technoevil

I grew up in First Colony and remember that Marco's on 6 in the old Kroger center too.  We went there a few times back in the 90's, but preferred Los Tios across the street in the Randall's center and frequented that more often.  Los Tios is still there!  There was another place off Cartwright and 1092 that my dad liked that we would go to on occasion too.  I think it was called Don Bravos.

This thread is relevant to my interests. Bought a 70s ranch at the end of last year in Glenshire subdivision (a bit past Fondren SW). Mine is not a "shed roof" but there are a few in my subdiv like that. I really like the ones with the clerestory windows. I think ours was cedar shake roof originally too -- evidence would be purlins (not sure if this is the term. basically 1x4s running perpendicular to the rafters?) running across the rafters. I believe people in our neighborhood started retrofitting them with asphalt shingles starting in the 80s.

Hi neighbor!

I bought my house in Glenshire east last year also, but my grandparents were original owners here and lived here at the opposite end of my street until 2009.  Mine is a 1975 ranch.  The roofs were originally cedar shake from what I have been told and also seen in the deed restrictions.  Most were replaced in the 80's and by the early 90's.

Copperfield, Greatwood, New Territory, The Woodlands,

First Colony, Cypress

There was one there also at West Airport, in addition to the W. Bellfort and Fondren one in the Fondren Southwest Village center.  

You're thinking of the Fiesta on Braeswood @ Gessner.

No, I know the Fiesta on Fondren was a Kroger, as was the Braeswood and Gessner location.  I went to both of them, but mainly the W. Bellfort and Fondren location.  

I don't remember a Kroger at that corner.  There was one near West Airport Blvd on Fondren.

The Fiesta was previously a Kroger.  I went there many times.  Opposite end of the center had a Target.  Its a few discount clothing and shoe stores now.  

 I do remember a Weingartens used to be at the corner of Fondren and West Belfort.  It's Fiesta now.   

I remember that being a Kroger.  I used to go there back in the early-mid 90's when I would stay at my grandma's house when I was little.  Even then it looked old to me. There was a Target at the other end of the center, and a Walgreens where the Anna's Linen is. That Walgreens had a shoplifter in there while we were there once.  I remember him bolting out the door and knocking it off the track in the process.  I think the Kroger and Target closed when the Meyerland locations opened, maybe a few years before.  I think the T-Mobile store was a Houston Cellular originally.  I know it was Cingular for a while also.   

The Fun Plex over on Beechnut and Eldridge was Fame City originally and had the waterpark.  I am not sure what it was previously, but I remember Exhilerama at Memorial City mall.  I grew up in the 90's in Sugar Land.  

I remember Jungle Jim's. I went there many times as a kid. The address is 7115 Clarewood, but you accessed the front door from Sharpstown Mall's parking lot. It's an indoor soccer place now, and before that, it was housing a fly by night charter school that had a recording studio in it for some reason. http://www.indoorsoccer59.com/portal/

I was thinking it was that building, but was not 100% sure.  

I remember Jungle Jims and went there a few times.  I want to say it was off of Clarewood near the Bally fitness center.  

Ah yes Houston in the 1990's I'm essentially a 90's kid being born in 1989.

 

I was always a Suburbanite though so not a lot of memories from inside the loop. These are some stuff I do remember.

 

The suburbs:

-a time when 290 still ended near Huffmeister and all that was left was feeder roads all the way out towards Fairfield

-Fairfield didn't exist yet, but it was still being planned

-the area that is Spring Cypress and 290 was nothing, but a small fishing pond and trees

-anything west of Barker Cypress was farmland/country

-I grew up around the Colonies area on West Little York and still remember most the Colonies still being built lol.

-A good portion of anything west of Hwy 6 was also farmland/country

-played a lot of sports and stuff at Bear Creek Park

-outlet malls were still a thing i think. I just remember being dragged to way out of the way places just so my mom could get good deals on clothes lol

-Katy was pretty much a sleepy little town

-only a small piece of what is now the grand parkway had been built and Cinco Ranch was just starting to be planned out.

-Going anywhere north of Houston seemed like forever away

-the woodlands....well wasn't really the woodlands lol. Just some small man made lakes and some neighborhoods

-Willowbrook mall was were everything was at, and is still that way today though it some of it is getting a bit run down.

