brucesw

Definitely a sign for a pharmacy, and a Jack and Jill Liquor. There's a 56 Olds and maybe three 57 Fords so that dates the picture. Anybody got a phone directory from that era? Was Westheimer @ Chimney Rock that developed by 57?

Television transmission is line-of-sight, like FM; that's why all the Houston stations are on the very tall towers at Mo City. You are being helped a little by being on the third floor; might not be able to get it as reliably on the ground floor. I have gotten it occasionally on the far SW side of Houston with rabbit ears on a window sill of a ground floor window (facing away from BCS). I wonder how tall their tower is but I'm too tired to look it up at this hour.

Turned up online: Lewis and Coker was founded ca. 1903; that not only predates KMart but goes back almost as far as SS Kresge. It went into bankruptcy in the 1990s and never emerged. It was a family owned chain; that surprised me as I always thought it was a grocer's association sort of deal, like Super-Valu stores. I've only been in 3 KMarts in my life, a delapidated one on Beechnut at 59, a new one a few years later on BW8 around Beechnut,and ,I think, one in Meyerland Plaza later. There were no L&C's near any, rather obviously in the latter two instances. I can remember the L&C name going back decades, from newspaper ads if not radio, but the only store I remember was the one on Holcombe @ Greenbriar mentioned upthread and I never went into one.

Welcome aboard Purpledevil. Pass the word around if you're in contact with any of the other regulars. We could have some really lively discussions here with lots of input from non-industry people.

And the winner is: KKRW. Updated story with more details and comments on mikemcguff.com

I have been contacted by a researcher writing a book on this organization and its activities. My own involvement was pretty minimal - I took part in a radiothon broadcast on KBRZ Freeport from Brazosport Hi in Freeport - but we also had a school talent show and students did other things to raise money. It's easy to forget what a big deal polio was back then. We had a flurry of cases in the early 50s in the Brazosport area, resulting in one popular student being forced to wear braces and walk with a pronounced limp for the rest of his life and we all learned about iron lungs. Wiki has an interesting section in it's biography of Jonas Salk on the dramatic announcement of the development of an effective vaccine and the public reaction. Anybody else have any memories of the organization and the activities schools conducted?

The WM Neighborhood Mkts I've been in are much smaller than a typical Randalls. I wonder if there'd be a big NIMBY uproar if WM tried to move in on Louisiana? That location might be a good fit for a Sprouts or Fresh Market or, if it weren't so close to the older Fiesta on San Jac, the new Fiesta Market Place concept. It's interesting that all the new chains that have come to town, Sprouts, Aldi's, TJ's and Fresh Market, are putting in smaller stores rather than the large Signature or Flagship type stores. They're all going after niche markets instead of the one-stop shopping approach. The Chron reported recently that the Randalls in Westchase, Westheimer at Gessner, is closing. That location would be a good one for a Fiesta Market Place. The new Fiesta Market Place in Sugar Land has become a regular stop for me even though there are two older, traditional Fiesta's much closer. I'm pulling for the hometown team and I hope they're planning on expanding the concept to additional locations.

1500 block, south side, between Windsor and Ridgewood. Looks like on Google it would've been 1513. The bungalow next door was a hippie ice cream shop as I recall.

Nice move. Thanks, editor. I've posted about the new forums on my blog; maybe it will help a few lost souls find there way over here. Here's hoping it gets real lively around here.

That would be interesting Filio. At least here you can block obnoxious posters (lol). But discussions would have to be split between the Media and Historic Houston forums, I guess. I think there were probably more HAIFers who occasionally read RI/RD or whatever the name was than the other way around. In case you hadn't noticed, I hadn't posted in a long time before the makeover. I tried to re-activate my account on the new software and after getting the Captcha wrong about 75 times (sure I did) I finally got a message that I could contact an administrator for help. They ignored my email for 2 weeks so I tried again but by the time they responded, I had concluded the thing was going to die. Registering a new account must have been as onerous an effort as trying to re-activate you old account on the new software. It almost seems like they intended to kill it off.

Thanks for posting this. rage. All I get is a 'not found.' The Houston board never recovered from the software makeover, plus the topics and rants were very repetitive. I'm betting someone will revive it or launch a new site. Please post here if you hear of anything or contact me on my blog. ETA: Oh, yes ... I didn't even know there had been a change of ownership.

They opened in Dallas a few months ago I think, close to opening two in Austin? Not hard to guess they'll be coming here. Eating our Words blog (Press), Food Chronicles, b4-u-eat newsletter, Culture Map, Eater Houston all have reporters/contributors who are supposed to keep on top of these things and try to scoop each other. Your friend probably is getting the info from one or several of these. Haif is not the place for breaking news about the restaurant industry, except perhaps in the Heights.

The diagram (circular) above of lower Westheimer is misleading. It does not show all the streets that cross or intersect Westheimer. The Round Table, a gay bar (m) and Prufrock's (n), which I understood were co-owned, were not next door to each other, they weren't even in the same block and neither was right on the corner. Whitney was the cross street and both bars were one house removed from the intersection. Michaeangelo's was (and still is) east of Taft; I haven't been down that way in quite some time but I think it's right were Mason intersects but does not cross Westheimer. The Yelp listing has a map that is a little better although it doesn't clearly show Mason coming all the way down to Westheimer and it also has some pictures. Edit to correct: the Yelp listing has one pic of the building, all the rest are of the food.

Here's a lengthy article on the incident published last May in Houstonia.

Here's a montage on YouTube of still shots from the Larry Kane show. I lifted this from the Facebook page of the book Boys From Houston.

