editor

Is "urbanist shopping district" the new "lifestyle center" which was the new "strip mall?" I don't think that the River Oaks District has any advantage in security over the Galleria. It's open to the street, and anyone can walk in. The Galleria literally has doors that people have to go through to get in. The problem is that Simon is too cheap to staff the Security department properly. There should be a security person at each door. There was a note in the Chronicle a couple of months ago about the city sending more HPD officers to patrol the Galleria. The Galleria is private property — it shouldn't have HPD on patrol. It should hire enough of its own security to do a good job, so that taxpayers don't have to fund its security, and HPD officers can work where they're needed more. As for the tug-of-war I mentioned, it's not speculation. I know someone who was involved with the process of a high-end overseas brand trying to decide between Houston and Dallas.

I think vagrancy seems worse in downtown and Midtown because numerically, there are far fewer non-vagrants than there were before so many people went work-from-home. It's a ratio thing. Also, I think it seems worse because there's fewer people who are "homeless" and more people who are just junkies. The city seems to be doing a good job of moving people who want housing into housing — the actual homeless. But most of the vagrants I see downtown aren't people who are too unfortunate/poor to afford a place to live. They're people so blitzed out on drugs that they don't care if they have a home or not. Protip: No shoes is a sure sign of an addict. You can sell a pair of shoes for a week's worth of fentanyl. Another sign is hygiene. Yesterday I saw a guy bathing behind the bushes of the Chase bank in Midtown, using the lawn sprinklers as a shower. That's a sign of someone who works, but has a super-crap job, like the homeless guy who sweeps the parking lots at the Chevron and Walgreens. Homeless because he's poor. Not homeless because he's drugged-up and face-down in his own filth. I sometimes wonder if there's a drug dealer right near the intersection of Main and Rusk, because worst of the the vagrants seem to pass out there. And while I'm not a drug user, I suspect that when a junkie gets some new drugs, he uses them immediately rather than going somewhere else to imbibe. I know there's a dealer who works Main Street between SoDo and the SuperGhettoMart on the corner of Lamar. He's approached me twice. But something else is going on at Main between Capitol and Rusk.

Three Keys is open. It actually replaced, not supplemented Greenway Coffee. Word around the food court is that Greenway's lease expired, but no one is sure if it jumped or was pushed. Strangely, Three Keys operates in the opposite direction as Greenway — the ordering area is now the pick-up area, and the pick-up area is now the ordering area. This is actually an improvement. Greenway was always counter-intuitive because instead of having the front of the joint face the building entrance, you had to circle around to the back. Reducing friction is key to getting new customers. The baristas are unusually eager (for Houston) to serve, which is nice. The one I spoke with said that it's been a roasting company for years, and this is its first retail location. I will do what I can to help it out, but I already drink at least six cups of coffee a day. The Three Keys menu is a little brief. Perhaps it will expand when it gets settled in. I'm not sure I was supposed to take the menu, but here it is: Also new (to me) is Carol Kay Cafe. I know nothing about it other than it occupies the space that was once occupied by a place that didn't have physical menus, and if you brought a book with you to lunch instead of a telephone, they looked at you like you were from Mars and refused to serve you.

You're not wrong, but you're also outdated. It's not 1990, or even 2010 anymore. The number of journalists in America — especially in local newsrooms — has plummeted. I'd be surprised if the Chronicle had even a quarter of the number of reporters today that it had in 2000. When I was in television, a 30-minute local news program in a market the size of Houston would have at minimum: two field reporters, two writers, a producer, an associate producer, an executive producer, and an intern or three. Today, it's very often just one field reporter, a producer, and maybe an executive producer shared with other shows. It's so bad that the anchors in Houston are even running their own TelePrompTers. That's why they have one hand on a black knob all the time. People complain about the poor quality and lack of local news, then instead of spending 71¢ a day to support local journalism they choose to get their "news" from social media because they think it's "free." Well, you get what you pay for. Enjoy the world you made.