 

The City:

-going to Astroworld at least once a summer or every other summer. Yeah it wasn't the prettiest or most intense theme park, but my god did I love some of those roller coasters especially the Texas Cyclone (first ride I went on every single time!)

- just walking across that bridge was something too. Just being a little kid walking across a busy freeway was pretty cool

-no Reliant Stadium only the Astrodome. Saw a couple rodeo's in there. A couple of Astros game's. No Oilers though :/

-Driving past Williams Tower everytime we were near the Galleria. I love that building to this day as it was the building which inspired me to become an architect

-Downtown was always a ghost town if we ever did drove through it. Skyline was still amazing though.

-Yeah I'm sure the zoo has changed since then, but I remember going several months ago and it looked like it did when I was a little kid. Especially the long rows of concrete canopies which lead up near the Reptile area.

 

Businesses:

-renting videos from Blockbuster and Hollywood Video every other weekend

-Malibu Castle was freakin awesome RIP....its now the new part of the 610 loop xD

-Montasia, Chuckie Cheese, Lazer Quest all those fun places

-there were still no really good theaters where I lived so we would always go near Tidwell and 290 where they had built a Tinseltown. Man those Auditoriums where enormous lol

-Grand Plex or something like that. It was kinda like some of the other places I mentioned, but this one was absolutely massive and I think it was somewhere on Eldrige past I-10. There was even a cheap water-park next to it.

-Of course my mom would cook a lot, but we ate a lot of take out too xD we were take family because my mom and dad were always pretty busy

-Someone mentioned a Poncho's. I actually remember that restaurant and we went there a few times (Jones Rd and 1960)

 

Weather:

-I know there were a couple bad Hurricanes, but I honestly can't remember the names of them (I thought about Allison, but that was 2001)

-I remember an enormous ice storm hit one winter. Was a literal winter wonderland!

 

Those are about what I can remember for now.

Not a large amount of stuff though. Living in suburbia there wasn't really that much to do or see for that matter except for endless rows of houses If you were a more outdoorsy person (which I wasn't) then I probably could remember more stuff. If I remember anything else I'll just throw it onto here later.

I was born in 87 and grew up in Sugar Land.  Things were pretty much the same here as they were up in Cypress.

- 59 was still two lanes each way

- Closest decent mall was West Oaks (now Ghetto Oaks)

-  Sharpstown mall was "ok" but not great

- First Colony Mall opened in 96 and was amazing

- Mainly cookie cutter homes around and typical stores such as Randalls, Target, and Kroger along Hwy 6

- Grew up in First Colony and homes were still being built in mass there

- Would go to the aquatic center and park next door with the huge boat playground/fort

- Anywhere north also seemed wayyy far away

- Richmond/Rosenburg was out in the country

I think you meant FunPlex instead of "Grand Plex".  It is still there on Beechnut near Eldridge.  It has gone way down hill, to the point where I am surprised it has somehow managed to stay open.  The waterpark was torn down quite a few years ago and now has a cookie cutter neighborhood on it. 

I found it! It was the TinselTown 24 at Westpark and Beltway 8, opening in 1997 and closing in 2008 (January of both years, I believe). Looking back at old HAIF posts, the theater was physically run-down and very "ghetto" by the the late 2000s. And I now how quickly these sorts of entertainment venues can get run down.

At Katy Freeway and Witte, there's a Chase call center (if I read correctly) that appears to be (from Google Maps) an old Costco before it moved east, but that's probably not the case. It was a large store of some sort though...

The Tinseltown did star becoming Ghetto sometime around 2004.  

I'm not sure what the Chase call center was before, but it was not Costco.  The first Costco built in Houston was the one that is at at I-10 and Bunker Hill behind Lowes and Best Buy.  I think it opened around 2001.  

What were the trendy neighborhoods in the 1990s?

First Colony, Cinco Ranch, The Woodlands, Cypress

Prime Cable was a system I remember growing up in the 90's. They might have merged with TCI.

 

One apartment we had Phonoscope for a while. They merged a few times, I think before that it was called "OpTel". Originally when we moved there, the landlord ran their own proprietary cable company, they had like 10 huge satellites on some adjacent land. Only problem is that they forgot to bill anyone, so everyone got all of the premium channels for years before they tore down the satellites.

