LarryDallas

Speaking of Walmart, I went to the one on Beltway 8 just south of where the Auchan used to be located for the first (and last) time recently. OMG...what a disgusting store! There were people just hanging out in the front and the store just seems very disorderly. To their credit it is a full service super walmart and not a mini Walmart the Meyerland one.

If you want a half way good walmart to go to then the one on HWY 6 south of Dulles is the best one to go to. You can take HWY 90 and go in the back way using Murphy Rd. It is about a 15 minute drive compared to the 5 minute one it would take me to go to Meyerland but well worth it. Up Hwy 6 about 1 mile north on the left is a Sears hardware store. This has also become my replacement for Sears in Westwood.

It is just sad to see Westbury/Meyerland lose 2 theaters in under 4 years like this. I think the Meyerland Theater will be converted into a foreign language version sometime in the future like the theater on W. Belfort and Fondren (the Indian theater) or the a Spanish language one. Otherwise, the building will sit dormant forever. But if Randalls pulls the plug on their store I would love for that entire wing of the center to be demolished and a Sears built. CLOSE THE WESTWOOD STORE SEARS!!!!! They would have to rebuild from nothing but they would have enough room to put in the auto center as well. Napoli pizza made the smartest move going from that center into a small private building near Chimney Rock and Beechnut. Now that is an area you feel safe leaving you car unlocked in the parking lot if you so desire.

I live in Westbury (a stone's throw from this area) and actually looked at a house in Westwood before buying here in 97. The area's only problem, like others have said, are the apartments that have become slums on the east side of Stella Link just south of 610 and on W. Belfort (north side) just before Stella Link.

If you are ever in Houston and come back to see this area I think you will find the stretch of W. Belfort between the railroad tracks and Stella Link to be sort of preserved in time. There are really no modern (post 1980s) structures anywhere to be found. Stanco plumbing has a building that is from when the area was first built up and they have preserved it very nicely. A few doors down from them is a car repair shop that looks like something right out of the 50s. The only problem area is the corner of W. Belfort and Stella Link. There is now a Citgo on the NW corner that has all sorts of riff raff hanging out pandhandling or up to no good.

Stella Link between W. Belfort and Willowbend has very clean and well maintained light office buildings and warehouses. In fact, Al's Formal opened a building there a few years ago. The warehouses that were there on Willowbend between Stella Link and the railtracks to the west have remained the same. They did find a dead body between those buildings about 4 years ago. I never followed that story much. There was also a plant nursey that was located on Willowbend that closed last year. The land has been turned into a baseball field that is maintained to perfection. Next to the tracks on Willowbend there used to be Kruger Motorsports (closed in 2000 and now demolished) and a small used car lot (closed shortly after Kruger....building stands abandoned).

I am in in the area all of the time so I can snap a few pics soon.

Anyone know more info about Kruger? They looked to me like they were struggling to pay rent towards the end cause they hardly had any customers and it looked run down. Had they been there since the 50s or 60s? Was it the place to go to get custom performance work done on your car in SW Houston?

I wish I had taken photos of the building before it was lost. =(

Oh, and does anyone know whatever happend to the man who owned the shoe repair shop in the strip mall on the north side of Willowbend just past the rail tracks? The windows are all blocked out with paper and it has been closed for about 3 years. I assume he passed and the store was shuttered. Now he was a nice guy. He also had a huge collection on toy cars, planes, boats, etc....displayed in glass cases in the store.....very cool stuff.

I was disgusted with the local media coverage of this and how they fear mongered the whole thing well after the NWS said it would not impact the Houston metro area aside from isolated showers. At about 7pm the weather channel repeatedly said only SE parts of Houston between the 45 & 610 interchange and Galveston would get heavy rain. Downtown and everything west had already experienced a wind shift coming from the north indicating the circulation was already to the east of the city and there was a ZERO chance of tropical storm/hurricane conditions to hit those areas.

Despite this being known as early as 7pm Houston time the local media fear mongered on the 9 and 10 pm news like crazy. They kept showing the OEM offices and transtar center at emergency alter stage and were just shy of saying we were on defcon 5 levels of emergency in metro Houston. The most hillarious part of the news today was the 5 am news on ABC 13 when Wayne Dolcefeno was crystal beach saying power was knocked out for the area while standing in front of a building with 3 light bulbs functioning on it.

Gawd we have complete imbeciles running our news outlets.

Funny how this thread went from one on housing to a dicussion on class and race.

