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Pleak

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Everything posted by Pleak

  1. Pleak
    Dude - read. I answered this in the 3rd post. Cops always liked rwd cars. Name an import rwd car in the last 20 years. Toyota - no. Honda - no. Nissan - no. VW - no. I think Hyundai just came out with one in the last couple of years. Other than that, you had to go upmarked to Lexus, Porsche, etc to get rear-wheel drive. And can you imagine HPD trying to justify the need for a LS 400 to the public?
  2. Pleak
    For the most part, police departments wanted rear-wheel drive cars. They feel they can take more abuse (driving over curbs, high-speed potholes, etc) than FWD cars. Plus easier to repair. And in general, for the last several years only the domestics have sold RWD cars (Crown Vic, Caprice, Charger) or full-size utilities (Tahoes, Explorers). Whether or not those reasons are valid is open to interpretation. Ford is gambling on this with their new Interceptor based on the fwd Taurus. Plus European countries have used fwd for years. Only time will tell if it catches on here. Didn't Bellaire use to have Volvo's as their police cruisers?
  3. Pleak
    Hey - I prefer to think of it as historic. That brings up an interesting question. If I lived in the Heights - would I be allowed to replace either one if they were that old?
  4. Pleak
    I think the "E" is fro Pennnzoil.
  5. Pleak

