IronTiger

At their peak, Kettle was massive, they had dozens of stores in the Houston area and hundreds more stretching out from Arizona to Tennessee. The late 2000s and early 2010s really did a number on the two dozen they had left, and the last one in Houston closed in 2011 (at the northeast corner of JFK and Beltway 8, now known as Hot Biscuit). The Laredo and Tuscon, AZ stores are all semi-independent franchisees that disconnected, but the Bryan and College Station ones had common ownership. Bryan's Kettle was not Kettle originally (it was a Denny's until the 1980s), and unfortunately, it's not open 24 hours anymore (COVID ended that). The menu between the Bryan and College Station locations was the same but I've heard the College Station one had better pancakes.

On 10/30/2020 at 2:35 PM, Texasota said:

Those corner-cut slip lanes are inherently bad for pedestrians, exactly because they add unnecessary crossings and cars have little reason to slow down (or stop) through them.

 

If we're trying to fix the intersection with minimal changes, then I would actually argue for filling in the slip lane. Pedestrian safety should be the primary consideration, as un-American as that may sound.

Enh, I think that the "slip lanes are bad" rhetoric comes from the same "transit blogs" that hate private automobiles and work everything around that theory, even skewing data they don't like to promote their opinions. One thing to note about "pedestrian safety" in their world is that bicycles are never seen as a threat to pedestrians, despite the fact that a fast-moving road bicycle with considerable mass could injure someone, yet the only people who advocate for bicycle speed limits are governments with a seeming contempt for actual citizens, like Toronto.

Besides, corner-cut slip lanes eliminate the idea that a car could not see a pedestrian waiting at the corner and cut them off in a right turn.

I didn't draw in pedestrian crosswalks in my little mockup, the idea was to "improve the intersection without completely throwing it out". If such an idea was under consideration, it would have some sort of additional crossings for the corner cut there.

On 10/28/2020 at 10:09 PM, JBTX said:

@IronTiger the current intersection is absolute cancer. You current have a 4-way intersection which, because of the 45 degree angle of the Navigation bend and Jensen, ends up actually being an 8-signal intersection as the left turns aren't properly aligned, so they have their own sequence. Add in the stoplight on the Navigation to Navigation right turn, and you technically have a 9-sequence light for a four-way intersection. It's also important to note that the amount of traffic going from Runnels to Navigation or Jensen is usually 1-3 cars, per cycle, max. The traffic from that side is negligible, but they have their own part of the cycle.

 

Unless you can realign the interesetion into a grid (which you can't), the *only* way to improve it is to add a continuous flow roundabout. I don't care if it's only one lane, anything that keeps this from being a 5 minute light is function over form. Especially when you add in a new 400 unit apartment complex right at the intersection.

Part of the problem with the existing intersection is I see is the insistence that eastbound Navigation has to have two lanes going continuous to the southbound part (requiring an additional light), which the roundabout would get rid of anyway. So if that were the case, I present to you a cost-effective alternative, for your consideration.

http://www.carbon-izer.com/files/haif/jnavi-1.png

Simplifying the roundabout to one lane may help drivers but I'm not sure if it helps traffic. Two lane roundabouts DO exist in Houston (ex. Washington and Westcott, which is a good example since it also includes of a single road going from north/south to west/east) but every time I see one of the "two lanes narrowed into one" design, it tends to affirm my belief that traffic circles are just form-over-function novelties.

9 hours ago, zaphod said:

Who knows.

 

The idea of building a lot of small units gave me the idea that they could turn it into a dorm for the homeless. They'd have an efficiency unit and there would be onsite security guards. Eligibility would be based on history of involuntary institutionalization, substance abuse, etc. Get them off the street, that would go way further in de-trashing that area than anything else proposed thusfar.

Problem with that if you block the druggies/alcoholics/the ones most likely to trash the place and start fires, those are the ones that stay on the street, furthermore it would just be a way to spend the night, while the day is spent panhandling (unless they are denied doing so, in which case it becomes a de facto jail). That's not to say that the homeless should get nothing, but building housing for the homeless is, at best, more complicated than it seems, and at worse, will just make the problem worse at the taxpayers' dime.

