mkultra25

How did Forest Hill fare during Harvey (and previous major flood events like Tax Day, Ike, Allison, etc.)? The neighborhood is obviously very close to Brays Bayou.

Preach it, brother. If I were king, owners of existing businesses would be granted legal immunity against these types of nuisance actions by subsequent purchasers of nearby property who failed to undertake sufficient due diligence before closing, for as long as the business continued to operate. I was not aware that Wabash had gotten grief from their neighbors. As a semi-regular customer I like the new location as it's somewhat closer to us than the old one was, but it sucks if the neighbors' attitude was a factor in their decision to move.

I'm not sure who may have been a Yamaha dealer here back in the 60s, but my guess would be H&H Music - as far as well-known piano dealers, I don't think Holcombe-Lindquist or Brook Mays were around until the 1970s, although I may be wrong about that. H&H is still around but I don't believe they sell pianos anymore (they are now the same company as Brook Mays, with Brook Mays operating under that name in Dallas and under the H&H banner here in Houston), so it's anyone's guess if they have sales records dating back fifty years. Since you have the serial number, it might be worth reaching out to Brook Mays/H&H corporate to see if anyone there is able to help. My second suggestion would be the US Yamaha importer/distributor, but I'm not sure who that is/was. I would expect someone at Yamaha corporate to be able to provide further information about where a piano was originally shipped from the factory, given a serial number.

I was going to ask if you had a link, but I found it: https://offerup.com/item/detail/405793849/?ref=Search Do you have documentation of its provenance? Not sure there are many Houston history buffs (as opposed to pianists) who have the means to drop ten grand on a piano, but such documentation certainly couldn't hurt its sales prospects.

I think Sears Holdings is focusing on the low-hanging fruit when it comes to deciding on store closures and selecting the ones that are most obviously underperforming. I think the N. Shepherd store still does a decent if not remarkable business - there are always cars in the parking lot, and when I went there with my dad on Thanksgiving evening to buy a washer, dryer, and refrigerator (a significant milestone in the post-Harvey rebuilding of their house), the parking lot was almost full and the store was packed with bargain-hunters, with lines at every register. Granted, that is probably an outlier, but I'd be more concerned with the prospects of any retailer that didn't pack people in on notable sale days like Black Friday, Boxing Day, etc.

I remember hearing about this before as well, but don't recall any of the details beyond thinking "so *that's* where they got the street name from" at the time.

Ran across this earlier today and thought @Evil Developer might be able to use it as a checklist for movie nights: A Brief History of Evil Developers in Movies Quite a few solid pull quotes that HAIFers will undoubtedly find amusing, for example:

What's really needed is a portcullis and a moat.

Very glad to hear that your career transition was by choice. Rice is a great place to work, and I have no doubt you'll enjoy it (I'm both an alum and a former staffer, having worked there for several years after graduation). Also happy for the Press writers who have already landed new positions that will enable them to remain active in local journalism.

I may well have brought up Futrell and his Texaco station here before. Clearly I got the two Texaco stations confused - the one I was thinking of would have been open earlier than 1968, so a 1964 opening for Futrell's sounds like the right timeframe. I'll have to send my father that photo, as i'm sure it will jog some memories for him.

Indeed, but the key phrase is "they weren't willing to do this with the resources they had." Other newspapers managed to overcome the obstacles imposed by the SCOTUS ruling, so why couldn't the Chronicle muster the institutional will to do so? It's pretty clear that the window for action has most likely closed, as newspaper revenues have sharply declined in the intervening years since the ruling.

I don't think we're ever going to see eye to eye on this, so I'll leave it at that. I'm not surprised that we're having this discussion, though - the Lomax family's heritage in the field of music has long been a controversial subject, with some folks feeling that the family legacy is one of shining a light onto hidden treasures through persistent and skillful curation, and some holding an opposing view that they have unfairly feathered their own nests on the backs and through the efforts of others.

Firebird, since you mentioned it, do you have any info on when that Texaco station became Grantham's Texaco? I recall that it was owned/operated by a gentleman named Mr. Futrell when I was very young, who at the time lived a few houses down the street from my parents.

