The Storm May 29, 2026 david
Curb Stopper
Transcript Here today
David · 00:00:00
There's another one sitting in her car. As soon as I come out here, she's trying to leave already.
David · 00:00:11
Funny — she doesn't know what to do now, because she's been caught. She backed up, and she doesn't want to be exposed for leaving.
David · 00:00:30
They just sit out here, as close as they can get to my house without being right in front of it.
Transcript Gone after the block walk
David · 00:00:00
I like my walking-around-the-block trick — it seems to work. You can see the white car that was there earlier, a few minutes ago, is now gone — the one that had the woman sitting in it while it was running. It was parked right behind that 4Runner, the gray one there, and now it's not, just a few minutes later. She almost pulled out when I took my phone out of my pocket, and she stopped herself, because they obviously know I'm doing that now. But that's a fear reaction. So for some reason, me emerging on my porch and pulling out a camera and pointing it at her is enough to cause her to react in a way she's not supposed to — at least momentarily — and she stopped herself. That's fear. Surprise and fear.
Curb stopper is my name for a recurring sight on my street: a car at the curb with the engine running and a person sitting in it, which in Texas is technically "stopped," not "parked." Today's was a woman in a white SUV; the clips are here-then-gone, before and after my walk around the block. I am not saying she was harassing me. She was not. But the count of these is real, and I keep having to hold the question open: here for me, some of them maybe protective, or am I reading pattern into ordinary parking? What I watch for is the reaction, the way some of them seem to respond to what I post.
Curb stopper — a working name for a sight that keeps recurring on my street. A car at the curb with the engine running and a person sitting inside. In Texas that car isn't parked; with someone in it and the motor on, it's technically stopped — and the distinction is the whole character of the thing. These aren't cars left at the curb. Someone is in them, engine on, ready to go.
Today's was a woman in a white SUV, pulled up about as close to my house as you can get without being right in front of it. The first clip is from when I walked out and raised the camera; the second is a few minutes later, after my walk-around-the-block trick, by which point she was gone.
I want to be careful here, because the truth matters more than the story. She wasn't harassing me. And I genuinely don't know what she was. The number of these vehicles on my street is real, and it concerns me — I do think some of them are here for me — but I keep having to hold open that this may not be true, that I could be reading a pattern into ordinary parking. It's even possible that some of the watching is protective; not everyone sitting out there has to be an adversary.
What I weigh it against is contrast. Not long ago I pulled my camera out on a man sitting in his car near where today's curb stopper was. He saw me, rolled his window down, and asked what I was doing. I told him the plain truth — that I'm afraid I'm being surveilled, so I'm documenting the cars out here with people sitting in them, running. He said, simply, "It's not me. I live here." He was in his own car in front of his own house, and I hadn't realized it. I apologized, told him I'd recognize his car from now on, and we introduced ourselves. That is what an ordinary person does, and it was a good exchange.
Today's car did something else. When I first came out with the camera and she saw me, she started to back up — and then caught herself and stopped, as if she'd reacted on instinct and then remembered she wasn't supposed to leave. When I raised the phone to photograph her through the side window, she turned her face away and simply waited for me to finish. That back-up-then-freeze is the thing I keep seeing, and it reads less like a stranger annoyed at being filmed than like someone reacting to me — possibly someone who has seen what I post.
That is why I record this. The behavior keeps appearing to synchronize with what I publish, to answer it. That might mean official surveillance, which I could almost make peace with. It's the unofficial possibility that actually worries me.
