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mollusk

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Everything posted by mollusk

  1. mollusk
    Hey, at least this year they aren't The Very Worst Team In Baseball, as has been the case in the not too distant past (and the medium past when they spawned the Michael Jackson joke,* and the past past...). * What do the Astros have in common with Michael Jackson? They both wear one glove for no apparent reason.
  2. mollusk
    To answer the question someone's bound to ask... That's under BG Place. It's a chunk from the top of what was built as the Hotel Cotton, known in its later years as the Montague (or, as my friend The Nutria called it, that old fleabag).
  3. mollusk
    Hmmm... trying to put together a unified way to deal with an area too big for any one person or business entity... what to do, what to do??? I know!!! Let's call it "government!!!" And to fund it, let's have user fees (nope, too wordy) "taxes."
  4. mollusk
    I like. BTW, it wasn't that long ago that Kirby's pavement was pretty nasty. It just takes a certain amount of will.
  5. mollusk
    I knew someone who lived in the old apartments while they were still well maintained. They were roomy, and had interesting touches such as stainless countertops in the kitchen. I miss them, and the ones that used to be south of the Southwest Freeway and west of Buffalo Speedway, set into a nice oak grove.
  6. mollusk
    On the street lobby level of 919 Milam (which I still call the Bank of the Southwest Building - granted, usually to blank stares now) there are very large photos of downtown as it was in 1956 +/- and just a few years ago, both taken from an airplane over somewhere around Woodland Heights or the 4th Ward. The tunnel level under 1000 Main has street level photos of downtown in the 20s and 30s. And La Carafe has a couple pictures of the City Hall and Market that it used to be across the street from.
  7. mollusk
    Today's earworm. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEEy615Jzg4 You are welcome.
  8. mollusk
    so, would HCF Cat Dinner qualify as Miss Kitty's guilty food pleasure? And since this IS the internet, cat pictures or it didn't happen.
  9. mollusk
    Looking at some of the comments on the Swamplot link reminds me of why I don't spend much time there anymore.
  10. mollusk
    The distance on 610 from the Gulf Freeway to 225 isn't much different than the distance between the Katy and Northwest Freeways in the opposite quadrant. I've driven that area a lot, and agree that it requires superior Traffic Ninja skills at times. I suspect the reason it doesn't seem to be quite as big a challenge as 290/610/10 is that the traffic count on 225 may not be as high as on 290.
  11. mollusk
    Agreed. I think the biggest difference between the two is that the Houston/Memorial ramp has much better sight lines than the Allen Parkway ramp. The Memorial ramp is pretty much level with the freeway a good ways back, is a gentle curve, and has not even so much as a Jersey barrier blocking the view; OTOH the Allen Parkway ramp comes up from below, follows a relatively sharp tight turn that requires all your forward attention, and enters from the left, so your only prayer of being able to see diddly before you are right on top of the merge is if your convertible top is down in a car without head restraints or back seat passengers. In theory, traffic coming from the left has the right of way. In theory, I would always eat healthy food and exercise daily, too.
  12. mollusk
    And to think of all the years we though that the Astrodome was the Eighth Wonder Of The World...
  13. mollusk
    IDK about full on removal - there's a lot of traffic that gets on 45 from Allen Parkway. Perhaps a realignment that would join it with the Memorial/Capitol/Houston collector, plus an additional lane on SB Pierce would be helpful. The thing that gets me is that I used to be pretty calm about entering from that ramp in an air cooled VW with its screaming 50 HP (and a zero to 60 time best measured with a sundial), with traffic bearing down at 70 or so. Now, flooring a 300+ HP performance car, I feel the need to cross myself or something. Granted, we also used to be much more accustomed to slow cars merging, but surely there is some reason for today's anxiety other than maturity and the knowledge that half the traffic is distracted by their cell phone.
  14. mollusk
    Northbound, it seems to be the traffic trying to come on from the Brazos/St. Joseph/Pease/Walker collector (many of whom want to make the left exit to the Katy just a bit up the road) duking it out with people trying to get on 10 eastbound or just to continue north. Southbound, the first squeeze is the Houston/Memorial collector from the right at the same time that the Allen Parkway ramp is doing the Merge of Death on the left. Neither ramp has an adequate acceleration lane, and the Allen Parkway ramp also has terrible sight lines. The weaving for 59/288 at the other end of the Pierce doesn't help much, either.
  15. mollusk
    Nevertheless, they do resemble one another from that angle. Let us each touch whatever talisman works and hope for both buildings' quick reduction to infill status.
  16. mollusk
    Sounds like Montgomery County going to become our equivalent of Orange County.
  17. mollusk
    The two districts that I have personal knowledge about did have well over 50% participation (actually, 67% was the minimum threshold), so, majority rules and all that. The remedy for an arbitrary process is to revise the process, not necessarily to eliminate it. Besides, the historic districts make up a tiny fraction of even the area inside the loop. (note to self - stop feeding trolls.)
  18. mollusk
    Getting the guy blowing past the "no bicycles" sign in order to ride down the busway into this shot is genius.
  19. mollusk
    Based on the address, I suspect that the cyclorama may have ended up being taken out by Jimmie Green Chevrolet (long before my time)... which in turn was taken out by Randall's.
  20. mollusk
    It's not like I was trying to do a grand tour or anything, but I visited (if not frequented) over half of them. And yet I still have a liver.
  21. mollusk
    Same names in the family cause all sorts of confusion. My dad kept using "Jr." at the end of his name until the end of his life; I thought "III" after our not at all Anglo Saxon family name was just too pretentious for words, and we not only lived in the same city but also had some of the same professional associations (even though we had different professions). Though within the family we could usually sort out who was being discussed or summoned, it was ever so much fun to be in my 30s and having a receptionist ask whether I was big mollusk or little mollusk (since Dad kept using the Jr., they couldn't ask "senior or junior?"). Then, the last time I started car shopping, I was informed that I had a credit score of zero. It seems that a credit card company that I hadn't done business with in years (but who the folks stayed with) got me confused with my dad and reported that I had left this mortal coil. Fortunately, it was a very legitimate credit card company whose reaction could best be paraphrased as "oh good grief, that's terrible. We are very sorry, and will fix this immediately" - and they did. Also, be aware of what the name rhymes with. Your son's young cronies certainly will (he said from experience).
  22. mollusk
    If the jenga stack fell just right, an R from the sane, business side of the party might be able to get some traction. A T, though... no way. And when it comes to politics, I rarely say "no way." Cruz barely won Harris County as a whole in 2012, and that includes the far more conservative burbs that aren't in the city of Houston. This year, the T side is definitely getting mixed results.
  23. mollusk
    Cool post, Triton, even though that particular view of the skyline is pretty much certain to never occur - at a minimum, it omits the Marriott Marquis, the 40 story building across Market Square, and perhaps even 6HC.
  24. mollusk
    Hotze and Woodfill and their ilk are gonna do what they're gonna do. But their constituency - which does exist - is shrinking, particularly within the city limits. I mean crikey, our female mayor went out to California and got all gay married, an event which was pretty much met with a collective yawn.
  25. mollusk
    Ultimately there would be fire rated walls - it's just that with stick construction they come later in the project. The same thing happened a few years ago with the complex off the northwest corner of Memorial and Waugh/Yale; IIRC that one didn't have a garage in the middle to be potentially compromised, though.
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