Reefmonkey

This seems to be the most updated version I could find:

http://blogs.chron.com/cityhall/archives/yardparking2.pdf

The concern about damaging underground infrastructure like water pipes seems to be the most justifiable reason for a city ordinance. In that case, I think:

1. It should be written into the ordinance that anyone who damages underground infrastructure should be required to pay the cost of repair, and the city should be given the power to put a lien on the property until the person pays.

2. The ordinance should be enforced by the city works department, not by HPD. If you see someone violating, you should call city works, who writes a citation.

In response to what Mr. Chenevert said:

You dont even have to pave it... as Christoph pointed out in his blog last week, in the ordinance, driveway is defined as any area that is primarily used for parking cars. And it also says that driveways are exempt from the ordinance.

So as I see it, if you use a portion of your front yard as a primary spot to park cars, you are legal.

What a badly written oridance.

If you read the ordinance, it states that wherever you usually park, it must be an improved surface, at least 4 inches thick. This seems to negate the idea of someone pointing to the already rutted up area of their yard and saying "see, that's the area I primarily park, so that's my driveway."

No, they cannot simply get a deed restriction passed. Getting deed restrictions revised in older areas is pretty close to impossible, so it is no where near that simple.

That's funny, because my neighborhood, which was founded in the late 50s (old for Houston) has gotten several new deed restrictions passed in the last 3 years, so I guess it can be that simple.

HPD just doesn't enforce as we keep stating, especially inside the loop. Older nabes do not have Homeowner's Associations either. That's why resident's like moi are tormented by violators. We can call HPD until we turn blue, they pass by about 1 hour later and keep going. Don't even bother to stop. You are basically left to fend for yourself. The elderly residents have just plain given up.

Yeah, you're right, HPD won't enforce it, which just goes to prove: anyone who would want this thing to ACTUALLY be enforced would WANT it to be a deed restriction, not an ordinance. There are always at least a few crabby old retired people in every neighborhood who take it upon themselves to patrol the neighborhood in their Crown Victorias looking for deed restriction violations to report. HOAs have scary power that municipalities would never think of wielding.

http://www.ahrc.com/new/index.php/src/news...owMedia/id/3045

Starting a Homeowner's Association in an established neighborhood that doesn't have one will be difficult and take time, but it is certainly going to be more effective in the long run than hoping that HPD will enforce this law. I know it sucks for current residents in these older neighborhoods that they have to deal with the headache of people parking in their yards, but 1. Since we all agree the law will not be enforced, they are no better off with it in place that they were before, and 2. You can't legislate everything. Sometimes it is just best to let market forces prevail. If parking on lawns is taking place in these neighborhoods, it is probably just one of many symptoms of malaise and lack of pride in the neighborhood that is dragging down market value. You aren't going to be able to legislate that away. Neighborhoods with strong deed restrictions will be more attractive to people, and so the neighborhoods without them will empty out or change demographic over time. This opens them up to being bought up by organizations that will redevelop them. As you said, this is especially a problem of older neighborhoods without HOAs inside the loop. Having just moved from inside the loop to where I am now (memorial area) I know how high prices are for houses, even rundown little shacks in not-so-great neighborhoods - the land value is just so high, because there are a bunch of builders waiting for the old owners to sell so they can tear one house down and put up four townhomes on its lot. For wht people can get for their old little crappy houses in town, they can buy a nicer, bigger house in a deed restricted area outside the loop. That's market forces at work. No one is being forced by price to live INSIDE the loop.

Look on the bright side - next time you get your property tax appraisal value notice, you can go to HCAD with pictures of your lawn-parking neighbors, protest your market value based on that, and have a good chance of getting your taxes reduced.

I look at Houston crime reports, especially since Katrina, and don't think it makes good sense for HPD to be spending its time writing tickets to people who park on their own lawns, no matter how trashy the practice is. I would rather see them patroling and deterring violent crime and property theft.

Is this really a serious problem that the City Council needs to address? Seems like if a neighborhood homeowner's association wants to pass a deed restriction against parking in yards, they can do it.

What's next, City Council will have an ordinance against putting my trash out on the curb early? Against having my boat in my driveway?

I would be ticked if someone in my neighborhood parked their cars in the grass, but then again, people in my neighborhood have pride in the neighborhood, and a strong HOA to prevent that. This should be a neighborhood-by-neighborhood thing - if it doesn't bother the people in the neighborhood enough to make it a deed restriction violation, then it shouldn't bother me, or the City, as no one has to live there. Again, if the current residents see it as a problem, they can get a deed restriction passed.

there's an article in today's paper where some of the "cigar bars" are worried that the increase in smokers at their establishments will cause them not to meet their tobacco sales quota and therefore they won't be considered a cigar bar anymore so smoking will be banned there too.

