Reefmonkey

I had forgotten about the Vault, that takes me back. What is in that spot now?

I think I've almost forgotten which one on West Gray came first - it was the one of the south side, right?

This got me thinking about when the whole craft beer movement really started to gain traction in Houston in the early 90s, before there was a Karbach or No Label or Southern Star, and St. Arnold's was just getting started and nobody had heard of it yet - back when Texas craft beer was Shiner. This was back when brewpubs were a novel thing, breweries that were eating and drinking establishments first and the onsite brewing was for onsite consumption only. There are a few I remember that are no more: There was Two Rows (the Houston expansion location of a Dallas concept) upstairs in Rice Village. I'm not sure when they first opened here in Houston, I think it was sometime in the mid 90s when I was away for college, they were here when I moved back in 1998, and I think they survived to about 2008? There was an independent brewpub nearby, I think it was called either the Rice Brewery or the Rice Village Brewery. I don't think it lasted all that long. Then down in Galveston, on the Strand, I remember there being the Strand Brewery, or Strand Street Brewery. Its location was taken over by the Fuddruckers. Any other 1990s Houston-area brewpubs?

Driving past another new Starbucks location in my neighborhood this morning, got to thinking. Starbucks is so ubiquitous now, and has been for so long, with a location every few hundred yards (it sometimes seems), but I do remember a time when Starbucks was a novelty in Houston. I'm trying to get an idea of where and when Starbucks really exploded on the scene here in Houston. Where and when does everyone remember going to their first Starbucks in Houston in the 90s? Me: circa 1994 5508 FM 1960 W (NE corner of FM 1960 and Champion Forest Drive - since moved to the NW corner) Houston Chronicle says the first Starbucks was the Highland Village location, then the Galleria, then Westheimer and Fountainview, and then a fourth location opened in February 1995, but it doesn't say where. I'm not sure if that is quite true, I distinctly remember going with my family to Starbucks after dinner up at the 1960/Champion Forest Drive store, my senior year of high school when it was a novelty for us (I was class of 1994). Perhaps though that intersection wasn't considered to be in the Houston city limits at that time, so the Chronicle doesn't count it.

Except, one could say the same thing about a package of linguine or soba noodles that you're saying about a box of Cheerios, yet when I have gotten home delivery, I've gotten linguine and soba noodles that looked like someone had sat on them, all broken up. When I go to the store to pick them out, that's not a problem. And when it's my food, I've just decided I like to minimize the chain of custody. I've never done Doordash or Uber Eats because the idea of some basically gypsy cab driver carrying my food around in his car turns me off. Generally if I'm getting takeout I'd rather go pick it up myself, but at least if the delivery driver is an employee of the restaurant there is at least some accountability for food handling and quality when it reaches you. I don't know, whenever I hear people justify their reliance on home delivery for everything with "my time is just too valuable to spend it in a store (or restaurant)", I just think about the high likelihood they are spending that "valuable time" bingwatching Hulu (or posting on internet forums), and getting up, getting out, getting some fresh air and exercise and interacting with people might be a more valuable use of their time. It's like we're becoming a nation of lazy shut-ins. When I lived Downtown just as it was getting cool in the early Aughts, the whole point of living downtown was to be out, to be able to walk out my door and have everything there. I rarely spent much of my waking hours in my apartment. I would have loved to have had grocery stores to walk to.

Heh, just 2 hours ago I said that, and then this story pops up in my browser: https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/03/business/hershey-virtual-checkout-counter/index.html

Yep, I've tried grocery store delivery just for "convenience" a few times, through both HEB and Randall's, and have to say I'm not a fan. First of all, you have to plan ahead, then have to schedule it in to be there during their arrival window, and then half the time they are "out" of things you know they have at the store, just not in their home delivery warehouse, and even when they attempt a substitution, it's not what I would have picked, any time I've ordered something like linguine or soba noodles they come all broken up in the package, and the produce is usually terrible looking. I think with the pasta and produce, they deliberately send to home delivery the stuff they know would be rejected by in-store customers. When I grocery shop on my own I can more spontaneously fit it into my schedule, I'm more likely to find what I need, or if I don't I can make subsitutions that are better for my intended use, I can pick out the best produce, make sure things like pasta aren't broken up, and when I'm going through the store I often remember things I need which I forgot to put on my list. Sometimes I think grocery stores haven't thought through the fact that by pushing the home delivery they are going to really cut into their revenue in the form of impulse buys from in-store customers. I have several friends who claim they never go to the grocery store anymore, rely solely on home delivery. These people claim to be foodies, and like to cook. I have to bite my tongue, because to me, if you really care about food, you want a hand in picking out the best ingredients. How lazy have we become if we can't take the time to pick out and prepare the very fuel that keeps us alive and healthy, and which forms the centerpiece of much of our coming together as families and friends? Man, I've read too much Michael Pollan. It is ironic, however, that urban hipster "foodies" have gone in about 5 short years from insisting that they have to shop at farmers' markets to have a connection with their food and the people who grew it, to having minimum-wage workers pick it out for them and deliver it sight unseen. Agree about Randall's. Shoot, in the 80s, Houston was the envy of many other cities for having Randall's. Sure, it was more expensive than Minimax or Gerland's, but the quality and selection were always top-notch. Then between Kroger's and HEB upping their game in the late 90s and Randall's being bought out by Safeway after Safeway had already failed in the Houston market, Randall's has just been downhill ever since. Now after running them into the ground, Safeway sold them to Albertson's, another company that couldn't hack it in the Houston grocery market, and Albertson's is already doing their best to make Randall's worse, by closing its Houston distribution centers and serving it out of DFW. As if they weren't always running out of stuff already. I almost wish Randall's would just finally fold completely, put it out of its misery.

