BY DON SORCHYCH | FEBRUARY 29, 2012
Poaching parking • Negro Creek
The lack of parking in Cave Creek is a well-known fact. This is especially true when restaurants have a big name musician playing or an anniversary party.
Such an event happened at Harold’s Corral a few months ago and complaints were leveled at town hall. Complainants weighed in from Binkley’s, Horny Toad and nearby subdivisions in Cave Creek and Carefree.
Town council members received a personal trashing from many and as a result the council asked for and received new tough ordinances. About two hundred people showed up when the ordinance was up for vote and their message to council was, “Don’t you dare!”
So council gave Town Manager Usama Abujbarah the task of fixing the problem. Abujbarah hammered out an agreement among the assumed perpetrators, Mark Bradshaw of the Hideaway and Tap Haus, Bill Vale of Harold’s Corral and Larry Wendt of the Buffalo Chip Saloon. This group agreed to be the enforcers to protect the victims of parking overflow, Binkley’s and Horny Toad.
It did partially work, although several parking lots were not included in the discussion. Jeff Price at the Horny Toad suffers a persistent problem of Hideaway customers poaching on his parking lot.
And not included in the negotiation is T.C. Thorstensen’s property across the road from the Hideaway, Town Dump and Plaza de Rico where the Cave Creek Armory gun store, an Acupuncturist and a Laundromat exist. The Laundromat is especially hard hit since it is open from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. seven days a week and Hideaway customers take over every parking spot on weekends.
Years ago renters convinced Plaza de Rico owner Rico Bonucelli to erect signs to stop parking poaching by the Hideaway. The signs read:
Rico’s objection was that no one would read the six signs and he was right. The public sees an open parking spot and they park there.
Because of complaints I received from Laundromat customers I went to the location on Sunday, Feb.26. During a four hour interval I told 87 car owners and 54 motorcycle riders they couldn’t park there. There are only 26 spots available so, had I not denied them the parking they sought, there would have been no spaces for Laundromat customers.
This plague continues due to the original approval the town gave to the Hideaway. During the hearing, council recognized there was insufficient parking, even though the applicant said there would only be motorcycle parking. The Hideaway leases their business from the Indian Village and it was the then owner, Ron Krasson, who pleaded for approval.
Krasson won the day by saying, with no proof, he had permission from Jeff Price, the owner of the Horny Toad, to accept overflow parking. That won the approval, which would have been withheld if the truth was known. Soon after the approval Price erected a fence and made it clear he would not allow Hideaway parking. Price is still suffering and needs to have paid employees protect his parking lot for customers.
When a business anticipates overflow parking they are supposed to notify area businesses and provide off-premise parking and transportation to their place of business. Obviously, Hideaway owner Bradshaw is too cheap to do that so he poaches on neighboring properties and lies to the town that he is doing otherwise.
But I have to admit that even with offsite parking provided, people will still seek close parking and if they see an open space they will occupy it. So the Bradshaws of the world are still responsible to police lots like mine, the Horny Toad and Thorstensen’s. If he doesn’t, the town should revoke his business permit, which was approved based on an untruth.
Negro Creek
I have written before about Depue, the tiny Illinois village where I grew up. Today it is a Superfund site due to the excesses of the New Jersey Zinc Company.
But I fondly remember the outdoor pleasures I had while growing up. My entire childhood and young adulthood was spent hunting, fishing, boating, trapping, and collecting and eating the sumptuous Morel Mushrooms, during their short spring season.
So there was little land I didn’t trample, explore or pick its pleasures. To me I lived in Paradise.
Not today.
Illinois has changed greatly, especially clamping down on second amendment rights. I wouldn’t live there now but the dream lives on.
My sister Jeane who lives in Wisconsin sends me cutouts fom the Bureau County Republican newspaper. I keep abreast of the war the town fathers of Depue fight with EPA bureaucrats, a true David and Goliath battle.
Recently I read about a Libtard named Philip Mol, who left California and descended on little Depue carrying a full bag of disputes about how Midwesterners live their lives. I don’t know what is next but right now he has turned his myopic glare on Negro Creek which flows from Cherry, meanders through Seatonville and dumps into Lake Depue.
I hunted the banks of that creek, fished its waters and picked mushrooms and wild asparagus from its banks. Legend has it the creek was named after Negro families who homesteaded along its length.
When I was growing up, there were no Negroes about until I played football and saw one black boy who ran like a deer from a nearby town.
I for one tire of the idea, sponsored by blacks who fancy themselves as leaders and tell us, use colored, no use Negro, no use black no use African American. When will this nonsense stop? Only when we stop being politically correct.
From what I read, Mol is mainly upset because locally it was called Nigger Creek. Oh my, I said a verboten word, one I grew up with and never gave it a second thought.
Mol, if you don’t like the water temperature there go back to PC California.