I am not a cigar smoker so I don't understand the cigar bar business - does a cigar bar have to retain some ratio of liquor sales/tobacco sales in order to be considered a "cigar bar"?

Even so, bar owners' concerns that smoking bans would reduce their revenues have proven unfounded in NYC, LA, Dallas, and so my gut tells me that cigar-bar owners' fears that non-cigar-smoking drinkers will innundate their bars are just as foundless. As the exlosion of the myth that bar revenues would go down with a smoking ban demonstrates, smokers haven't stopped going to bars just because they can't smoke there, and they aren't going to flock to cigar bars because they can smoke there. People go to bars for a variety of reasons - atmosphere, good drinks, cheap drinks, the crowd that goes there, because their friends like the bar, because good-looking members of the opposite sex go there. Just as smokers didn't give up chances to meet women/men at bars so they could stay home and smoke, they aren't going to give up chances to meet men/women at traditional bars so they can smoke in cigar bars. In general, a lot more men than women like to smoke cigars, and from my trips to Downing Street, most of the girls there were on the arm of a cigar-smoking sugar daddy, so guys aren't about to sequester themselves off in cigar bars where there are no available women. What is more likely to happen is what happened in LA, etc - people choose not to smoke when they go out drinking, or catch a smoke between bars. I think this will be a good thing. Pretty much everyone I know who is a smoker now started because they would go out to bars with people who smoked while drinking, and most started out saying "I only smoke when I drink" and are now full-blown smokers. Smokers are already in the minority. Separate the social connectedness of smoking and drinking, and the smokers will choose to not smoke so they can hang out at bars with their nonsmoking friends and potential hookups. In ten years you'll see smoking become some strange anarchronism that no one does anymore, like wearing Members Only jackets.

If you can keep your smoke out of my lungs, great. If you can't, don't do it next to me.

You reminded me of an episode of The Simpsons, where Marge's sister Patty is dating actor Troy McClure, and on a date to a trendy restaurant, she lights up a cigarette, to the horrified gasps of the other patrons. A Waiter comes up to her and says "we don't serve contemporary California cuisine in yours lungs, so don't smoke in our restaurant."

Seems a lawsuit has been file against the smoking ban by several bar owners.

Price and a coalition of bar, nightclub and cabaret owners last week challenged Houston's smoking ordinance in a federal lawsuit. They argue that city officials overstepped their authority last fall in passing the ordinance, scheduled to take effect next month, creating an unfair competitive environment for them to operate.

The ordinance bans smoking in most public places, but exempts bars with significant tobacco sales or outdoor patios. The lawsuit claims the city does not have the authority under state law to regulate differently businesses licensed to sell alcohol for on-premises consumption.

full article

I don't understand how the lawsuit can claim Houston is overstepping its authority in regulat[ing] differently" businesses licensed to sell alcohol for on-premises consumption. I don't see how this is regulating bars any differently from any other business. And what does the alcohol consuption have to do with anything? If anything, this is leveling the playing field, making bars adhere to the same regulations every store, office, etc in Houston already adheres to. Bars are a place of work for the bar employees. Anti-smoking ordinances are meant to protect workers from smoke in the work environment, among other things. Why should bar employees have less protection than anyone else?

There are similar plans around, but after 50 years of remodeling they hardly look alike on the inside. Most have even changed moderately on the outside. I find these old Memorial homes to have more character than the newer ones. All those peeked rooves get to you after a while.

We ended up in a Georgian. There is one two streets back that probably was the same plan but things have been added etc, and we plan to enhance the facade by adding some tweaks.

Too me Village Builder, and their plans with names, and having 15 of the exact homes per street are the most guilty of the cookie cutter label.

I live in a 1965 house in Nottingham Forest and tend to agree with you. Yeah, there are a few houses in the neighborhood that are similar to mine, but it seems back then, even if there were only a finite number of exterior styles, there were still many more styles available than subdivision developers and builders now offer. My brother lived out in Grand Lakes in Katy until last year, with big houses, but about every fourth house looks alike on the outside. And inside it was all white walls, offwhite tiles, and beige carpeting, and super-glossy hardwoods. And yeah, with all the interior renovations and painting that has been done to my house over the years, it definitely does not have that sterile new house look, and certainly doesn't look like any other house in the neighborhood inside.

On the issue of peaked roofs, yeah, some of the 60s modern houses in the area, the "Brady Bunch Style" as I call them, look kind of fun and quirky, but I will take a peaked roof any day in a city with as much rainfall as Houston.

