Street Beat

Every Monday at 7 p.m. they roll up with helmets on, rearview mirrors adjusted, ready to ride. Bud and Annie Melton, owners of U-Cycle in Snider Plaza, are serious about their weekly bike rides around the Hollywood Heights, Santa Monica and Mt. Auburn neighborhoods in old East Dallas. So are the half-dozen or so riders who join them. Although their pace is leisurely, their purpose is not.

“I don’t want to play up the role of crime buster,” says Bud Melton, straddling a black mountain bike splattered with fluorescent green paint, “but when you get people out in the neighborhood, it has a crime-watch effect.”

While the neighborhoods which Melton and his group ride are near some of the city’s most gang-infested areas, the bikers say they rarely hear gunfire while they ride. Yet the group only rides on Monday nights, because “we were a little concerned to go out on a Friday or Saturday,” he says.

However, those who deal with gangs question the wisdom of the Meltons’ take-back-the-neighborhood tactics. ’Talk about giving a new meaning to drive-by shootings,” laughs one Dallas County prosecutor.

Melton, meanwhile, respect-

fully disagreees. “A smile, a wave and a ’Howdy’ go a long way to making you fee) comfortable in your surroundings. It’s a neighborhood bonding kind of thing.”