Poppahop

Thanks JHC. Yeah, after you clarified the location of the Weingarten's I figured it must now be the Sellers Brothers store. That one is several notches above the Davis Food City that closed. There's a Spec's next door to the Sellers Brothers, and a dollar store, and a Burke's Outlet in the strip. There's a Shipley's down there still near the strip mall and a funny little restaurant run by a Korean family that can deep-fry the hell out of anything you want two different ways. (London-style or Cajun.) It's really good, but every meal you eat there probably takes 12 hours off your life. Further south, closer to Shearn, there's a Vietnamese-run "You-buy, we-fry" seafood store that is said to be very good. I've only bought raw seafood there, and it was good. Bleak as my portrait was, I meant to leave you feeling somewhat encouraged. Things have turned around a lot in just the 15 months I have lived near there. What's more, the difference between now and 10 years ago is huge. That little pocket of ghetto is getting smaller every month. Cruddy apartments are being replaced by nicer townhouses, and there's even a Catholic Montessori school back there now too. Farther south, there's a huge Jewish school (the Weiner School) and some of the ball fields for the newly merged West U and Brays Bayou little leagues. Yes, it's still kinda sketchy around Bellfort, but again, nothing like it was five or ten years ago.

People from those neighborhoods rarely go to the Galleria. In the nine years I most recently lived in the Museum District, I went to the Galleria maybe twice, both times mainly just to take a walk. Just about everybody I am friends with feels the same. There's no real need to go there. As for the shootings, wherever there are drunks plus guns, that's gonna happen. DT is not Dodge City by any means, it's just that every shooting down there gets tons of attention. I am sure that the Club Next incident was not the only incident in H-Town that night.

I live between Brays Bayou and Bellaire a mile or so up Stella Link from Shearn. There are still some rotten apartment complexes east of Stella Link, although they are relatively small and it does seem to be getting better slowly but surely. There have been a few shootings there the last couple of years -- I often see the 3800-4000 blocks of O'Meara (and adjacent cross streets) in crime reports. (The most recent one was back in January -- a Saints fan and a Bears supporter got into it over a playoff game and shot each other dead.) I have also been propositioned by skanky ladies of the night at what probably used to be the U-Tote-Em of your youth. Just inside the loop, the hyper-ghettodelic Davis Food City supermarket (maybe the old Weingarten's) just went out of business. You couldn't even take shopping carts in and out of the shopping area there -- they had turnstiles before you got to the food. I am assuming it closed for lack of clientele, so that is probably a good sign. The crumminess of Shearn is holding the property values down for now. If they can turn the school situation around, there's no real reason that neighborhood would not take off, almost to the extent of Braes Heights and Ayrshire.

Does Radar set off anyone's Gaydar?

My wife is English, and she thinks all pledges are silly at best, dangerous indoctrination at worst. I think she's right. On the other hand, she's an atheist and yet she had no problem with praying and singing hymns in school. (Most schools in England are affiliated with the Church of England.) I agree with her about the pledges but disagree about the prayers and hymns. If you want your kids to pray in school, send them to a religious school. Also, I was talking to a woman from the ex-Soviet Union a while back, and she said they used to pledge allegiance to Lenin every morning at school. Pledges of allegiance seem to be more in line with Communism than freedom when you think about it.

The Malibu where the murders took place was on 59. I remember it very well. It stayed open for years after that -- they might have changed the name, but it was still a go-kart place when I was in high school in the mid '80s.

Roznofsky's moved to W. 34th and TC Jester. Also, someone upthread mentioned Bellaire Broiler Burger. It's still there where it always was.

You can get po' boys like Antone's in New Orleans too, and that cold-cut/french bread sandwich is available under other names all over America. What about the Vietnamese po' boy as a Houston icon? As for kolaches, you can get them in Prague, and I bet wherever Czechs have settled in America too. And even in Texas, the best ones are in places like Halletsville, Brenham and Colombus. Seems like you should have the best of something if you want to be the capital of it.

Randall's has hands-down the worst instore piped-in music of any of the chains here. They are still playing Muzak.

Hawks do eat the parakeets here, but I've yet to see a cat catch one.

AS a kid I lived on Insititute Lane, which is a block east of Mandell on Bissonnet. It's half of a two-block 1920s subdivision called Jandor Gardens. Anyway, peacocks used to roam around there in the early and mid-70s. A few years ago I spotted a guinea hen foraging around on Taft Street near that gated old community with all the mansions...Can't think of the name of it right now.

The Brays Bayou parakeets nest about two hundred yards from my house, in the power lines that run parallel to the Union Pacific tracks just south of Bellaire Blvd. One tower has about four huge nests on it, each of which is home to 5-10 of the birds They come in our yard every day. Yes, they are very noisy, but not quite as annoying as blue jays.

Was it the Rising Star?

The chapter about that area in Sig Byrd's Houston is called Pearl Harbor, no "little."

Vertigo, you just live in terror, don't you?

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/2007/0..._song_about.php If you're gonna make a Yacht Rock song, it's best not to set that yacht on the Ship Channel

In 1973, there were four Hamburger By Gourmet restaurants: 2910 Hillcroft 5712 Kirby 1011 Milam 3802 Yoakum I think the Yoakum one turned into a Luke's for a while.

I don't have a pic or anything, but the Gallant Knight was demolished this morning. I saw it on the way to work.

Guy and Townes did play there but it was before my time. It was located near where El Pueblito and the Menil annex is today. It might even have been one of those places.

There's another in the strip mall on Bellaire that is also home to IW Marks

I read in the Village News that it will be reopening on Morningside.

How many of these claims amount to squat to someone living here? I'll go through them one by one: "Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States

A walk down the length of Westheimer http://www.houstonpress.com/Issues/2006-10...ws/feature.html

Las Cazuelas was still open in the '80s -- I used to take dates there in high school. I remember once taking an eighth grade girl there when I was a freshman, and they served us all the Margaritas we could handle. My mom was there in the '60s one time and she ordered a plate of nachos. She didn't order the huge cockroach that was on the plate, though, so she took them back to the cook. The cook grabbed the plate from her, snatched the roach and threw it in the trash, handed the plate back to mom, and went on with his business.

Those scary stories might have been Mystery Theater, hosted by EG Marshall. They were still making these from 1974 to 1982