Jeebus, spare me your hypocritical righteous indignation about me supposedly mudslinging and insulting you in my last post when in your previous post before you had insinuated that I am fat and lazy:

Why are you in such a rush in your above example that you have to hoof [sic] it across the mall from one end to the next? You prove that you are not the typical customer and that you are not the target customer of a mall. Perhaps you would be better suited to strip malls where you can park in front of the store you desire, run in, grab your item, then run out and drive across the parking lot so that you can do the same thing only 500 feet away. There's no wonder our nation is getting fatter. Are you so busy that you can't make the time to walk across the mall, get your cardio and burn off the calories from that Mickey D's combo you had for lunch?

I pointed out that I am a competitive surfski racer, and likely in better shape than you, therefore in no need to get "exercise" from walking in the mall, as a direct retort to the above. You seemed confused about why I brought up my surfski racing in the last post, so I thought I'd connect the dots for you.

I don't really care if you are insulted because I compared you to some of Brown's appointees. I had direct contact with them, and your views echo many of theirs.

See, this is where we will disagree. Yes, many feel that sprawl is the product of low density development over great distances. I personally feel that it is the product of mass employee commute.

This is not where we disagree. This is where you don't understand the difference between the cause of urban sprawl and the effect of urban sprawl. I have already explained the difference between the two, I am not going to waste my time typing it again, so read my previous post again. Jeebus, reading one mass-market book on urban sprawl does not make you an expert on the subject, and certainly does not mean you know more than the US Census Bureau, who has studied the problem for decades and concluded that poor land use, including low-density construction, contributes to half of sprawl. Once again, the distance people travel from their home to their place of work is not a cause of sprawl, it is a symptom of sprawl. People don't live far away from their workplaces for giggles, they do so because they can't find affordable, safe, quality housing with good neighborhoods near their place of work. For office dwellers, that is often because of poor urban planning, one aspect of which is low-density building, and yes, some of the New Urbanist ideas you cherish can allieviate that. But for some people living close to work, even if there were good housing, is not an attractive option. This is where some of the flaws of Suburban Nation and the New Urbanists come into play. For Houston, their ideas aren't very applicable. I personally would love to live in a place like Seaside, FL. It would be great to walk to work. On the other hand, since in my current job I do environmental work for a chemical company, maybe living that close to my job isn't such an attractive option. And that is part of the naivete of the New Urbanist movement - not everyone, or even most people, work in a nice, clean urban office environment. NIMBY is a hard mindset to get around, and people aren't going to want to live around heavy industry. Don't try to discount this, especially for Houston, where the petrochemical industry is a very important part of the economy. For people who work in this industry, living and raising a family within walking distance of a refinery does not create a good quality of life.. While some of the New Urbanist ideals would work well for building master-planned communties where people would not have to drive to go to the store, etc., it isn't going to solve the commuting problem for people like chemical workers. It isn't a pancea, and it is naive to think that everyone can live so close to work.

Also, Suburban Nation considers strict zoning to be an important contributor to urban sprawl, and favors more fluid mixed-use zoning. For a city like Houston which has never had zoning, this is not applicable. The book has also been criticized for its bias and lack of documentation, as well as a lack of understanding of certain issues, like transportation. I am sure you have read How Cities Work by Alex Marshall, which has a lot of criticism of the New Urbanist movement. I tend to agree with him about transportation being one major way to alleviate a lot of the problems of urban sprawl, especially for Houston. Decent mass transit and light rail, something this city has fought for a long time, and then implemented in such a stupid and half-assed way, could do wonders to alleviate congestion. It would take a lot of change in mindset of both commuters and employers. Because we are already so spread out, we can't expect everyone to be able to get off on the train at a station that is reasonable walking distance to work. Therefore, major employers who live outside the concentrated business centers are going to need to run buses from the rail station closest to them. I have personally experienced how this works, as when I go to my company's plant on Tokyo Bay, about an hour or so trainride from Tokyo, I get off at the station near my plant, and board a company-run bus for a 5 minute ride to the plant. Obviously, even this kind of mass transit isn't going to fix urban sprawl by itself, as trains running down from the nice suburbs in the north to Downtown and elsewhere via the EastTex Freeway Corridor and the North Freeway Corridor, especially, but even the Northwest Freeway Corridor, would be running through decaying, low income neighborhoods with poor schools. These neighborhoods need to be seriously rehabbed, and brought back to productive mixed-use, where the ideas you espouse would work great. It will be a herculean labor, as will developing the rail infrastructure, but no one said that reversing Houston's urban sprawl would be easy, or have just one turnkey solution.

