mollusk

The blue fabric that was covering the south (Rusk) side of the building is all gone now.  I don't know if it blew down or they took it up, but it was sailing like a curtain in the breeze yesterday at lunch time as the squall line was about to blow through downtown.  There was also so much particulate being blown out of there that it looked like smoke.  

The actual language in Article I, Section 2, is:  "The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct."

Translated, this means an actual headcount, and that the Census Bureau doesn't have the authority to use statistical corrections unless directed to do so by Congress.

Arch, the quotation is actually "infested with mosquitoes and Methodists." (if my Googlez are treating me right... I thought it was Presbyterians.)  

In another thread, there was the observation that Paris (France, not Texas) is flat.  As I've mentioned before, we really ought to have a nice statue of Willis Carrier (the inventor of modern air conditioning).

And once again, it doesn't have to be a zero sum game.  

If the Elmiraj concept was built, it would've carried the Eldorado name with pride. With this new nomenclature scheme at Caddy, most of their vehicles will adopt a CTx scheme for new names in the next few years, with x being a number. The ATS and CTS will change into something like CT1 and CT2, but the Escalade will keep its name.

Dangit.  It's right up there with the Infiniti Qwhateverthehellitis.

I've been driving cars with numbers on the trunk lid for years (and as they have always had).  I recall when "tii" meant Touring International (the speed kit) Injected (an even more serious speed kit).  Frankly, I'm a bit annoyed that they keep putting "i" on the end.  Injection quit being special when I was a lot younger and skinnier.

Incidentally, that post card is from before Warren's... IIRC, it was in the white building in the middle.  He did not move across the square until forced.

FWIW, I was very, very young at the time.  My parents brought my pre-adolescent self to Market Square in its heyday, as well as the Quarter in NOLA.  No, they weren't giving me and my brothers gin intravenously, they were teaching us responsible fun.  Thanks, publicly, Mom and Dad, who I've never been scared of as long as there was no blood or broken bones (actually, they could handle cops... prolly better than was necessary).

Filio, I will always remember him for Remy (who I kept holding up to my own dogs as an example, fat lot of good that did)... not even the overpass.  

It's sad to see him leave us so young.  I never met him personally, but he always seemed like a guy I would enjoy knowing.  

God love him and his family.

I was thinking of other names they could've used like Calais, or Sixteen. Heck, if they wanted to stay with the alphanumeric scheme and have a nod to the past, CT60 would've worked. The 60 would've been a nod to the 60 series from the days when Cadillac was seen as being on par with Rolls Royce.

Yep.  

The CTS coupe (at least the newer incarnation in CTS-V trim) would wear an Eldorado badge pretty well, too.

If you are basing this on the rendering in the leasing brochure, I would not put much stock in that. It looks like somebody had about two minutes to put that image together. The building is actually dwarfed by the Lyric Center across the street. Then again, based on the quality of renderings and marketing materials we've seen, I'm not expecting a whole lot from this project other than more residents.

The renderings and marketing materials seem to be heavy on the Soft Corinthian Leather.  I just hope the building itself ages better than the Chrysler Cordoba did.

Oh boy, all of our fears were true, there will be absolutely no new retail facing the park in an attempt to match the other two sides of Market Square. And all of the "new retail" theyve been touting is actually all the old vacant retail in the ugly ass Kim Son garage.

The only "new retail" I see is a 1,400 square foot slot facing Preston.

Looks like they have made absolutely ZERO effort to interact with the park/square on the street/pedestrian level. Such a shame.

It's amusing that the eateries that are tagged on the aerial photo are among the most pedestrian least representative of downtown.

It also looks like they're doing zero, zip, nada to the Market Square Garage beyond joining it on the ground level and taking up a bunch of its spaces.

I don't live in this particular district, which has its own fairly unique set of issues, but I have participated in the formation of other districts.

I'm not going to say that someone does or does not have an accurate memory.  I will say, though, that an experienced lawyer who has a litigation oriented practice with some transactional work folded in would have a resume similar to what Barkley finds unbelievable.  Other than a bit of divergence about what particular boards and agencies are involved, my history is pretty close to s3mh's.