 

In 1998 we moved to an apartment complex served by TCI, they were offering the "innovative" new digital cable which we had for 6 months. You could only get 1 cable box, and they also deleted 10 analog channels in order to provide the 80 or so digital ones. Time Warner did not add digital until at least 2002 at the house we moved to.

 

For info about satellite, look at the national services like Direct TV, they are all national providers.

What areas of town?  In Sugar Land (First Colony) we had TCI until around 97 or 98 when Time Warner took it over, the Comcast took over that when they took over Time Warner in Houston.

I'll be damned. I remember Lee Cook coming and going from my radio station down the hall from Phonoscope. He was friends with the station owner John "Shorty" Powers. I never knew till today that he was the owner of Phonoscope. That explains the gimmicky cross promotion deal I described in my first response here.

 

I also have to say that if the Nassau Bay Phonoscope operation was an example of Cook's "expertise" in building a cable TV system, I have to wonder how he has survived in that business. I will say only that I was never impressed with it. 

Phonoscope is still around.  They do provide cable to some apartment complexes scattered around town, but are more know for their huge fiber network around town that is used mainly by businesses, schools, and cell companies to link their facilities.  

I am not from that area, but looking at Google Streetview, It looks like Wally World was where BigLots is now and at the opposite end of that strip was a Kroger.  The Hobby Lobby looks like an old K-Mart.

The tower behind the main studio is just for the microwave link to their main transmitter (thats what the two round antennas near the middle are, If look where they are pointed on a map, its towards the Anderson tower). The shorter tower with the movable dish on it is for the microwave truck.  The rest of the stuff on the tall tower appears to be probably 2-way radio and maybe some more  stationary microwave truck antennas at the top.  I think I remember hearing from a friend who works at their sister station in Waco they also have a microwave link to them, so the top one could be that also.

If you want another example, take a look at KPRC's tower along 59.  They have 2 large microwave dishes pointed toward Missouri City, plus looks like maybe 2 smaller ones.  The big dome at the top is doppler radar, and the smaller dome just below it is for their microwave news trucks.  Looks like they may also have a stationary one pointed towards maybe Reliant stadium.  

Wilchester-Western Memorial area: Most likely not leaving. I can check up on houses and take pics of the exterior and e-mail them if needed.

I remember going there in the early 90's.

I remember that phone test line. We did that too! We would set it up for my mom to answer. There used to be a "robot line" too. You could call it and it would produce some really unique noises to that time during the 1970's. 455-5555 or something like that. Maybe it was one of the first fax lines or something.

In Sugar Land with Alltel you can dial your own number then immediatly hang up and the phones will ring. I have tried it on SBC/AT&T and it dosent work.

That was Brittain's Broiler Burger - one of my all-time favorite places to eat. Beck's does a pretty good copy of the old "number 2 with cheese" with their Bubba Burger minus the lettuce and tomatoes and add onions.

If you've never tried it, Beck's has a couple of very nice locations - one on Westheimer between Chimney

Rock and Fountainview (they saved a BEAUTIFUL old oak tree and put seating below) and the other is next to the "pro shop" at Memorial Park golfcourse - north of Memorial Drive. You can sit outside and look out over the fairway or putting area - like "being at the country club".

There may be a Broiler Burger preserved on Bellaire (near where it splits with Bisonett) but I was not impressed with their food. Didn't come close to the Brittain's Broiler Burger I remember so fondly.

The broiler burger on Bellaire is called Bellaire Broiler Burger.

Goode Company BBQ on I-10 is not in the city of Houston. I think it is in Hedwig Village, but it may be Bunker Hill.

My friend and I went to Fun Plex a few months ago because we had not been there in a few years and we wanted to see if it had changed. The place is now a dump, over half of the building was closed off and the parts that were open were not in very good condition and half the lights were burnt out so it was kind of dark.

I found the Fun Plex website. It still appears to have a lot of stuff http://www.funplex.org/

I was wondering how most of the stations decided to place their towers in the Missouri City area and why? Also, were their towers orignally placed there or were they somewhere else?

A Steak 'n Shake is going to open in Tomball on F.M. 2920 sometime soon. My company is doing the engineering for the shopping center that it's going to be in.

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Cool. Are there going to be any others?