The deafening thud of bass from a pimped out Subaru Forester shakes the foundation of Roanoke Avenue like an earthquake.
Business owners peer cautiously from locked doors and see a passenger in the Forester glance here and there with a thousand yard stare, nodding his head, green pointed dreads swaying to the beat of Sap Sappy Sap’s latest hit, “We’re Back Punks!”
The words of Sap Sappy Sap’s latest hit — Forget about me and I shall return, forget about me and you’ll feel the burn — could not be truer because the trees are back and this time they’re looking for answers.
This editorial is a sequel to a previous column we wrote when we thought the tree issue had died, the holly trees were rehabilitated and came back as productive members of society.
Now we find out the trees are terrorizing the public again with their loudly blaring sap music and menacing points on their green leaves, trunks sagging even more than last time and avenue business owners calling for something to be done.
Like the business owners at Tuesday night’s council meeting, we believe something must be done, the Roanoke Avenue business district shouldn’t have to live in fear of losing customers by having these holly tree toughs loitering in front of businesses, shooting dice and selling their illegal tree sap.
That’s why the pimped out Forester is cruising, checking for signs of drama, danger, gangland violence when the front has been quiet for the last two years.
We don’t think the Holly gang is out for sap, we just think they want to know where they stand in a community that saw more people attend a city council meeting about them than attended a public hearing on the city budget.
What we believe is the trees have a place on the avenue and should remain.
The trees have gone unwieldy because they have not been cared for and tended to and that’s what makes them delinquents and troublemakers.
The solution to this is relatively simple and that is to care for them, twice a year as one business owner suggested at the council meeting — a trimming in the summer and a trimming in the fall.
There’s another solution to put on the table and that is maybe the business owners should do more to promote their businesses and not blame the trees. As a purely selfless promotion, rrspin.com has a very affordable advertising plan for avenue businesses to take advantage of and the information is simple to obtain — just email editor@rrspin.com and we’ll send it out to you.
Many people already know where these businesses exist; maybe it’s just a matter of spending slightly more money to publicize what you have to offer.
The crux of this saga is the business owners and trees can coexist. If the trees were people, we believe all they want is for someone to care for them and they will be productive members of society, put down their pointed tip weapons and stop cruising in a pimped out Subaru looking for blood — Editor
