We moved here 2 1/2 years ago through ArtsMove. We are still glad we did. However, we are running into broken promises about the Southside redevelopment. (I am glad Beverly Carroll brought the discussion to print. We have been having it in the neighborhood.)

Turns out several people who left Jefferson Heights were told there would be housing built across from the Park that they would be able to afford to live in. Every one knew those folks would not be able to afford $350,000. Yes, developers need to recoup their money and make some. But, there are grants available to help folks get into housing. A previous version of Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise promised mixed income housing including Section 8 rentals would remain on the Southside.

I specifically asked the ArtsMove folks if this area was going to turn into a place where artists could no longer afford to live. I was told it would not. Affordability, sustainability, diversity were part of the plan. Several of us in the neighborhood talk about how glad we are we bought when we could afford it as we would not be able to now. Some are wondering if they will be able to afford to stay.

I left the suburbs to move to a diverse, interesting community. Each day the Southside looks more like the ‘burbs. The Mission is gone. I miss chatting with those guys on my walks. Tienda Jelisco is gone. I miss the food and the people. I hardly need to learn Spanish now. I long for a pizza joint where the families here can afford to go hang out together regularly. And while I want the local businesses to make it, I hate that we are paving Paradise with parking lots for more and more folks to drive in to spend. Could the shuttle and the carriages bring them?

A suburbs downtown is not what we were promised.

Brandy Davis

“All Those Backward Bible-Thumpers….”
(Can Just Kiss Our Tissue Mass)
“The important thing is to stop lying to yourself. A man who lies to himself and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself as well as for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal, in satisfying his vices. And yet it comes from lying—lying to others and to yourself.” -Dostoevsky (Brothers Karamozov)

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“We have elevated adolescence to a central value of our culture, and we are driven by the restless longing to escape boredom. Consider the irony of it all. At a time when we do see increasing access to the pleasures and provisions of the system, and with an ever-increasing array of products, goods and services to benefit from, we see people not more satisfied but less.” -Stuart McAllister

Being poor and elderly has nothing too do, with keeping your grass cut and hedges trimmed, I went back to look where I grew up on Ocoee Street, that runs between North Orchard Knob and Shouler ave back in 89, it looked like a JUNGLE, yards were all grown up, houses were in disrepair, old cars on blocks sitting in yards, talk about an eyesore!!!

We only had reel type lawn mowers when I was growing up, my grandad worked for the southern railway, times were hard for us too, but at least we kept our yards mowed, hedges trimmed, house’s painted, I drove on up too see Hardy Jr. High School, they were tearing it down, in it’s place was this ugly el-cheepo pre-fab thingee, the boone and hysinger projects had iron bars around the dirt yards, where they used to be neat and clean with grass growing, I cringe just like every other white person, when the black people pull out that race card and call me a racist bigot, as their excuse, and that’s the problem, When the blacks moved in from what we used to describe as N-Town up at North Orchard Knob and 3rd street specifically, after the white people moved out to the burbs, that’s when the neighborhood went to hell in a handbasket.

It’s the same way in Cincinnati and across america, Affirmative Action Mandates provided an EXCUSE for black folks, When you are protected by a mandate, it makes one LAZY, and that’s why our manufacturing jobs were shipped to third world countries, you can’t discipline, nor FIRE lazy blacks who intimidate managements knowing management can’t fire them or write them up, it’s communism, and some call it socialism, call it what you will, socialism is great till you run out of other peoples money!!!I talk with justbrenda, an 70 year old black lady who lives in St. Elmo on the nooga.com forum board each day, I’m part black and cherokee, there’s not a racist bone in my body, but when she talks about there ain’t no gangs in Chattanooga, or she runs her rants on the whole of the Chattanooga Police Force because she felt slighted by one particular cop, from the past, I call her down, because gang activity, has always been one of the major problems in Chattanooga, organized crime, she refers too my descriptions of gang activity, as the three piece suit crowd of white boys, the corrupt politicans and business people, of which there’s truth to that for sure, but as I told her, there’s also that element both black and white trash, who would just as soon blow you away for a hundred dollar bill and not think twice about it…In my opinion, if these so called poor folks have got money to buy booze and drugs, that they get on the welfare dole, then they’ve got money too fix up their houses, whether they be homeowners or renters whatever….I wouldn’t ask anybody to do something that I ain’t done for myself, I take pride in where and how I live, my older sister lives in east lake, I listen to witchydemonwoman and my sister wail on about all the crime and prostitution, crack heads, dopers ruleing the streets at night, being poor doesn’t mean you can’t be neat and clean, we have representitive democracy in america, pure democracy is MOB RULE, that’s why we elect representitives as a form of checks and balances too hassle the ones who don’t want to conform to the rules!!!

