Mister X

You're right. I sometimes forget that what is written as harmless sarcasm or dark humor, offends much more deeply than I ever intended. I can't do that kind of humor as cleverly as they can do it on 'Family Guy', so I'll try and choose my words with more care in the future. I went back and read that post later in the day and realized that it came off sounding much more harsh than I wanted it to. I never meant to advocate suicide, maybe just ending misery. That's why I apologized to everyone (which includes woolie) for it. I should probably remove it, but I figured it would serve as a reminder to myself to leave it so that everyone can see what an ass I can be sometimes when I hit the 'submit post' button before thinking, and not to do it again. When several respected members of this forum (which includes you) raise objections to that kind of language, I better listen. Again, I'm sorry to everybody I offended.

The way I see it is that even if only a fraction of the urban developments that have been announced in the last few years actually become a reality, it's still a move in the right direction and something to be joyous about. The annoucements alone are reason enough to be optimistic after decades of corner gas stations and strip malls. But just think of the number of projects and tear downs that will have to happen in this city before it really starts to look truly urban. Sure we may end up with pockets like Regent Square, West Ave, Sonoma, or BLVD place. And that will be fantastic. But I think the only thing that will ever make Houston a true walkable urban environment is to fill every street in the loop from DT to UT with these types of projects. That sounds as unrealistic to me as turning Galveston into a white sand, blue water beach within 10 years. I think it's unrealistic to expect that the current urban trend we see happening is going to transform Houston overnight. If it happens at all it will take decades to really change the Houston landscape in any significant way. Unless you can handle Houston for what it is today and learn to appreciate the positives, this city will be an agonizing place to live. If your just here waiting for the city to change right before your eyes, you're in for a very long wait. It took decades of good and bad ideas just to get it where it is today. Luckily, I don't have a real problem with it. I'm pretty much cool with Houston as is. Any urban improvements that come along (just like woolie said) are just icing. My pet hope is that the city will one day begin to see the potential in Midtown and create some new zoning laws, building restrictions, or incentives to make Midtown and maybe East of Downtown an extention of Downtown. Forget about Uptown and the rest of Houston. A suburban atmosphere fits the rest of Houston just fine in my opinion (sans the freeway blight of course). As far as urbanism goes, the city's core (DT, MT, East of DT, and maybe the Montrose Area) deserve all the attention. I guess thats why a possible setback of High Street doesn't upset me that much. I already think of that area as a suburb. A beautiful suburb full of gorgeous highrises, but still a suburb. A setback for a project like High Street if it were to be in Midtown would have hurt. And yes I agree with everyone about the Main/Elgin CVS. It's an atrocity. Much worse than a possible High Street setback.

Oh Boy! 4 new downtown stadiums! But seriously, I doubt this will be any different than the other pro football leagues that have come and gone over the last 30 years or so. But maybe this guy thinks that the other leagues just never found the right formula to co-exist with the NFL. But this seems like a real long shot. The one thing I think that could help this league succeed however, is starting the season around the end of July or early August. Right before the NFL season. That is when people start getting hungry for football. In the past few seasons, I couldn't get enough of all the live and taped preseason games they showed on the NFL Network in August. By the time the real season started the 'new season buzz' started wearing off because I had watched so many preseason games. If this new proposed league started its season right before the NFL season, I would probably watch. It would be like the appetizer before the main dinner. People might be lured into watching, and might even stick around in the following months just to see what happens.

O.K., O.K., I apologize to everyone for being such a btch today. I'm very fond of Houston and sometimes I go overboard and defend this city as if I were defending my own mother. I should have made my point without getting personal. It wasn't woolie saying he wanted to leave Houston that set me off - it was Houston being compared to dismal, decaying, Detroit, or for even suggesting that Houston was headed for a similar destiny. That idea just seems so messed up when I look around and feel the buzz, excitement and optimism in this city today. I expect a retaliation from Red (someone who I almost always agree with) and that will be it for today. xxxooo

Actually, whining must be a 3 way street now that you've joined the party. And no one is forcing you to read my post. If you can not handle my whining perhaps you should find another forum as well. I hear lipserver.com is looking for new members too.