On 7/15/2020 at 4:40 PM, webmeist said:

I just wondered if anybody could answer this if they happen to see it. When I was young my dad used to go to Texas A&M grad school but at the school in San Antonio. I think it was when we moved out of Texas up to Pennsylvania, but we stopped to get his transcripts up there in college station. This was early 70s like 74? And we stopped In a Burger joint it must’ve been on or near the campus. But The snack shop or whatever it was seemed to be inside another building like I just assumed at that time I was young so I didn’t really know anything about colleges, I was probably 13, it seemed like it was kind of an official college building or some office building or something and you walked in an entrance off of the sidewalk outside and then you walked into the building and there was another entrance in there for the burger joint inside to the right kind of. The reason this always struck me was it was really just one of those experiences that you have when you were Young like being in a new kind of college environment for me because while in there having our food, there was just all the cool college experience, and I specifically remember Rod Stewart Maggie May, and you’re so vain by Carly Simon playing on the jukebox there, or it could’ve even been a college radio station. But it was just the coolest time I always remembered back on it and I always wondered where it was. I was in Bryan today and College Station and I drove around a little bit but I thought there’s no way I’ll ever find it. Anybody who might have an idea where a place like that was in the early 70s I’d appreciate it. 💚

In the days since creating this topic, I have an entire blog about the city and everything in it, and more than half of that is restaurants (pretty much everything on this page has been covered). The way you're describing the place is either (what is now) Grill at the Pavilion, which still exists (the chairs face toward the hallway) but I don't think the Pavilion was like that in the 1970s (I think it was rebuilt wasn't rebuilt as actual office space until the 1980s). It sounds more like the MSC, which had cafeterias and other small restaurants inside of it.

On 6/25/2020 at 5:10 PM, Houston19514 said:

 

Exactly.  Different elements of what are now the same company have tried and failed.

 

Safeway.  Failed

Albertson's. Failed (very quickly)

Randall's.  Failing

Different companies (at the time) and different reasons.

Safeway (original Houston) division failed because due to Safeway assuming lots of debt due to getting bought by KKR to "save" them from corporate raiders, and that meant a lot of divisions had to go, including the entire Southern California division (where Safeway had done quite well) to Vons. The "new" AppleTree chain in Houston failed because it had lots of debt and old stores, whereas Randalls and even Fiesta were zooming ahead with larger and nicer stores and getting attacked by newcomers Food Lion and HEB Pantry at the low-end.

Albertsons (original) division failed because Randalls and Kroger already had lots of stores, and it would've taken a big investment just to get a fraction of the market share. (That and Albertsons had a lot of bad location planning). The company had also assumed a lot of debt through buying American Stores in 1999 and decided that trying to get Houston wasn't worth the effort.

Randalls had been run into the ground by Safeway's leadership from the 1990s and a failure to effectively compete (including on price, selection, larger stores, etc.) and even after Albertsons' purchase of Randalls, the division was in bad shape (and again, struggling with debt), so it's dying on the vine.

20 hours ago, sinister1 said:

That's awesome IronTiger, do you recall what paper? Was it the Houston Press, Post or Chronicle?

Houston Chronicle. They've got the whole thing digitized these days, so searching for many things is much easier.

According to the paper, it opened in November 1967 as "Orlando's Lucky 7" (Lucky 7 being a grocer franchisee at the time, much like Minimax).

So I guess the rest of the rail spur is history?

On 1/31/2020 at 1:56 PM, handcrew said:

Hey IronTiger, thanks for posting the 1989 ad from the newspaper.  I am on the hunt for Houston newspaper movie ads from the 1960s-1980s (grew up and lived in Houston from 1971-1989).  Where did you find this?

Found 'em from newspaper microfilm. Luckily, the Houston Chronicle (but not the Post, sadly) has been fully digitized (ads and all) on the Houston Library website, all you need is a Houston library card.

On 12/18/2019 at 12:50 PM, Reefmonkey said:

Ah, Dumpling King, when I first moved back to Houston from college in '98, I lived on Westheimer at Fondren, picked up takeout from Dumpling King all the time, I probably had everything on their menu. Can't believe it's now been 20 years (moved downtown in January 2000) since I ate there. Glad to hear they're still around.

It's been there longer than that...records indicate it's been there since at least 1990.

49 minutes ago, ljchou said:

My house was built in 1930 (East End/Second Ward) and I'm trying to find historic photos of either the home or the close-by neighborhood. Could anyone help direct me where to look?

If I recall, the "1930" date used by HCAD isn't necessarily accurate because of lost/missing records in those days.

Discovery Channel Stores were neat, I remember visiting one in New Jersey when the chain was winding down business. My father bought a clock that projected the time on the ceiling (still in use in his bedroom) while I got a novelty inflatable tongue (which sadly didn't last).

On 1/17/2011 at 7:15 PM, FIREhat said:

Woodway Square is still open in truncated form.

None of the original Woodway Square buildings remain today. The fire destroyed a third of the apartments, and even by 1989 a new office building had been built on Woodway on the northeast side. In the early 1990s, the rest of the complex was redeveloped, except for a separate section that had been sold off as a new property (on the San Felipe side, my records say it was called "Woodway on San Felipe Apts."). The last of these were torn down in early 2004.

