This is why its been harder to find girls on the eastside.
Johnson Avenue's recovery is source of pride for residents
By Robin Roenker
Special to the Herald-Leader
[quote]Angela Baldridge
Situated between Lexington Traditional Magnet School and Duncan Park, Johnson Avenue sits on a single block between East Fourth and East Fifth streets downtown. The scene of some rough times in years past, the neighborhood now has a newfound pride and sense of community and is being discovered by renovators. Photo by Angela Baldridge Pauline Byrd remembers a time when it wasn't safe to sit out on her Johnson Avenue front porch, years when increasing problems with drugs and prostitution at neighboring houses led her son and daughter-in-law to encourage her to move.
But Byrd stayed put.
"I didn't want to move, " said Byrd, who bought her house for $10, 000 in 1967. "This is my home. "
Today, Byrd feels safe again as she takes in the view from her front porch as she does most evenings, chatting with her longtime friend and neighbor Humphrey James. Together they reminisce about the 40 years they've spent on the street and remark on the changes Johnson Avenue is undergoing.
When things on the street were at their worst, James remembers, he had to lock his car doors when he left at 4 a. M. For his job with the city's Sanitation Department so prostitutes couldn't "jump in" to proposition him, he recalls. For a long time, the house next to him was a "dope house" as well, he said.
Eventually, residents rallied to take back the street, James said. They began calling the police repeatedly, leading the department to send undercover agents to break up the prostitution rings. At times, neighbors even took matters into their own hands, chasing prostitutes off from behind the alleys near Johnson with warning shots from a shotgun, he said.
"That's how we got it stopped, " James said.
These days, problems with drugs on the street "aren't completely gone, " but they are noticeably fewer, said Travis Robinson, a registrar with the International Museum of the Horse, who moved into his home at 425 Johnson a year ago.
"Neighbors are taking pride in their homes and in taking care of the street again, " said resident Shahied Rashid, who's lived on Johnson since 1986.
Houses roughly 100 years old
Flanked by the campus of Lexington Traditional Magnet School and Duncan Park, Johnson sits on a single block between East Fourth and East Fifth streets downtown. Roughly 30 homes, dating from 1903 to 1911 —many of them quaint Queen Anne or Arts and Crafts-style cottages, their brick long ago painted red or white—dot the street, which is visibly in transition. Several homes are in the process of being gutted and renovated for resale. Dumpsters sit curbside, overflowing with old lumber and drywall. Many are being refurbished by Laurella Lederer, known for her restoration efforts on the Third Street corridor downtown.
Others have been purchased and redone by a wave of 30-something do-it-yourselfers like Robinson who are new to the area, drawn to the street for its downtown proximity, solid architecture and makeover potential.
"It's probably the closest street to downtown that hasn't been redone, " said Robinson.
Several of the homes on the street have architectural or historic significance, including the one at 470 Johnson Avenue, which was built circa 1905 for Adolphus "Dolph" Wile, co-founder of Wolf Wile Co. Department store, a fixture on East Main Street for years.
Robinson and his wife, Jennifer, gutted their home down to the walls, updating and opening up the floor plan and creating a new loft space in the former attic.
Two of Robinson's good friends live on the street now as well, and the threesome often meet up for jam sessions in their informal band at one another's houses.
Next door to the Robinsons live Rodney James and his wife, First District Council Member Andrea James, and their two children, Clarke, 15, and Roman, 10.
The Jameses had lived for a while in New Jersey, but moving back to East Lexington was a priority, said Andrea James. For the past 11 years, they've lived at 457 Johnson, across the street from Rodney's father, Humphrey, and the house where Rodney grew up.
The Jameses love that living on Johnson has taught their kids about the importance of meeting their neighbors and respecting and learning from the older generation there. The love the blend of ethnicities and ages and walks of life that are mingling in harmony on the street.
"My children have friends who live in the suburbs who don't understand that you go out and socialize with people on your street. They don't understand that concept, " Andrea James said.
James says her friends often ask her why she'd choose to live in an older home in an urban neighborhood rather than "upgrading" to a new home in the suburbs. But the Jameses love living so close to downtown.
"We can live modestly here. We don't have to spend all of our money on a mortgage and new cars so we can drive in and out of town, " she said. "Also I keep thinking about when the storm blew through Masterson Station and took off all those roofs. "
"We have the houses that the wolf can't blow in, " Robinson agreed.
Remembering the 'gatekeeper'
Jill Chenault-Wilson, 46, lives in the house on Johnson that she grew up in and shared for years with her dad, Philip "Sonny" Chenault Sr. Until his death last May. Her father was "like the gatekeeper" of the neighborhood, Chenault-Wilson said. He was the one neighbors would ask to look over their houses while they were on vacation. He was the one who invited the mailman and meter reader in for a cup of coffee during their routes. He was the one who'd help neighbors out with a loan when they needed one. He was the one who helped start the neighborhood watch, and yes, he was one of the ones wielding that shotgun when it needed to be waved.
Chenault-Wilson's mother was also a neighborhood activist, helping start the petition to get the pool built at Duncan Park. Until it later became a meeting place for drugs and prostitution, Duncan Park was the site of many of Chenault-Wilson's early, fondest memories of the street.