Torpedos in the Gulf, by Melanie Wiggins, is a great history of the Galveston area during WWII. Covers not just the U-boat situation, but also the home front and civil defense in Galveston county. Also discusses the POW camp out in Alvin.

http://www.amazon.com/Torpedoes-Gulf-Galve...y/dp/0890966486

Katiedidit - I graduated from SMU in 98

Vicman - I noticed you said more than once that some HISD kids are allowed to attend SBISD schools. I have never heard of this. Can you elaborate?

I am glad to see this happening, hopefully it will go all the way this time.

Second-hand smoke is a public health issue, as well as a nuisance. I like to go drink in bars - why should I have to endure someone else's second-hand smoke, and my clothes reeking, to do it?

Why should asthmatics not be able to enjoy bars because of others' disgusting habits?

Working in bars is flexible hours and good money for people like students, why should they have the choice of "either accept the smoke or find another job"? That's like telling mine workers "no we're not going to improve ventilation, either accept you're going to get Black Lung or find another job." We ban smoking in workplaces, right? Guess what? For the people who work in a bar, that bar is a workplace. Done.

For those who say bars are private establishments, and the owners should be able to make the decision, come on. People used to make the claim that restaurants were "private establishments" and therefore should be able to decide whether or not to serve black people. That ultimately didn't stand up to scrutiny. Public health trumps the rights of "private establishments" all the time. Ethnic restaurants may have "traditional" ways of making certain dishes, but if they don't pass health code, they aren't allowed to serve them. The owners can't just say "well, if people don't want to risk salmonella, they should eat elsewhere."

There was a lot of conflict with the principal, but that issue is too newly resolved and its "too soon to tell" if it changed anything. The Demographic problem is that you have some pretty harden kids coming from the Tully Stadium apartment area. Its always been a socially tough school, but since Katrina its gotten a little tougher. Many try to get their kids into private for the middle school years then return to Stratford in 9th grade.

I guess its all what you are used too and what you are comfortable with. And it also has A LOT do with the personality of your child. Only a parent knows if there child would get eaten alive or fall prey to pressure in such an atmosphere.

My wife said that was one of the big problems with the old principal, my wife's colleagues were telling that principal that the demographic had changed and she needed to adapt, but she stuck her head in the sand about it. General diversity in a school doesn't bother me, but Katrina diversity does. It isn't a race thing, it's a Louisiana culture thing. That entire state has been so corrupt for so long, that even in the school districts there is no accountability. My wife has worked with several Katrina kids, and just in general finds that the education there is awful - the 5th grade level of education in LA is equivalent to maybe 3rd grade, and there is a cultural difference in behavior, too, the kids are allowed to get away with a lot more over there, so they are used to acting that way here.

Because of your post yesterday, my wife and I talked more about what we are going to do in two years, and we are now pretty much decided that we are going to get our oldest into Cornerstone, with WAIS as a backup.

We recently moved to West Memorial. The boys will attend Stratford High School, however they will got to St. Francis until that time. Our little neighborhood (east of Kirkwood) is for some reason zoned to Spring Forest Middle. While the neighorhood is in revitalization, the school demo changes are not there enough for us yet. Spring Forest has too many issues at this time, but I think it will shape up to be a great school once West Memorial fills with 30-40 year olds with kids and the number of 65+ households depletes.

Its an incredible neighborhood and such a RELIEF after The Woodlands.

What problems have you heard about? We are considering our options for our oldest, who would be going to Spring Forest in Fall 2009. We are considering Cornerstone instead (my stepson is high achiever). My wife had heard negative things about SFMS, mostly associated with its old principal, and she was under the impression that there was a new principal?

I'd be interested in any information you have on specific issues at Spring Forest. Is it just the demographics? At least for us a diverse population isn't a bad thing unless it is accompanied by problem behavior that could interfere with learning and be unsafe. I'll have to check with my wife, but I was under the impression that the main problems were conflicts between a principal who wasn't well liked and the teachers.

It seems odd to me that for people living in Midtown, where $300k+ townhomes are the norm, the primary concern when grocery shopping is saving a couple cents on cans of vegetables. I've never found Randalls to be more expensive than Kroger if you use a free Randalls card, but maybe there are some unusual items I don't buy.

I like the Midtown Randalls for the sake of convenience. The amount of money spent on fuel would outweigh any savings, at least for me.

I think for most of us the price differential would not be a big problem if we weren't aware of what Randall's used to be, and what a hollow shell of that it now is. For me there is a principle involved in not paying the same prices I used to when the service and selection are not what they used to be. I find the Kroger's signature stores to have much better selection now, a better shopping environment, and maybe slightly cheaper. For all that I will drive a little father, rather than letting myself get irritated when I find Randall's has stopped carrying yet another item they used to, which I happened to want/need that night.

