IronTiger

More like the love child of two defunct retailers: Home Depot EXPO and Service Merchandise. EDIT: Also, it looks like it will be adjacent to the current "Design Tech Homes". Hm.

To me, Kroger has always been worse than H-E-B. Back in the 1990s, Kroger was an old "greenhouse" location, while H-E-B was a Pantry Foods. Circa 2002, Kroger renovates and H-E-B moved across the street to be a real H-E-B nearly three times the size. Unfortunately, Kroger zapped the character out of it while retaining the overall dumpiness. Brand names aren't great either, and you have to use their ____ Kroger card to buy anything that competes in price with the other stores in town.

Wikipedia says that one was the last one to close, in 1986, two years after the others were sold off.

Have they ruled out arson yet? I mean, weren't there a rash of arson fires in the Heights last year?

Yeah, in the 1960s, the Henke's Family Center stores were run by Kroger (http://pleasantfamilyshopping.blogspot.com/2009/01/family-affair-at-kroger.html)

Why did Weingarten sell out in 1980? I mean, when did out-of-town competitors (Kroger, H-E- come in?

Was the woman who owned the house (in the Chron photos) killed in the fire? And 9,000 square feet! For a house, that's huge!

Right. So the grocery store chain was sold in 1980, but closed in 1984. Although that website was pretty clever.

I've become a bit more curious about Weingarten's. I read on my "BCS Supermarkets" thread that a Weingarten's was briefly in College Station from 1982-1984, and was quite upscale. What were they like, really? Also, is the current Weingarten development company at all related?

I was in a Books-a-Million last December in Florida. If what you mean by "Christian slant" as "some Joel Osteen books", that doesn't really count, as Joel Osteen is as much authentic Christian as ramen noodles are authentic Asian food.

Let's see, CityCentre has been pretty much developed, although Town & Country Mall did sit vacant for several years. There was a development planned for the Astroworld site that was axed though.

Funny, "Jewel-T", in addition to sounding like "Jewel Tea" (Jewel-Osco's original name) sounds very much like Jewel Grand Bazaar, but they never opened outside the Chicago area. With the "Family Video Center" next door at Kroger, I hypothesized that the local Kroger was a 1960's early superstore prototype. About the Kmart grocery store, I had also correctly guessed that it was a Kmart Foods. Thanks for confirming it. Weingarten's could've become Hobby Lobby (now a 99 Cent Store, which ironically is what replaced the Post Office Kroger) or possibly even TJMaxx. As for what it sold out to be, it could've been Safeway, which probably then relocated to the Culpepper Plaza down Harvey, which became AppleTree in the early 1990s late 1980s. As for AppleTree, like stated before, it was closed and eventually demolished for a Spec's.

Apparently the parents also changed their story, so they may be hiding something. Either way, there's still a lot of unanswered questions by Ms. Nelson. If she's as innocent as she says she is, then WHERE'S THE PLASTIC BIN?

Surely most of you know about the Jonathan Foster case: a 44-year-old woman was accused of kidnapping a 12-year-old boy on Christmas Eve, they found a burned body in a ditch, identified it as him, and got a suspect who has had a criminal record. That's the short version anyway. What do you think? Do you think that Ms. Nelson is guilty and should get the punishment she deserves?

Yeah, House & Hahl still does technically exist, but it was partially cut off by Bridgelands Lake Rd. (Google Maps shows H&H going south east of Bridgelands Lake, but that's always been a private dirt path). Spencer Rd. was rerouted sometime in the 2000s to better line up with 290 (and also eliminate the main railroad crossing)

Oh hey, I just remembered I had a 1976 atlas showing Houston street names. A subdivision road in Spring Valley was obliterated for the I-10 expansion was called Bunningham Rd. (it's still on Google Maps as the frontage road title). Jackrabbit Lane was the informal name for FM 1960. The one I was thinking of the first post is still Horse & Hahl Road (it was just truncated). Interestingly, within a mile, there was a private airfield (Josey Ranch...go to Cottage Cypress Road in Houston and go back to '78).

It's always fascinated me that some roads in Houston are simply closed off or renamed. Specifically, there's this one road in Cypress area: it was demolished for a bike path when the new subdivision was built in the mid-2000s. 29.956403,-95.722429 I'm sure there are others that were demolished or renamed. What do you think?

My English teacher. He had questionable ways of training his dog, though: whenever the dog took a piss on the floor, he'd rub the nose of the dog onto the spot so the dog can smell it. One of my later teachers (who also owns and loves dogs) said that it wasn't a good idea.

Wow, three downvotes. Lighten up: it was only an idea, not something going into effect.

It's not going to be strictly Dallas. It will include Austin, B-CS, San Antonio, and Waco...though I suppose you have more acronyms for them too.

Yes, Coast, you brought up two good points. Quality Control to cut down on overtly bad topics, but too many moderators make for a bad forum. And of course, Houston pride. But here's another argument: in creating a Texas forum, we would end up having highly fragmented groups: one a Dallas group, one a San Antonio group, one an Austin group, etc. (maybe if we just limit it to the Texas Triangle, we can cut out El Paso ) But there are already fragmented groups on HAIF. The Heights rules disproportionately, and there's other groups that rarely show up behind certain groups: Historic Houston, Katy, etc. Alternatively, we can jettison the Dallas-FW boards and create a new, non-HAIF forum. A second HAIF, only not focused on Houston. I propose the name HA2F!

I subscribed to UrbanOhio.com for reasons of seeing photos posted to a thread I was following, when it gave me an idea. The HAIF has become Houston's premier Internet forum, but the other cities are kind of lacking. College Station/Bryan's board, in particular, is quite nice, and not the cesspool MyBCS.com is. Dallas/Fort Worth's board will never be popular, because DFW residents don't like the idea of flocking to a Houston forum (in general). Given that HAIF, as an acronym, is now obsolete (it stood for HoustonArchitecture.Info Forum), why not just drop the tagline "Houston's original social network", give the Dallas-Fort Worth board more space, and put the screws to the "Dallas Fort Worth Urban Forum" and MyBCS.com? I can imagine that some shortfalls would be... - Bandwidth concerns - Quality control - Houston-only pride It's just an idea, but what do you think? Could HAIF work as the premier forum of Texas?

I think I learned about Bob Dylan through an English teacher in tenth grade. He had quotes by musicians on his whiteboard, swam the English channel, hugged Bob Marley's mother...he was an interesting guy, I'll tell you that.

Oh, okay. It turns out that Brazos Bookstore is fully aware of it anyway.

A few years, eh? Well, what happened is that Les (that guy)'s wife Lisa died of cancer in 2007. A time jump of ten years happened, and now it's mostly a mouthpiece for Batiuk to get his views across all while letting characters decay in an increasingly bleak environment. Here we have author-avatar Les Moore selling his book about his wife's death. His fans are stupid saying things that no actual person would say (like "I respect your opinion too much to argue about it") and all the while he's being smug and acting like, well, a jerk. This quote from Comics Curmudgeon sums it up nicely. "Sorry, Batuik, but your premises undermine each other. Premise #1: Les the literary genius is finally recognized by a respected media outlet for his massive contribution to the world of letters. Premise #2: Les is a misunderstood genius suffering fools who can’t even read a book title from a teleprompter. You see, if #1 were true, #2 wouldn’t happen. If #2 is true, then what value the praise? The only way for both premises to stand is if the lazy assholes are recognizing the smug asshole for achievements in the field of assholery."