Here's the Facebook page for this book published in July about the Houston music scene in the 1960s by Vicki Welch Ayo who was a teenager in Pasadena then. The book is available on Amazon at a discount from the publisher's price and you can look inside the book at a few pages. There are mentions of many bands and some of the venues that have been mentioned here on HAIF. And a feature from the Chronicle that includes an interview with the author. I've heard from Cy Statum, a disc jockey on KFMK, the pioneering album rock station in Houston, who later worked with me at KAUM. He's heard from another FMK jock, Gary Goforth that the book only mentions KILT and KNUZ and omits any mention of KFMK but I haven't seen the book and can't confirm that.

There was a lot of information on Houston Safeways/Appletrees that found its way into your B/CS thread. I can add to what I posted there: There was a Safeway on Chimney Rock at Gulfton in the 70s, same exterior as the Holcombe/Greenbrier and Westheimer/Weslayan stores but smaller inside, I think. Not a good location for such a large store, too close to the store in downtown Bellaire and surrounded by lots of warehouse/light industtrial rather than residential. That one may not have lasted long enough to become an Appletree and I'm virtually certain it was never a Rice Epicurean, despite being only about 3 blocks from the Rice headquarters on Gulfton. That was a bingo hall for a while and now is a private academy. The Foodarama on S. Wilcrest @ West Bellfort was a Safeway, obvious from the north wall along W. Bellfort, especially. I worked part time out of an office half a block from there briefly in 83/84 but don't remember it at all. I would not have been doing any grocery shopping while I was there, however. The 'Your Super Savings Thrift Store' or whatever the name is on Dashwood @ S. Fondren, west of the old Sharpstown Mall was a Safeway and probably an Appletree, also obvious from the front of the building. I'm not sure about the Fiesta on Bellaire @ S. Gessner but I think it was a Safeway. Have to look at the building again.

That was a Randall's just before becoming a Foodarama but I don't know if it had been a Safeway/Appletree before that. As best I can remember the building, it looks more like a Randall's.

Well I have a question (chirp, chirp). Neither Sands, Smith nor Elvis were 21 in 1954. I presume 21 was the legal drinking age and since this non-existent place was supposedly a bar, would they have been allowed in? (chirp, chirp).

No, what doesn't need to be said doesn't need to be said. I will withdraw and rest my artillery for future battles.

Well dang, FS. I was working on a long-winded rebuttal of this crock and here you go throwing cold water on the effort. Actually, though, I agree. That’s why I never weighed in on the hilarious Tinker’s tale earlier this year. I would like to emphasize, however, a point made in passing by TilelsBetter - the restrictions on movement always applied to Blacks, not whites. If there was a separate section for race records whites would have been free to go in there, restricted only by their fears of what their peers might think of them. Blacks would have been prohibited from going into the White records section, if there were such a distinction. Remember also that though there were still very tough civil rights battles to be fought, by the mid-50s, white kids were enthusiastically embracing black artists like Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Big Joe Turner, Laverne Baker and others and their records would have to have been available for those white teens (including me) to purchase. I could buy any of them at the little record shop in Lake Jackson by that time and they were not in a separate bin from the likes of Eddie Fisher, Steve and Edie, Pat Boone, Peggy Lee and Patti Page or the Andrews Sisters. Oh, and if any of PJ Crock’s entourage is following this, remind the great one that he forgot to mention Main Street was just a dirt road and he had to slog through several miles of mud puddles just to get to the Woolworth’s

Darts for Dough had been a radio show before moving to TV. Many of the early TV shows, both locally and nationally, had been on radio. Others locally were Paul Boesch's Friday Night Wrestling and Fashions in Motion, a women's fashion show that Gottlieb also hosted that was broadcast live on TV from the Battlesteins store on Shepherd. How showing off women's fashions on radio worked I have no idea. I have no idea when D for D moved to TV but I think Gottlieb was mainly a radio announcer (on KLEE) before The Post took over KLEE-TV and flipped it to KPRC. Enough of the aside, on the the original question: it's very unlikely there is any video surviving or was even made. Video tape had not yet been invented - in fact, audio tape was still quite new. The only means of recording a show if it wasn't shot on film (and D for D was live) would have been kinescope which involved pointing a film camera at a TV screen. I don't even know if Channel 2 had the equipment to do that but I doubt they would have bothered with a show like D for D. It was a little tricky since the film frames had to synchronized with the TV frames; pictures were not very good. If anybody knows if there is any video it would be Bill Bremer at the KPRC Facebook page. He's apparently been documenting KPRC history for decades and might have some stills from the show in the hundreds of pictures he's published. BTW, my mother was on Darts for Dough twice and we didn't even live in Houston, we lived 60 miles away. She wanted to be a TV star. I hope you find some pictures and come back here to tell us if you do.

In the 70s and up until 1985, that was an Eagle. That may have been the original occupant.

According to Robb Walsh's Tex-Mex Cookbook, Loma Linda opened in 1956 and the original location was on Telephone Rd. That location is still in business as Fiesta Loma Linda and a reviewer on Yelp says the Palm Center location was actually the original. Pic taken in 2008.

I'd have to agree with this. I shopped at the Sharpstown location for a few years (it went downhill) and I never remember groceries in the sense of produce, dairy, frozen foods, just snacks. There may have been a snack bar, I don't recall. There was a Target that opened up much closer to me one block north of W. Bellfort on S. Fondren that was, for a time, a much nicer store and I switched over to shopping there. Again I don't remember groceries but I'm pretty sure there was a snack bar. Both stores are long since shuttered.