TexasVines

I grew up less than 2 blocks from there on the same street many of our former neighbors still live there there are some other unique houses on that block as well those were the greatest times ever!

does sketti warehouse still have the large welded metal piece by the door where you take a pinball and put it in the top and it goes through a series of tracks and loops ect and ends up back down at the bottom?

are you going in to kill 4 years until the economy improves or to change careers? Marines = the hardest Army = they still march around places and sleep in tents Navy = no one marches around a boat (but they do scrape rust) and at least you get to sleep "indoors" Air Force = no one marches around a plane and they fly to places fast if you want a career change go in the Navy and go into IT or nuclear propulsion (the nuclear job market is about to explode and south Texas is looking to build two more so you could get a job right close to home)......the problem with nuclear is that big ships go NO WHERE......you can not send a 5,000 person carrier (much less the group) into some small Italian port without people thinking the USA has invaded........they send the SMALL oil burners to places like that......the guys on the SMALL oil burners are the ones that get to see all the coolest places because the USA does not like to burn the fuel and a small ship does not take over a town when they pull in nuclear subs go NOWHERE.....so if you are looking at getting on a boomer and thinking about seeing the world.......your world needs to consist of home port and UNDER THE OCEAN.......those are the ONLY places that boomers go no matter what anyone else tells you.......so at least get on a surface nuclear ship......if no nuclear go into IT or fire systems control and get on a SMALL boat you really should look at the Coast Guard if you are looking to kill 4 years

if I was you I would totally skip going to school at UNT....I would go to just about any other university in Texas over UNT....and I have been a student at 4 state universities in Texas including UNt and 3 community colleges and worked for yeat another state university UNT talks a good game and fails to deliver on ANY of it unless you are a mucis major....when I was a student at UNT even the art students made fun of their art programs....the advertising art program they all called "fake advertising"....you would be better served going right out there and going to work especially in any type of arts program and especially from UNT...their arts do have a decent computer lab, but that is about it Lewisville is a LONG way to Denton especially in the I-35 traffic which can be 24 hours a day sometimes and because of spans like the Lewisville bridge that don't have feeder roads if there is a wreck (there area lot at all hours of the day and night) then traffic will just come to a stand still.....when I went to UNT I worked for a while off of Trinity Mills and gas was cheaper then and I drive like a bat out of hell and it was still 45 minutes to get to work.....parking at UNt is horrid and probably worse than even some of bad universities for parking in Texas.....you will be parking in BFE and you will be taking a bus a LOT....unfortunately UNt runs a horrid shuttle bus system as well and you will be parking out by the football field which is on 100% the opposite side of the art buildings....there is parking right near the art building....but unless you show up 10-12 minutes after classes let out (which is eother 48 to 50 minutes before yours starts or 10 or 12 minutes after it starts) and stalk someone you will NEVER get one of those spaces....you would be better off paying to park behind Rip Rocks UNT is currently trying to move some of their arts programs to the UCD in downtown dallas....but like many things UNT does they are not doing a good job at it...so be careful you don't start in a program that then moves to another location calling yourself a "young urban professional"....you will hate Lewisville....Denton and UNT have a pretty poor night life for a university of 30,000+ students....but it surely beats Lewisville in short you will have a LONG commute often in traffic often both ways you will miss classes and be late to classes because of it, you will burn a ton of gas, and I don't think you will find any benefit to going to UNT unless you want a masters to teach in a HS or a community college no real photography collection, very small art gallery, no real works or collection, nothing of significance in the program, no life in Lewisville, parking miles from the art building, poor shuttle bus, poor campus life, photographers make it based on THEIR WORK....not a piece of paper....even if a piece of paper helps....UNT is not that piece of paper not sure where you moved to Houston from....not sure what you think you will find in dallas...not really suppose to pick on dallas in this forum.....pretty sure you won't find what you think you will find in dallas....especially in Lewisville.....pull the hype curtain back and look what is behind it.....look for a LONG time....take a good LONG look.....look again.....ask questions.....shake head....strongly consider your options

