Shenanigans on the Boulevard

by Dennis Evanosky

A neighbor knocked on my door around 10 p.m. a few weeks back, upset about donuts. Donut problems are no strangers to us here in East Oakland. We hear thugs noisily marking intersections and parking lots with blackened figure eights day and night. This complaint puzzled me, however. He insisted that I leave the comfort of my toasty home and follow him up the street. As the anxious neighbor escorted me to the scene of the donuts, he was pointing to a back yard on the next street. "Can you smell that?" he asked. As I had already programmed my proboscis for burning rubber, my senses detected nothing. "They're doing donuts back there," I thought I heard him say. Puzzled, I wondered how anyone could do donuts in a back yard where there was no pavement. Suddenly, my olfactory nerves kicked in, sending the smell of food to my brain. Then it hit me. No one was doing donuts. Someone was cooking doughnuts. As the brand-new silver vents on a garage's roof busily rotated, they sent the aroma into the night air. Normally, I would welcome the smell of doughnuts cooking; not past 10 p.m., however, and not when the doughnuts were meant for sale rather than for my enjoyment. My neighbor now told me that the owner of a local doughnut shop had converted the home's garage into a commercial bakery. One neighbor's bedroom borders this latest assault on our senses; he and his family find it hard to sleep. Molly Wetzel's "Safe Streets NOW!" training came immediately to mind. What was it she said about offending the senses? We went back home to my computer and found exactly what Molly had to say: "California state law dictates that a property owner's responsibility is to use property in an ordinary and reasonable manner. This use must be conducive to the peace and harmony of the neighborhood and must not interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property." So far, so good. "California state law defines a public nuisance as anything injurious to health or indecent to the senses," she continued, "or anything that unlawfully obstructs the free use of streets or property so as to interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property.'" "Anything injurious to the senses," I paraphrased to my smiling neighbor. "Well, if the smell of cooking doughnuts at 10 p.m. is keeping you awake, we've got him," I said. "No one is allowed to simply set up a commercial bakery in the middle of a neighborhood with you in your beds smelling his wares." We plan to get together next week and draft a letter to the nocturnal baker. We'll tell him that he is "injuring our senses." We'll also let him know that if he chooses to do nothing about it, it can cost him over $100,000 in his hard-earned money. You see, no fewer than 20 of the neighbors will promise to sue the offending property owner in small-claims court. That court allows a maximum award of $5,000 per participant. Neighbors of the Hillcrest Motel have just won such a suit against the Motel. We have used this tactic before, and we have never gotten a dime from anyone; that's not our aim. We've won without ever setting foot in a courtroom. With this tactic, we persuaded one absentee landlord to evict a houseful of drug users. He got so worried about what we might do next that he sold the house. We impressed upon a second property owner that if the loud nighttime gambling andmidnight barbecue parties did not stop at his property, we could force him to do so. At first, this second landlord did not believe us. When our letter arrived, the tenants suddenly departed. Our biggest victory has its own monument an empty lot at the head of our street. Ten apartments once stood there. They housed drug dealers, users, and prostitutes. With "Safe Streets NOW!" and a lot of help from Dick Spees and Robert Bobb, the city of Oakland demolished the buildings. Some people complain about the weeds on that vacant lot. I don't mind. To me that overgrown lot is a thing of peace and beauty. So, someone's cooking doughnuts at night for commercial use in the neighborhood. Well, to us he's just small fry, if you'll forgive the pun. Stay tuned.