mollusk

And Houston started out as a real estate promotion.

Can pasting in a cel from The Simpsons really be considered independent thought?

Houston pre tunnels had big department stores, lots of specialty stores, and big movie theaters downtown. Tunnels didn't kill them, malls and sprawl did. I first started working downtown in the mid 70s, when the tunnel system barely existed. Most of the buildings that they connect hadn't even been built yet. More so then than now, they pretty much rolled up the sidewalks at six pm. The tunnels are what they are. Aside from the lunch rush one could get up a pretty good head of steam up on roller skates in them if so inclined without bothering a soul other than the occasional security guard.

Every time I read the last few comments on this thread I get an earworm. And a desire to run 20 red lights.

Apparently, the use of satellites to monitor the weather, and charting what the weather does over a period of years, is actually in support of some sort of political agenda. It's a bit precious to complain about budget cuts when your own party has controlled the side of Congress that originates revenue bills for years, has a hammerlock on the other one, that demagogues about the evils of spending (unless it's for the military and whatever "security" happens to be), and can't seem to grasp that investment is a form of spending.

FWIW, the HSR will be electric, thus doing away with the engine noise that the Diesel freight trains have.

Been a while for me, too, but I've got a pretty strong memory of something that looked a lot like the public areas of Two Houston.

I saw the pumping going on yesterday, but I couldn't figure out just what they were pumping where (other than somewhere in the 700 block of Travis). Not a mat pour, obviously, and so far they've kept the old side walls in place. The garage looked empty again today. I wonder how/what they did with/for/to Those Whose Parking Shall Not Be Disturbed.

Springbok and the Hearsay twins also fit into that mold, and a couple of others whose names escape me at the moment.

Much of the "security" at the airport is theater. The really effective changes were a secure lock on the cockpit door and a change in passenger attitudes from "go along and it'll be over" to active self defense. The point of terrorism is to make people skeert. As demonstrated by the formation of the TSA, Homeland Security, etc. and having to virtually strip nekkit before getting on a plane, it looks like the 9/11 attack worked. Besides, as has been pointed out, you can't really hijack a train.

Moving the sandwich shops out of the basement won't magically make downtown sidewalks look like midtown Manhattan or San Francisco's financial district. What will give the streets more life will be more 24 hour warm bodies downtown, and some shopping options. Both of which are in the pipeline. I wouldn't mind subways instead of street level rail - but realistically, the streets are able to carry the traffic pretty well even without Main and even with FUBAR traffic light timing.

The tunnels are what they are. I've been a Mole Person for so long that they just kind of blend into the landscape for me, but every once in a while we have a new hire who's not familiar with downtown. Oh, the disorientation they experience of not being able to triangulate off of surface landmarks... I doubt that they pull all that much street life away. They're pretty much locked tight by 6 PM, and about the only time that they're really crowded is lunch when the weather's crummy in some form or fashion. Downtown Houston just doesn't HAVE a whole lot of street life except in certain areas at certain times.

By the way, California isn't struggling to pay its bills nearly as much anymore. Apparently, they moved past the idea held in some quarters that there is some sort of money fairy that can substitute for taxes. (pearl clutching and hyperventilation among some here begins in 3, 2... )

Considering that the in town routing is pretty much along existing (Diesel powered) freight lines, this sounds like a lot of fear without a whole lot of thought behind it... the basic autonomic "no" response. At in town speeds, the HSR ought to sound much like the light rail, which can barely be heard from immediately adjacent buildings unless it's signaling at a grade crossing. Crikey, people on foot manage to wander out in front of that thing. It would still be interesting to see how things would compare for a Northwest Mall terminal vs. downtown,

mmmmmm... sugar and lard...

There is still a bunch of digging out of very massive concrete foundation pieces and crunching them to rubble. We are now past the Satisfying Large Easy Things. Trust me, if you're nearby you have no illusions whatsoever. Work is going on.

Layoffs occur in most mergers, regardless of the external economic conditions. Many of the non revenue functions don't require the full staff that both of the merging entities would otherwise bring with them because a lot of that work gets consolidated. Regardless, a boom by definition can't last forever. Absent some tectonic change (i.e., the steel mills leaving for overseas), neither do the busts.

I have to agree with Utterly Urban. With a few brief exceptions here and there, I've worked downtown pretty much continuously since the late '70s. Back then, you just did not park east of Caroline after dark, unless you were going to Liberty Hall. It wasn't panhandling that was the concern, it was getting mugged. Having more and more people out and about has helped make things much safer, as has a larger and more visible police presence. No, I'm not going to leave anything visible in my parked car downtown (a rule I also follow pretty much everywhere, including in my own dang driveway), and I'm not going to park in a dark, secluded place at night (nor would I do so at the suburban mall/shopping center of your choice), but all in all, downtown's tons better than it used to be.

Ross and arche are correct. If memory serves, the city's default height and setback restrictions are driven primarily by fire issues. Unless there's a deed restriction against it, one can build up to the property line so long as the wall has a fire rating. Likewise, occupied space over x height and/or level (I forget which and what the values are) triggers a fire sprinkler system requirement. That said, the permitting office doesn't always communicate with the land use folks all that well. I've seen a number of situations where permits were issued for construction that didn't even begin to comply with deed restrictions or other land use requirements. Once the appropriate dime gets dropped, red tags start flying - and yes, the'll even require stuff to be torn out.

OHMOG. A Villages real estate agent, who is marketing this solely as a teardown - as in, exactly one picture of the house itself. Bless her little Memorial soul.

Not quite. The section that failed during the Loma Prieta earthquake was at the transition out of the truss section. The 2009 failure was, IIRC, a linking member with cracks that got picked up during evaluation check; a patch was applied because that section was going to be history within a couple years. And then the patch failed, again IIRC, because of a metallurgical issue. That entire 2/3 +/- of the bridge was found to be seismically inadequate. The suspension bridge section from Angel/Treasure Island to the City, grounded on bedrock, could be reinforced (and was); the eastern part was on redwood pilings pounded into the mud of the bay. Some projections had it that if the Loma Prieta quake had lasted about thirty seconds longer, pretty much all of the eastern section would have failed (a la the Cypress Structure in Oakland).

Actually, the Bay Bridge problems were in the old cantilever truss bridge portion.

It wasn't that long ago that the Heights and Montrose were pretty skeevy neighborhoods.

I can at least address the shift from 84 units to seven single family houses. The tl;dr version is that it's a very difficult tract to build on. Access to this tract is down a very narrow street, causing concerns about access by fire trucks and ambulances. On top of that, much of this tract is in the White Oak Bayou flood plain, if not floodway, and unlike the Graystar project just a bit downstream it's not taking the place of existing structures. Surge (or its investor) won't get as big a profit, but I suspect that at that price point and with how long they've owned the land, they won't lose their shirts, either.