FilioScotia

And the downside was?????

Am I the only one here who remembers Ice Land? It was an ice rink on Calhoun just east of the UH campus. I skated there several times in the late 50s. I don't know when it closed, but the building lived on as a large maintenance facility for UH. It came down some years back to make room for all the new buildings on the east side of the campus. A large parking garage now sits on that spot.

Innes has never found a bridge he couldn't burn. Let us join hands and pray that he will someday run out of bridges. And let us not forget that WE the listeners have all the power in this on-air relationship. WE own the tuning dial and the off/on switch.

The restaurant was Raffles, a high pay grade fine dining restaurant. Raffles has restaurants, resorts and luxury hotels all over the world, but, not in Houston anymore. Don't know when it closed. Maybe when oil went south in the 70s and a lot of big companies folded or moved out of Houston taking a lot of Raffles' deep-pockets clientele with them.

***Something tells me Innes will end up at another Radio Station.*** Never fear. He will end up somewhere else because assholes always do, thanks to idiot station managers and their idiot consultants who think obnoxious and controversial generates ratings.

((((I'm thinking "a successful stint of more than 15 years" was a slight exaggeration}}} I'm thinking the same thing. Why did it close if it was so successful? You noted that they sold their lease? Why? The only answer is that they weren't making enough money to pay their bills and make a profit. I don't call that "successful".

"Like" worked fine for me. I think. Great summary Reef. But I think it's worth noting that fining dining establishments are vastly outnumbered by the franchise gimmicky eateries. There are thousands of restaurants in Houston, but only a small minority are fine dining.

You aren't the only one. Fancy high-end fine dining restaurants with white table cloths have never lasted very long in Houston because the owners always overestimate the size of the clientele they hope to attract. There are exceptions of course. Kaphan's come to mind. The number one reason that more than half of all start-up restaurants fail within five years is under-capitalization. The rule of thumb is that a restaurant MUST have enough cash in reserve to keep the doors open for at least three years even if nobody shows up. How long was this place open? I was in and out of downtown Houston a lot in the 90s and I have no memory of it.

I thought you guys would be interested in the Chronicle obituary of local movie-house mogul Al Zarzana from 2009. He was the "Al" in the Al*Ray's name. The other half was his partner Ray Boriski. Al and Ray bought and renamed the old Lindale Theater on Fulton in 1960 with the goal of making it a showplace for foreign films. For many years the Al*Ray and the Delman were the only places in town that showed foreign films on a regular basis. I had the pleasure of knowing Al back in the day and he was quite a guy. https://blog.chron.com/bayoucityhistory/2009/11/obituary-al-zarzana-73-theater-owner/

I lived in that neighborhood in the early sixties, and the "community center' was actually a full size gymnasium where kids could play pickup basketball to their hearts content.

You may be thinking of Woodland Park. It's on Houston Avenue north of I-10 and west of I-45. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Houston+Heights,+Houston,+TX+77008/@29.7819296,-95.3695194,1379m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x8640b89ff43d5ab7:0xbeaa5119beac7cc1!8m2!3d29.7980049!4d-95.3979942?hl=en

Bruce Bowen's Architectural Antiques ain't there anymore? Sad. Loved browsing through his stuff.

I think KHOU brass are finally realizing how useless TV traffic reports are. They're also a huge waste of expensive air-time.

I was inducted into the service in 1961 at a large barn-like building on either Caroline or Austin outside the downtown area. I remember it looked like a recreation center on the inside. It even had a gym. I've read that it closed in 1966. Does anybody know exactly where that old facility was?

My wife and I ate there once when we lived in Fallbrook in the late 70s. I remember it was a gimmicky place with lots of gimmicky decor and waitstaff dressed in really old fashioned style. I don't remember the food being anything special. We didn't go back, if that says anything.

