tony

So, the Texans are thinking people are going to leave the stadium, go in the Astrodome Hotel, buy a beer and go back to the stadium with it? And, the last time I went to the rodeo I had to pay admission to get in. I didn't even think of going to my car where I had a corndog stashed. Their arguments are fishy. It seems to me 'those people' are holding the good citizens of Harris County back from a good deal. Where is Ida Tarbell?

On October 30th that 60-year-old urban forest of healthy live-oak and pine trees that inhabited the former Parkwood site officially bit the dust. The developer saved a few around the edges. Cambridge Street between OST and Holcombe has reopened and construction seems to be progressing on the bayou bridge north of Holcombe. A large concrete structure is well underway at the far northeastern edge of the Baylor property. There seems to be sitework on the large empty lot facing Cambridge one block south of Holcombe, in Devonshire. The foundations for a number of townhouses have been poured a block west of there. The tree removal has opened a new and somewhat ominous view of the south side of the main TMC campus. It seems much closer to OST than before. (The view I'm speaking of is looking north from the corner of Cambridge Street and Old Spanish Trail.) I'm not a treehugger but I hate it that all those trees are gone. If any of you can remember what the SW corner of Richmond and Kirby looked like before that strip center was built (late 70s?) you have an idea what the much larger Parkwood parcel looked like after the apartments were removed.

The thing on top is called an 'eyebrow'

The park, southwest corner of S. Main and Holcombe, is, I believe, a Johnson/Burgee design. It was built in a corner of the old Shamrock property where the tennis courts once were. It's very nice but somewhat lost on the edge of the swirling TMC. Did Johnson have a hand in this?

Maybe Miss Charlotte's was the wrong name. Ebenezer's rings a bell. The menu and upstairs part seem right. I'm sure it was on Converse. I also remember the pagan church but it wasn't the place I backed in to or the postman's house with the damnit dolls nailed to the side. The damnit doll house could have been the parsonage, I guess. The two houses looked similar except it seems like the damnit doll house had only one floor.

I remember Miss Charlotte's (a very trendy restaurant for the time, not the gay bar) on Converse St., two blocks east of Montrose between Willard and Welsh, behind Anderson Fair Retail. It opened and closed in 1973. It was just down the street from a house (corner of Welsh and Converse) with damn-it dolls nailed to its side. A postman and his wife lived there and they had naked seances at night. Late one Saturday I backed into a driveway on Willard St. trying to turn around. I hit a huge Bonneville parked face-out in the driveway of this bungalow and put out one of the car's headlights. A man in jockey shorts comes out on his porch with a shotgun and demands I pay cash for a whole new front end to his car. I told him he'd have to deal with my Dad's insurance company and took off (we lived on Woodhead at the time.) The insurance company did some sort of search and found he had no insurance and the county picked up his car. I felt terrible about that but he got back at me by writing on my car with a nail--very embarrassing because this was before self-serve gasoline and every time I filled up the guy would come inform me that someone wrote on my car with a nail. My Dad sold that car and kicked my ass for being drunk. We ate TexMex at El Patio on W. Gray (in the center of RO center) and I usually ordered their Nachos Grande. I remember eating at Lillian's, on Westheimer where Numbers is now. They sold crepes. There were several sidewalk restaurants on the Lower Strip and pedestrian traffic was always heavy, even during the week. I stayed with my grandma sometimes in the summer (she lived in an old white wooden two-story house on Westheimer where the parking lot for Numbers/La Strada is today.) I would sit on her front porch swing with my shirt off and try to hustle joints from the guys walking down the sidewalk between the restaurants. Il Padrido was on the corner in that block (where La Strada stands now). They had good pizza. Michaelangelo's, which was directly across the street, is the only restaurant left from that time period. Sorry for rambling, this took me back.

The building under construction is at the corner of Bertner and the new, unnamed street which parallels OST and connects the new part of Bertner and Cambridge. It looks similar to the twin Red McCombs Early Cancer Detection buildings (uncertain of the exact name) located where Knight Rd and Fannin merge just south of OST--the only exception is that the new building has six floors and the twin buildings have 4. The Menninger Clinic will probably be located in this part of the Med Center or on El Paseo at Cambridge further south, although that site has been mentioned as a future Harris County Mental Health facility. The #73 Metro goes up Cambridge and El Paseo and circulates throughout the Med Center. The Smithlands Station is about a 15 minute walk from upper Cambridge. Cambridge itself is completely impassible from Holcombe to OST and the city has spared the 15 year-old live oaks in the Cambridge esplanade just south of OST. The Parkwood apartments are history but the trees are still there for now...

Since the old HISD administrative building was leveled, it's one of the few Brutalist-style buildings left. There's another on the corner of Fannin and OST that I would consider Brutalist along with the Kroger on OST at Cambridge. I don't think it's anybody's favorite style but the building on Fannin is comforting somehow.

Barnet Newman's 'Broken Oblisk', in the plaza pool in front of the Rothko Chapel, was defaced with a swastika several years ago. It has since been completely refurbished and resealed and is back in place. This sculpture, which is arguably Houston's most controversial and artistically important outdoor expression, was dedicated to MLK and its defacement was a crude political act and not an ordinary 'tagging' if that word can be used at all. The new sculpture seems a little wayward to me. It seems too close to the building. The back appeals to me more than the front where a large, vagina-like appendage spills forth above the entrance to the cave. It is somewhat more magical at night. I think I will like this sculpture over time but at the moment I'm feeling a little squimish about it.

How would you define 'basilica'?

The ground level facing MacGregor is very swanky looking. I wonder if it will have a Cambridge Street address in the future. I'm still trying to figure out why the city changed the original name (Outerbelt) and why it was named that anyway since it went in front of the original TMC institution, Hermann Hospital. Maybe the street was an afterthought, assuming the hospital faced the Fannin extension.

This building is inoffensive and as bland as any from the Kirksey firm. They also did the new UT dorms on Knight Road and they're somewhat more successful. I like the "lantern" on top of the building too but does anybody know how the contractor plans to remove that giant, white, triangular, three-story cement mixer sitting inside it?

Let's be clear about the Prudential building: It can all be repaired including the swimming pool, the track to the west and the falling plaster. The owner just doesn't want to. They know there is neighborhood opposition to the Prudential building's demise. This is an historic building. It was among Houston's first surburban highrises and a Houston landmark. Inside, it is boxy and hard to work with. It is not particularly distinctive when compared with other buildings of its era in other cities and I imagine architectural historians would dispute its importance. But it's ours. It deserves to live. It is ironic that there is a public outcry about another boxy, uncomfortable space, the River Oaks Theater--and, yes, I signed the petition to save it. I'm just wondering why people hate on Weingarten Reality and give M.D. Anderson, Inc. a blank check. It's true that if a city is to grow, everything cannot be saved and Houston, like New York, has given the bulldozer a free hand. Granted, the Prudential is no Pennsylvania Station but shouldn't we save something? Does M.D. Anderson not have a rehab department?