So for those who aren't familiar, a little background. Joppa is a little settlement on 45(S) past the trinity river bottom and flanked by a huge railyard depot and buttressed by wilderness to the South. There is no local law presence (DPD has to be about 20 minutes away from call to contact) and, if you've ever seen Training Day it is exactly like that; there is one way in, across the tracks and over a bridge, and one way out. Joppa is one of the oldest left freedmen settlements from the old policy "40 acres and a mule" days.
Generally speaking, these tracts of land given as a sort of "reparation" have long since evolved into thriving communities, assimiliated and later incorporated into normal cities of today. Well, for whatever reason (my theory is geography) Joppa is the last, isolated settlement that is almost 100% African-American and has remained largely insulated to the point that residents dont have basic necessities like A/C and the government subsidizes almost everything there. At any rate, me and a friend decide it would be fun and fitting to drive over there, walk around and maybe crash a yard party or drink a 32oz. beer out of a paper bag, see if there is a place to eat lunch, general tomfoolery.
We get there and I don't leave my car.
Prostitutes, crazy vagrants and drunks roaming the street, evil glares. I've had a gun pulled on a group of us at 5am on Canal St. in New Orleans and this rivals that incident on my psychological state of fear and safety. The best way to describe it is there is a general sense of doom once you enter, like being in a haunted house. Anyways, some pics attached, which include a prostitute with a cane, a horse in a house and a shotgun house that, ostensibly burned down, but the charred embers still remain. I didnt take pics of some of the more flagrant things because I was fearful of what would happen if they saw me taking pics. It amazes me that a place like this still exists, in Dallas at that, and that 98% of my peer group has never heard of it.
Also in this link a professional European photag did there is a picture of a guy with the words 'Dog Life' tattooed on his face, that alone should have told me not to go.
http://www.panos.co.uk/stories/2-13-...What-is-Joppa/
So, after that whole rigamarole I go to Sweet Georgia Brown in Oak Cliff- much safer way to celebrate my black heritage.
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