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mollusk

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Everything posted by mollusk

  1. mollusk
    As we can see from some photos posted further up, Rice Village started 70 or more years ago. Our metro area (that now has roughly 6,000,000 people) had fewer than 400,000 in 1940 - not a whole lot bigger than Bryan / College Station now. Cars weren't as fast then, nor was the pace of life. So one could pull off straight in parking on a street.
  2. mollusk
    But Elvis didn't die, he just went home.
  3. mollusk
    tl;dr version: we're no longer fabulous, just in the top tier.
  4. mollusk
    It looks like the rail connector is now up and running. And it's a cable car. The price is up, from $3 to $6, but so is the frequency. I presume that it doesn't lurch around as much as the bus did, since it doesn't have to mess with traffic lights and poorly driven cars.
  5. mollusk
    Dude, you apparently haven't been around the Fashionable Bars lately...
  6. mollusk
    a bit of contempt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWBUl7oT9sA
  7. mollusk
    well, yeah... I like it better than the more recent renders, too - however, anything to somehow mask some of Three Allen's awkward shape... (and yes, I realize it gives as big a floor plate as can be put on its particular site - but it's otherwise interesting chocolate brown cladding is kinda like someone wearing black in the hope that nobody will notice his or her Falstaffian mass).
  8. mollusk
    I cannot count the number of times I've gone to our major daily's website for news in the last couple of years. Literally. Because you can't count to zero. At least the dead trees version has some utility as a fish wrap.
  9. mollusk
    Hmmm... 5 Allen coming in before Chevron? I somehow doubt it. (yes, I know it's just a marketing brochure...)
  10. mollusk
    Not very ambitious - only a couple of Audis among a bunch of Volvos and even an older Chrysler 300. Whatever will Afton Oaks do????
  11. mollusk
    How about a citation or link for some of these grand pronouncements?
  12. mollusk
    Over by the library it's still pretty quiet at night...
  13. mollusk
    I recall hearing something to the effect that Union Station might be out, I'm guessing for some infrastructure/available space reason, but adjacent to it most certainly is in the running.
  14. mollusk
    Quelle surprise! The Dallas Business Journal has a Dallas orientation! Quick - fetch the smelling salts! In other news, the sun rose in the east this morning. The Dallas station has a particular place to go that makes tons more sense than the other locations that were in play - it's adjacent to the old, yet still in use Union Station. The SP terminal got torn down almost 60 years ago, and not only was Union Station a "back in" design but it's also now a baseball stadium - so the decision in Houston is a bit more complex. Given that, why wouldn't the concept for the Dallas station perhaps be a bit further along? I have no doubt that whatever ends up getting built for Houston will certainly surpass the current Amtrak station's... ummmmm... unadorned functionality.
  15. mollusk
    That's a very interesting concept. And since it is actually slated to be built and commercially operated, it will be relatively easy to extrapolate actual costs (personally, I'd trust JRC's numbers over whatever China claims its costs are) and do a straight up, apples to apples comparison with what it will take to build the infrastructure for the HSR. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the numbers are closer than what some people might think, given that the HSR is also pretty much being built from scratch, from the rails to the rolling stock and all the way up to and including the stations.
  16. mollusk
    Riffing off of bobruss a bit... a prime example of Building Art is the giant V shaped tower at the deYoung in San Francisco, on what is otherwise a well scaled, organic, very attractive building. OTOH, even though it's not self consciously Building Art, the Menil expansion certainly has its own sculptural qualities.
  17. mollusk
    FIFY: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Burger-King-5899682.php Google: wendy's tree cutting 300,000 settlement chron iff'n you don't have a chron.com subscription.
  18. mollusk
    It was moo. In this case, not in the autocorrect sense, but literally. Granted, a long time ago.
  19. mollusk
    (**my mother's voice**) - "if everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you?"
  20. mollusk
    Me too... I wouldn't want my car to get bashed in going through the drive through like they're showing.
  21. mollusk
    I have seen those renderings... and there is no need to make the streets dark and gloomy. HC as built has lots of (cheerful, airy) gerbil tubes but only a couple ('70s era) caves.* Another example is the ring connecting the Enron Chevron complex over Smith Street at Bell/Ruthven. * as if we really need anything more to mock the '70s...
  22. mollusk
    I just tried Southwest for December 10 -12. It was all within a buck or two regardless of where the round trip started, though it was a bit cheaper in/out of Oakland. I fly between Houston and the Bay Area with some regularity. Southwest and Continental used to be pretty much in lockstep on stated fares, with Continental getting more expensive once various fees were added in. United never seems to match Southwest, not that it really matters that much - I'd much rather use Hobby anyway since it's a lot more convenient for me here. On the other end, travel time on BART from SFO or OAK to the Financial District is pretty much a wash, and if you're going anywhere not on the peninsula OAK pulls ahead. As a side note, not only does United have a fortress at IAH, it has nearly as big a chokehold on SFO.
  23. mollusk
    Annnd... the one access they have also has a very steep driveway ramp, which means that some of us have to come in slowly and at an angle.
  24. mollusk
    It will be interesting to see if DP maintains the tradition of the blocker bill. The first Senate bill put on the calendar is usually something along the lines of calling for erecting a giant limestone mockingbird statue at all highway rest areas or some similar nonsense that never actually gets taken up. Under Texas Senate rules as I've understood them, it then takes a 2/3 majority to suspend the rule and allow another particular item to be taken up "out of order." It has quietly drowned soooo many bad ideas over the years.
  25. mollusk
    Dunno - for me, headphones always seem to work better than spirits at distancing myself from adjacent pax I'd like to ignore... and if they are imbibing in spirits it often makes them get worse...
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