I searched for the Jack in the Box in my "defunct restaurants" list, it wasn't there because it was rebuilt on the same site at one time. The fried chicken place is now a taqueria, and that other building between the fried chicken restaurant and the liquor store (notice it still has the same facade) was torn down prior to 1978.

On 7/3/2019 at 8:14 AM, Subdude said:

Nice pictures!  Can anyone identify the street with the accident in front of Jack-in-the-Box?

 

Unless the lens is extraordinarily screwed up, the intersection isn't perpendicular. The other road is wide, accommodating three lanes on each side, which eliminates a lot of options. There's also a movie theater in the background.

I was always a bit fascinated with the Katy line, and until relatively recently, there was a user, @Purpledevil, who swapped stories about living in the Heights and many of his posts dealt with the Katy railroad, including some of the crossings (mostly crossbucks on a few crossings, but one had a big, overbuilt crossing with lights everywhere and gates, I think Houston Avenue). When I was living in Houston, I crossed the MKT trail near work (along Spring Street, with inconsiderate bicyclists) or if I was going to Walmart, on Yale (great ice cream nearby). Sadly, during that time, I was unable to contact Purpledevil despite being in the very areas we had discussed previously.

3 hours ago, plumber2 said:

Of course this railroad line had long been removed through the neighborhood by then, it's just that the city didn't care to remove the tracks in the pavement at this location where it crossed Westheimer. Sure they paved over it, and built curbs, sidewalks and such, but they left the rails embedded in the street for decades, causing it to be a bone rattler like so many other poorly maintained crossings back then.

This was also true for the line that went down Greenbriar to Rice University (which curiously does not show up on the attached map). That long abandoned line had rails in the cross street intersections way up in into the 1980's.

There's probably still lots of remnants though, even over houses. A long-abandoned (from the 1960s) right of way near my parents house has had a road built over it for the last 15 years (and it was properly engineered to the point where it never needed to be resurfaced completely), but when expanding it, they dug up old ties and even a few spikes. Who knows how much has resurfaced when the original houses near the right of way were torn out for new buildings? They might have even had rails!

7 hours ago, Grungy said:

The June 1983 covers are by Norman Baxter.
I have copies. I'm making high-resolution scans.
Still trying to contact Barry Moore to see if he drew any after Norman stopped.
Since Southwestern Bell was swallowed by AT&T, and this was over 30 years ago, is the copyright still in effect?
I'd like to make the scans available, so that others can enjoy them, but do not want to violate copyright.

The yellow pages (without the covers, as it's only microfilm) are at the downtown Houston library, so I don't think it would violate copyright. Modern AT&T cares about copyright (certainly the Warner Media division), but I don't think old yellow pages will cause any problems.

3 minutes ago, cspwal said:

I just stumbled across a House of Pies on 45 south

https://www.google.com/maps/place/House+of+Pies/@29.6146063,-95.2187061,18.08z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x864099e7aefef195:0x34f8715554b01f0!8m2!3d29.6147289!4d-95.2183624

 

I thought the only two left were on Westheimer?  Is this one part of the remaining chain, or is it a separate former franchise?

It used to be part of a larger chain but they started expanding locally in the last few years. For example, a location opened in The Woodlands in a former Black Eyed Pea.

By the way, in terms of Wienerschnitzel, there is a separate topic:

I was rewatching some E3 trailers, and I noticed around 1:09 in the new Microsoft Flight Simulator trailer, you can actually see Minute Maid Park and the convention center. It appears only around a second, but it's definitely Houston.

18 hours ago, CaptainJilliams said:

 

 

And I acknowledge we need more affordable housing/shelters and mental health facilities to assist these people. My question is what part of town could have these facilities and not receive major pushback from nearby residents?

The problem with homeless care is the chance for actually incentivizing homelessness. San Francisco screwed itself over on homelessness by actually having stipends for the homeless for years (even now they're guaranteed a small cash grant monthly, from what I've heard) and other homelessness initiatives to the point where tents are now crowding out sidewalks and the amount of human fecal matter is 10 times more than New York and 21 times than Chicago [https://www.realtyhop.com/blog/doo-doo-the-new-urban-crisis/#figure1], and the "poop maps" are used as political ammunition. 

12 hours ago, JLWM8609 said:

This schematic shows the railroad crossings remaining as-is under the freeway, but that can always change.

http://ftp.dot.state.tx.us/pub/txdot/get-involved/hou/sh35-i610/040618-schematic2.pdf

Ooh, that's not good. Some remarks that come to mind:

- The light rail yard essentially forces a right-turn-only out to the southbound frontage road rather than do something sensible like connecting it to Mykawa. 

- The highway would reduce visibility for the troubling railroad crossings and make it difficult to revamp the crossing.

- The rerouting of Wayside south of 610 means that the rest of South Wayside's extension down to Beltway 8 will never happen.