Reefmonkey

Violating city regulations for scooters on a trail as their very first activity in our city - kinda sends a message about what their attitude is going to be vis a vis respecting and working with city authority, and pretty typical for these "disruptive app" companies.

Pleasant Bend: Upper Buffalo Bayou and the San Felipe Trail In the Nineteenth Century, by Dan M. Worrall. I also agree with Earlydays on Blood Rich by Jane Wolfe about the Sakowitz family from the 1800s to the 1980s oil bust and Oscar Wyatt. The infighting in the 70s and 80s between Robert Sakowitz and Oscar Wyatt reads like a story arc from Dallas with JR Ewing.

I got acquainted with the Live Oak Grill on Hempstead Road and Dacoma when my office was out there from 2012-2013, enjoyed a few lunches. And my daughter has gone to a few events at Speedy's Fast Track recently, so during the last one my wife and I decided to get lunch and have a couple drinks at the Live Oak while we waited for her instead of driving all the way home only to turn around in a couple hours. It's always intrigued me that this rather large house from 1915 has survived for over 100 years while the area around it has been industrial for as long as I can remember, (the story of the house can be found here: http://www.liveoak-houston.com/our-story.html) and I was curious to see what the area immediately around it looked like before. The earliest aerial photo of the area only goes back to 1953, and the area around the Live Oak house appears to be residential, though much smaller houses on smaller, closer together lots. Those houses were all torn down sometime between 1966 and 1973. It's hard to tell when those houses were built, as the topos don't depict any structures until the 1946 one, not even the house that is now the Live Oak Grill in the 1932 topo, even though we know the house was there at the time. I have to assume the houses are pre-war vintage, because it doesn't seem likely that a bunch of houses 20 years old or less would have been torn down like that. Another thing caught my eye, just northwest of the Live Oak Grill house on Hempstead Rd was a large structure that almost looked like an ampitheatre to me at first. It's clear as day in the aerial photo from 1953, and the 1957 topo labels it as a drive-in theatre. It's not on the topo before that, from 1946, so built sometime between 1946 and 1953. It's still there in the 1966 aerial, but by the 1973 aerial it's gone. Any oldtimers here remember that drive-in theatre?

Nope, not in the book

Bought this book this weekend to give my mother for Mother's Day or her birthday next month, and spent the afternoon looking through it. What a great resource, more than just a simple listing of notable closed restaurants with blurbs about their histories, the front section of the book is a great general history of Houston's restaurant scene going back to the Allen Brothers. Plus I loved the inclusion of recipes for favorite dishes from many of the restaurants listed, intend to try several. May have to buy a second copy so I can keep one for myself.

^^^^The Dunning-Kruger Effect displayed in real life^^^^^

Sorry if I misinterpreted your intent, brotastic dudebros tend to stretch my patience. But I was also hoping to provide an explanation once and for all of why the lack of a Crystal Lagoon in Galveston isn’t due to Galveston city fathers’ lack of “vision”, but due to real geographical limitations, for anyone who’s really interested.

A Crystal Lagoon is basically just a very large beach entry swimming pool, filtered and chemically treated like any other swimming pool. Which is exactly what Moody Gardens's Palm Beach and Schlitterbahn's Kristal Cove, Kristal Bay, Wave Lagoon, et al are. What is it you guys are thinking is so special or magical about a Crystal Lagoon compared to what is already there? The only thing really difference is the size, with some Crystal Lagoons being large enough to do water sports in. Okay, lets look at the practicality of having one of those. Once you get west of the Moody Gardens complex (around 99th Street), the island narrows significantly. It's pretty obvious there is no room for a Crystal Lagoon gulfward of FM 3005 (among other issues), and the distance between 3005 and Stewart Road is about 1500 feet, and already has a lot of developments between the cow pastures which would limit the contiguous land that could be bought up. Bayward of Stewart Road the island is crenellated with multiple coves and inlets, and much of what appears to be solid ground on a map or satellite imagery is actually wetlands, and the solid land that is there is mostly already occupied by vacation home subdivisions. As soon as Stewart Road ends, you hit Galveston Island State Park, which spans the island from beach to bay. After that, the island gets even more narrow. And you have subdivisions like Jamaica Beach, Indian Beach, Sea Isle, with maybe a parcel or two of land in between them, but none big enough for one of these water sports-capable Crystal Lagoons and the infrastructure and the parking that would be needed for them. And who is going to want to pay to do watersports on some tiny little sterile confined body of water where type and size of craft and speed is going to be heavily restricted, when the freedom of navigation of West Bay is right over their shoulder? So basically, again, we're talking about a big beach entry swimming pool, and why would someone drive out past 12 Mile Road to go to a new one when they could go to Schlitterbahn or Palm Beach practically right after I-45 dumps them on the island? See, this is where having actual knowledge of the island exposes brotastic "vision" as unrealistic pipe dream.