Am I the only one here who sometimes uses Google Maps Street View to visit and explore my old neighborhoods? It's really eye-opening to "go back" to the neighborhoods I lived in when I was a kid back in the 50s. I can click my way into, through, up and down almost every street and all around the town. It's really sad to see houses I lived in that looked really nice long ago looking ragged and rundown today. Some of my old stomping grounds in Pasadena have really gone to seed or don't exist anymore. Does anybody else do this?

Recent stories about Muhammad Ali and his refusal to be drafted here in Houston back in '67 has me wondering where the Armed Forces Induction and Processing Center was. That old barn-like building where I was processed in 1961 was closed in 1966, but I remember it was on San Jacinto somewhere just south of downtown. Does anybody remember the address?

Lisping never held Barbara Walters back.

Don Janicek's record shop.

I bought a Honda 350 street bike at Gulf Coast Honda in 1970, and rode it to and from work on the freeways and all over the place for several years. Great little bike with plenty of power to compete on the freeways. I laid it down on wet pavement one morning on the way to work and got up with a broken left wrist. The bike had a cracked handlebar grip and a busted headlight. Easy to repair, but I had to wear a cast on my wrist for a month. I think about that bike when the arthritis in my left wrist starts acting up.

The apparent fact that he's still locked up years beyond his original parole eligibility date tells me he probably hasn't been what we would call a "model prisoner". He was denied parole in May of last year because of the nature of the crimes he committed. Here's what the parole board wrote about him last year. "THE RECORD INDICATES THAT THE OFFENDER HAS REPEATEDLY COMMITTED CRIMINAL EPISODES THAT INDICATE A PREDISPOSITION TO COMMIT CRIMINAL ACTS UPON RELEASE. THE RECORD INDICATES THE INSTANT OFFENSE HAS ELEMENTS OF BRUTALITY, VIOLENCE, ASSAULTIVE BEHAVIOR, OR CONSCIOUS SELECTION OF VICTIM'S VULNERABILITY INDICATING A CONSCIOUS DISREGARD FOR THE LIVES, SAFETY, OR PROPERTY OF OTHERS, SUCH THAT THE OFFENDER POSES A CONTINUING THREAT TO PUBLIC SAFETY. " Wow. If he's that bad he needs to be put away for life, but he wont be. He'll get out some day, and I predict he will go back in for committing new crimes.

His name is Sandy Sanderson, and he was sentenced to 50 years in prison. That was decades ago, so he's probably out by now and I have no idea where he is, if he's still living. He's mentioned in the first paragraph of this Texas Monthly story from 1996. https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/state-of-the-reunion/ I'm not a Westchester Alum. I just Searched for Houston Voss Road rapist and found this article.

I agree with Tumbleweed. I'm going out on a limb, but I'm sure this is the intersection of west bound Calhoun Street with Dowling or Chartres.

Here's a link to the best history of Houston's freeway systems ever written, with hundreds of historic photos showing how it was created and developed into the nightmare it is today. In the chapters on the Loops, there's even an amazing photograph of the ammonia cloud enveloping the West Loop interchange on the SW Fwy on May 11, 1976. You can spend hours sifting through this incredible E-Book. http://houstonfreeways.com/

Some people with drones are causing problems for law officers. A week or two ago in Lufkin, a man coming down from a meth high started threatening his family and firing his gun out the window onto a golf course. When he barricaded himself in the house and threatened police responding to the shots, police closed off the area, and evacuated houses on both sides and even closed the golf course. Several police agencies responded to this with dozens of officers - Lufkin Police, Angelina County Sheriffs and the DPS. The standoff lasted several hours, but police really got concerned when they learned aerial video of the whole scene from a privately-owned drone was uploaded to the Lufkin Police Facebook page. The video revealed locations of the officers who were surrounding the house, and that really got them alarmed. They immediately deleted the video because if the man in the house had seen it he would have known exactly where to shoot. Fortunately, it ended peacefully when the man surrendered after several hours of negotiation and no one was hurt. The owner of the drone hasn't been identified or found, but police are still looking for him.