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mollusk

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Everything posted by mollusk

  1. mollusk
    I live within spitting distance of Triton, and have attended a bunch of the meetings over a very long time as well. Some very small changes on the structural side (TxDOT's responsibility) can make a huge difference to the final result - we're not talking about placing the ferns here. There are a bunch of such issues in the segment between 610 and 10, and in particular between Cavalcade and White Oak/Quitman.
  2. mollusk
    If you go a little to the left of what's visible in this picture, you would see another building behind this one, separated by a driveway with parked cars on each side. IDK if it's the clientele or what, but navigating HV's parking lots on foot takes Frogger to a new level.
  3. mollusk
    Feh... who needs a main library anyway?
  4. mollusk
    Funny - they're substituting in white and grey just as brown is starting to return (as breathlessly revealed by the fishwrap the Chron yesterday).
  5. mollusk
    I just got a push email that Moku Bar is now open at 2914 White Oak, which you get to via the alley between Pho Binh and Tacos A Go Go.
  6. mollusk
    The old school parking meters had a message to that effect inside the little window that showed how much time was left. The new meters just won't accept payment.
  7. mollusk
    77001 is only used for PO boxes; downtown street addresses are 77002 (or 77010 for the Houston Center / DG / GRB area). Given NASA's mission it's difficult to imagine letting its mail get outside of secure channels, so direct pickup from the post office or perhaps dedicated delivery makes sense.
  8. mollusk
    More like 30s deco with the plants someone stole from a Chotchkie's - but it does have flair.
  9. mollusk

    Where Am I?

    mollusk replied to hindesky's topic in Off Topic

    Houston Museum of Natural Science?
  10. mollusk
    Cotija works pretty well - it's a crumbly hard white cheese. Try the mole enchiladas at La Mexicana - they come with cotija.
  11. mollusk
    All four cars are '65s - Catalina, Catalina, Tempest, and the grille of a Ford (most likely Galaxie). That was in my prime car spotting days - I could even tell what year a given VW Beetle was. 🤷‍♂️
  12. mollusk
    "Do you have it in chartreuse and pumpkin?" Seriously, that was my stock response to any salesman insisting that the whatzit could be configured anyway one wanted.
  13. mollusk
    If you're asking about the one to the left of the Humble (Exxon) Building, in front of the old downtown Y, it's the Humble Building's garage. It's still there.
  14. mollusk
    It's more stable than it looks...
  15. mollusk
    Houston is built on layers of sand and clay. How far down the transition is between a sand layer and a clay layer varies, even within a block, and different soils have different bearing capacities. Ground water also enters into the calculations if it's there.
  16. mollusk
    In which case you should also know that Critical Mess no longer starts at Market Square.
  17. mollusk
    Short term memory... it's the second thing to go.
  18. mollusk
    Rather than having a giant concrete moat around downtown I'd just as soon all the freeways be reduced to stubs with business designations, and if we need to have through signage just post it to any of our ring roads. That's what a lot of cities in other countries do, and it helps congestion. We had a real life experiment with that in San Francisco, where traffic improved when the Embarcadero Freeway was torn down due to earthquake damage, repeated more recently when they tore down the Central Freeway north of Market. (IMHO they ought to finish the job and replace it with regular surface streets all the way down to the 80.)
  19. mollusk
    Actually it's one of Crock's recovered threads.
  20. mollusk
    Along with the people IRL who refuse to ride the train because they're "afraid [they'll] get knifed" (verbatim quotation). 🤷‍♂️
  21. mollusk

    Cooking

    mollusk replied to BWSchultz's topic in Off Topic

    Central Market and HEB also have bulk spices in bins so you can get what you need for waaaaaaay less money. Even though the price may be marked as some huge amount, it ends up being a buck or less (sometimes much less) when you scoop your seasoning into a little bitty ziplock bag. People basically are paying several bucks for the bottle, which ends up holding much more than generally will be used in the next few months.
  22. mollusk
    FWIW, the ponding issue is something that whoever paid for the parking lot should drum on the contractor about. Whether it's a permeable surface or not doesn't make much of a difference - poor drainage is poor drainage.
  23. mollusk
    fruit juice beer, peanut butter beer...
  24. mollusk
    Essentially it was a panic reaction to the erosion of a more or less apartheid society. It was a time when people who supported integration were often referred to as "(slur) lovers," sometimes with spray paint (or worse) - and that was here. Other places in the deep South were even worse; some still are. To be sure, there was also an element of not wanting to go from comfortable majority status to being in the minority for fear of being on the receiving end of what had been dished out. My last comment, too, to get back on topic.
  25. mollusk
    It's wonderful that the pervasive racism and bigotry I grew up with is inconceivable to people who grew up afterwards. Still, it was most assuredly "a thing." From the late 50s until 1967 or 68 my grandparents lived a couple blocks from the intersection of Calhoun and Griggs. It was a neighborhood that looked exactly like Oak Forest and postwar Bellaire used to - smallish one story 3/2 ranches, most with attached one car garages, as white as a box of rice and solidly middle class. You didn't get into the wards until north and west of TSU. The first shopping mall in Houston was Gulfgate, and Palms Center (anchored by JC Penney) was built about the same time. And until 1964, racist deed restrictions were common and enforced. They had a "This is my home. It is not for sale!" sign in their yard (follow the link in Crock's post above). Nevertheless, they got stampeded out of there over to a very similar house in Sharpstown, and took a beating on the sale price, when the neighborhood went from solid white to almost entirely black over the course of just a couple years. So yeah, it really was "that important to people... back at that time."
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