It's not a zero sum game between the two metropolitan areas - each has its strengths, and each has its deficiencies.  I probably spend more time in the Bay Area than in any other one place outside Houston, and while the views are nice in a macro sense, it's a lot grubbier (as in physically dirty) in the city centers of San Francisco, Oakland, and to a lesser extent, Berkeley.  BART is great for getting around the area, MUNI's light rail works pretty well, and of course there are the ferries across the bay which are at least cool; but I'd stack METRO's bus system up against that of AC Transit or MUNI any day; in terms of routine daily commutes I think we likely come out on top (the Bay Bridge's toll plaza into the city during morning drive is easily as big or bigger a cluster than the West Loop).  One thing that a casual visitor may not notice is that a lot of people in the Bay Area will stereotype "others" the same vigor as the most xenophobic of those behind The Pine Curtain - they just choose different groups of "others" to slam.  Jerk status of recently deceased former football team owners?  Between Al Davis and that Okie Mercury dealer with a bad rug, it's a foot race.  Dysfunction of state governments is also pretty much a wash.  Though we certainly were a culinary backwater 25 years or more ago, now I'd put the variety and quality of our food up there with anybody else - and our Mexican food is MUCH better than what they call such there, though they do have us beat on East Asian.  The newly higher housing prices that we whine about in some neighborhoods here, is considered "starter home" territory there.  The absence of mosquitos out there sure is nice, though.

Who's cooler?  That's a matter of perception, unless you're talking about average temperature west of the Caldecott Tunnel - in which case the Bay Area has us beat (over the ridge gets every bit as hot, though).

In answer to the original question - I've had the opportunity to move there, and didn't.

Do you take a bore-o-meter and ride around town taking measurements with it?

 

Why yes, you do.  

It's typically mounted in a five year old, beige Camry, so as not to skew the results. 

IIRC, the train will go through the garage - I think there was even a picture on some other thread.  

Piling on with James, having some particular X thing go wrong can then cause a cascade effect, sort of like pulling the last piece out of a Jenga stack.  In this case, it sounds like one issue is having to schedule testing around a number of other things.  Rodeo is a heavy user, so yep, there goes most of March if you're needing to take the Red Line out of service for some things.  

Subdude, I'm very concerned about meteorites.  Fortunately, the Alcoa company has given me a haberdashery option that works well.

I like the Uptown Dillard's building. It's a lot better than their newer stores, architecturally, methinks.

Marble.  Just like the big ol' SakowitzthatwasmakingFoley'sitsbeotch / nowaparkinggarage downtown, and the long gone First City banking lobby.  

Nobody uses it anymore, which is a bit of a shame.

Information can be very reassuring or very scary.  It is what it is.  Even if the information is scary, though, looking at it rationally also allows for at least a chance of a rational response.

Ignorance and rumors, however, are almost always scary, usually overblown, and rarely lead to anything productive.  Remember the panic about AIDS maybe being spread by mosquitos?  Hey, they bite someone for their blood, and then bite someone else... maybe you...

Let's try to stay in the reality based world, whatever your individual politics may happen to be.

^ Let's not get started on THAT.  

An extra ten points for the first person who correctly identifies the freeway interchange depicted on Page 9, Metropolitan Rankings. 

I have no pride in my skillz of teh Googlez... if someone can link to more authoritative numbers, fine and dandy.  

IIRC, there was some amazing six digit number that was plastered on METRO stuff a year or two ago.

(***sigh...***) It just hasn't been the same since the giant disco ball went into disuse.

While the common complaint is trains, I noted a lack of a real farmer's market (much less one located downtown) as part of the "missing" things.

Tige, go behind Canino's sometime - that's a real, live farmer's market, open daily, with all sorts of things you just don't see in standard supermarkets, and an amazing assortment of taco trucks.  It's just not real well known, or particularly visible.

It would be nice if it were on a rail line, though. 

Yeah, but the downtown daytime population is almost that of the entire state in 1860. 

The newer lights tend to be sodium vapor, with a yellow orange light, rather than mercury vapor, which has a bluer light.  Supposedly the sodium lights create less light pollution; still, there's plenty of spill over into adjacent neighborhoods that didn't occur with the lower profile cobra lamps.

I certainly get the idea of having better lighting for safety.  I just hope that the altitude of the light sources can be lowered back down as LED technology continues to improve and become less expensive.  I'd like to be able to take the blackout curtains back out of my bedroom.

OK, we get it.  You don't want to live in a small, old home, and apparently neither does anybody you hang out with.  Nobody is forcing you to.  However, I hate to break it to you, but you do not hang out with everybody in town, or even a representative cross section.

Your whims do not give you the right to diminish the value of my property, and that of my neighbors, to the cost of the soil less removing what is already there just because our collective ego does not require us to pay to heat and air condition and furnish and maintain something far larger than what we need (let's not even address concerns about sustainability), nor does it mean that I and my remaining neighbors must be forced to have something twice or three times as tall encircling and peering into our back yards, on my property, and that of my neighbors.  

In other words, a majority (or super majority) of the property owners in some areas (a tiny fraction of Houston's land area, by the way) have said "no.  You may not build whatever you want, wherever you want.  We were here first and like it as it is, or if it must change, at least in harmony with what's already here."

You are welcome to have your gated open concept McCraftVic community with Italian cabinets and soft Corinthian leather.  

Elsewhere.

Tin foil is on aisle six.