Here is my blatantly straight to the point 2 cents:

The wealthy parents in West U all do not have the mentality of "poor and non-white = criminal/threat to me and my kid". I am sure some do but not all of them. The mainstream ones bought into West U not only because of who lives there but who does not live there. They wanted a low crime area where a crackhead would not break into their car to steal the radio for the next fix. That said, I am sure West U has people who use illicit drugs. In this case they can afford their $200 a day cocaine habbit and do not have to do crime to get the money hence your car stereo stays in your car there.

Anyway, that is getting off on a tanget. From the perspective of the parents you have a kid that you raised in a safe environment and built up in their mind that the world is a safe and friendly place. You send that kid into a middle school for the first time with kids from the have nots and you can see how the parents would worry there could be some type aggression directed towards their kid for having the better clothes or just getting dropped off at school in a nicer car or whatever. If I was a parent there I would entirely base my decision on what type of kid I had. If he/she is strong and can stand up for themselves in most all situations I would encourage expose to kids that do not have such privilage so they learn to be appreciative of what they have and not judgemental towards other people. There really should not be a rich kid vs poor kid paradigm since you can not help what family you are born into. But, if the kid was kind of a whimp (and honestly a parent can tell this about their own kid) I would pick a private school just for safety reasons cause stuff like "you have a better iPod than me" or "your mom drives a new Mercedes and my mom has a 10 year old Chevy" would not come up and you would feel better about it.

College changes completely because you are on your own and you pick what groups of people to seek in your social circle. In other words, you can be a whimp and make it to college to but I would suggest becoming strong before college cause you will need it when you get out of college and have to work with people that get on your nerves.

For young kids growing up in Westbury is still a great thing. I would encourage any young family to move here and stay for a long time if they are going to purchase a home here. Very few of the homes have been demolished and ugly McMansions put up as have been in other well established parts of Houston. There is a really ugly house like this at the SE corner of Willowbend and Chimney Rock. It looks very much out of place and lacks mature trees in the front yard like most homes have here. For the most part the area looks like it did back in the 50s and 60s where single family homes are located. Once off of the main roads it is like the 1950s with just a handful of cars passing by your house each day. There is tons of bird activity and things stay very quiet at all times of the day.

I've been a resident for 10 years and the young family next door has a child in Parker (K-5) Elm. School. They always say good things about it and mention that the teacher to student ratio is very good. Johnston middle school is not as praised but it is better than most middle schools in this town with the exception of Pershing and Lanier. Michael Dell (of Dell Computers) went to Johnston as a child and donated a computer lab to the school a few years ago. That does not make the school great but just some trivia for you.

You will have to pick a private school or get your children into an HISD magnet school for high school. Westbury High is a disaster. Last year a student was killed in a driveby shooting on campus and a female student was raped in the school by an alum that returned a few years after graduation to do this. They reconstructed the school (around 2000) due to one of the main areas being laced with asbestos and beyond practical repair conditions. IMHO, they should have just closed the school and leveled the land to break up all of the gangs and criminal element that has built up there. The slum apartments on that street (Gasmer) will probably stand at least another 25-50 years until they are so far in disrepair they are condemed. The lack of planning and how they clumped so many unit there to have a very high population density has caused the crime and low quality of life. The people who planned those projects were TOTAL IMBECILES.

I saw the final tribute show on the regular broadcast 13 tonight. This was the best done one for sure. If you did not get a lump in your throat during the final segment with the Dolly Parton song then you are not a human being.

Dave Ward mentioned in an interview that KTRK should have made "Thank you Marvin" bumper stickers at KTRK some years back. I think they should do it now. Just have viewers send in a SASE and print tons of stickers for distribution.

If you work at KTRK or in the local media get this going if you have the power to do it. I will call and email KTRK myself soon.

On a side note, Dave Ward made Meyerland seem like a working class and kind of poor area to live in by the way he said Marvin lived in his "small" house for 30 years in Meyerland. I live about 5 minutes away from Marvin's house and that part of Meyerland is NOT shabby at all. The homes are between 2000-3000 sq feet and price around $250K-300K.

I watched bits of the funeral as well. It was not as sad as the day I found out he died. That day it just kind of hit me hard and I knew Houston would never be the same again. The funeral was more of a celebration of his life so it was upbeat for the most part. Many people talked about famous Marvin moments and trivia so it was great!

I'm sure KTRK will air the funeral again this weekend for everyone who was at work or for other reasons missed it. I'll watch the whole thing this time around.