Alright, maybe my post was a little ugly. Don't kill yourself woolie. You guys may know more about oil and gas economics than I do, but this city has still got a few good years left before it turns into Detroit. Negitive comments about Houston and dooms day senerios always bring out the btch in me. Don't let it add to your problems. Houston is no flawless urban paradise and I doubt I will ever live to see it be, but it survived the last oil bust and has been growing at a faster pace than most cities in this country for the better part of its existance. There have been countless projects announced in the last 30 years that haven't been built or were scaled down. Yet somehow this city has continued to grow by leaps and bounds. High Street looks nice, but life will go on with out it. I wouldn't be freaking out over a delay or cancellation just yet. Someone else will announce something else tomorrow and MAYBE it will get built maybe not but Houston is smoking right now - be happy. When woolie moves, ten more will be here to take his place.

Why don't you just put a bullet through your head and end your suffering? But seriously, this would be a much nicer city to live in if all the discontents with too much time on their hands were living in other towns. Woolie is full of crap. His school and his girlfriend might make him stay in a city he would rather leave, but they don't make him come to this forum to whine about his personal problems with delayed or cancelled projects. It's obvious that he's got Houston under his skin and isn't mature enough to know how to handle a setback or two. Grow up or move on. It's business as usual in Houston. Adults adapt and compromise. Babies just cry until someone shoves a pacifier in their face. Not enough cranes in the city limits for you? Move to N.O. then you will really have a good reason to throw a cybernetic temper tantrom hissy fit.

I love reading posts like this from folks like Niche. It makes me all goose pimply to think something cool may be in the works. The winking emoticon is always encouraging coming from an insider. Spill it Niche. What have you heard? I know you can't reveal secrets, but it never hurts to ask.

When someone resorts to name calling like that, he is really showing what he's is made of. Not exactly, the best Dallas has to offer is it?

Remembering glory days is great as long as you don't lose touch with reality and start thinking that just because a team once played a good game a decade ago or thirty years ago that it is somehow relevant today. I consider anyone a victim who comes to this website to see what's going on in Houston and having to deal with insults to our great city by a bunch of insecure out of towners. How would you like it if I came over to your house and made a BM in your front lawn? Bad manner's wouldn't you say. You might even try to chase me away if you could. This may be on a DFW subforum, but the topics appear on the 'view new post' section in the main HAIF board, which makes it HAIF first, DFW section second. The H in HAIF stands for Houston - get it? I don't want to avoid the new topics board, that's where all the new Houston stuff is. But in between the Houston stuff, usually somewhere at the top, there is always some dumb and completely irrelevant DFW topic that distracts me from the stuff I am mainly interested in. I just don't think the DFW section of this forum serves any valuable purpose, at least to the main city it is meant to serve - Houston. If someone wanted to learn about what's going on in Dallas with any detail, they would go to dallasmetropolis.com or some other Dallas based forum and get some objective, broad minded opinions about Dallas stuff in greater detail. Stuff that doesn't read like a commercial for the Dallas tourism industry. Stuff that doesn't invite hostility. Notice how only the good stuff is mentioned about the plex by the plexers on HAIF. If you go to the Dallas based forums you can get a better idea of what life is REALLY like up there, if you're even interested. The plex guys on this board only give you half a picture, usually heavily cropped, color enhanced and blurry in all the right places. (metaphore) These DFW guys come here looking for a pissing match and as long as the DFW section exist they will receive it. Houstonians are always ready to scrap with anyone from north Texas that comes to Houston with a chip on their shoulder. The only point the DFW section serves at HAIF is suppling insecure Dallasites with a place to brag about stuff that they obviously aren't aware Houston already has plenty of. Houston and HAIF doesn't need a DFW section in my opinion. Still, I would agree that all this flaming can be a source of cheap entertainment. At least Houstonians can be made aware of the obvious obsession many DFWers have with our city. We can feel good that the opinions of our citizens are so important to Dallasites. So important that they feel they just have to share DFW info on a website that is dominated by people who live in the Houston area. After all, there is no reason to post Dallas news on a Houston based forum unless you are doing it to see what Houstonians think. But as long as this subforum does exist, I'm sure I can handle all the 'meanies' you can throw at me. Until I go too far sticking up for the home turf and the moderators ban me. I'm trying to be good.