Though I do agree the Krogers in the old Albertsons suck, as the Albertsons did before them.

One thing that always interests me is why certain older complexes go condo.

I lived in the Westpoint Apartments, some old Harold Farb apartments on Westheimer just east of Fondren, when I first moved back to Houston after college, and lived there from the Summer of 1998 through the end of 1999. My parents gave me a lot of perspective on this complex's life cycle when they found out I was moving in there. Seems when they moved to Houston as a young newlywed couple in 1970, Westpoint was one the hip complexes to live in, even boasted its own nightclub - Barbery Coast. When I was living there, Barbery Coast had become the fitness center, and the occupants weren't young and hip, mostly strippers from Babydolls who would sun themselves out by the pool (thus turning me off permanently to strip joints once I saw what strippers look like in the light of day) and all sorts of burnouts, interesting characters, and recent immigrants.

I went to an opera there, and was underwhelmed. The performance was great, but the seats were terribly uncomfortable. They were small and the pitch was too much. I didn't even have nosebleed seats. It didn't seem that they had any trouble filling the place, so I submit that Houston needs a bigger opera house. One with more comfortable seating, and enough seating that they don't have to cram people in.

Oh, yeah, I'm not even afraid of heights, but I get a feeling of vertigo walking around in the upper balcony area of Wortham, it is so steep.

Poe is not the only feeder school, though - Lanier is also fed by:

* River Oaks (I graduated from that school, as did my sister)

* Wilson (partial)

* St. George Place (partial) (Opening in 2007)

* Roberts (partial)

In other words, the Poe crowd is not the only group at Lanier.

Also, I know many people from West University who went to Lanier, despite the fact that West U is zoned for Pershing.

Maybe you should have the people who you know at Poe visit Rummel Creek - Perhaps send video clips, photographs, etc. Poe has every reason to be as good as Rummel Creek, and perhaps Verdon should take a notice of this.

I can tell you at least from what I have heard, River Oaks is still very good. At least the Vanguard program. I'm not sure if it also has mainstream students because everyone I knew was in Vanguard.

I don't have much of a vested interest in Poe's future anymore, but I could suggest it to a couple of friends who are about to have a baby and are struggling on whether to move out of the area or not. Maybe they will get involved with introducing Poe to what Rummel does well, or maybe it will push them to decide to just move out.

I don't mean to disparage Lanier. I can't say for sure about the true state of the education one gets there now, or of the education one would get there in the next 6 years. We just had to go with the warning signs we were getting, not just about Poe, but about Lanier, too, and with our own guts. There were other factors besides the quality of the education there as well. It was also the values of the kids there. And I don't mean worrying about gang activity, I mean the rich white kids. Let's face it, while there are families like yours or mine, because of the real estate values in the area, there are a lot really wealthy people in the neighborhood who have more materialistic values than I do, and who really indulge their kids, both materially and behaviorally. I compare the behavior of the kids in the cub scout den there with the one my stepson is in out here, and it is night and day. Parents from Poe would just sit and watch as their kids ran riot and talked disrespectfully to leaders. My stepson has much better-behaved friends out here. Good education or not, that was just not a peer group I wanted my stepson learning bad habits from. With wordgirl's questions about the snobbiness of memorial schools, I figured she would have the same concerns. From what I have heard, kids who go to Frostwood, Bunker Hill, Memorial Middle and High are cut from similar cloth as rich Poe kids.

You mean "Crazy Crew"? Well, I know the apartments that house those guys are being torn down in Montrose. Benton, by the way, went to that school for a few months before the stabbing. She probably fell into the "wrong crowd" quickly (she lived in Montrose and socialized with the Crazy Crew kids). Benton previous went to Lanier MS, Hogg MS, some school in La Porte, and some high school in Cy-Fair and exhibited many behavior problems once she was in high school. Even if she stayed in the suburbs, she probably would still have been trouble.

Did your stepson go to Lanier? Or was he only at Poe before you moved?

Also, did you hear statements like "Then we started to hear more and more about Lanier, how it was the same way, in reality no longer living up to its reputation." from people in Vanguard/IB or people in the regular program? My sister graduated from Lanier in 2001, and my cousin graduated in 2004 (both in Vanguard). Did the school change since then?

I've heard MS-13 as well. But, like I said, I think Lamar is still a good school. I guess being intown, no public school is going to avoid gang problems completely.