It depends mainly on what others have said but another factor to consider is what kind of car you will get. If it is an expensive car then leasing is the best thing to do so you don't get hit hard with depreciation and never have to worry about paying for repairs on fancy systems like laser guided crusie control or an air conditiong system with 4 sensors in the car to monitor temp. and circulate air to where it is more warm; stuff like that.

If you plan on getting a cheap car then buy it outright.

The stations have been playing footage of an old commercial during the tributes. In the commercial there are a bunch of people with exaggerated expressions on their faces and Marvin, with a microphone in hand, making his way up to a window, maybe a bank teller, and the frightened man pulls the shade down in front of Marvin and on it is a note that says, "Out to lunch".

It's deliciously campy.

If anyone by chance has an old VHS copy of this, please do everyone a favor and post it on YouTube or one of those sites.

Agreed! I LOVE that commercial where he says "In the name of action 13......" and then goes on to say "give these people their money back".

HAHAHAHA...now that is classic funny stuff; nothing like today where every joke comes with a 4 letter word.

This reminds me.....Tom Snyder.....BIG LOSS there as well. I used to watch his late late show avidly when I was a freshman in college. The guy had awesome stories and told them in a way that no one else could.

RIP to Snyder as well.

Anyone know if Woodlawn cemetary off of Antoine and I-10 was of any significance to Marvin? Is his family plot there with the grave of his parents or was this place picked for no such reason?

I feel he should be put to rest in Glenwood Cemetary instead with all of the other Houstonians that were known well and can be visited in one place.

Oh well, after all of the media and Houston have time to grieve and things go back to normal I plan to visit his grave out there and reflect on things a bit.

I'm 28 yrs old so I pretty much saw the guy on TV since as long as I have been watching. Actually, my mom used to tease me about how I was always trying to say "slime in the ice machine" when I was just starting to talk as a toddler. Anyone who lived in this town long enough lost a family member today. This is very sad indeed.

The city should do something like put a bronze statue of him in front of city hall that will stay there forever. I just don't want him to be forgotten or just remembered as a consumer reporter. He was so much more than just a reporter. The man was part of what makes Houston be the Houston we know.

RIP Marvin you are a LEGEND!

You'd better have tons of $$$ to shell out for a small lot of land in West U. Most all of the first homes built there predate WW2 so they were tiny homes with tiny lots usually with a 1 car garage. Since the mid 80s people have been doing demolitions and building large homes on these lots. This has further driven prices through the roof. The homes on the major roads that run through the city have had larger homes on them from the start.

If you have money to burn this high price factor is a good thing because it keeps out people you would not rather see in your area (the famous snooty factor) but it is bad if you make average money and want a safe and clean place to live. It truely is a whole other world in West U as it is in River Oaks. You are completely isolated from the outside world yet live in the heart of the city.

West U is also home to the famous Darth Vader house that some plastic surgeon with tons of money built back in the late 80s.

If you are looking for a somewhat affordable place to live where it is clean and safe then Meyerland is your best bet. Kolter or Parker are your primary schools while Johnston is the middle school. You would have to use private school for High since one should go into Westbury High only with a concealed weapon, a tazer, and a ballistics vest on. Meyerland has excellent access to the city, mature tree lined streets, well kept large yards, and homes that are not cookie cutters (all look the same) like most post WW2 era tract housing or McMansions built in the past 20 years.

I'd say someone has a crush on Curry ;-)

Maybe so.....she is in an attractive yet classy catagory when in the clothes/makeup she has on air during the in studio broadcast. Iguess that is the reason it was so striking when she devated from that routine during that 4th of July show. Sachse is low class compared to Curry.

The 95 pic makes me want to cry. Home Depot is nothing but a thug. They had enough of a parcel of land to place the store facing Chimney Rock with the rear facing the square with enough room for trucks to be able to get to their loading docks. As it is over 50% of the Home Depot lot is never used. The only time I recall it was even over 50% capacity occupied was in the 2-3 day period right before hurricane Rita was coming this way. If they had bulit a lake (as city park property) where the land was in the glory days of the square we might have been spared the ugly Home Depot coming in.

Although it will likely not occur I would like to see that whole area gutted and single family homes built where Home Depot, 99 cent store, and the Chase are. With rising energy prices this location is more valuable than it used to be when gas was 99 cents and Sugarland was a viable option.

It is very odd that this parcel of land sat idle so long from the 60s to 95. Currently there is a small lot of land right in front on Home Depot next to the Dominos Pizza for sale. It is big enough to accomodate a fast food joint. I pray that does not occur. God help us if a McDonalds opens up and all sorts of crime comes along with it.