So basically to kind of fill the role bodegas play in NYC?

Ah, I see. Well I think the issue of public transportation is that even if you drive into Downtown, you only have to park once, and everything in downtown is so dense you can walk around (with good, wide, continuous sidewalks), or if you want to go a little farther in downtown than you wish to walk, there are b-cycle stations, there is the light rail, which if you want to see more than just downtown can also take you all the way to the Museum District, Hermann Park, Rice Village. In Uptown, if you want to go anywhere other than the shopping center you happen to currently be in, you pretty much have to get in your car and drive there.

I'm not sure how much of an impact on stormwater the unpaved strips and medians contribute, if it's really significant compared to lawns, etc. The problem with trees is they need water and oxygen to get to their roots, so you can't pave right up to the trunk. Permeable pavement helps somewhat, but you've also got the issue of tree roots that will start to break up pavement. You can go with unmortared cobblestones that are still permeable and will move with the tree roots, but you're going to get weeds growing in between them. And generally for trees you need a minimum width of 5 feet, making them unsuitable for those strips of grass between the sidewalk and the road, and for all but the widest median. One solution might be to plant something like buffalo grass, which is native, extremely drought tolerant and doesn't need to be watered, disease and pest resistant, and doesn't grow very tall (maxes out at between 3 and 8 inches) so doesn't need to be mowed often, if at all. Sort of along those same lines, xeriscape-style plantings in medians, with drought tolerant grasses (but also need to be able to handle rain and humidity, too).

Okay, that's a little much. I love downtown (despite agreeing with gmac on sports stadiums), like the walkability, the theatres, the nightlife, the architecture, but saying gmac has "no use for life" because he doesn't like downtown and what it has to offer is crossing over to personal attack. I believe a Houstonian can have a very full and rich life without going into downtown.

I don't understand, I have a car, and I like theatre. Pretty much everyone I know in Houston who likes theatre also has a car.

My guess is that it isn't due to anything so forward-thinking as leaving grassy spots for flooding. My guess is it's mostly done to save money on concrete. Sometimes maybe because residents in the area pushed for green medians for aesthetics, but then maintenance falls by the wayside. But in aggregate, more pavement instead of grassy strips and medians is going to have an incremental effect on flooding, a larger impact on the urban heat island effect.

I remember growing up in Houston in the 80s and early 90s, hearing multiple times on the traffic reports about mattresses being on fire on the sides of freeways, causing slowdowns. I went away to college, got a ticket my freshman year, had to take defensive driving, and there was a segment of the course where they encouraged people to ask any oddball questions about driving, traffic, etc. I asked about the mattress fires, and everyone looked at me like I had three heads. I guess it's just a Houston thing. Though I haven't heard about a mattress fire in decades, come to think of it.

That's interesting, because the last time I was in Manhattan I noticed as I never had before how much bagged trash, not in bins, was piled up on the curbs. Maybe I was just there on trash day, but I think about downtown Houston, I've never seen bags of trash piled up on curbs, it's all placed in dumpsters. Not that I'm faulting NYC, given its layout its probably not possible for every little building in Manhattan to have a dumpster, so most of them have to put their garbage out in bags on the curb, but it certainly didn't seem neater and cleaner and less trashy than Houston on that day. I think downtown Houston is as clean as Manhattan (to which it is comparable in density and layout), if not cleaner. If you get out into the outer boroughs of NYC, you're going to see trash, broken sidewalks, mud, bushes and other stupid barriers you'll have to step around.

Which I imagine means China Garden's days are numbered. Oh God. You know what I think would be really neat and unique in a sports stadium? Being paid for by the team, not taxpayers.