Nope. I was walking to Walgreens today and just happened to notice it. Sorry to deflate any conspiracy theory you might be forming. If it's not running, it's not working. A car that also doesn't start 24/7 can also be described as not working. That Houston Center photo was taken at 9:00am on a weekday. I don't consider a water feature that runs from 11:54am to 11:57am every other Thursday to be a fountain. Also walking around today: Dead fountain. Partially working fountain, but good to see the spigot working for the first time in years. I guess that's progress. Dead fountain. Amazingly working fountain. This has been dead for years, then was working on-and-off. This is twice in a row that I've walked by and it's working, so hopefully this one can be considered a success. Dead fountain replaced with a bowl of dirt. Dead fountain. Dead fountain. Dead fountain. Dead fountain. Dead fountain replaced by a bowl of flowers. Dead fountain. Dead fountain. Dead fountain. Dead fountain replaced by a bowl of weeds. It's a shame about those fountains that have been replaced by bowls. Some of them used to be baseballs with water flowing out from under them. They were made to look like giant baseballs crashed to earth. They were supposed to line the street all the way down to the baseball stadium. While looking for an old photo of the baseball fountains, I came across this picture. I'd forgotten there used to be a fountain in front of Chase Tower: I think the El Paso Energy fountains are gone, too. But I'm happy to be corrected about that: I also forgot that there was a fountain on Milam between Rusk and Capitol: I haven't been over by the bayou in a while. Does this one still flow? For some reason when I put in "fountain," my computer sent this back. It must be psychic, because this has a fountain today (working!) that wasn't there when I took this picture: The computer search for "fountain" also popped up lots of pictures I took of Sesquicentennial Park, but I'm not going to post those here. That would only embarrass anyone who believes that downtown Houston doesn't have a problem with its fountains.

Nope. Not working. Also not working, but Midtown, not downtown. I did see two seemingly refurbished Cotswold fountains today. So I guess that's something.

After mass, Saturday, May 27th

There's a lot of tug-of-war going on between Houston and Dallas recently when it comes to luxury brands. Also a lot of the same between the Galleria and the River Oaks District. The luxury stores in the Galleria are not happy with the levels of crime at the mall, and worse — the number of their customers (and employees!) who get followed home and robbed by thugs who see them leaving the mall. Purely speculation, but Simon must be discounting rent to keep those luxury brands in the Galleria. Especially considering that the Galleria is really showing its age, in terms of infrastructure. (Some stores struggle with chronic HVAC issues, and other basic problems that can't seem to be solved for months or years.)

Already open. People are raving about the sunglasses.

I've seen two of them in the last week. One at the GRB and one by the dead McDonald's in Midtown.

I've decided to stop caring about this project, simply because when it's finished, I will be long dead.

Nice place. Terrible acoustics.

Good thought. Or Singaporean. It's been a long time since I've had good chili crab.

Needs a Pac-Man machine.

Though I agree with you that garages, currently, are popular in Houston townhomes, the mythical "market" doesn't always know what it wants, and citing "the market" is usually a cop-out. "The market" wasn't clamoring for an iPod, until suddenly there were iPods. You can lead, or you can follow.

I grew up on old-fashioned grubby Cantonese. What do you prefer?

I wouldn't get my hopes up about this. Essentially, it's like one of those Great Wolf Lodges, but without the kids. From the web site, of the dozen or so places they've announced, only three have opened — two in Germany, and one in Romania.

Put it in the Astrodome. Think big!

Ugh. I lived in a building that was ⅓ apartments, ⅓ condos, and ⅓ Radisson Blu. Shared amenity spaces are awful.

There have been plenty of newspaper articles in the last year about backlash against the term "Latinx" in the Hispanic community. I don't speak anything well enough to have an opinion on it. Unless you count gibberish. That I'm fluent in.

Good to have another coffee option. The Greenway coffee at the Finn food court has been my go-to lately, since The Star no longer has free coffee, and lately I find my usual Starbucks drink too sugary for some reason. Hopefully the sandwich joint works out, too. Most of the food options at Finn try too hard. They take good food and turn it into nothing more than a big pile of mismatched ingredients because they're doing too much while trying to be as pretentious as their neighbors. If you have good food, let the food speak for itself.