My stepson was at Poe, and when we realized how disappointed we were in Poe despite its reputation, we started asking around about Lanier. The Houston school psychologist community is a really tight-knit group, and my wife got information from them as well as parents of my stepson's classmates who had older siblings in Lanier. There was talk about recent turnover in some key faculty and administration changes as well as dissatisfaction, a belief that it was still riding on a reputation that was starting to not quite match the reality anymore. Had the school significantly declined in the 2 years since your cousin graduated? I don't know, but I think probably not. But our son was just completing 2nd grade at the time, so he had 3 more years before he would start at Lanier, 6 years before he would graduate from it. We just didn't feel comfortable staying put and hoping that the information we were hearing didn't necessarily mean that Lanier would significantly decline during those 6 years.

And after hearing about Poe's great reputation and then seeing for itself that it doesn't measure up, I honestly think that a lot of people must have lower expectations for education, at least than I do. I think they say to themselves "wow, this is a great school compared to the rest of HISD", but after seeing the difference between Poe and his new school, I think a lot of these people wouldn't be so enthusiastic about Poe if they just put their kids in an elementary school like Rummel Creek for a year; they'd really see the difference. So I didn't feel comfortable knowing that Lanier's reputation is kept going by these same pople who have low expectations for Poe.

Sidenote: You might think I am especially picky about schools, and I may be, but I have an advanced degree, my wife has advanced degrees, we value education, it's our thing. I don't think one's child's education is necessarily the worst thing to have demanding standards about. But I know we weren't the only ones who were dissatisfied with Poe. We knew several people who pulled their kids out of Poe after a year or two. Some of them put their kids in River Oaks Elementary's Vanguard program, which some seemed to hate, not because it was a bad education, but because the homework, projects, and in-school expectations of parents were so time-consuming. Others put their kids in First Presbyterian.

When the Houston Symphony played there in beginning in the '50s until Jones Hall was built, there was quite a bit of acoustical work done with wall treatments, reflectors, etc. It was relatively reverberative because of its size, which is desirable for orchestral music and less so for theatre. The occasional rock or jazz concert there tended to be very successful.

The production issues had more to do with the size of backstage and support areas, hallways, stairs, loading dock, orchestra pit, etc. Those things are really hard to re-do. Not so much lighting, rigging, or audio equipment.

I never felt unsafe there, but it was cramped and the angles were too steep. It was certainly not built with modern cars in mind. As far as I know it was one of the first parking garages downtown.

I've gotta disagree with you there. The "no center aisle" design is called "continental seating" and I've never had a problem with it in Jones Hall. It's the best way to get seats closer to the stage with better sight lines. When it is done, code requires a much wider aisle than it does in theatres with center aisles. I also love musicals in the Alley. Of course they don't have a pit, so they have to do non-traditional shows or stagings. But I've seen several and never a bad one. We'll just have to agree to disagree on the exterior. I think it is the best New Brutalist building in Houston, and one of the only ones left. It looks like a castle to me.

The lobby addition to the Music Hall happened in the '50s. It was the glass walled wraparound lobby, and yes, the restrooms were downstairs. I don't know why older theatres had so many fewer restrooms, but I have noticed that too. Most of the stairs and floors in the Music Hall common areas were hard institutional tile rather than the carpet found in newer venues. I was always afraid of falling and hurting myself on the stairs, and the lobby was deafeningly noisy. Of course their attempts to retrofit to ADA standards looked really tacked on, too, and I'm not sure if there even was an elevator to the balcony.

That makes sense then about the acoustics. I never went to symphony stuff there (not a fan of sitting still watching people play instruments, but that's just me), but went to lots of theatre productions there.

Understood about the backstage - you'd pretty much have to rebuild the thing, and then what's the point of preserving it after that?

I'm not sure the garage was built with ANY cars in mind. Seems the large boats of the 40s would be much harder to drive in there than today's front-wheel drive sedan with power steering. It's probably good they tore it down before Suburbans and Hummers became so common, though.

I do agree that continental seating does result in higher numbers of good seats, so it's a good tradeoff.

I do remember in the Music Hall as a kid wearing my treadless dress shoes on that slick tile and slipping.

New Brutalist style - I've never heard of it before, but it is a good name for the Alley's architecture. I guess part of it is I think Alley's company's forte is in stright plays, esp. drama, not musical.

I do believe Hobby is a good venue, and despite the airport terminal effect it has on me, is a nice addition to downtown. Now that TUTS is finally doing some better stuff, it makes for a nice evening.

Jones Hall and the Alley are both really good examples of their day's architecture. And they work pretty well for what they do. Especially the Alley, which is a perfect place to see a stage play.

I always thought that the acoustics were one of the best things about the Music Hall. Having said that, the backstage spaces and theatrical equipment were not up to the requirements of most modern shows, especially touring ones. And lots of the seats were really far away. And the restrooms and lobby were woefully inadequate. And we lost the horrible Coliseum too, don't forget, which was a worthless venue as far as I could tell. Every time I went to the Music Hall I thought "I like Art Deco and old buildings, and the acoustics are pretty good. So why do I hate it here?" It looked like a low-budget municipal version of Jones Hall. And the MCM-inspired '50s lobby addition just looked incongruous.

