It Would Appear My Neighborhood 7-Eleven Is Popular With Cigarette, Lotto Ticket Thieves

This morning, the Dallas Police Department sent word: It's looking for two men who, over the course of the past few weeks, have been hitting the 7-Eleven at Walnut Hill and Marsh. There are videos, of course; they follow. In both it's hard to tell what's happening, but per the police reports, during late-night and early-morning hours men walk into the convenience store, threaten the clerk, walk around the counter and stuff bags full of cigarettes.

In the first video you'll see, the man asks the clerk where he might find the bathroom. The clerk shows him, but the man returns moments later. He tells the clerk and a customer not to move, that "this shit is mine." In the second clip, a different man also gets away with more than $1,400 in lottery tickets. But a search of DPD's police reports reveals that particular 7-Eleven has been hit often in recent years -- 60 times, by my count, since '05. Among the items taken: everything from cases of Corona to 25 tubes of Crest to an entire gas pump. Meanwhile, the next-door Big Daddy's, which used to be a Hasty, has been visited twice by DPD during the same time frame.

That's the 7-Eleven closest to my house. I'm there all the time (well, you know what I mean, though they do sell SkyBars for 50 cents, which is a steal ... no, wait, officer, that's not what I meant). It's where I grabbed the photo you see above: There was a pit bull in a holiday sweater wandering the shared parking lot on a recent Saturday night, close to midnight. Feel free to use it as next year's Christmas card. No wonder going there always feels like such an adventure.