OUCH! :lol:

Clinging to the glory days of old teams like the Cowpokes USED to have is too sad. I agree with Texastrill, I wish the DFW section would be discontinued too. Then we could come to this site to find out what's happening in Houston without exposing ourselves to all this useless and pointless Dallas crap. Which, after is all said and done, means nothing to Houston anyway. I know the DFW section was originally designed to discuss stuff that was happening up there, but it only seems like a place for DFWers to brag about stuff they think will make Houstonians jealous. When they don't get the accolades they expect they start stirring the poo. Just like when Texastrill invited all his Houston buddies to chime in on this topic yesterday after Jep only posted an announcement that everyone knew was coming anyway. Texastrill came here looking for trouble and here it is. HAIF is a terrific website, but it seems the DFW section is only good for flaming. Does anyone remember the last time anything in DFW was discussed here without a pissing contest breaking out? As long as Houston and DFW are always running neck in neck in almost every catagory, it's hard to imagine that someone will not eventually bust out with something offensive. Kidding or not. The Hou/Dal rivalry goes deeper than HAIF. I admire the guys who are always pro Texas and can set aside the crap to discuss things in a normal manner (I admit this isn't me), but there will always be someone ready to throw the first stone. (this isn't me either) Notice how no one anywhere has anything bad to say about San Antonio or Austin. That's because they are no threat. As long as DFWers consider Houston a threat they will continue to come to HAIF and start up. And we will continue to deal with DFWs never ending insecurities at the Houston Architecture Info Forum.

You're so right WxBoy. It's so lame how the Dallas boys run to this website to brag about new structures or big events that Houston already has or already has done, expecting us to be impressed. Wow, hosting a superbowl - I wonder what that must be like? Wow, a new 20 story tower - That's totally amazing! And when we are not impressed, because we already have been there and done that, they go on about us having an inferiority complex. It would be like Houstonians running up to DallasMetropolis.com and starting a new thread everytime a new McDonalds is built in Sugarland and accuse them of feeling inferior if they don't seem impressed. The need to come to this forum to gloat or trash the city it is based from is nothing less than the expression of true feelings of inferiority. I never go to Dallasmetropolis.com to trash Dallas - ever. In fact, I would never know anything about what was going on in Dallas at all if I never hit the "view new post" button at HAIF and saw all the Dallas posts floating up at the top. Everyone knew that the Superbowl was going to Arlington, the only thing that surprised me was learning how close Indianapolis came to taking it away. Imagine what a kick in the balls it would have been to lose a superbowl bid to Indianapolis after building that new stadium way out in Arlongton. But even if that had happened, I would not have felt a need to go on dallasmetro.com and sling it in their faces.

Refineries aren't so bad. All the most important coastal metros have them. LA has them in Long Beach. SF has them in Richmond, CA. No one said their pretty, but I'd rather have them on the outskirts of town than the never ending acres of that ugly scorched praire that you guys have to deal with right smack in the middle of and in every direction around the plex. At least when folks came to the Houston superbowl, they never had to see the refineries. They're all away from the action on the east side of town. The freeway from Dallas to Arlington is a boring and ugly 17 mile drive throught the middle of nowhere unless you like scorched prarie and industrial landscapes. That is what the visitors will remember about the Arlington Bowl. Lots of driving, lots of prairie. The superbowl logo for the Arlington superbore should definately include lots of weeds. If you want to talk about funny things that happened in this century, lets talk about Romo's inability to hold a ball for a game winning 20 yard field goal. That was priceless.

What has Houston got to feel inferior about. There have already been 2 superbowls in Houston. 0 in Dallas. Furthermore, I wouldn't trade Reliant Stadium and it's good location for the new Arlington Football Stadium and its crappy location any day. Inferior. You're funny. I wonder how many Houston people went to the Dallas based forums on the day Superbowl 38 was announced to gloat. Anytime anything happens in Dallas you plexers head straight to HAIF to stir the $h!+. Now that's what I call an inferiority complex!