The smaller sizes of the two Hobby theatres work much better for local arts groups. I tend to be strongly anti-demolition and tend to think that many new Houston structures are not improvements over what they replace. The Hobby Center is probably the most shining counter-example in Houston.

I might be wrong on the acoustics, it has been so long. I'm thinking of some place that I thought had bad acoustics. Oh, I remember - the Arena. I hate theatre-in-the-round anyway. I can believe you are right about the backstage and theatre equipment being outdated, though a lot of that could be redone. I agree the Coliseum is no loss. And now that you mention it, I totally remember the bathrooms. It felt like you had to go underground to access them, and the lines were hideously long at intermission. I guess people in the 30s must not have needed to go to the bathroom as much Remind me of the lobby addition, I can't remember what it was like.

The parking was the biggest think I remember as being outdated and scary. Inside you felt like a mugger was lurking everywhere, and driving past it, you were sure it was going to fall off and plunge into the bayou.

Jones Hall works inside, except access to seats. Heck of alot better than Broadway theaters. Alley is great for straight plays, not so good for musicals, so thank goodness they only occasionally try one (last i saw there was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum 2 or 3 years back.) I just think Alley is ugly as sin - a bunker - on the outside.

Most of my reaction to Music Hall being demolished probably comes from nostalgia rather than it really being that great a venue.

Depends on where you are zoned, even within Spring Branch. My wife is a school psychologist, has worked in SBISD very recently, knows the character well.

Stratford (the high school my stepson will ultimately attend) and Memorial are both excellent schools, academically. Memorial tends to be very snobby though, a lot of spoiled rich kids, and a lot more recreational drug use among the rich kids.

Basically, the rule with Spring Branch is that the further west you get, the less snobby the kids are, and the nicer the faculty are, too. It even starts in elementary school. In Frostwood Elementary School, the administration and faculty think they are running a private school, and any kid with a learning disability, maybe some social adjustment issues, they don't want to deal with him. Even the parent volunteers are snobby, and were very nosy, trying to get my wife to tell them about students they had no association with, even though that is federally protected confidential information, because they think they have a "right" to know if there are any potential troublemakers in "their" school. Now Meadowood and Rummel Creek are great.

So yeah, Spring Valley is pretty far east, and my wife didn't have the best things to say about the snobbiness of kids, parents, and teachers there.

Lanier Middle and Lamar High are rated highly and are located about 9 miles from your Garden Oaks house.

Lamar may be good, but I disagree on Lanier. Before we moved to Memorial Area a year ago, my stepson went to Poe Elementary, which feeds into Lanier, and Poe is always highly rated as one of HISD's best elementary schools, being a fine arts magnet school (whatever that means at the elementary level). I found it very lacking. My stepson was clearly struggling in math and getting frustrated, and I was spending a lot of time tutoring him, yet we never got a note of concern from his teacher, and when I emailed to ask how she felt about his math performance, she seemed very blaise about it. I got to talking to a lot of other parents, many of whom had similar experiences. I learned that the principal who had made Poe so good had left, and it had really slid. Then we started to hear more and more about Lanier, how it was the same way, in reality no longer living up to its reputation. It was one of the reasons we decided to move, and I have noticed a marked difference in the quality of instruction at his new school in SBISD. He was still a little behind at the beginning of the year in math skills (I helped him catch up through flash cards and math workbooks during the summer), but by the end of the year was doing great.

And that girl who stabbed that boy to death in Ervan Chew Park? She went to Lamar. It's got some gang problems.

So, thumbs down on Poe and Lanier. I know, they have reputations for being such great schools, but remember this is relative - they a great for HISD schools, but just mediocre compared to many of the schools in the districts to the west and northwest of HISD. What can I say, some people find them "good enough", are willing to compromise on their kids' education in order to live in a fashionable zip code near the hip restaurants. We ultimately decided we weren't.

... after I point to the fact that Bellaire HS and Lamar HS (of West University Place and River Oaks) are open to most city residents... AND are still very successful schools.