I recall someone posted about Rascon's interviews at the bus loading area; maybe that was you as well. Not to excuse his behavior he did do a few good stories. He did one back in 02 or 03 where he interviewed and went along with a coyote that was smuggling people in from Mexico whenever he felt like it. He would take them to any major city in the US. This was at a time when the Department of Homeland Security was feeding us BS lies about how it was so capable and handling the situtation of a secure border with perfection. In fact, the smuggler too a group of his pasengers right in front of the Whitehouse and KTRK filmed it.

Rascon also did a good smaller story after this immigration amnesty thing became popular. He posed as an illegal alien and got a job in a pipecutting factory to show what it was like and how much money someone made in day. Granted it was no prize winning story but these were issues much more important than the ones other stations do following around loonies like Qunanel (sp I'm sure and don't care to correct) to stir up race relations. KPRC LOVES to create racial tension stories between blacks and either Chinese/Korean people and it always involves a C-store.

Now the reporter that is most scary is Alex Sanz on KHOU in the morning. I think he is Satan himself come to Houston in mortal form. If you look at his eyes for a few seconds you expect to see lightning shooting out at you soon. The guy has his own private URL which is rare for a reporter of his level to have at this early of a stage in his career.

He is just creepy:

http://alexsanz.com/

I went to Poe but decades later (class of 1990). While I was there it was the height of the cold war in the 1980s. The USSR had just launched their new Typhoon class of submarines that carried enough ICBMs onboard to destory any city in the world in a matter of minutes. We used to do these disaster drills in Poe where we hid under our desk if we were in he classroom or crouched in the hallways agaist the wall covering our faces with our hands.

The Houston Post ran a story about that bombing in the late 80s during the anniversary of it one year. One of the student survivors was an amputee and they had a large color photo of him that I remember very well.

During my time there Poe suffered a fire during summer vaction of one year but it never impacted the school calendar year so it was a non-event as far as I was concerned.

If any fellow Ravens are here; did the school always have those lights that were an incandescent bulb with concentric rings around them? During my 1st grade year they did a major renovation to the school and all of those fixtures came out. In went the flourescent tube lights; getting us ready for coroporate settings I guess. On a side note and totally off topic thing I would like to say that Ms. Irvin of 2nd grade in 1985-86 was the most attractive teacher in the whole school during the time I was there.

Did anyone else watch that 4th of July show on 13 tonight? Montgomery Gentry was awesome! I really lost touch with country music after about 2001 so most of the songs were new to me.

Anyway, what was up with Curry? Her hair and makeup was not appropriate for a family show like this one. It was more suited for showing up at a pornography shoot to work. I'm not complaining but KTRK has gone over the top with this one. I thought it was cheesy when they kept showing Jessica Willey during hurricane Rita with wet hair in Galveston to make the news sexy when it was a total non-event (rain and wind wise) in this part of SE Texas.

KTRK is also running this promotion of Curry at night that is a cheap knockoff of the cheap commercial style KPRC has. They used to have one with Dominique Sachse years ago and now they do one with Wendy Corona and Jerome Gray.

Your thoughts/comments/2 cents...GO.

Those post card photos from the glory days of the square are awesome! At the same time, they make me want to cry at how that place went from such a wonderful independent business and no motor vehicle place to the concrete jungle home depot is now.

I would have to say while all of us on the board, minus a very small minority, wish the square was now as it was once, we have to be realistic. These times in which we live are nothing like the times were back in the 60s. I was born in 78 so I do not speak from firsthand experience but even in my lifetime I have seen our culture and population move towards egomania, anti-social, and flat out rude behavior. These days people want to drive to a big box store in an urban assualt vehicle that screams "I have more money than you do", buy communist made chinese goods on the cheap, and not give a rat's tail about much more. People used to be more nicer and more friendly just a decade or two ago in my experience so the 60s must have been way better than I even know.

Anyway, while we will most probably never see that style of community square place in town I would like to see the square preserved somehow. These days if you want that kind of walkable marketplace in the neighborhood you have to shell out megabucks and live in a town where not just a subdivision is masterplanned but the whole city is a planned community.

A sterling example of this is a place like Celebration, Florida.

http://www.celebrationfl.com/

I understand where you're coming from, but the jet engine/prop analogy isn't very valid in this particular case. Of course jet engined aircraft needed longer runways, they had higher takeoff speeds and higher takeoff weights than thier prop counterparts. Cars do not have to be at a high speed to handle a curve, they can slow down and adapt to the road design without crashing.