In her youth, Johnson was full of kids, she said, and they all knew it was fine to play out in the street as long as no one ventured into Mr. Green's yard. "He hated kids, " she said. The younger boys even came to call themselves the "J Crew" and developed a yelp they'd use to call one another out of their homes to play, Chenault-Wilson said.
"We were really all like an extended family on the street, " she said. "It was all working-class families, so the parents worked and the kids were latch-key kids. But when we got home from school, we'd all go to Mrs. Pauline (Byrd) or Mrs. James's house and they'd watch us. Everyone on the street took care of each other. "
As more new families move onto the street, helping its older residents preserve the positive aspects of the street's past, Johnson's sense of community is being reclaimed. Earlier this summer, the street held its first "Johnson Highway Day" block party. (The street was originally known as Johnson Highway.) With more than 50 in attendance, the event was such a success, residents plan to make it a yearly event.
"It's a relationship between the young and the old, the long-term residents and the new, " said Andrea James. "I can't think of any other neighborhood where you'd get that. "[/quote]
Camelot West Loses Liquor License
[url]http://www.wkyt.com/news/headlines/28577679.html[/url]
If she gave a fake ID and her mother admitted to orchestrating the whole thing, then why would they hold the club responsible? I guess you have to have psychic powers to be able to know someone's real age.
I really don't see what he did wrong
Man accused of trading pills for sex acts
By Bill Estep
[email]bestep@herald-leader.com[/email]
Roy Lacy Cobb is charged with distributing oxycodone.
With a spike in prescription-drug abuse among young women, it's now commonplace for them to engage in sex to get drugs, a development illustrated by allegations in a federal criminal case.
Young women performed sexual acts hundreds of times in the last few years to get drugs from a Laurel County man, federal authorities have charged.
On Wednesday, a federal grand jury indicted Roy Lacy Cobb, 55, of Keavy, on a charge that he illegally distributed oxycodone, the ingredient in the much-abused painkiller OxyContin, from June 2005 to May 2008 in Laurel, Knox and Whitley counties.
What sets Cobb's case apart from many are allegations about a byproduct of drug abuse that appears to have increased in recent years with the spike in abuse of prescription painkillers.
The epidemic of abuse seems to have hit young women in particular in the last decade, said David Mathews, director of adult services for Kentucky River Community Care, which provides substance-abuse treatment and other services in eight Eastern Kentucky counties.
With that, it's now typical to hear about women engaging in sex to get the pills they need to feed their addiction, he said.
"Men are taking advantage of that," Mathews said. "It's tragic."
At one time, men in substance-abuse treatment outnumbered women by far. These days, the numbers are about equal. Mathews said.
Many women are trapped in abusive relationships because of a man's ability to provide drugs, Mathews said.
Five witnesses said they told authorities that they had either gotten drugs from Cobb in return for sex or had heard about others who did, according to a sworn statement from Detective Richard Dalrymple, who is on a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration task force based in London.
Dalrymple said that Cobb's daughter Mary Cobb, who is charged with stealing drugs from a pharmacy in London, said during an interview in June that her father got drugs from a doctor in Tennessee and distributed them mostly to young women in exchange for sex.
Authorities began tracking down women who alleged they'd engaged in sex acts to get drugs from Cobb.
One told police that another woman, who later died, told her sometime in 2005 that she could get OxyContin pills from Cobb for sex.
The witness said she went to see Cobb with the other woman. On her first visit, the two women had sex at Cobb's direction and the witness got one pill, according to Dalrymple's statement.
The woman said that over the next two years, she visited Cobb about every other day. She paid cash for pills about 50 times, but most days she engaged in sex acts to get pills, she told Dalrymple.
Sometimes she had sex with other women, while at other times she had sex with Cobb or performed oral sex on him, the statement said.
Another woman said that when she first met Cobb in the summer of 2005, he gave her OxyContin free and took her shopping, but later, she had to start performing sex acts to get pills. She got an 80-milligram OxyContin every other day for months, the woman told authorities.
Yet another witness said Cobb bragged about giving pills to young women for sex. He showed her a hidden camera in the ceiling and claimed that he taped videos of himself with young women, Dalrymple said in the statement.
Dalrymple submitted the statement in seeking a warrant to arrest Cobb. Police arrested Cobb at his home in Laurel County Tuesday.
Cobb preyed on women in the grip of a powerful addiction, said Brad Mitchell, a Laurel County sheriff's detective who worked in the investigation.
"He used that pill as power over them," Mitchell said.
The investigation in the case is continuing. Cobb might be charged in state court as well as federal court, Mitchell said.
Cobb was arraigned Wednesday afternoon and pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Derek Gordon, was not available for comment.
However, Cobb's daughter Christina Kinman, said the allegation that Cobb traded drugs for sex is not true.
"We think it's ridiculous," she said.
Kinman said her father has a 2-year-old daughter by a woman who has stirred up allegations against Cobb because of a dispute.
Kinman said Cobb once did home repairs, but now receives disability payments and takes heart and blood-pressure medication.
Cobb faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