http://www.moodygardens.com/attractions/palmbeach/ https://www.schlitterbahn.com/galveston

You and Antony can socially groom each other all you want, but you still have no idea what you are talking about, either about me or Galveston. I never said I was anti-development, I welcome quality, sensible development; I merely asked you to elaborate on your vague assertions of "crystal clear blue lagoon" and "Hamptons-type" development and you couldn't. If you can't do that, then you're the one without any "vision". "Vision" isn't "yeah, let's develop more, and make it something swag," vision is actually having a detailed and sustainable plan. Vision isn't trying to copy someone else, which is all you've been able to offer with your "let's be like the Hamptons and Miami", you want Galveston to be a lame wannabe Hamptons or Miami instead of something unique. And at the most basic level, knowing what is already there is a prerequisite for vision, and you don't know jack, you didn't know about Beachtown, didn't know about Palm Beach at Moody Gardens or Schiltterbahn. So the more you try to camoflague your lack of vision or knowledge in made up straw man mischaracterizations of me or use of moronic dudebro insults like "no swag" and "snowflake", the more transparently pathetic you are. As for anyone having their "panties in a bunch" over this thread, it's been lying dormant now for almost a month, you're the one who revived it with your juvenile chest-thumping macho rant, so simmer down, son. The fumes from your Axe body spray seem to be going to your head.

Such a tragedy and loss of our world's heritage. It was undergoing some kind of fairly significant work, was covered with scaffolding, I'm hoping it was a simple construction-related accident and not something sinister, and I know some bronze statues had been removed for safe keeping during the construction, hopefully other priceless artifacts were also removed.

Still, best venue in Texas is the Bass in FW. I’m guessing j Cuevas was a victim of Autocorrect.

Yeah, I've been to the original Neiman Marcus several times, it's nice and all in a mid-20th Century downtown department store way, but I keep hearing retail is dead, I'm not sure how important downtown department stores are to a vibrant urban life anymore. Up until a few years ago Houston still had the original downtown Foleys, and Macy's closed it because it wasn't making enough money. I agree about Houston's theatre district being superior to Dallas'. Dallas' only really nice downtown venue is the Meyerson, but it is only for symphony and other musical performances. I don't understand why they built it the way they did, but it was extremely short-sighted, which is why if Dallasites wanna see the national touring production of Hamilton, they've gotta go down to the Music Hall at Fairpark, which is a dump. And I'm not saying this to diss Dallas, it was my college town, I visit friends there a lot I actually like it, I could live there again. I always see Dallas and Houston as two equally good, slightly different cities, I've always thought the back-and-forth rivalry was silly.

Smearing me in absentia to try to distract from the fact that you're making a fool of yourself in yet another discussion - you're a gutless tool.

I've kayaked near alligators many times. Most of the time they've ignored me, occasionally have swam away. I don't think they see a human in a boat as food, though maybe something big enough they don't want to mess with.

