mkultra25

12 hours ago, Ross said:

That's the sort of error that makes me want to take my work PC apart and disconnect the mouse pad.

You should be able to turn off the touchpad via settings (for Windows, Fn + F9 frequently works depending on which flavor of Windows it's running), unless your workplace has locked out the ability for you to access certain settings. 

4 hours ago, dmil said:

The Happy Budda was owned and operated by the late Beverly Wren. She had operated several other Houston restaurants before. She was married to a wealthy Oilman and had traveled the World. The Happy Budda was a Teppanyaki style Japanese restaurant similar to Benihana. In the 70's I took clients there when I worked in the Shipping Industry. My employer was the US Gulf Agent for NYK Line of Japan. The menu was similar to Benihana with better and cheaper prices. It later had a fire and did not reopen. The food, ambience, and service were great. Beverly Wren passed away several years ago.

It had two fires, in 1985 and 1986. I don't think it ever reopened after the first one. Don't recall what caused the fires, but at least one of them was rumored to be arson. 

There was a recent auction on eBay for a photo of the second fire from the Chronicle's library: 

1986 Press Photo Fireman Put of Fire that Damaged the Happy Buddha at Restaurant

5 hours ago, gene said:

Greenspoint Mall became worthless the day they closed Chess King and Merry-Go-Round  

 

I just drove past the old Deauville Twin site on I-45 this afternoon, and wondered what, if any, vestiges of the theaters are still visible within the Family Dollar that currently occupies the site. Perhaps a field trip is in order when I have more time - it's been years since I've even been in the parking lot there, let alone inside any of the stores. 

5 hours ago, s3mh said:

Yelp may be the worst thing to happen to the restaurant industry in recent history.  I have family in the PNW that run a very high profile restaurant (NY Times reviewed, tops local media "best" lists, etc.).  The cuisine is Asian/French fusion.  The Yelpers started a crusade calling out the Asian side of the cuisine on the grounds of lack of authenticity and cultural appropriation (chef is a white guy).

Didn't you get the memo? The painstaking enumeration of microaggressions has assumed primacy over such outdated, oppressive relics of the colonial era as "quality" and "aesthetics". 

How did you find out the opening dates? Did you already have the year and maybe the month, and just dug through microfilm until you found the exact dates and the movie listings, or was there a better method? 

It would be interesting to see not only the listings for the opening but also the closing dates, extended to all the theaters in the Houston area, but that could be a major undertaking given the number of theaters that have opened and closed over the years. 

I was pleasantly surprised to see that almost half the comments in that Swamplot piece were pro-Pig Stand, and were clearly from folks who had patronized it before its untimely closure. 

I was a fairly regular customer of Eatzi's, and will be happy to see them return, but the local dining landscape is very different now from what it was when they were previously here - there is a lot more competition in the same space they occupied, and there are a lot of newcomers who weren't around for the previous iteration and thus have no memories of it. It'll be interesting to see what location(s) they wind up deciding on.

2 hours ago, Firebird65 said:

 

I actually was in two of these pod classrooms (or what Aldine ISD called clusters) for first and second grades. Cluster A for first and Cluster C for second at Hidden Valley Elementary.

 

To be honest, I kind of liked them. I was briefly in a regular classroom for a week in second grade before moving back to a cluster, and I thought it was kind of boring in such a small, confined space.

 

I don't remember having any problems learning in a cluster classroom. So I'm not sure why people these days speak badly of them.  

I was in Cluster C for second grade there as well (or "Unit C", as I remember the sign above the entrance stating). It was my first year at HV Elem, and to my second-grade eyes the classroom seemed vast. I think there were either three or four teachers assigned to the room, with each one rotating around to different sections depending on what activities were in process.

Do you know if the cluster classrooms are still there in a recognizable form? I'd have to think they'd have been subdivided into smaller rooms long ago. I occasionally pass by the school while driving down 249, but I don't think I've been inside it since fifth grade. 

