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mollusk

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Everything posted by mollusk

  1. mollusk
    That makes sense. And I didn't mean to call you Shirley.
  2. mollusk
    wow - this thread certainly has spun out of control - like a car driven too fast by an inattentive, homicidal maniac near a flock of terminally negligent and/or suicidal people trying to cross the road in the middle of the block, undoubtedly following the chicken they're trying to catch 'cause they can't afford to go to the store. Let's break out the Ouija board and see what Gov. Barnett has to say. OK, did I forget anybody?
  3. mollusk
    This is a "throw the spaghetti at the wall" guess, but perhaps they're trying to tinker with the traffic light timing? It's weird - Travis is pretty well synchronized, while on Austin, which also runs north in a less trafficked area of downtown, it seems like one has to stop at just about every block. Cleaning that up could certainly take some load off of Travis.
  4. mollusk
    When a lot of people think of 600 Travis's plaza, they think only of the giant expanse of granite with the MirĂ² - but it's more. There is a big chunk on the Capitol side with a water feature, trees, and benches, and it gets used even during the height of summer (mmmm - shade from trees... what a concept... ). Market Square used to be the site of the Houston City Hall and Market. After the current City Hall opened in the late '30s it became a bus station for a while, and ultimately was torn down in the early '60s. It was replaced by - wait for it - surface parking. Around 1980 or so, the asphalt was ripped out and the oaks and some grass planted, with berms here and there that were known as the "wino mounds," after the primary users of the park at that time. This was replaced by an X of sidewalks crossing from the corners and meeting in the middle with the Surls piece that is still there (albeit moved off of dead center), sunk in between linear benches and a water feature or two around the edges. Again, the primary users were the people who lived there. Finally, it was redeveloped in its current form a few years ago, and finally took off. What's really given downtown life is residential. It wasn't that long ago that it completely emptied out after 6.30. But yes, more plazas, with shade trees and benches that are situated so that people feel safe, would definitely be A Good Thing.
  5. mollusk
    Unfortunately, 30 years ago Hines himself built a twelve story parking garage with another bunch of office floors right where you'd like the plaza. The people on the east side of 600 Travis would have agreed with you right after Ike - the roof membrane peeled off and slapped all the glass out of every window across Travis from about the 44th floor down. Even the rubber rails on the escalators to the tunnels were a bit chunky for a while.
  6. mollusk
    blue, somehow your Q ship (which I've always been fond of, BTW) now makes more sense.
  7. mollusk
    At least a couple of weeks - though my ability to put daily sights into the background is a bit disturbing, too.
  8. mollusk
    For me, Hickory Hollow is the nearby default go to. However, they serve them on those damnable aluminum pizza pans, which means that cutting must be done very carefully lest one end up with a forkful of aluminum tang. Back when Goodson's was on Gessner, I'd drive out there. Kelly's over by Hobby is pretty tasty, too. Ouisie's is nice, albeit a bit too foo foo a place for CFS. The Voice of Experience will say, resist the impulse for chicken fried ribeye. Sounds great in concept, in reality taking a cut that normally renders the fat out to make it tender and encasing it into an impermeable shell of deep fried batter is just too much to even taste good. Same with the chicken fried bacon at the Rodeo (though it's fun to take a picture of to send to vegan friends in Boston or some such place). Dangit, now I've got to kidnap the new people in the office who are fresh in from out of town and force feed them tomorrow. Perhaps I'll indulge in another guilty pleasure instead - Triple A on Airline. nom nom nom. Edit: Triple A can't really be a guilty pleasure. The food is too good and fresh.
  9. mollusk
    Alfred P. Sloan's original idea was having a "brand for every purse" during a time when a given brand had one model, maybe two, and perhaps two or three trim levels for each. For example, from at least the '30s into the '60s, Buick had two different sizes and two different engines, thus four models (at one time the Special, later the cheesiest model, was the small body with the big engine - and thus the hot ticket). The creep started in the 60s, but before Roger Smith the different brands at least had different engines and different engineering - so a Pontiac wasn't really a Chevy with plastic junk on the bottom as it ended up. Eventually, it got to where the difference between a Citation and a Cimarron was about $5 K and the store where you bought it - and even the Cimarron did not rise to the quality of a Malibu of 10 years earlier (side note - Michael Moore had it right with Roger and Me). And once upon a time, dealerships had one brand, at most two in cities (see Pontiac/GMC), or maybe three in smaller places (Buick/Olds/Caddy). Mopar had Chrysler/Plymouth, with no overlap between the cheesiest Chrysler and the nicest Plymouth; Dodge was down the street - and there was no doubt what was a Lincoln, what was a Mercury, and what was a Ford. Now, the mega dealers sell every dang thing under the sun. As per* my fingers and toes count from the Car and Driver New Cars for 2015 issue, Chevrolet alone has 18 models now. So in reality, ditching a couple brands is really no different than what taking out the overlap in model lines among brands would have been - except the Buick dealer wouldn't have a cheap car unless it was an Opel. * sorry, Monarch, I resisted as long as I could.
  10. mollusk
    Nah, not really. I've had offices on 65 and 70 over the years, on 3 of the building faces. FWIW, I don't even want to be on what we've called The Ego Wall (aka the floor to ceiling glass, one side to the other, facing due west). It's too dang hot, even with the A/C on. Once you get up above pretty much everything it gets almost unnoticeably incremental.