I've been noticing the construction for months now, but didn't really register beyond usual road maintenance stuff to me, until I was down there yesterday, and they were far enough along that I noticed something different, the protected lanes in the center of the median. I was trying to figure out if they were bike or pedestrian lanes (which seemed weird to have in the middle of the road), knew they couldn't be light rail because of the way they were being laid down and the trees that were being planted were too close to them. Looked it up and found they are dedicated express bus lanes. Still seems like the trees are too close to them. I'm wondering what people think of the utility of having these center bus lanes, if it is practical and will really benefit traffic/speed and use of buses in the area? https://theboulevardproject.com/the-project

I've always thought if the Buccaneer Hotel hadn't been demolished in the late 90s, it would have been a prime candidate for the boutique hotel/luxury apartments-in-historic-building trend of this century. A great location with a great view and great architecture as well. I've never mourned the Flagship, even though I don't go on the pleasure pier because it's overpriced and cheesy, I think it's an asset to Galveston, and the Flagship was an eyesore, but I do lament the loss of the Buccaneer.

I have to agree, that while I don't discount climate change, it is a very serious threat, unfortunately in the public's eye it overshadows a lot of extremely serious environmental/human health threats, like plastics, endocrine disruptors, oceanic dead zones, deforestation, fresh water depletion....

Ah, looks like you edited out the "deep in your heart" histrionics and replaced it with a completely baseless accusation of reasoning errors. I'd say let's have a show of hands as to which one of us is off base here, but the replies and likes in this thread have already established that.

That’s pure gibberish. And you ARE wrong here. You haven’t actually articulated a “vision “ or “grand plan“, your idea echoes the shortsighted “rain follows the plough” cargo cult-type reasoning that lead to the Dust Bowl. You’re displaying blatant confirmation bias; because you don’t like the look of the prairie and because you don’t want to “lose” an Internet argument, you’re scouring the web for information that you interpret as supporting your position while overlooking and attempting to minimize any contradictory information. But again you fall back on accusing people of “defensivess” for calling you out on your BS. “Troll” may or may not be overused, but in your case it’s warranted.

Maybe AnTonY can get EIseed to chime in on his side: "Nah dudes, AnTonY's idea would be totally awesome. Like a cross between South Beach and the Hamptons. Maybe add a crystal clear blue lagoon. It's kinda lame as it is.You guys just have limited thinking. Not wanting to tear up natural habitat to make it 'better' is very old school Texan thinking. You have no imagination. It would be epic."

Maybe she needs to take a page from Laverne Hooks

Well, reddit is a cesspool of trolls and misogynists, so that wouldn't surprise me if people there were using "needs a deeper voice" as dogwhistle (and an obvious one at that) for "needs to be a man."

For all your throwing around the stupid word “flex” to describe my comments, all you’re doing is talking circles around the issue to try to distract people from the hole you’ve dug for yourself, just like in the Galveston water topic. Whoever said was right, you’re just a troll. Okay, give us a number of how much you think it would cost to convert all the prairie prairie soil into soil suitable for forests.

Tice's remarks are absolutely inexcusable in any way. We don't have an official language in this country, and we do have people in this county who speak only Spanish or understand Spanish better than they do English, and they need to be served by our county government as well. I'd ask Tice why he isn't taking Rosetta to learn Spanish so he can better serve a larger number of his constituents. And also, she's from Columbia, not Mexico, assuming that everyone who speaks Spanish is Mexican is as racist as it is ignorant. As far as sexism, if people have been sexist towards her on this forum that's terrible. I haven't seen it, but of course it's highly likely I haven't seen every post about her. Regarding ageism on this forum, again, I haven't seen every post about Hidalgo, but I think we need to be careful not to turn every critique of a candidate who happens to be female and a person of color as some "ism" that indicates bigotry. The county judge is an important position with wide-ranging duties, including emergency response for the third most populous county in the United States. It is entirely reasonable to expect that someone shouldering that burden have both broad and deep managerial experience, something that no person could possibly have accrued at 27 years old and working as a medical translator. Pointing this out isn't ageism.