8 hours ago, CrockpotandGravel said:

Hopdoddy Burger Bar is "officially confirmed" but unlike Eater Houston, CultureMap failed to include this forum as a source. Houstonia, Houston Chronicle, Houston Business Journal, and Houston Press does that too. Is it too much for them to give this site acknowledgement?\

There are multiple reasons why the nickname "CultureCrap" is popular among denizens of many online fora. 

20 hours ago, mollusk said:

And the strange orange car on the right is a Mercury Bobcat - the nicer Pinto.  

37 years old, and preserved like a fly trapped in amber:

1979 Mercury Bobcat

17 hours ago, JLWM8609 said:

Everybody is going for the fastback look these days with the kinda-sorta opera window in the c-pillar. This also marks the end of the non-luxury/non-muscle/midsize coupe as Honda's discontinued the Accord coupe for 2018. 

They have also discontinued the V6 engines for the Accord for 2018 in favor of turbo fours. Similarly, after many years of US enthusiasts slobbering over multiple generations of the Civic Type R that were never made available in the US domestic market, they finally decide to sell the new-generation Type R here, but in place of the hyper-tuned, high-revving naturally aspirated engine that was the model's hallmark, the new one has a turbo four (although at 300hp a lot of people probably won't miss the old NA engines too much). The fact that some of these changes were likely driven by the need to meet ever-tightening mileage and emissions standards don't make them any easier to swallow. 

I miss the days when Honda set benchmarks for engineering. Their current Formula 1 engine program is an unmitigated disaster, and the current product line just isn't that interesting or exciting. 

This argument of "modernism = bad" seems vaguely familiar. I'm almost certain I've seen it somewhere else before.

Entartete Kunst

The other Texas store on the latest list of stores to be closed is the one at the former Westwood Mall site. I had no idea that one was still open - I thought it had closed long ago. 

Heh. I just happened to run across a post on Facebook last night from the guy who lives in the house visible directly to the right of those shipping containers in the pic above. Suffice to say that he is not at all happy with the new stack o'metal that has arisen next door.

The developer started a discussion on Reddit about this project that seems to have almost immediately turned into a serious dumpster fire. 

20 hours ago, SpaceGhost said:

I remember that Enron location! It's sign stayed up a bit post bankruptcy, and IIRC the office itself may have stayed open slightly longer than the rest of the company? Not sure though.

The network was shut down several months after the bankruptcy filing, but there were a handful of employees that were retained for some time afterward to assist with administrative tasks and asset sales associated with the bankruptcy proceedings. Not sure how long the Greenspoint facility was actually occupied, as there were at least a couple of other facilities (NOC and leased space at a data center) that Enron Broadband had in addition to offices at 1400 Smith. 

5 hours ago, IronTiger said:

12031 - Sportstown (this was once a pretty major sporting goods store in the early 1990s in the Houston area...I wonder what happened to them)

Sportstown went bankrupt, and the leases on most of their stores wound up being acquired by the Sports Authority and Oshman's:

http://m.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Issues/1995/07/31/Sponsorships-Advertising-Marketing/SPORTSTOWN-SALE-COMPLETE-SPORTS-AUTHORITY-GAINS-7-STORES.aspx

Despite having grown up in the area, most of my memories of The Commons are from when it was a telecom center. Enron Broadband's Houston POP was located there, and I had occasion to visit it a couple of times. It was a nice facility that had lots of room for future growth, none of which came to pass as a result of the well-known unpleasant events that occurred less than a year after the buildout was completed. 

3 hours ago, FilioScotia said:

I spent a night in the former Astroworld Hotel this week, and I can testify that the Crown Plaza group has done a great job of upgrading the place and making it a very nice place to stay. I highly recommend it. And that wasn't a paid endorsement.

 

I made a point of asking the desk man if they still had those outlandishly luxurious and very expensive Celestial Suites Roy Hofheinz created on the top floor, and the answer is yes. They're still there in all their garish glory, but they don't make them available to customers. They do give tours from time to time.

