dalparadise

I worry about developers who want to put up condo towers with units that start around $1,000,000, but don't know how to market themselves very well. Turnberry doesn't even seem to know the market into which they are coming. Their tower does seem luxurious, but their materials are terrible. Points: Their ad in the Playbill for the Houston Ballet has a typo. They need to inspire confidence that they pay attention to details when asking for millions of dollars from potential customers. The Flash presentation on the site inexplicably opens with a couple of shots of cattle -- hardly the image I associate with high-rise living in a major city -- but exactly the image I associate with someone's perception of this town who has never been here. That may be fine for marketing to out-of-towners who, perhaps, share this perception. But, what about Houstonians who might be in the market? Do you really want to give the impression you know nothing about this city? They go to the "everything's bigger in Texas" tired old routine. Sigh. They use stock photography from the 80s to show what kind of ladies might live here. Seriously, I think the one in the silver dress was Kelly LeBrock from the Weird Science days. There's also one by the pool, where the model is sneering at the pool boy as if to say, "leave the towels, you insignificant piece of feces." It's pretty amusing how hard it's trying to show pretentious luxury, while I think the shot was actually meant to be comical or ironic in nature. In the location tab, they acknowledge Galleria I,II and III being just a block away, but fail to point out that Galleria IV is right across the street! They show Nordstrom as just some anonymous building right next door to the site. Does the marketing team know their own site? Is it stronger to represent your location as a 5-minute walk away from The Galleria (with entry via a not very pedestrian-friendly area across busy streets and through massive parking garages, by the way) or as having access to the street level entrance to Nordstrom right outside your front door? Looking at the Flash presentation, I'd assume Turnberry Tower was Williams Tower. They say it is "rising to the sky" with a shot of Williams. They offer its location as prime, with a shot of Williams. They circle Williams Tower from the air. I understand the limitations using stock photography puts on creativity, but again, it makes Turnberry seem like they don't know what they're talking about. They represent Uptown as the place for the ballet and symphony, calling it the city's premiere entertainment district. Well, I was in The Galleria Friday evening and went to the ballet. With traffic and a stop at the Pulse machine, plus parking downtown, I was able to make the curtain by just 10 minutes, leaving 55 minutes before. Again, I don't think Turnberry knows where they are. Great shopping, yes. Entertainment? Culture? Performing arts? That's a different neighborhood. These seem like small gripes, I'll agree. But, together, they paint a picture of a developer that's out of touch with the location and stereotypical of his view of Houston. In the past, that hasn't been a good sign for the success of business of any kind in this town. I'd recommend they spend some more time here, or at least hire some local marketing experts to help them get it right, before perception becomes reality.

I thought Explorer was dead. It went obsolete for Mac users some time ago. The way PCs hang onto software and hardware dinosaurs is funny. Safari is even fading fast on the Mac. Firefox is pretty nice.

INSIDE. Inside it's one of the nicest places in town. There's a Bellagio meets W quality to it that clearly makes it a Hilton flagship.

Last season it seemed like Minute Maid's roof was closed from pretty much mid-May until mid-September. I did seem like in previous years they would crack it open in about the 4th inning every night well into late June. Last year, I don't remember any games where the roof started closed and opened mid-game. Is there a new policy? I love open day games in April and May and open night games in early June. I also love Sunday day games in the dead of July or August when a big thunderstorm rolls through outside. MMP is just as spectacular as a living room as it is a backyard.

What? I'm not ashamed of having bought the fist. I was simply making the point that I couldn't really see how it could be considered a sexual device. It didn't seem rigid enough to insert and anyway, it was just a hand. What could possibly be embarrassing or illegal about a rubber hand? Anyway, my creative director at the time thought our idea for the fist trophy was a lame idea, so we kept it around the office for a few weeks until somebody stole it. It did show up on my art director's desk one day all greasy. Maybe someone figured out how to use it, after all. I think, if that were your thing, why not just use your own fist? We paid over $20 for that thing.

You could always buy whatever you wanted just by asking the clerk for access to merchandise behind the counter, or in the back room. The rule was that things weren't supposed to look like real genitals. I had to do the "behind the counter" thing once when I bought a life-sized rubber fist to make a trophy, though. When I asked if they had one, I was told it was illegal, because it looked like a real body part. So, I guess the law wasn't limited to just genitals. After about two minutes convincing the clerk I wasn't a cop, he went in the back and brought me my fist.

Could the editor please suspend the language filter for this thread so that we could accurately describe this show? What amazing crap.

Good for Austin, I guess, but zzzzzzzzzzz. Pelli hasn't done anything for me in a long time. This doesn't seem to offer anything to change that perception I have.

