blue92

and pissin everywhere but the restrooms there. The hippies are what killed Westbury Square. I knew some shop owners there that moved out because they were tired of the hippies running off their customers. The entire concept of the center was shop owners could have apartments over their stores. Plus in the late 70s the center was purchased by a landlord that refused to keep the upkeep on the place.

btw that google map you posted has the South Main Drive-in in the wrong location. The drive-in was in the location where Trans World Services is now. The drive-in was boarded by Stella Link on one side and the railroad tracks on the other side.

The vacant lot to the left of Target and behind the storage place was where Gateway Swim was. The bunch of rectangle slabs to the left of the storage place was the old Alamo Motel. The house that's behind where Grace Courts was with the white roof and swimming pool wasn't built till 1976/77. It was a vacant lot when I lived in the house to the left of it when I were I grew up. Where Parkview Inn & suites is now used to be the Chief Motel, I and all my playmates used to clime threw our back fence and sneak into their swimming pool all the time. Where Target is now used to be a 78 lane bowling alley. I think it was called Astro Lanes. They had like a 36 table pool hall in it, I played lot's of pool in that joint.

Gateway pool opened in 1959 I was 10 at the time they had this huge grand opening and my parents bought me a season pass. Our house backed up close to it. I would ride my bike threw the vacant lot next to our house and it was just on the other side of Alamo Motel. I was brown as a beet for the next 2 summers. Our house backed up to Grace Courts which had been torn down years before our neighborhood was built and it was just a big vacant lot with big trees like an orchard, I went by there in 2000 and the sign for Grace Courts was still there. Fact it's still a vacant lot now you can see it on Google Earth. The "bubble" was fed air from a big red hose that they dropped down in the deep end that was hooked up to a big air compressor that was housed in the store room that was behind the diving boards in the deep end. When they had swim meets there they would lay down a walkway that went half way across the pool that separated the shallow end and the deep end making it an Olympic size pool. I went to several diving competitions there too. I remember going down the big slide head 1st with my arms stretched out in front and gliding over half way across the pool. The Shamrock pool was only an Olympic sized pool Gateway was a bigger pool. When they 1st opened they advertised Gateway to be the largest pool in Houston. I went to grade school and 7th grade with the guys son that owned/built it and he was in our car pool. They also owned a Go-Cart track that was just the other side of Main St. @ OST. behind a Spanish Village restaurant. By the time they opened the go-cart track I was 12 and was more interested in go-carting than swimming. I used to work after school and Saturdays at the track helping get the other kids into the carts and pushing them off, that's how the carts were set up you pushed them to start running. They didn't pay me money they paid me in cart time. I also helped in the cart shop fetching tools. I guess that's where I got the bug to drive fast which I still do. I wish the pics of the pool that were posted early in this thread were viewable. Could someone repost it?

On the Border was started by a Dallas family. The entire family were flying to Santa Fe, NM when their small plane crashed killing them all. Some restaurant chain ended up with the restaurants and they are all over Texas and the southwest U.S. They have them all over the DFW metropldex.

Yes there was a Gaido's on S. Main it was right across the street from Playland Park. I know this because my parents house was almost right behind it. But no it didn't have a shrimp with 6 shooters that was Kapan's at S. Main & Kirby. Gaido's had a huge crab on the top of their building.