Translation: the Chronicle would prefer to let the memory of the Post remain dormant, so as not to invite unflattering comparisons with the Chronicle. I subscribed to both the Post and the Chron for years, and there was no question in my mind that the Post was the better paper. It's depressing to contemplate that with each passing year, there are fewer and fewer people around who remember when Houston was actually a two-newspaper town, and was the better for it. As to Lomax, I defy anyone to read this piece and tell me honestly that he is not a truly gifted writer. Lumping him in with all of the other web-content aggregators who like to claim the title of journalist does him a great disservice, IMO: Of Unknown Origin

That sign really stood out at night, when it was lit up. In today's world of retina-searing, oversized LED panels that have people reaching for their sunglasses at night, it probably wouldn't merit a second glance, but back then it was quite noticeable from a distance. Lance Lalor is a name that I hadn't thought of in a long time. Hard to imagine a city controller now behaving as he did. For those who weren't around then (or have forgotten): The Self-Destruction of Lance Lalor

Great photo. Now that's the Houston I knew and loved. Also visible, albeit partially obscured, is the old Houston Motor Inn sign in the foreground. When I was growing up, the rate listed on the sign was like a hot-sheet-based inflation tracker - my earliest memory of it was "Couple $8" in the late 60s. Then it became "Couple $10". Then "Couple $12". It's hard to make out in this photo since it's behind the Palms Nursery sign, but it looks like it might be "Couple $15" here. I don't remember with certainty how high the price eventually got before the sign was torn down, but I can recall "Couple $18", and I'm pretty sure it broke the $20 barrier at some point.

Yeah, but it's not uncommon for LinkedIn profiles to not be entirely up-to-date (or entirely factual, but that's a different issue). She has been removed from the "About Us" page on Houstonia's website and someone else is now listed in the position she formerly held.

I hope I didn't curse her by posting that, but it appears that as of a few days ago she is no longer there and has been replaced by one of the recently-laid-off Press staffers. Not sure what happened, but I'm very sorry to see her go, as she was IMO a crucial element of what really made the magazine (and its online component) worth reading and distinguished it from the pack of anodyne competitors. And I say that with no slight intended toward her successor, who I'm sure will do a good job. At any rate, the Texas Observer posted a fine article yesterday which contextualizes the rise and fall of the Press better than anything else I've read so far: Requiem for an Alt-Weekly

There's only so much you can do with maple syrup and poutine.

I remember the neon sign at Hebert's Ritz, but was unable to find a pic of it online during an admittedly cursory search. In addition to the restaurant name, it depicted a bear standing upright on its hind legs, in keeping with their familiar advertising tagline "pronounced A-Bear".

Yeah, she's the managing editor. I should've said "parent company" instead of "publisher" in my earlier post - poking around a bit, I see that they had a transition in the publisher role several months ago - the parent company is still the same: Houstonia Magazine names new publisher as former publisher launches new media co. The key quote, for purposes of this discussion:

I would be shocked to discover that Houstonia isn't financially healthy. Maybe my viewpoint is skewed by living in close proximity to the Greater Heights bubble, but from what I can tell the magazine is quite popular and they have a well-oiled, ubiquitous social media presence. I can just about guarantee their ad revenues are far superior than anything the Press could've ever dreamed of, but that's to be expected when you compare the types of advertisers that grace the pages of Houstonia with those in your typical alt-weekly. And in this day and age, revenues from subscriptions and newsstand sales are just a bonus - it's all about the ad revenue. Also, this isn't the publisher's first rodeo - they have previously established other monthlies with a regional focus. The editor used to post here, long before she successfully used her blog as a jumping-off point to a journalism career - I guess if she were still around, she could probably shed some light on these types of questions.

To be fair, most of the freelancers they're depending on now have been writing for them for a while, and some of them are fairly capable writers. But taken as a whole, I fear you're right about the suck factor increasing exponentially as a result of the staff dismissals. I think the music coverage in particular will suffer greatly without Chris Lane there. What may be even worse is considering how many writers got their start at the Press before moving on to bigger and better things, and wondering what will replace the Press as an incubator for such future talents now. Oh, and as to your assessment of Jef Rouner:

The Shepherd School has come a long way since the days when its practice rooms were consigned to the basement of Herman Brown Hall (the building that housed the Math and Math Sci departments), almost as an afterthought. Of course, that was back in the days when pretty much everything at Rice that wasn't related to engineering was an afterthought.