as the cyclists come and go in front of their businesses and then leave while their customers stay away to avoid the event.
But it is what happens after dark that needs to be addressed if the planners and wellness boosters want to actually impact the revitalization of the city.
After dark, the city belongs to the crackheads, the burglars, and the prostitutes (both male and female) who are plying their wares through the darkened streets and alleys.
One or two legitimate businesses directed at the average city resident who still goes downtown remain open. The new Palm Lounge on Elizabeth Street offers a modern ambiance with live music on Thursdays and weekends. A block down, El Hueso del Fraile offers live international folk music laced with some Musica Nueva from Latin America. Down Adams, across from Market Square, the Kraken is an inviting refuge for Millenials into modern rock.
And the conjunto buffs will flock to La Carta Brava and La Movida on the weekends.
Those with a simple taste for beer and some karaoke will gather at El Capitan. Those content to listen to the juke box and to pay $ 1 for draft beer (un tarro) and $1.50 for bottled beer flock to the Sportsman Lounge.
George Ramirez's Half Moon, undergoing a renovation and installation of a kitchen, was until recently an anchor for a more upscale crowd seeking to listen to the blues and rock.
Everywhere else, the area resembles one of the circles of hell.
On any one day, you will hear a downtown crack queen openly shouting that she needs three dolalrs to buy a rock (crack cocaine). Yet, she retains a sense of dignity saying she does not want charity but will perfom some kind of sexual favor for the cash.Name your poison.
The transvestites looking for a trick or panhandling will hover just out of the dome of the streetlights enticing the unwary and the mañosos for a tumble in a dark alleyway or a store's backdoor: the street walkers bear with the john's lust for flesh for a few dollars to satisfy their urge to buy a shot of their favorite high.
Along the alleys, in recessed back doors of legitimate businesses, numerous cigarette lighters litter the ground. Those are the ones used by the crackheads to light their tubes. After covertly lighting them in the outside air, they run out of fuel or their flints wear out and break and are then discarded.
The police know this.
The downtown HEB got tired of having these haggard, desperate-looking visions of humanity come in and buy the disposable lighters amidst their customers and no longer sell them there. If they want to buy one, they have to go to the dollar stores when its daylight, or as far as the nearest convenience store on International when the stores downtown are closed.
Some have complained that downtown businesses charge non-customers $2 to use the bathroom. They don't realize that a crackhead would rather crouch in an alleyway than spend the $2 they can use to buy their rock.
The only other alternative to do your business is the Multimodal Terminal where there are public bathrooms.
Our city fathers (and mothers) are in denial that there is a large (and persistent) group of homeless wandering the streets of downtown. In winter, there's more. They turn a blind eye to them sleeping wrapped in segunda-discarded blankets in the doorways of stores. Without a place open to perform their bodily functions, they use any hidden recess to relieve themselves. It could be a space between dumpsters in the alleys. Or it could be a recessed doorway along Washington or Adams.
Is it any wonder that the town reeks of excrement and urine during the day?
The city many years ago passed a bond issue to establish a homeless shelter where the Mothers of Perpetual Help used to be. Instead, the money was spent elsewhere and the homeless were encouraged to seek shelter miles away at the Ozanam Center on Minnesota Road. Without adequate mass transit, this was wishful thinking. Municipal and community neglect has resulted in what we see today.
Next time you are in the downtown area look at the buildings closely. Almost every store front has some kind of burglar bars or fencing to keep out thieves. Few are successful. Some businesses have been hit twice, three times or more in a month. Other have lost count. Burglars have broken into some of the bars and smash the jukebox to get at the cash. In other cases, entire flat-screen televisions have been taken even as live-in guards slept in the next room.
"Look at us," said a business owner on Elizabeth. "We'be ben burgalrized twice, and they break in even when there is nothing to steal. The burglar bars make it seem like we're in a war zone, and we are. You never see the police patrol here during the day. At night, it's worse. At night, the city belongs to the walking dead of this town."