mkultra25

Not sure about Indy, but there were lots of tracks around the country made of wood at one time. The first board track opened in 1910 (the first Indy 500 was in 1911). Board track racing

Oh yeah, the late, lamented Caribana. It almost seems unreal now to think that at one time there was a reggae club smack dab in the middle of Rice Boulevard. Before Texas outlawed multiple-drink specials, they had insanely popular happy hours at which 3-for-1 well drinks were the order of the day, for the ridiculously low price of $2.50. If you were an impoverished college student, you could head down there with five bucks in your pocket on Friday afternoon, and get hammered in no time. Another punk club to add to the list: the Consolidated Arts Warehouse, which stood where Chelsea Market is now on Montrose at 59. As its name suggests, it wasn't exclusively a music venue, but they hosted some great shows before the building burned down in, I think, 1983 or 1984 under vaguely suspicious circumstances. Within sight of it, under the lengthy portion of 59 that used to be elevated, was one of the more memorable pieces of Houston public art, Paul Kittleson's life-sized stegosaurus made of foam, rubber, and various other found materials. It lasted a while longer than the Warehouse, but I can't remember what happened to it, other than it was eventually removed from the site.

The Island (aka Rock Island)? That was THE place for punk in Houston back in the day. I was trying to find a photo of it online, but struck out just now with Google.

I believe that would be La Tour d'Argent. The Rainbow Lodge moved to the same location.

No one except true gearheads will ever claim that the GUMBALL RALLY is great art, but I love it. I saw it in first run at the Northline General Cinema as a kid, and thought that it was one of the greatest movies I'd ever seen. It's available on a nice widescreen DVD now, and before that, I had the earlier laserdisc and rewatched it at least once a year. There's no way anyone would make a movie now and drive those cars as hard as they did in GUMBALL RALLY - back when it was made, Cobras were just old race cars that you could still pick up for a few thousand dollars. Now they're half-million-dollar collector's items. BTW, you may have already run across it before, but if not, Brock Yates' book "Cannonball" is a great read chronicling all of the various real-life Cannonball races that the various movies were loosely based on, of which GUMBALL was the first and best. "The first-a rule of Italian driving: whatsa behind me is not important."

For those who either don't have a vinyl rig, or don't have the LPs, Collector's Choice Music recently reissued Fever Tree's first two LPs on a single CD. Their website appears to be having issues right now, but it's available from other vendors as well. Fever Tree/Another Time, Another Place CD

I think you're confusing two different places here - the building that housed Hamburgers by Gourmet on Alabama (at Yoakum, I believe) is long gone; the barrel-shaped burger joint is Lucky Burger, on Richmond at Mandell, and it is indeed still in business. I used to eat at the Alabama HBG regularly, as I lived only a few blocks away from it for most of the 80s. Wish they were still around.

The old General Cinema theme! If ever there were a piece of music permanently imprinted on my brain, that's it. I spent many happy hours in the Northline General Cinema (recently razed after having been closed for many years) when I was a kid, starting from the very first movie I ever saw there at the ripe old age of 4, ICE STATION ZEBRA. General Cinema had several theaters in Houston over the years - off the top of my head, the Meyerland, Gulfgate, and Northline ones, then later the Galleria ones inside the mall. I'm sure there were others, but I don't have a list at hand right now. Long after the original Meyerland GC closed, the new one was built. It was the last GC theater in Houston, and changed ownership several more times before finally closing to make room for the center's further expansion a few years ago. It wasn't as popular as some other multiplexes because it didn't have stadium seating, but it had a tremendous sound system and the projection was always perfect. When it closed, I drove over there to take some pictures of the marquee and the building, only to be spotted by a roving security guard and asked to leave the property.

The Galveston facility was larger, and was one of Todd's main facilities, but there was a separate, smaller facility in Houston. My uncle worked there for years. There's a good history of the company here, a list of all the ships constructed at the Houston facility post-WW2 here, and an entry here indicating that the assets of the Houston shipyard were sold by Todd in 1987.

There's also the Houston Zen Center on Heights Boulevard - the links section of their website has a list of other Houston-based Buddhist and Zen sites.

Never been to the brunch, but we ate there for the first time a couple of weeks ago and liked it. It's run by the same people who are involved with Hungry International on Rice Blvd., so if you're familiar with Hungry's, the menu at Chatter's is very similar.

I was at Half Price Books a couple of days ago, and spotted a couple of photos above and to the right of the front door I'd never noticed before. They're two panoramic "then-and-now" photos of the intersection of Westheimer and Yoakum taken from the same angle, the earlier one from the 1930s depicting an automobile dealer and a gas station, and the later one from 1983 depicting the Tower Theater and the Boobie Rock in those same locations. I hadn't thought about the Boobie Rock in years, and here it pops up twice in the same week.

I was driving down Washington while running errands this afternoon, and noticed someone changing the letters on the sign in the Pig Stand's parking lot. When I was headed home an hour or so later, it now read "Employees Fundraiser Tomorrow". No further details, and by that time the guy who'd been changing the letters was gone, or I'd have stopped to ask him about it.