Wasn't that the point?

I've noticed that very very few plex buddies are chiming in either. The Arlington superbore will probably make the Jacksonville superbowl seem like Las Vegas on New Years Eve. The stadium will probably be a hit, but I'm sure the world will be thoroughly unimpressed with Arlington and the rest of the plex. -Unless they enjoy long drives out to the suburbs, dry icy winds, and that beautiful dried up "dead look" the north Texas landscape gets in February. Enjoy your 15 minutes. It will be your last.

THAT'S a crowd? :lol: It looks more like a little line forming to leave the area. But at least I finally see some people there. It only took about 5 days of checking that webcam image. Those folks sure look bored from a distance. Their body language tells the whole story. And it says - "I want to go home".

Whatever it will be a community of... At least there will be living human beings walking around and enjoying it in the web cam images - unlike Victory.

If you're going to drag all that crap into it, then I guess we have to start talking about the Theatre District, Bayou Place and the Bayou Walk on the west side of DT Houston - lots of new stuff there. The northwest part of midtown is coming right along. Hey, The TMC is only a few miles south - heard a new large residential tower was going in there. West Ave, BLVD Place, Regency Square and the New Rice Village are all within 6 miles. - Those mixed use projects could change Houston as we know it. Let's not forget the new towers around Montrose and Allen Parkway. Oh and there's the cute new Westheimer Tower just west of midtown. Greenway's still a force to be reckoned with. Uptown Hou - big and getting bigger -can't keep track of all the stuff going on there... What else... oh yeah, the buzz today is that there may be a new large 'German style' soccer stadium DT, right next to MMP. Wow, three professional sports stadiums all within pissing contest distance of each other. They just keep throwing more logs on the fire in DT Houston. That ought to get this flame war really going. How is Dallas going to catch up when Houston just keeps building and building and building. I guess the next step is to drag all the new towers in Clear Lake, Memorial, West Chase and the Kirby area into it. -all within the city limits. Now shall we go to Galveston, the Woodlands, or Sugarland? They aren't exactly snoozing out there either. >

That's probably because you were being chased by a homeless guy. For people who aren't trying to prove anything (people who aren't counting steps or timing it like you do) it's about 15 or 20 minutes. Walk like a man.

As much as I hope Kemah will turn into a full fledged amusement park one day with all the frills and thrills of the best of them, I can really understand why the neighbors would pitch a fit. That area is going to be completely transformed as the Boardwalk becomes more popular. Noise, crowds, strange cars parking in front of your house. But who cares, Houston has no place to scream since Astroworld was killed and the Boardwalk can help to fill the local thrill void. I have no doubt that as soon as the new coaster is operating, that area will be in total chaos. Parking was already difficult. Kemah Boardwalk is now going to start drawing some of the crowd that Astroworld once had. I don't see how they can handle it unless they add some parking areas and more infrastructure. Maybe Tillman plans to buy up the whole town and by planting a noisy 96 ft tall roller coaster in the middle of a residential area he plans to drive out the neighbors so he can expand (bless his twisted soul). I hope so. The bay is such a great backdrop to an amusement park. Those ugly houses next door aren't doing anything for the community. But at least a well-run amusement park can provide a lot of happiness to many people -specially the kiddies and the ones like me who still love roller coasters.

lighten up captain, i was half kidding - as usual. in reality, i'm sure that the people who will live in or near victory will probably use it sometimes - unless walker:texas ranger is on.

But there is no construction going on in the jumbotron plaza in the web cam image. It looks dry, grey, and dead everytime I see it. I'm sure on the left side of the plaza (the part just out of view) it is buzzing just like Time Square. Everyone must be camera shy so they don't walk to the right side of the plaza so that we can see them. Victory is too isolated from DT Dallas and too hard to get to. It looks like one of those places that people just see from the freeway but never stop at because it isn't worth the bother. There's nothing to do when there is no game at AAC. When the residential buildings are complete, those residents will probably just drive to Northpark like the rest of the plex when they get bored or just watch t.v.