A few weeks ago, after the city planning commission fielded a proposal to eliminate the minimum parking requirements, the Houston Chronicle's op-ed voiced its full support for ditching them https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Ditch-Houston-s-burdensome-parking-regulations-13220515.php What do people think of this, is this the way to spur better urban planning and encourage using public transportation, ride sharing, micromobility? Or are they putting the cart before the horse, reducing parking before providing better alternatives to driving yourself?

I didn't say it was Mediterranean, I was saying all the Mediterranean houses in the Memorial area are bad enough because that style doesn't really fit there, but this adobe house is even worse, because the adobe style is even MORE unsuitable for the area than the Mediterranean style.

I've eaten at them a few times out in California, and I like the design of their t-shirts so I have bought a few. As for the food, like others said, the burgers are pretty good, above average for fast food, but the fries suck. My guess on the reason the fries suck is In-n-Out's insistence on using fresh ingredients, including cutting fries from whole potatoes right there in each store where you can see them. I've made french fries from scratch, and the secret to gettting them to come out right is they have to be par-fried at a lower temperature, allowed to cool completely, and then fried again at a higher temperature. Most fast-food restaurants bring in bags of frozen french fries that were already par-fried before being frozen. It "seems" like fresh potatoes would be better than frozen, but the reality is frozen fries make better fries than fresh that haven't been allowed to rest. I'm guessing that In-n-Out, cutting fries from potatoes in each store, does not have the time to fry them twice, with the cooling period in between, to keep up with demand, which is why they suck. Overall, I think In-n-Out's draw is its hometown loyalty out in California, a lot like Whataburger's here in Texas (because if we are honest with ourselves, Whataburger is fine, but isn't as great as we all like to claim it is). Any draw In-n-Out will have here is along the lines of "oh my friends out in LA always talk about how great they are", along with the draw of the connection to the Southern California lifestyle. It's like the connection to NYC that comes with Shake Shake and Halal Guys that gives them more buzz than they deserve. (Seriously, Halal Guys, Houston has so many different mom and pop and chain choices for good Middle Eastern food, that Halal guys should just be white noise). That kind of buzz usually doesn't last that long, and I think once In-n-Out gets here and the novelty wears off, they'll do only slightly better than Carl's Jr has been doing in Texas. But maybe I'm wrong, how has In-n-Out been doing in Austin and Dallas? Are they still expanding, or starting to close shops?

This is a house that happened to catch my eye as I was driving northbound on Wirt between I-10 and Westview: https://www.google.com/maps/@29.7883189,-95.4852996,3a,75y,3.27h,81.68t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sW4KsuF9-j_OA-jt2mDP6pA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 I've often thought that architectural choices in the Memorial Villages demonstrate the old adage that money doesn't buy taste. One pet peeve of mine is homes that choose a particular vernacular style that doesn't fit with its surroundings, both natural and manmade. Particularly, the proliferation of Mediterranean-style houses in the Villages. Obviously Mediterranean-style houses look most congruous in semiarid environments similar to the Mediterranean, like the Southwest, Southern California, even the Hill Country; they can work for a Miami-style look with a lot of lush tropical landscaping, but again natural surroundings as well as nearby buildings need to be taken into consideration. Trying to shoehorn a Mediterranean-style house in to the Villages, surrounded by mostly traditional American styles and a dense mixed pine-broadleaf temperate riparian forest is usually a fail IMO. As bad as I think Mediterranean houses look in that area, I never thought I'd see someone try to get away with an honest-to-goodness full-on adobe-style house, straight out of Santa Fe, complete with viga poles at roofline. Or should I say little stumps glued on at the roofline to look like viga pole ends, most of which have fallen or rotted off (not surprising given Houston's wet climate.)