Wasn't intending to suggest anyone didn't know which theater was being discussed, just posted the link for anyone who may not have been aware of the Pasadena Capitan's more famous Hollywood namesake. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Plus, they're two different theaters. The El Capitan is in Hollywood and is owned by Disney: El Capitan

Ducho's has only been closed since February 2003 - the last year or so they were open, the expense of running the restaurant was apparently getting out of hand compared to the business they were doing, so Mr. Ducho decided to retire. The building was sold to some folks that converted it into a church. Ducho's used to front right onto N. Shepherd, at Heidrich St., but at some point in the past they relocated to the building behind the one that currently faces Shepherd. This is why their large neon sign was right at Shepherd and Heidrich - it used to be in the parking lot of the original location. You may have been remembering the original location when you thought they were gone, but I thought the move happened longer than 10 years ago. I really miss Ducho's - I used to go there with my parents when I was a kid, and many years later I rediscovered it after a very long absence. For the next couple of years until it closed, my wife and I ate there semi-regularly, and even reintroduced my parents to it as well. Can't begrudge Mr. Ducho's decision to close, though; he had a great run for 38 years, and I have to admit that in the restaurant's twilight days I rarely saw anything like the crowds I remember packed in there in the late 60s/early 70s - more often it would be just us and maybe a couple of other tables of diners. Interesting trivia: "Ducho" is pronounced "DOO-ho", with a silent "c". Wonder how many people have pronounced it "DOO-cho" or "DUTCH-oh" over the years?

Theaters make almost all of their money from concessions. Typically, the percentage of the box office that they get to keep vs. what's handed over to the studio is calculated on a sliding scale that's heavily weighted toward the studio in the first week of release. For example, in that first week the studio may get 90% of the box office take, and the theater 10%, then in the second week the ratio is adjusted to 80/20, and so on. In the modern era where everything is focused on a big opening weekend rather than a slow, word-of-mouth buildup over several months, this system is artificially skewed toward the studios at the expense of the theaters. It's one of the key reasons the exhibition industry is in trouble (almost every major chain has entered bankruptcy over the past ten years). This is how it works for big Hollywood films and the large theater chains, at any rate - there may be some variance when it comes to indy films and Landmark, but the bottom line is that theaters are typically operating on very thin margins to begin with. My guess is it would not take very much of a rent hike on Weingarten's part to render the RO economically unfeasible. And I agree with the previously-posted sentiments that they'll just gaze skyward and intone the mantra of the hardcore free-marketeers, that the theater's demise is regrettable but it was simply the will of "the market". And another irreplaceable local institution will vanish, thanks to a hard blow from Adam Smith's invisible hand.

Piccadilly isn't completely defunct, although they have closed some locations - the Northwest Mall location is closed, but the one at Northline is still open and seems to do quite a bit of business. There used to be a Furr's in Deauville Plaza (I-45 and Dyna), but I'm not sure if they're still open. I still can't get over the closure of Luby's #1 on Buffalo Speedway - given their location, I can't believe they weren't doing well. It used to be a regular stop for us when we lived a few blocks away from it. Some things are better and some are worse since Pappas acquired Luby's, but on the whole I think I preferred the old Luby's.

Very much alive, healthy and active. He's in his early 80s and still lives in Hidden Valley. My dad talks to him fairly regularly as they've both served for years in the neighborhood civic club.

Whoops, I need to read for content more carefully - I glossed over your mention of the Kroger when I posted my earlier question about Piggly Wiggly being the first supermarket in the area. Now that you mention it, I do recall the Kroger and the Piggly Wiggly coexisting at the same time, but my memory's obviously a bit fuzzy as I was only two years old when the Kroger was built. Where was the Lucky 7? The only one in the area I can think of was on Airline at Carby Rd - it's now the Airline Grocery, and you can barely make out what remains of the old Lucky 7 sign. My aunt used to live right down the street from there, on Carby Rd - she owned a nice-sized chunk of land there, some of which she eventually sold to the people who started the trailer park that's still there.

My parents live in the section yet to be constructed in the photo, west of Sunnywood and north of Hidden Valley Drive. I remember that Texaco station well. Mr. Futrell, the owner, lived a few houses down the street from us when I was growing up. Also spent a lot of time in the stores in the Hidden Valley Shopping Center as a kid. The Dugan's Drugs had a great lunch counter with a grill and soda fountain. Wasn't Piggly Wiggly the first supermarket to be built in that area? The closest one I can remember before that was an A&P in Northtown Plaza at 45 and Tidwell. It's pretty rare to run across anyone who even knows where Hidden Valley is, let alone anything about the history of the area. If you're doing a history of the Mustangs, have you talked to W. W. Thorne himself? He'd probably be interested in something like this, and was certainly "present at the creation", as it were, of a lot of the things under discussion in this thread.

That is an amazing photo - I grew up right in the middle of it as well, in Hidden Valley, and my parents still live there. I assume that's Hidden Valley Drive along the north boundary of that first group of houses built in the neighborhood (dead-ending into US 75 as it heads east), and Sunnywood heading north from there parallel to 75 before crossing what would be SH 249. When I tell people that are more recent arrivals to that area that it used to be practically out in the country, they find it hard to believe given the massive development that's taken place since then. Unfortunately, flood control improvements haven't kept pace with development, which is why you can count on seeing a shot of the intersection of 249 and 45 under several feet of water on the evening news every time there's significant rainfall in the area.

It's not. It's a replica that was built to look like the original marquee. I couldn't find a picture of it online anywhere, but if you compare it with a picture of the original marquee, it's fairly obvious that the proportions and some of the details are different. I believe that there was originally some talk of using of the original marquee when the Village Arcade was being planned, but for whatever reason (previously undetected structural problems due to its age?), it never happened.

FWIW, Weingarten's website lists Brook's email address as bwootton@weingarten.com - my guess is that ir@weingarten.com was a generic investor relations address that may be out of date if it's bouncing.