IronTiger

I love Houston, and every few months I take an excursion down there for various reasons. Since I live in College Station, we take Hwy. 6 which becomes Hempstead Highway in Houston. Now, somewhere outside the first highway loop, there's a strange warehouse on the other side of the railroad which has all sorts of junk...including a McDonald's sign, just laying with miscellaneous other signs and stuff...I don't know what it is, or even where it is, I think around here is it: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=29....mp;t=h&z=16 ...but since I'm relying on my memory, I can't quite remember exactly where it might be. Has anyone else seen this bizarre junk? Am I just insane?? Help!

I really don't get it. I've heard Greenspoint was full of hoodlums, gangsters, and thieves, some murder-suicide in a lingerie shop recently (several months ago), and the incident regarding some deputy that somehow was found dead inside a trash can, but that was a long time ago. According to the mall website, it doesn't SEEM like a terrible place. Seems empty? Sure. Plenty of Class "B" stores? Yup. It still has lots of other stores, and reminds me of Northwest Plaza...a large mall in St. Louis that became soon cavernously empty due to crime. However, it seems like this is Northwest Plaza before its place today. It still has Sbarro, Tilt, Brother's Pizza, Quizno's, and New York and Company. Tell me more crime stories.

I named it Shady Acres Mall. I feel really bad for Greenspoint...if I could afford it, I would fix it up and rename it something like "Airport Place Mall". It needs a Fry's Electronics. That would be fun...

HEB won't reopen? Dang...that's the only H-E-B Pantry I know of. H-E-B Pantry and that Dillard's from MotM are both gutless cowards indeed.

I dunno...one post? Sounds pretty suspicious to me.

Holy crap! Where did you find that? I'm pretty sure the Orange Julius is now the other entrance to American Eagle, but a look at my own picture vs. the current mall directory, the entrance to the restrooms changed. Let's see, the Orange Julius was basically gutted between American Eagle Outfitters and the restroom entrance, and Pepe's and Ken Martin's combined into the current Taste of the Tropics space. Or something like that if you went to the same space today, you would only Taste of the Tropics, American Eagle, and the restroom entrance. Although I'm sad that such places no longer exist in the mall today and today's food court spaces totally suck... ...for today, you are my hero. Thank you.

First of all, I probably should've mentioned its in a disintegrating (may be improving, based on renovations to locales) subdivision in Waco, not a stately old Houston neighborhood. The house was two stories but I'm not sure about the wall strength and the fact if the "pier and beams" did not extend into the actual house itself. It was sunken concrete beams with a two-feet tall crawl space and a normal house built on top of it. The hardwood floors are damaged in some parts (a three-inch sinking in a bedroom caused by continuous leaks) and thanks to a honeybee infestation in the 1960s, possibly some honey in the parts where the sun doesn't shine. And did I mention the tilt? The enclosed porches are made of cheap metal siding and the garage leaks. There's a small creek in the backyard with a questionable-quality boardwalk. When we visited, my grandfather was a widowed man who was in his late 70s or early 1980s (depending what year we're talking about). The house wasn't well-maintained. It was my grandfather on my father's side that was the master remodeling man (he had several blue-collar, skilled-work jobs throughout his life). However, he lived in Florida and only saw my other grandfather twice. My grandfather that owned the house did sell the house in 2002 and moved to a newer, much smaller home in Hewitt. There, thanks to his refusal to give up the musty furniture, his small black dog, and his general habits ended up trashing the other house, too. Anyway, the new owners improved the outside: hacked down a ugly/pleasant shrub (depends how you look at it) near the end of the driveway, hacked back trees to reveal a more complete birdbath, and replaced the shutters. Inside renovations are unknown, nor the fate of the abandoned boat house and other outbuildings. Maybe if I owned it, and had some skill, not an obligation to high school, and a lot of money, I could've turned it from the rather non-descript brick building to an entirely new building...something kind of fancy, I guess. We can always dream, though...

Is this really the place to discuss your dinner theater/dance room idea? Yeah, I do have a neat idea for a pirate-themed dinner theater (with real water), but I'm not going to discuss it in a thread like this...

Oh no, those things are awful. My late grandfather owned a pier and beam house with the wooden posts sunken into the ground, and the house was ever so tilted. I don't think it had centralized AC, and despite being "remodeled" in the 1970s (read: enclosed patio, dark brown everything, green shag carpeting) it also had woefully outdated power plugs and questionable water pipe status. I would guess it never had plaster, since it was a farm house long ago.

That should be http://www.b4-u-eat.com/ Rotating skyscrapers are one of those "future concepts" that were made in the 1950s and such. Some of them were neat ideas, but some (like this) seem horrifically impractical...

It was in Sunday's paper and mentioned about 50 buildings (they didn't mention that cool Empire State Building-esque one near Westheimer though). I thought it was cool. You?

Was the food court around before the big renovation? What was it back then? Any pictures of ANYTHING pre-remodel?

Wrong. The Wards at Crossroads of San Antonio was partially demolished to make way for a brand-new SuperTarget, and the old Wards is actually a conference center now.

I think it would be cooler, though, if it was restored, to be a new concept by Sears, actually reintroducing the old dept. store feel. It's not gonna happen, though.

But that's not in Houston....

How shockingly modest. There's also an old Art Deco Sears in California near Santa Monica Place (http://www.labelscar.com/california/santa-monica-place). Even if the Art Deco is restored, it's still going to be the same old Sears inside...Craftsman tools, a large apparel section, jewelry, etc. What did Sears have in the "olde days" that it does not have now?

Rain. No school.

That's terrible. Hopefully they can rebuild. I imagine the Target/Home Depot (old Galvez Mall) probably was flooded/damaged as well.

I visited the Island about three weeks before the storm...took pictures of the HEB Pantry and all that. My family is considering going back over...how did the Elissa, the Peanut Butter Warehouse, the oil rig museum, the sunken metal tanker, the Train Museum, and the Pier all fare?

I'm sorry, but I hold true to the argument that the people they interview are idiots. They're like "well, I lived here for 60 years and something never happened like this", not taking into account that there have been major hurricanes every half decades or so. I can go on and on, but I give no sympathy to the fools that stayed.

I kind of like old Targets ...any pictures?

I agree. The Mall of the Mainland is a dump, and I can see why Dillard's wants out (they are closing a few other underperformers this year, including one in Nevada and Florida) but the hurricane is a big excuse. I don't think its floods, I think they mean roof damage.

I was in Galveston a month ago...there was a tower (hotel? condo?) going up, and I saw it was supported by HUGE concrete pillars in the center.

Nah...furries often have less/tighter clothing, I think. I wonder if Bear-Man is a HAIF member...and which one?!

We in CS got no winds over 40MPH and had power the entire time. What a disappointment... Is this thread going to disappear forever once Ike is gone completely? Say it isn't so!