  11. mollusk
    Not bad, not bad, Sir. And just think of all the cool things that wouldn't happen if everybody was afraid of looking like a dork.
  12. mollusk
    I gave up on Dish ages ago, back when they would end Astros games whenever the schedule said they would end, extra innings and rain delays be hanged.
  13. mollusk
    I can, and you can too. It's more a matter of knowing how to get down there, and where to go once there, than anything else. However, in the evening and at night the heat abates, so the street level isn't nearly as punishing as it can be at, say, 2 pm immediately after a brief rain (when the pavement is literally steaming). I really think we ought have a giant statue of Willis H. Carrier somewhere around town, but even I will sit out on a downtown patio and enjoy a bevvie or three on a summertime evening. Back on topic - Nice pics, Nate.
  14. mollusk
    Frito pie is its own food group. And it definitely belongs among the guilty pleasures (one benchmark for which is how well it horrifies friends from foreign states).
  15. mollusk
    Surely it's not really the case, but from that angle it sure looks like a bunch of cars just got fenced in.
  16. mollusk
    Using the first map tool, check out New Orleans - now THAT'S a city with starkly divided neighborhoods.
  17. mollusk
    Starting a post with a gratuitous insult is rarely a good debate tactic. I've already said more than once that I was NOT commenting on Heights proper, because I did not participate in that process; instead, I was discussing other districts where I do have personal knowledge of the hows and whys of their creation. If I choose not to respond to a future post of yours, please don't take that as agreement. More likely, it will be a desire to not engage with someone apparently unwilling to acknowledge any viewpoint other than their own. -- 30 --
  18. mollusk
    I would like to watch, but I refuse to get C**pcast, and my liver (and Director of Domestic Bliss) wouldn't be happy with me hanging out in bars that much. For a better update on the legal battles than one gets from the daily fishwrap, view this. John Royal, who blogs about the Astros for the Press, is also a lawyer, so he actually understands what's going on at the courthouse and describes it accurately.
  19. mollusk
    Even a bland cookie cutter five story apartment wrap is better infill than a surface parking lot.
  20. mollusk
    The bigger question is not so much how many houses are going on the market, but how long do they stay there, and what is the sales price trend. My ITL neighborhood is experiencing a lot of turnover, but much of it is profit taking. Since the more prosperous new neighbors tend to be far less neighborly, far more entitled, and down right whiny about things that don't seem to fit their world view that master planned suburbs are the utopian ideal, I've considered doing so as well.
  21. mollusk
    One thing you'll have to factor in is sun exposure. Another is how much area you have for what the full sized plant will occupy. I have neighbors who are overly fond of backyard lighting, so I planted some full sized yaupons along my back fence. They're native to the area, so pretty much bulletproof. It took a while, but the ones with good sun exposure are now roughly 20'. Some of them also have nice red berries, and they can also be shaped to a tree form to allow understory planting, and don't mind being cut back to being wider than they are deep, while still providing a pretty good screen. If you've got the room and the sun, oleanders can also get pretty big, and flower early and often. They can be susceptible to freeze, though. If the yard is big enough, you can go with some sort of tree or three closer to the house, with some sort of hedge towards the back. I've got a pineapple guava trained to a tree form about half way between a living room window and the upstairs windows next door. It's evergreen, has interesting blooms, and a decent screen. Stay away from cherry laurel. It's not native, it's invasive, and it's prone to suddenly dying for no apparent reason.
  22. mollusk
    I participate in the eternal search for the ultimate chicken fried steak. Sometimes it has tragic results. A few years ago, I was traveling with some friends from the SF bay area. We stopped off at a roadhouse in Redding or someplace like that for dinner. Living up to stereotype, they all had things like salads and/or turkey; I had to go with what was billed as CFS - drawing shudders and comments of "you're going to eat battered, deep fried, RED MEAT??!!??" To which I could only respond, "yep. With cream gravy." I was so sadly disappointed when it was some sort of Sysco-esque patty that was breaded, not battered... though I really don't know why I expected anything better. There are some things you just can't get west of the Central time zone, among them decent CFS, good bourbon...
  23. mollusk
    Although I liked the flagstone veneer, I can understand how it might be easier to lease out corner offices that actually have windows on two sides.
  24. mollusk
    I do not live in a designated historic district, though I am close to several and was up close and personal with the formation of one. I also served in a land use management capacity for my voluntary HOA until the Director of Domestic Bliss informed me that I would no longer do so. The problem with deed restrictions in older neighborhoods is that you have to have someone to enforce them. In theory, the city attorney's office can; however, my personal experience is that unless it's something truly out there like opening up a rave club in your garage, they just don't have the resources, and in those instances where they will take the case, they are very, very slow. Even newer areas with mandatory HOAs often have to hire an outside entity to do the job, and that's before hiring the attorneys to bring the lawsuit. 67% is 67%. These are all just different ways to get to a similar goal. The thing is, there are some people who are going to insist that nobody, nowhere, is gonna tell them what to do with their very own property, and they really don't care if they are the only person on the block that wants to have the ability to install an industrial smelter. And as I've said before, I'm not to jazzed about how the commission works, either. But the way to address that is through the political process instead of calling for dismantling it.
  25. mollusk
    Butch, you are evil. Brilliantly evil.
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