I fly out of the airport just south of those towers. They are always on my mind. They are about 2000' tall and provide a nice beacon home to the airport at night. They are also a good gauge of the cloud ceiling -- as the minimum for visual flight in our pattern is a 1500' ceiling. I can stand in front of the terminal at the airport and look toward those towers to check the sky easier and more reliably than checking the local weather. If I can see the tops of the towers, it's legal to fly around the pattern and practice landings, at least.

http://www.forbestraveler.com/food-drink/r...er=yahoo_travel San Antonio may have a far more manifest Mexican food culture, but Houston, which spirals forever outward, has far more breadth and depth

The city does not have the right to move all general aviation away from Hobby. A certificated pilot may land at any public use facility he pleases -- that's really every airport in the country, given compliance with Federal Aviation Regulations. What the city can do is make it so expensive to do business at a particular facility that most GA (aside from corporate jets) will not fly there. That is already the case -- where landing fees and fuel prices make a field like Pearland or Ellington much more attractive to GA than Hobby. Lobby groups like the AOPA work to keep these practices in check by various means, to ensure pilots retain the rights our certificates guarantee, however.

I don't know about the Pearland location specifically, but I do know that the group that owns and runs the Cabos around town has been in real trouble for many years. I always thought their quality was very good, but their value was a bit sub par. The buzz about them for as long as I can remember is that they were a great concept, but poorly run business that capitalized on one very successful location (Shepherd) and overbuilt (and overpaid) for a location (Downtown) that has struggled to tread water for 8 years. I'm not clear on whether all subsequent locations were by the original owners, or not. I have heard that the couple of attempts to expand and/or franchise the concept were last ditch efforts to save the business. Somehow, they've always stayed afloat -- one loan/location or deal ahead of the creditors. I think that boils down to that good quality/poor value thing.

I've always thought his observations were like a slow-moving train that never goes up high.

You could get your Realtor's license. Or, you could wait two more days and see if they include that info in the public site when they launch the new one. I doubt they will, though. Realtors don't want you to have ready access to that info. It makes strategic marketing of properties too difficult. I used to have my Realtor's license and thought the added functionality on HAR was worth it, alone. Then, I just let it lapse and went back to the public site with the rest of you.

The Tube is, indeed, on "autopilot" right now. They are updating their equipment and moving into big new studios with big new aspirations for this market. Be patient. They have some great ideas that will be well received, once they get settled in.

If 35,000 people turned up for any festival around here, it would go out of existence immediately, not be touted on the news. They get more than that for the Heights Festival, for God's sake. And the "more established" argument doesn't really work, either. The Galveston celebration had laid dormant for decades, when they decided to revive it in the 80s. The turnout was immediately so large, they began to look for ways to scale it back -- including the controversial admission fee. Even with lame-o rules like that, it still has remained a big event -- though one that I'm not really interested in anymore. If Dallas wants to "create its own authentic culture" (whatever that means) they should at least aim a little higher than this. I really can't imagine anything less authentic or less interesting than the description put forth by their own PR machine in that "news story". Houston is not without sin in this arena, either. We've tried to recreate the NYC NYE party, dropping various icons from buildings that face public squares downtown a couple of times. It happens every few years or so to crowds of about 35,000. The difference is that organizers are usually embarrassed by the turnout.

It seems lame to me. A short parade, then standing around waiting for the news to start? At least 35,000 people!? If this were the Denton celebration, it might be newsworthy. But even the 10 o'clock news had to cut to footage of New Year's Eve to make their strange point of what this event was "like". Were there bands (besides marching)? Was there a lot of bar hopping between the three $20 martini lounges there? Did the parade have floats, or just marching bands? Were there any balls to attend? Or was it just a few thousand people showing up to shriek on a 2-minute local news segment? Is this what passes for "awesome" in Dallas? As crappy as the Galveston thing is, at least it has some of the flavor of the real thing.

Small private field. One short-medium East/West runway - two directions to it. How did lowering the Class B to 3000 hurt the fun here? It's still just a couple of minutes to get out from under it. I fly out of an airport under a 2500' shelf with no problems. Down the road at Pearland, you can barely fly the pattern without nudging into the Bravo around Hobby, which extends down to the surface. They still have active ops there.

Based on what I saw when you were speed walking through my neighborhood a few years ago, I'd say, get the work done.

Clearly, you tried a lot harder on this one, but it's still a mess. How you made it through grammar school, much less law school "exacerbates the life out of me".

I find your ability to argue your position and effectively state your point hampered by your poor grammar and spelling skills. In most places, that would be a liability for an attorney. Apparently, it

Are English and grammar part of the curriculum for a law degree in New Orleans?

Yes, but everything inside the loop and nearly everything inside the beltway from north to south is class Bravo airspace from the surface up to 10,000 ft. There's a small corridor between I-10 and the North Loop, over The Heights, where planes and choppers may fly without ATC clearance under 2000 feet. Otherwise, anything will need explicit ATC clearance and radar guidance from ATC to fly. There are "shelves" of airspace beneath the class Bravo that encircle the two airports at about 8 miles out, starting at 2000 feet and stepping up to 4000 feet. That's where the news choppers usually stay. But, with the two airports being so close to one another, the surface ring is almost conjoined north of I-10. It's no big deal to enter Bravo airspace -- it isn't "restricted", but doing so requires strict compliance with ATC guidance and quick pilot response to their commands. That's definitely not the place for some cop to be trying to fly multiple drones.

Holy crap! Was that Marty in there?

Really? It looked pretty anonymous to me.