Bellaire is another HISD school that has a better reputation than it deserves because parents rationalize living there because they want a fashionable address in town. It has developed some real problems with a culture of recreational drug use among its rich kids. I think Lamar, HSPVA, and Westside are still good HISD high schools, but not Bellaire. Here is a summary of some recent incidents (from Wikipedia):

In 2005, several Bellaire High School students were involved in violent incidents, somewhat hurting the reputation of the school in the local community. In December 2005, two students, Jonathan Finkelman and Desmond Hamilton, were murdered in separate off-campus incidents, and a third shot and injured. In January 2006, a female student was accused of and admitted to killing her mother. In February 2006, a stabbing involving two male freshman occurred in a school stairwell. The victim survived the stabbing while the perpetrator was arrested and prosecuted. The attacker was a national of Mexico.[11] The events have triggered HISD schools to review security policies.

On March 20, 2007, Tamara Ryman, 37, a Bellaire High School algebra teacher, was arrested after being found with a 16-year-old male and former student of Ryman's, who was naked from the waist down, in a van. The current charge is trespassing. She was found in a parked van with the boy. When the deputy approached the car, the boy had his trousers lowered, and Ryman had just jumped into the driver's seat, according to police reports[6][7].

By the way, I want Spring Branch ISD to merge with Houston ISD so Memorial High School is open to all Houston residents. MHS can establish a magnet program and get kids in Houston.

It's not going to happen. That's what the "Independent" in Spring Branch (or any other) Independent School District stands for.

It is a popular, nevertheless wrong misconception that Galveston is muddy because of the Mississippi. If we were muddy because of the Mississippi, then the water out in the Gulf would be muddy too. I can tell you from paddling my surfski just a mile or two off the beach out on West Beach that the water clears up and turns blue pretty fast. It is our own Texas rivers that do it, and it is completely natural. Galveston's water is muddy because of the silt that comes out of it from rivers like the Trinity, Brazos, etc. It is this silt that built up the Island. No silt, no Galveston. The silt makes the water muddy, and the silt becomes beach sand, so it is going to be fine and clumpy?

So how exactly are we supposed to clean up Galveston's beachs when they are naturally supposed to look like that?

As for the sargassum (seaweed) that washes up on the beach, scraping it off would also scrape off a lot of sand, which would contribute to beach erosion, which is a bad thing. Leaving it on not only does not harm the beach, it actually helps build the beach back up, because the seaweed provides a matrix that holds the sand in place and keeps so much of it from blowing away or being washed away.

RUMOR

A source that services the grocery industry tells me that Randall's is suffering and may be re-evaluating the midtown location. Has anyone else heard anything? That would be a major blow to DT/MT residential if that were to close. I'm thinking Kroger on West Gray or Fiesta on Fannin are the closest grocers otherwise? I can't imagine that would stay vacant too long until Kroger or HEB moved in. It is always busy when I go there.

I wouldn't be surprised. I lived right across the street from it, in the Camden Midtown, from Spring 02-Spring 03. It's a nice building, was well-stocked at the time (though Safeway is really ruining Randall's on that point), but the panhandlers really make it an unpleasant place to shop. You get hit up on your way in, you get hit up on your way out. One time a panhandler approached me in the frozen food section. I alerted security, but they will always be fighting that battle, and it chases away a lot of customers.

Of course, none of the Randall's are doing very well, thanks to Safeway. They are still more pricey, but their selection and service, which they used to pride themselves on, have gone way downhill.

It looks like they are still only halfway through building it, and have put temporary beams in to support it. There are some really bad architects out there.

I don't feel that strongly that it is that ugly. I did identify with someone's response that the exterior looks like a Dillard's department store, but I think it looks nice on the interior. I do appreciate that the arch of the external front entrance tried to be evocative of 19th-century opera halls (look at the 1893 Grand in Galveston), but the exterior is pretty boxy.

What about Jones Hall, I have always thought that was pretty ugly. And the seating, too. I hate climbing over a hundred people to get to my seat. Or the Alley? That looks like a Cold War bomb-proof bunker.

The Hobby Center is alright, but it reminds me too much of an airport terminal, and it isn't just the name making me think that. Give the exterior another look.

Why, oh why couldn't they have built Fort Worth's Bass Hall in Houston?

Another thing - why tear down the Music Hall. It needed some modernization, esp. the acoustics, (oh, and the parking garage, too) but it could have been saved and kept as a landmark and authentic example of Art Deco (which Houston loves to tear down - watch out River Oaks Theater and Alabama Bookstop) as well as a vibrant theater venue, and we would not have needed to build the Hobby.

"Love it" is kind of strong, but I certainly don't hate it. By virtue of its being here so long I think you can call it a landmark, plus it's got the Petroleum Club, which has a lot of history.

Architecturally, I find it an interesting example of early-mid 60s modern style. The cantilever sunshades, which are the distinctive feature that is hated by so many, make a lot of sense in keeping the building cool in the Houston summer, especially 3 decades before the advent of green glass. I say it is better to have it than another anonymous glass box.