 

Wow. I can't help but think that there would be a niche market to rent the Celestial Suites out to semi-obsessed Houston history buffs of a certain age, but the cost would likely be a stiff barrier to entry.

The Tarzan Room reminds me of Elvis' Jungle Room at Graceland. Wonder if he ever stayed there when he performed at the Rodeo?

On 6/3/2017 at 9:16 PM, houstontexasjack said:

Also, Geto Boys, Fat Pat, lil' Troy, and Destiny's Child are from here and have a place in Texas Music History.  "Tops Drop" is an H-Town classic.

Trunks keep popping
Tops keep dropping down in Houston

Fannin Street

Tom Waits

There's a crooked street in Houston town
it's a well worn path I've followed down
now there's ruin in my name 
I wish I never got off the train
I wished I'd listened to the words you said

don't go down to Fannin Street
don't go down to Fannin Street
don't go down to Fannin Street
oh yeah
you'll be lost and never found
you can never turn around

don't go down to Fannin Street

once I held you in my arms I was sure
till I took that silent step through the gilded door
but the desire to have much more all the glitter and the roar
now I know that this is where the sidewalk ends

don't go down to Fannin Street
don't go down to Fannin Street
don't go down to Fannin Street
you'll be lost and never found
you can never turn around

don't go down to Fannin Street

when I was young I thought only of getting out
I said good-bye to my street 
good-bye to my house
give a man gin give a man cards 
give an inch he takes a yard
and I rue the day that I stepped off this train

don't go down to Fannin Street
don't go down to Fannin Street
don't go down to Fannin Street
oh yeah
you'll be lost and never found
you can never turn around

3 hours ago, H-Town Man said:

As far as I know, Houston has been mentioned in one song that can be considered a genuine American standard and will survive the centuries. I suppose when they build the museum, they can inscribe the lyrics above the entrance:

 

If you ever go to Houston,
Yeah, you better walk right,
You'd better not gamble
And sure thing better not fight.

What's considered a standard is often dependent on the ear of the behearer, but it's hard to argue with Dylan.

I'm not sure about "surviv[ing] the centuries", but we're three days away from Dino's centennial:

20 hours ago, bobruss said:

Maybe you should suggest it. Im a member and will make a call myself. Thanks for all of the information. I should read those things when they get home.

I overlooked it myself for several days, then did a double-take when I finally glanced at it and realized what they were talking about. 

A correction: the 31-minute to 4-hour rate for members is $6, not $8 - I misread the small type. 

8 hours ago, bobruss said:

I believe that the new garage is built under the new Glassel. Thats what was going in underground.

The church parking is north of the church on a lot that the museum owned and traded to the church for the southern lot between the church and museum.

Yes, the new underground garage is at 5101 Montrose. Museum members received a flyer in the mail about this earlier this week communicating that the current surface lot is closing after this weekend. After that, you will have to park in the new underground garage or the existing one on Fannin adjacent to the Beck Building. 

I have to admit that as much as I'm happy for the upcoming expansion of the museum, as a semi-regular filmgoer there I'm really not thrilled about having to pay $8-10 to park every time I want to see a film, in addition to tickets to the film (members receive a parking discount - for 31 minutes to 4 hours, the $8 and $10 rates apply to members and non-members, respectively). I take light rail there about half the time, but sometimes that's just not optimal. I'm willing to bet the folks that run the film program probably aren't too happy either - it would be nice if there was some way they could validate garage parking for filmgoers, but I doubt they'd be allowed to do that to the exclusion of other museum visitors.  

1 hour ago, Nate99 said:

Sweet! We're getting an Entablature!

Not too excited. I was hoping for a Pediment.

21 hours ago, Montrose1100 said:

Crazy how the Enron fortress built on greed and lies is still the centerpiece of every car commercial filmed here.

I'd pay good money to see a 917K at full chat down Smith Street.