    Lufthansa Airlines

    Pleak replied to editor's topic in Planes

    The double-decker jet bridge for the A380 was installed yesterday at Terminal D. They have a few more things to get ready by the first flight to IAH on August 1. http://www.chron.com/business/article/A-tall-work-order-for-2-deck-German-jetliner-3668550.php
  6. Pleak
    OK. Thanks I think. But more generally. Is it a 4-star, 5-star? What does the term actually mean in this context?
  7. Pleak
    By the way, apparently Conn's closed their location here about 3-4 weeks ago. Completely missed it. They had a closing out sale and everything was apparently really cheap. Dagnabbit! Wish I had know about that - our 37-year old oven croaked and we had to buy a new one two weeks ago. Would have been really nice to get it at a closing out sale.
  8. Pleak
    By the way, apparently Conn's closed their location here about 3-4 weeks ago. Completely missed it. They had a closing out sale and everything was apparently really cheap. Dagnabbit! Wish I had know about that - our 37-year old oven croaked and we had to buy a new one two weeks ago. Would have been really nice to get it at a closing out sale.
  9. Pleak
    Gotta do something to keep all the day laborers busy.
  10. Pleak
    Somebody correct me if I am wrong, but Metro cannot ask for a "tax increase" They are limited by state law to 1% sales tax. If I remember correctly, the state gets 6.25%, whatever city you live in gets 1% and then a local "special purpose" entitiy can tax up toa maximum of 1%. In Houston area - that's Metro. Stafford doesn't belong to Metro and has some sort of improvement district - they built their performance center and a bunch of road improvements and underpasses under the Union Pacific tracks with their money. I think several of the Fort Bend cities not in Metro are in the the Fort Bend Transit District which funds a Park-n-Ride type service from the UH campus, mall and Fairgrounds to the Galleria, Greeway Plaza and Medical Center. So Metro can't get any more tax money without changes at the state level. But the cities could - but their thought is why should I be the bad guy that raises taxes (and get voted out) when I can get the money from Metro? So there is your stalemate.
  11. Pleak
    Not at all like putting a water taxi in a drainage ditch in the Woodlands.
  12. Pleak
    Gotta get your priorities in order, now don't we?
  13. Pleak
    So what is a Tier I hotel?
  14. Pleak
    But this is HAIF. The only thing that matters is how much of that transit ridership is on rail - no matter the cost or practicality. And how much neon is on the buildings downtown.
  15. Pleak
    Have no idea what is going in there - but for some reason it looks like a child/daycare to me with the playground next door. At one time I heard Petsmart was coming - but haven't seen anything to that effect in quite a while. The Carl's Jr. (beside Sonic) is up. They are building out on the side of Academy also. I think it's going to be a Michael's and and Ulta. Nothing terribly exciting there. Not a bad place for the clinics. When you have kids, it's always nice to shave a few miles off the weekend runs to the minor emergency clinics. And they always seem to happen on weekends or after 5 pm. The 59 Diner replacing Arby's is interesting. That Arby's has had a sign up ever since it opened - "NOW OPEN" Apparently they don't get much traffic where they are. I figured it was because it was Arby's. Haven't eaten there in years. Only thing good there is their Horsey Sauce. But last three or four times we ate at 59 Diner - it was a big let down also - there quality has gone down from what I remember 10-15 years ago. So doesn't sound like I'll be in that building one way or the other anyway. One other interesting note. On the brochure http://www.newquest....zos-Town-Center It shows a Peter Piper Pizza tentatively coming in next to Olive Garden.
  16. Pleak
    I would argue they already have bio-degradable highways. Have you driven on 59S around Sharpstown Mall (excuse me - El Mercado) lately?
  17. Pleak
    And as far as you poll. I think they are in that awkward stage. Past the looking new and fresh stage. So they are starting to look a bit tired and "yesterday" They are still way too young to be classic. Give them a couple of more decades before and then they might be appreciated again.
  18. Pleak
    The fear is a LOT of money was lost. The Gulfton Ghetto was full of young swinging professionals at one time. It was a happening place to live for all the young single geologists, engineers, etc. that flocked to Houston to make the big bucks. Then the party ended. And all those miles of apartments became deserted overnight as everybody left. You couldn't get a U-haul to move your stuff from Houston. My wife had a friend from middle school whose dad was a geologist. After the crash he ended up driving a school bus. Did that till he retired - never went back to the energy industry. Things started getting better in the 90's. Then the Thailand economy crashed and set off a chain reaction. The booming Asian econmies which were driving oil growth just cratered. Oil dropped again to something like $12 a barrel around 1997. I went to work for big oil service firm in 2000. They had just come through laying off about 10,000 employees about 2 years before. And merging. And to top it all off - I read somewhere recently that the average price for to get a barrel of oil out of the ground now is either $38 or $48 - I can't remember. And it is projected to go up by about $20 in the next 20 years or so. The cheap oil is gone - no more J.D. Clampett methods of drilling. I think all of this has also scared off lenders from Houston - they don't want to put big $ into massive projects unless they are sure of something. So we get smaller projects with better odds of success. How many S&L's did the RTC have to take over in the area back in the 80's and 90's? Banks don't want to be wiped out due to overexposure to the global oil market.
  19. Pleak
    30 years ago, Houston was a lot more of a "damn the torpedos" kind of town. Anything was possible - shoot for the moon. And my project is going to top your project. Then $8 oil happened. And life sucked hard for about 15 years. I remember a client that was in real estate in the inner loop area about 1994-95. I read his annual year-end letter that he sent out and he was talking about the "great sucking sound" that was coming from the Houston real estate market even then. Those were his words. There was still nothing happening of any consequence. A lot of people got burned big in Houston. They have long memories. Now a project has to almost be a slam dunk to get off the ground.
  20. Pleak
    Pat???
  21. Pleak
    Actually this post is pretty weak. The Heights of which you speak only flourished for a few decades around the turn of the (last) century. Before that -for the greatest majority of time, it was scrubby trees and coastal grasses housing a few wandering Native Americans who passed through from time to time to fish and camp and eat mussels along the bayou. If you want to go by greatest use of time (at least as long as man has been wandering around) that is the biggest %. So maybe the ordinance needs to be changed to reflect that any changes be to put the Heights back to it's original state. You say the Heights was always a residential area. I say for most of recorded history - it has been a temporary campsite at best. After the war, the Heights went downhill. Nobody cared about it, it was old and smelled funny. My uncle had a house there - not sure when they bought - I think sometime in the 40's. They soon turned it into a rental when he got a job up north. Even back then the neighborhood was turning into light manufacturing, repair shop, used car lot hell. Everybody told him to get rid of that old house - wasn't worth anything. He kept it until the mid 80's before finally unloading it. Too bad he didn't hang on a few more years - he could have really cashed out. This is the glorious Heights history. What the ordinance is trying to force is a very small sliver of time that somebody saw from a picture hanging on a wall somewhere and decided that was how the Heights had "always" been. It was a scrubby, ramshackle bypassed neighborhood for a lot longer than a tony "hip" place to live. Now it has come full circle.
  22. Pleak
    Dude, don't worry about the quality so much. At least you are one of the few posting pics. Thanks for that.
  23. Pleak
    Amazing ability to say so much and so little at the same time.
  24. Pleak
    Double post
  25. Pleak
    Good points that do get ignored around here. One question that brings to mind - somewhat related. I read on a thread here that I would never find again that places like the Gulfton apartment sprawl actually have very low Metro ridership. This seems counterintuitive. Pretty high density area, lower income, seems like it would be ideal for bus ridership. Why the discrepancy? Is it underserved? Are the bus routes poorly designed? Or is it a cultural distrust of anything official?
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