long story some on here don't like their opinions being proven false

The Beef and Bird was great...I grew up about two stones throws from there

In my area Lakeside and Walnut Bend it seemed like things hit hard because there were literally 10 for sale signs on some blocks, but a lot of people in that area were higher up and or pretty valuable and many were conservative with their cash....many many of our neighbors still live there today and some even call our house the (my last name) house even though the people that bought it from us have lived there now longer than we did there were also a lot of people in that area not in the oil business....some of our neighbors on our street went over seas one with Aramco and another with Cooper and rented their houses out....houses if they sold sold for 30,000 - 40,000 less than when times were better.....some were vacant, but all were maintained.......WestChase went from being developed and streets cut and landscaping done on the edges of the raw land to just vacant space with nice landscaping and streets of nothing....same with CityWest.....the HPD was busy back then solving real crimes so all those vacant places like CityWest pond, end of Richmond...the drinking age was 18 then and cops and society were a lot less strict back then....every so often especially at the end of Richmond the cops would roll up in a car or two and those "new to the game" would go running off into the field and the cops would just laugh and not even get out of their cars and get on the speaker and say they were getting complaints and to pick up all the trash or they would run us off for good....when Richmond finally got extended the cops came by one night and told us a new place to go that was a four lane road just north of the west side police station where they stopped construction because a ditch there was polluted and the company went under and it was going to be forever before it was all settled...I don't think the cops ever came there all over Houston was basically abandoned developments many commercial....streets, landscaping, vacant land......out west near Dairy Ashford they went from building two streets of houses at a time to building none.....you could go out there during the boom and 25-30 houses were framed at a time....then they just finished them and that was that....many did not sell for a year or more....same in Alief, Sugarland and many other areas on the west side the SNL deal was really a separate issue, but it was like a kick in the nuts after a punch in the face....Houston lost all their major banks....Texas went from single banks under a holding company to branch banking, Texas Commerce, Republic, Gibraltar SNL and tons of others were bought up....the real kicker was many of the bankers jerked the strings on people pretty quick because they all thought oil was going to be back pretty soon....when oil did not come back those banks found themselves sitting on assets decreasing further in value and costing in upkeep...Frost was the only major Texas bank to not go under....Mortgage lending went to hell too Commercial construction fell off the map as well and a lot of buildings sat as empty shells....times were bad, but it never seemed like a total panic...a lot of the USA was still doing OK and many people had moved out of Texas to build homes and commercial property so while some companies were down others were able to ride it out by working out of state or in Hong Kong (money seemed to flow out of Houston to Hong Kong for commercial properties then back from Hong Kong early on in the recovery) apartments were what REALLY went to hell.....places like gulfton NEVER recovered...oil is hard ass work for young people....young people that liked to work hard and party hard and spend cash....so they rented apartments....also the yankees that were flowing in crapping everything out from places like Michigan were also dead ass broke so renting an apartment was their only option at first....the apartments in some areas of Huston have never recovered and many probably will not until the D8 runs them under.....crap built in a fashion that absolutely prevents any type of renovation and torn to hell and never maintained for decades now a lot of schools had T-shacks so when things went bad Houston did not have tosit on a ton of empty school...the T-shacks just went away.....there was a LONG time where Houston did not build a lot of high schools or even many middle schools....the elementaries seemed to come after the subdivision filled out so there were not even a ton of those vacant...I think Alief shut off part of Hastings and or Elsik and even then they were HUGE schools in population so class sizes shrunk...a lot of people I knew lost their ass, but many seemed to have connections and they got into something else...others had actually saved some money and just stopped pissing it all away....a few moved back to California and rode that boom up again....there was a long time when Texas was way down and most of the rest of the USA was doing pretty well...people that were young and single or young with young kids were the ones mostly up and moving....higher ups were doing a lot of commuting during the week and back home on the weekend....or some overseas looking back Houston really rode it out pretty well and with the exception of losing all the big banks and the clout that came with that it was probably pretty good for Houston it really diversified the economy over all and taught people about saving cash VS pissing it into the wind....for all the "high rolling" back then people were a lot more conservative in Houston then and even today....they were not house flipping every year they were paying houses off and buying things like nicer cars that were easier to toss the keys back on and cloths and other BS that did not totally kill them when they had to stop buying them....Texas also has the homestead exemption and back then it was unlimited amounts....so people that say it coming ditched a LOT of assets and went and bought a ranch or a big house and homesteaded it and that is what they were able to use to climb back out of the hole...Texas back then did not allow home equity loans so real estate had not totally blown out of proportion as well......the home equity and 2nd/3rd mortgages is what is killing the USA now it was a pretty crazy time before the bust and pretty crazy after....Houston in the 70s - 90s was a wild time