Yes and no. No because if a vast majority of roadways are designed by engineers to be taken at 60 mph with complete safety and you have one that is a newly built exact copy of the first one built back in the 1950s when vehciles themselves were primative (solid axels, body on frame design, drum brakes, etc); this catches people off gaurd and is a major safety problem even in low traffic conditions. Someone who does not know that interchange and takes the turn at high speed can have a crash. Yes it is the fault of the driver for crashing but it is the fault of TXDOT for making conditions more favorable for a crash.

I was on the Levi Jordan dig in 2002 when they got started and they needed slaves....um..volunteers to find things and then not touch anything but only call in the find to a person on staff that could doccument it.

The contact person is Professor Ken Brown of U of H; he is the director of the whole project. Since your wife has a background in this maybe she can go to work with his people.

http://www.publicarchaeology.org/webarchae...ml/kennethl.htm

http://www.anthropology.uh.edu/faculty.htm

HAHAHA...funny stuff with the Dr. Bellows reference and the Jennie pic.

Do you guys remember that room they had toward the end of the museum with all of the planets in the solar system done to a scale? The walls in the room were painted black and each planet was lined up right by the sun which was like 10,000 times the size of earth.

When I was under 12 or so it used to freak me out and I always thought the sun was just going burn the earth to vapor with me on it. Well, actually that is kind of true. The earth does turn slower as each day passes and one day millions of years from now it will cease turning completely. The sunny side will be a wasteland inferno while the shaded side will be a frozen wasterland. Then I think the sun is supposed to die and as it does this it will expand and eventually incinerate the earth in its path before it explodes.

Something like that is what I recall from a geology class I took years ago.

Anyway, great thread and yeah that is the mural I was talking about!

Man I LOVED that old place.....it was classic NASA as represnted in shows like Jennie as well as news media in the 60s. The modern Space Center Houston is garbage compared to it. The entire main hall is nothing but a playground for kids while the back is just an overpriced resturant. The theme of the place has gone from one of technology, science, and discovery to just marketing to make a buck.

Design standards were different in the late 50's when the interchange was designed. Cars were bigger and slower, and people didn't barrel down them like they do today. I don't see anything wrong with those ramps today. Solution is, if you're driving a big rig or a SUV or a car that can't handle sharp curves at speed well, slow down! That's why they're going 25-40 mph in light traffic. If you crash going through it, it's your fault, not TxDOT's. They have signs telling you to slow down. It's all part of being a responsible driver.

To adapt to the changes that have occured in vehicle design thus enabling higher speed operation the roadways must also be changed.

Do you think putting jet engines on aircraft was a bad idea? Props are what flew out of airports all over the world first so was building longer runways to accomodate faster jets also a mistake?

It would have to be built elevated to retain at least 2 lanes going each direction on S. Post Oak. It would look sort of like the intersection of Willowbend and S. Main near the Al's Formal wearhouse. It would be a mix of freeway and surface streets; a concrete nightmare full of smog.

The gasmer land has already had the WillowWaterHole built on it plus the land that Shell owns they would probably not mess with.

This was before Disney came in and built the Space Center Houston. You used to drive up to the security booth at NASA, tell them you were going to the visitor center, and just go. You would also drive your car to the Rocket Park that the tram takes you to these days.

Sure they did not have the tram tours that took you to the training and R&D areas of NASA but I liked the old museum so much more. The Space Center Houston really seems like a playground for kids. The old museum had things like actual presidential pens that signed key doccuments in the space program, trophies, more actual equipment that was once used by NASA, etc.... I always felt like the old building and display was the I Dream of Genie NASA in her glory days of the 1960s.

Best of all it was 100% free.

Anyone have old photos of that place?

The mural near the theater was such a pure NASA/Houston thing....it is burned in my mind.

Prior to the 1980s the apartment regulations were very different. The managers could lease to whoever they wanted and reject whoever they wanted based on anything. Some apartments were for adults only and yes they did discriminate based on race; that was wrong.

However, the laws are so insane now that someone can apply for an apartment drunk and smelling of weed but if their criminal and credit check turns out okay plus they meet the income requirement you are obliagated by law to lease them the apartment or they can sue you. Common sense has been thrown away.

Eventually, I think Fondren will be bought up by a mega developer once energy prices get so high building new construction in the boondocks will not be good business. If someone purchases a huge parcel of land all of the way from S. Braeswood to W. Bellfort and gradually started demolishing to build single family homes the area could come back. It would take over 20 years to fix the area but it is possible.

I think homes in that area were selling for about $15,000 back in the 1960s. I wonder what the rents in the apartments were then?