The island itself was formed by buildup of the same sediment that is suspended in the bay. And that same sediment extends out into the Gulf (which the bay is hydrologically part of). Very fine suspended sediment takes several days of very still water to finally settle. One kickup of afternoon winds, one afternoon rainstorm, starts the clock all over again. But when we do get long stretches of doldrums and no rain, the gulf water often gets surprisingly clear, I've even snorkeled in it, I remember a few years ago it got where I could see my feet standing chest deep, and enjoyed following a school of spadefish for quite a while. And the waters from the Trinity and San Jacinto keep on going through Bolivar Pass (and San Luis Pass to a lesser extent). Remember what I said about fine sediment taking a long time of still water to settle out? Well not only does the sediment from the rivers NOT have time to settle out, the currents the rivers create stir up sediment that has previously settled. Rivers also create plumes of sediment that fan out beyond a simple straight line out of their mouths. This is how deltas form. So just because the Sabine, Brazos, and Colorado rivers don't "empty at Galveston", doesn't mean their sediment can't make its way to Galveston. And you're contradicting yourself here, you're saying the Sabine, Brazos, and Colorado, three rivers that are fairly close to Galveston can't affect Galveston water clarity because they don't empty at Galveston, but you are saying the Mississippi River, which is much farther away, can. You're also not factoring in the longshore current, which runs parallel to the coastline, and which, in Galveston's case, happens to run West-Southwesterly (ie, from southwest to northeast), pulling sediment from the Colorado and Brazos towards Galveston. No, it doesn't, you're wrong, this has been definitively dealt with. The shear bulk of discoloration in Galveston comes from Texas rivers, NOT from the Mississippi. The Loop Current carries Mississippi water AWAY from Texas, not toward it. It makes no sense that you are so invested in the Mississippi source misconception. Bill King is both right and wrong. He's right that the bay used to be, and could be, clearer, and that oyster dredging and loss of seagrass makes for a silt bottom that is easily stirred up, making the bay murkier. If you look at Dana Cove, on the bay side of Galveston Bay State Park, where I've been canoeing and kayaking and fishing for 35 years, the planting of seagrass and placement of geotubes as breakwaters to shelter the cove and allow the seagrass to take hold since the 90s has absolutely made that water body clearer. When I was a boy in the 80s, it was nothing but puffermud and opaque brown water, but now when I paddle through it, I can see to the bottom, see flounder, stingray, crabs, etc. in the dense seagrass. But King is off-base comparing the Great Lakes to Galveston Bay, especially using clarity as a benchmark. Clear water is not necessarily a sign of a healthy ecosystem, and the Great Lakes continue to struggle with water pollution, worse than Galveston Bay in some ways. And one reason why the Great Lakes have become so clear in recent years is the invasive zebra mussel, which filters plankton and nutrients out of the water - plankton and nutrients that native Great Lakes organisms need. It's not just the sediment that makes Galveston Bay waters murky, it's also the plankton, and that goes hand in hand with Galveston Bay being one of the most biologically productive estuaries in the United States. It blows the Great Lakes out of the water in terms of biomass density and biodiversity. You can see how much a role plankton plays in water turbidity in Galveston Bay during winter when the plankton doesn't bloom like it does during the summer. The water is much clearer in the winter, and a deep slate blue instead of greenish-brown. As a final note, if you look at my profile, you'll see I'm an environmental scientist, so I kinda know what I'm talking about here.

That's quite a claim. Anyone heard of any corroboration of that? I just finished reading a history of the west Houston area from the early 19th Century to now called "Pleasant Bend" that makes no mention of suicides.

Here's just about the only stuff I could find on it: An odd old movie of white kids protesting their right to eat at the lunch counter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI1iw4EzQXU An obituary of a member of the family that owned the pharmacies: https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/houstonchronicle/obituary.aspx?n=marvin-levy&pid=154439236

Ah, so you're the one who wrote that book. I've got it in my Amazon "items to buy later" to order for my mother for Christmas. And then intend to steal it when she;d finished

I'm not saying you have to have an entire block of historic buildings in order for it to make sense to preserve one, certainly having older buildings peppered here and there adds character to a city - as long as the buildings themselves are aesthetically valuable and can be retrofitted to serve modern needs. There are a lot of great old buildings in Downtown that I hope will be saved and repurposed, if I were a developer with the money to do so, that's what I would focus on. And I live in a 50+ year old house even though I could have a newer, bigger house, because I like living in a house, and a neighborhood, that has a history extending back before my lifetime. If it made sense with schools and commute and the amount of space my family needs, not to mention budget, I would totally live in a prewar house, preferably Craftsman. I love older buildings, and am definitely on the side of preservation, even to the point of protective regulations, but I think the aesthetic value of this particular building is being overstated, and I used to work close to it so I'm familiar with the area, I don't think it's really adding that much to the area. You've got modernist buildings, mostly high rise, from the 60s through now surrounding it. Sadly it just doesn't fit there anymore. That is a problem, I was reading an article (posted here) about how apartment square footage has been on an upward trend. Back when I was living in Midtown (Bagby and Gray) in the early 2000s, I though that area showed a lot of promise for true urban living, with places like Cafe Botticelli, Farrago's, etc. moving in and becoming neighborhood hangouts. When I was doing night school for my masters, I'd hang out for hours at Botticelli drinking coffee, or lingering over wine while I studied, it was what I thought intown living was supposed to be. By the time I had moved out of the area, it was getting increasingly suburbanized, with a standalone CVS and suburban-style strip malls sprouting up. And when my younger brother moved into one of those high rises which is exactly like what you're talking about, I saw no charm in that kind of living. However, I think that's all a separate issue of Houston's chronic lack of sensible urban planning, and not really germaine to preserving this particular building.