Rusty Pelican was the restaurant there was a halmark card shop just to the left as you walked west out of Target....the Target mall entrance was at an angle.....I believe there was a toy store (possibly a KB) a womens fashion store...the Pizza was Godfathers with an outside entrance....the game room probably was funway freeway......it started out across the mall from Godfathers inside the mall then moved across the mall next to Godfathers with plans to cut an outside entrance for later hours, but the expense of cutting the wall was too much them game rooms died......the Randals was a Weingartens to start and never had a mall entrance....the Randals was origionally across Westheimer from the mall at the corner of Lakside drive on the west side....It was Two Pesos (not dos pesos) before the big Taco Cabana Two pesos lawsuit there was also a Bennigans just to the west of Two Pesos ....there was possilby a Gap in the mall and some other stores I can't recall....it was definately 100% what I would call a mall with stores on both sides of the interior ....some of the others were smaller womens stores like shoes for one and the one previously mentioned....I know there was one chain jewlery store if not two....there was some type of cookie store as well I think....hell for all the time I spent there I sure can't recall a lot of the stores, but like I say a lot were geared towards women...I am pretty sure besides the Target entrance there were only two other entrances into the mall....the floor tile was brown and there were planters just set on the tile, but they looked decent and were always well maintained as was the whole mall one of the stranger aspects is that the mall kind of never "died"....it lost stores and then it was VERY quick after that it moved to the strip center format.....a few of the successful stores moved to the front and cut exterior entrances and one of the big stores to come was Larrys Shoes....the grocery store was actually vacant for a longer time until Randals opened the Flagship there and closed across the street when we first moved to Lakside the mall was a cow pasture complete with stock ponds and the area where Randals origionally located was a dirt field with a bilboard for Lakside advertising it and a large hill of dirt about as high as the billboard that all the kids would ride bikes on....Westheimer was two lanes asphalt with bar ditches on the sides from at least where Beltway 8 was (long before Beltway 8 existed on anything more than a map and it was also two lanes on what was going to be one side of the access road and there were large hills of dirt all up and down between Westheimer and the Bayou that were in place to be the over passes for the freeway part)

that is probably to get the cars on the roof

My suggestion would revolve around what you feel your house is worth in a down market VS what you feel it might be worth in an up market.....and it would be to find a place you desire or think you desire and possibly find one that needs a bit of "touch up" work and then purchase that place using the equity in your current home and rent that new place out for a few years.....you can find management companies that can take care of the work for you and if you are buying a place that needs some touch up already you can be less concerned with renting it as long as you break even or better on the rent or mortgage you could come out well ahead on the total deal this would allow you to keep in your current home until housing picks up and your current house increases in value and it would also allow you to own buy a new place in a down market and get it before the market picks up....it would also allow you a few more years to see if that area is really where you want to be and if it is when you move you could have all the "touch up" work done and you would be moving into a nice fresh place with no work needed I realize this is much more complex than what you may want, but I think housing even in Houston is too far down for you to make the best deal on your current property now....I feel OIL will be back up in a year and two years at the most and the overall economy will as well....but I think buying in a down market for a forever home has advantages as well....but the downside is that in todays market you will either still be paying a high price for something that will just about guaranteed to stay nice or you may well buy something in an area that is not so guaranteed and find it turns south over the next few years and then is ignored in the upswing because too many neighbors are holding out to "cash in" on the upswing or have moved on and are renting buying now and renting would give you some options in a few years and allow you to attempt to gain on the up in your current home while gaining on the down in your new place downsides are obviously renting for less than the mortgage, not finding a renter at all, having people tear the place up, finding you bought in an area you don't think you want to be in long term which means you need to unload two properties not one, but would also mean you still are in a place you like to try again to find a dream home, but if things are on the up you might gain some benefit on the sale of both or on your current property to offset the loss or "cost" of the second property just offering a different option to think about also if you incorporate the rental unit there could be some tax breaks both on the ownership of it and on the renovation of it and you could possibly do some "fancy" things when it came time to sell the current place and take personal ownership of the rental

depending on the race of the people sitting on those graves it would either be appalling or no big deal at all.....one large culture now in Texas sees nothing wrong at all with sitting on graves, stones, or markers because they view their dead and their observance of the dead in a much different fashion than many others do so while you might have seen it as disrespect to the graves or the dead they saw it as common ordinary behavior based on what they do as celebration in their own country and in no way viewed it as or intended it as disrespect to the graves or the dead in them

actually poorly designed and conducted studies show your results more realistic modern well designed studies show exactly the opposite results http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/memphis-crime just one example of how breaking up the ghetto and spreading it around not only hurts a city it hurts the lower and low middle income areas the most some people will just never want to admit that there are many many many people on welfare that have no intention of ever getting off of it and no intention of ever doing anything but abusing it and no intention of taking any responsibility for themselves or their children until mandatory community service is required for welfare and until mandatory random drug and alcohol testing is reqired for welfare and until welfare participants are penilized DOUBLE or TRIPLE for serious crimes done while on welfare we will never get control of the situation paying people to exist while being a drain and a menace to society and giving birth to more future drains and menaces on society is not the answer

widen almeda to accept the traffic and put in the red flyovers by Santiago and the basins serve the puropse if it gives water a place to go other than where it is not wanted

they should do away with that stretch of road entirely and hook it into almeda and then move/widen/beautify the bayou there and put in some flood control lakes in it...the golf course would be shifted over and more room for the zoo and park like this the white is one alignment alameda would be made a wider parkway and if the red flyovers were desired in addition to the white parts they would be of course designed by Santiago Calatrava obama is in office now so there is plenty of money for anything

I believe technically the park is 100% private property since it is in trust for 20 years and because of that cops can tell people of any type they need to leave private property and this is the same reason it can be rented and parts or all of it closed for private events