Chattanooga is the PITS, itls like the wild west down there…in 89, I observed the police cars with the vinyl signage adorning the sides of their cars saying “Live Not In Fear” and the SWAT teams in military garb, with pistols strapped too their legs, helicopters staged at the airport, and that’s why I prefer to live In Knoxville where it’s more progressive…in the final analysis, you can blame most of it on the evils of religions, the freemasons secret society and the klan, which is one and the same thing, there’s enough blame to go around….makes a person sad as well as mad, when it’s quite obvious too rational people, in a civilized society, the only thing you can do is gentrify the whole stinking mess and start over….you can’t please everybody, so’s we might as well please ourselves!

I dream of Las Vegas in Chattanooga, bring on the casino’s, the danceing girls, nightclubs, the glitz and glitter, built around the themes of that most romantic & nostalgic civil war, That’s a draw that brings over 10 million tourists a year down Chattanooga way, that would create tens of thousands of good paying jobs and tax revenues, public/private partnerships, which would be a heck of a lot better than those el cheepo flakeboard McMansions that would only bring in a little more tax money to corrupt politicans, school boards and teachers unions….that turns out idiots in social promotions run amuck. Education and Life skills training by psychobabblers and pointy headed intellectuals is not what’s needed, what’s needed is JOB CREATION, and people going back to work, noze to the grindstone, get a little dirt underneath those fingernails….never hurt me, that’s why we call it WORK…..in my curmudegonally opinion, not that it matters….ha ha….I’m retired, I’ve served my time in hell!

The issue is JOBS, which create tax revenues, and progress, which ole backwards Chattanooga desperatly needs…..Well thought out gentrification can be accomplished, there’s plenty of nearby land available in outlying places like Dunlap Tennessee, Falling Water, Soddy Daisy, create an intentional community like Steve Gaskin’s farm up in Summerville Tennessee, there’s over 50,000 such intentional communities in america today, where the poor can live high on the hawg and be taken care of in a commune type setting….They’re all over the place in tennessee, georgia, alabama if you look em up on the internet. Already established.

I’m a 67 year old chattanooga street kid, grew up on Ocoee Street in the avondale section of east chattanooga, but moved to Knoxville and later Cincinnati Ohio too make my fortunes in an more progressive culture, free from bible belt pentacostal and southern baptist religons, that is responsible for all the intellectual poverty of mind and wealth. The philosopher plato’s not so NOBLE lie of all religions…Christianity is a perversion of pure morality that constitutes the anti-christ, so said Thomas Jefferson and all our founding fathers. This is the dark underbelly of the beast that stands in the way of progress in senic Chattanooga….

Councilman Rico has the right idea if it were only true, when he says, “It’s gonna take normal WORKING people to say, “I can buy this fairly reasonable and I can fix it up.” Problem is, in this lost culture of parasites and useless eaters, there’s no normal people left. Now I bought an small nurseing home out in east brainard for 25 grand back in 89, sheriff’s auction, guy who ran the nurseing home went to prison for messing round with little boys, turned it into a seven bedroom McMansion with ten grand and noze too the grindstone sweat equity labor….it can still be done….I bought a two bedroom, one bath, TVA era wood frame on four acres in a block watch upscale community outside knoxville in the county, it was abandoned and condemned, took 16,000 dollars, and made a tranquil paradise, taxes only 168.00 a year….

Enjoy it while you can, watch GOD TV on cable at all the religious nuts and idiots, quivering, shouting, talking in them so called unknown tounges, like they used to do at The Chastian brothers pentacostal churches in avondale, ridgedale, the old serpent handleing believers till the government outlawed that crap in 1946, but it still goes on, it’s just culture, the sheeple can rape, steal, kill, and justify anything they feel, by useing that Jesus Myth as a shield for all their wicked desires!!! They’re still go by American’s manifest destiny doctrine…..Religious Thieves….it’s incorperated since 1994 in tennessee state law thanks too that scoundrel Bill Frist and HCA, to protect these self referring thieveing doctors against malpractice, they got a license to kill with the governments blessiongs….depopulaton control is the name of the game….you can’t take it with you, they’re gonna grind up your old dead bodies into hamburger to feed the lower castes left behind….it’s just wealth distribution, remember Tennessee Ernie Fords song, 16 tons?

You owe your minds, bodies and souls, to the company store…..of the united states of america, the land of pirates. As the scholars say up at the freedom from religion foundation, “There is little difference between organized religion and organized crime. They’re both running scams. Exploiting the irrational passions of the gullible fools in order to filch power and wealth unto the elites and priests….but the retribution of karma will get ya all in the final analysis……

This has been a public service message from the Smoky Mountain Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, bio listed in marquis who’s who in the midwest and american editions….speaking my golden moonshine wisdom daily on Rick Igou’s Nooga.com forum board under my screen name Captain Marvel……have a nice day……lol