desirous

Not freeways, but I get a big kick out of calling 1960, Jackrabbit Road; and calling Westheimer, 1093.

I refer to freeways by their numbers, except the West Loop, which ends where it meets the North Loop; and the Gulf Freeway, which goes by that name all the way to Cuba.

As a corollary, roads should be paid for entirely with fuel taxes, private investment or otherwise. It's inaccurate to consider public transit wasteful when compared to the massive drain on tax dollars caused by highways.

Why do so many projects have to have so much retail? Are residential-heavy projects unfeasible or something? I'd think more people would prefer low-end luxury units with a few conveniences like a grocery rather than a veritable mall downstairs.

Houston used to be a classic ring city, but the gap is filling in quickly.

More like the ring is expanding outwards, with the donut hole being filled in.

I agree that even the inner loop is quasi-suburban in nature. It feels more suburban than, of all places, Los Angeles. Not that I mind, just that people shouldn't refer to the inner loop like it's Chicago.

I enjoy urban living, but suburban development deserves more credit. For instance, in most regards sprawling San Jose is more dynamic than compact San Francisco.

What happened to the 290 expansion? www.my290.com is still up.

The Southwest Freeway was backed up before 6:30. Thank goodness I reverse-commute.

Well Los Angeles is not Spoke-Shaped...

Doesn't Downtown and Uptown account for 45% of Houston's office space? Los Angeles is a mess, and that's not even counting Orange County.

Speaking of spoke-shaped cities, downtown Chicago has fully half of the metro area's office space. In fact, the city proper discourages office development anywhere else. That explains the over 20 rail lines and 200 stations that serve the CBD there. Very efficient.

Bill White is magical, I tell ya. You don't appreciate the idea of a competent, transparent, uncorrupt mayor until you've lived in Chicago.

Mine went out for about 18 hours. Hmm, the $2.

Nothing important got flooded. They evacuated their equipment onto street level and tied it to the fence.

Did you saw down all those sycamores and ash trees in the Market Square Area. Ball Cypress seem to have fared very well. Isn't this one type of tree that they'll be using on Kirby.

Okay, so what's with the east side of Chase Tower, the west side of Chase garage and the upper floor windows at the Rice. It would seem that there was a mini tornado at Texas and Travis. What do you think?

I don't recognize trees as well as I recognize people.

Yes, there was a tornado. Specifically, it formed around the lightpost atop this picture:

You guys are kinda sick!

:wacko:

Sick excitement! The hurricane party here was the best ever. Too bad I wasn't there to film the guy run down Texas Ave naked.

Still no power for us in Timbergrove, but everyone else has it but for us and the neighbors around us who are served by the pole that got broken by the tree.

I happened to be home last night taking out the trash last night (stinky unfrozen food - blegh) when I saw a Centerpoint truck slowly driving towards me spotlighting all of the poles on the street. So I flagged him down and show him about the broken pole and he says, "Well that's why we keep shorting out up the road! I'll send a crew over tomorrow to fix that up."

11:00pm and it's still technically, "tomorrow," right? So they could still show up now, right? Right?

Centerpoint runs on biblical time. "Tomorrow" was the fourth day of creation where Cold Heineken is created.

All these murderous transformers... damn Decepticons.

Travis Street is finally reasonably clean and open for traffic today. I got tired of driving the wrong way through a minefield (two flats this week) to reach the Rice.

Home Depot on I-10/Bingle is wonderful. They had everything I needed each time I went -- chainsaws, bow saws, thousands of cases of bottled water.

houstontranstar is barely reporting any traffic... I would guess that most of their sensors are out due to the storm.

Ive been doing my standard 60 mile roundtrip commute since monday, and traffic is light.

You obviously don't commute by the Katy Freeway. Westbound in the evening today could have used some serious Preparation H. Way worse than usual, if that's possible.

I've been on HAIF a lot more in the past few days. I try not to leave my apartment too often: already got two flats this week from downtown debris.

I'm hopeful that because there is power at either end of my block that I will have power soon but musicman's post was not encouraging. If I don't have power by friday I will begin planning insurgent attacks on the neighbor across the street with the whole house genset who has not so much as offerred to let us store some food in is 10,000 dollar subzero fridge. He's also never offered me a ride in his turbo porsche or either of his 2 harleys so I'm not surprised

That guy's going to hell. Just ask Jesus.

Well that didn't get rid of them, they placed them back up. Right now they look fine.

We'll see what happens in a few months. Hopefully nothing goes wrong.

Maybe I'll check them out for lunch tomorrow if I go to work. I'll tell you, I'm going to take the long way around. There is no way I'll be walking near Chase.

Do you know if Les Givrales is open on Mkt Sqr?

Haven't checked; Cabo, Market Square Grill are both open. Timpano and Azuma are up and running as well -- perfect incentive to get near Chase.

Is this the first time the Washburn Tunnel flooded?

Most restaurants in the vicinity of Market Square are open now. Got a burrito at Chipotle downstairs for dinner -- it tastes better after a hurricane.

Cleanup:

Who opened the window?

They're boarding up now.

I wonder if the lion ate his master. Purportedly predators don't like the taste of human.

Good to hear about the library. My loft is not configured for doing anything productive: HAIF on one end, TV on the other, with a futon in between.

Crap keeps falling out of Chase Tower. Even overnight. I think they're tossing debris out the windows instead of using trash receptacles... it's a lot easier, I presume.