mollusk

Torque steer used to be there even on <100 hp cars. I know, I once had a '78 Fiesta (which was a very amusing tin can to drive). On smaller cars, the difference in interior room is really noticeable. I imagine that many of y'all didn't get to luxuriate in a Vega, Pinto, or Mustang II, but the transmission and drive shaft hump really ate into the real estate. Meanwhile, the VWs, Corvairs (rear engine and rear wheel drive, making for some... interesting handling with narrow bias ply tires and swing axles), Fiat 128s, etc. had lots more room in comparison. (Edit: reading back over this, Good Lord we had some nasty POS cars in the 70s!)

Betting is now open on whether it will have a PO box in Kingwood to give it a Houston address, and all physical location descriptions will only refer to I-69 and perhaps the (whatever) exit.

Closer example: The Texaco Building, vacant for what, 20 years or so?

shhhhhhhh.... be vewy, vewy quiet about Hempstead Highway. Let's not let people know how to find it, so it can continue to be an escape valve. Instead, let's remind everybody that Hempstead Highway has stop lights on it. Stop lights adjacent to (not really particularly) sketchy neighborhoods. You never know when a train will show up. There's nothing to see here. Now get back on the Northwest Freeway and move along, move along. That's righhhhhhht... there you go... That is all. (*static*) (Edit: my mom will no doubt be pleased that my theater no longer looks like it's one with an "X" on the marquee.)

IIRC, that's part of the big reshuffle and vacating of space that Shell's been up to lately (not that one can tell much difference by the still tight availability of parking contracts).

Oddly enough, I don't think the wildly different adjacent styles are that jarring. I suppose that's because it's kinda common in that immediate vicinity. Keep in mind, it's surrounded by the big pipe wrench catty corner across Rusk (which itself abuts the 1920s-ish Stowers Building/Aloft), the Saks garage in all its sixties glory across Capitol, 609 Main to the immediate northwest, Club Quarters across Fannin and the old Customs House across San Jacinto. Kinda like the nearby food court, where you can spin around and get gumbo, burgers, meatballs and pasta, banh mi, dumplings, or a smoothie (as I refer to it, "collision cuisine), all among the Mole People. Pure Houston.

OK, that brought back some scent memory... kind of a manky scent memory that would probably have sent Maaaaaaarvin Zindler into a swivet.* *(Today is apparently turning into Vocabulary Day. Sorry, I just can't help it.)

I live to serve.

(*snort*...) I love it when people refuse to read something literally.

The parking has to go in at some time or another - might as well have it in place for the first residents.

If this is something that happens routinely in this intersection, there is a serious design issue afoot (he said, demonstrating once again his startling grasp of the obvious).

True, arche. I've heard people make comments that assume that we drive from Houston to Mexico for lunch.

Thanks for the link. I'm glad to know that no one was seriously injured in the making of this clip.

I'm just glad we don't have matchups that would have Germany rolling over Belgium and then coming to a draw with France.

Just getting the fenestration fixed is going to make a world of difference to the appearance of this place.

Interesting. My main contact with GoT is that my Director of Domestic Bliss makes sure that it fills the haunted aquarium whenever it's on. I'm in the room, usually, but paying attention to reading or some such. I haven't read any of the books (they aren't one of my favored genres), so unless I relent and go back and binge watch, I can't really follow it. As a result, about all I notice are the scenes of sex and/or mayhem, such as Mr. Watermelon Head, so I leave it to y'all as to how much it does or does not advance the plot. Now I am familiar with my Hitchcock. Marion's last scene was more suggested violence than actual, save for one dang near subliminal moment. Instead, scoring, a frantic number of camera cuts, and a final soupçon of chocolate syrup down the drain provided the chills. Regardless, as far as the story itself goes, all we'd really need to see is Anthony Perkins carrying off a shower curtain full of potatoes to get the point across that she'd checked out. Neither Oberyn's* departure nor poor Miss Crane's would be suitable fare for young chilluns, IMHO. But as adults, we get to be titillated if we so desire. If there wasn't a market for it, GoT and Hitch would both be relegated to the same odd little bin that crush and snuff videos are in. *(see, I learned something. I had no idea what the guy's name was.)

Not so fast, Grasshopper. The area bounded by the Katy, Shepherd/Durham, Memorial, and Studemont is just a smidge smaller than downtown inside its necklace of freeways. Yes, it's got a train track down the middle; so does downtown (granted, the light rail trains are only 200' long rather than a mile or so). Considering the economic incentives the city is handing out, it's not that big a stretch to include a requirement that the parking consist of something other a fifteen acre field of uninterrupted concrete - which would in turn make it much more walkable.

I remember analog clocks in several geez-Dad-can-you-be-more-boring cars from my childhood. None of them worked.

There are no Audis in the renderings. Obviously not aiming very high.

Maybe this is where Skanska is recycling the brick from the Houston Club.

This got me to musing a bit about expressly graphic vs. impliedly so. Put differently, which was more violent - Mr. Watermelon Head in GoT, or the demise of Marion Crane in the 1960 version of Psycho?

Not to mention a Christian Science reading room.

Spot on, Subdude; it was right behind the Odious Sc.., er, Odeon Spectrum. And yeah, the Island didn't sure didn't last very long, did it? IDK why for sure, but I suspect along with the usual reasons bars and venues come and go would be the patrons. Our safety pin jewelry might have frightened the landlords if they ever came to visit. Or perhaps it's just because punk was by nature transient.

Done right, this can be an Ode to the Rat Pack.

Tickling of the Googles reveals that the Illinois Central trainset in the video is very similar in appearance to the UP experimental units (whose cabs were a bit more upright). Both IC and UP had carbodies built about the same time by Pullman-Standard.