Subdude

I love Frankfurt because it's Germany and that means it's clean and everything works smoothly and efficiently.

Frankfurt 1 is nice, although it was odd to see people smoking in the shopping area. Terminal 2 just seemed like a big box however.

Atlanta Hartsfield is hard for me to peg even after spending countless hours there. It's like a giant machine for transportation. Efficient enough, but it has all the charm and character of a pencil sharpener. It's not pleasant, and it's not exactly unpleasant. It doesn't feel like anything at all, just the experience of waiting.

I like Charlotte A because there is a bar and free wireless near the Continental gate that goes to Houston.

I used to have to go to Charlotte periodically and I remember thinking it was a very fast airport to get in and out of.

Note Titan topics merged.

Houston has a large enclosure just waiting for something:

Great idea actually. A rocket museum would be a perfect use for the Astrodome.

I got to thinking about this yesterday during a three+ hour layover in a nearly empty Schipol airport (Amsterdam). You have to give them credit - that is one great airport. The signage is clear, everything is clean, working and well-laid out. It's such a nice place that it is almost enjoyable to hang around, and that's even before you get to the stores, casino, museum etc.

Although I suspect a lot of travelers think it is confusing and has rotten food, I have always kind of liked IAH. The strange layout is the outcome of 40 years worth of assorted additions, and I like seeing how all the additions have been adapted over time.

Hobby was nice with the 1940s look and feel, but that will go away once the rebuilding is complete. It will end up nicer, but lacking the charm.

One I couldn't stand was O'Hare. You get the feeling they are trying to subtly punish people for going through there.

What is that?

Fantastic Thai food where they treat the customers like a necessary evil. It's new location is actually behind a strip center so it is a bit hard to find. I suspect the management prefers it that way, but nevertheless the many Telephone Thai loyalists will continue to seek them out. Great stuff.

Great shot, great colors, but it looks strange with no people about!

Well, I think that is the whole point of this clockwork. A "beautiful disaster" if you will. They are letting everyone write resolutions on it, and it will all be destroyed just minutes after midnight, so perhaps it is an attempt at art imitating life ?

To me it is kind of a cool New Years gesture. Is this a one-time-only thing, or will they try to make it into a local tradition.

Yep, and a pair of townhouses by Francois de Menil. Those are the only Houston buildings. The Beck Building at MFAH is the only Houston building in the earlier Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture.

Wow, I'm jealous! I hope you have a coffee table that is sturdy enough!

You have to wonder how those were the choices for Houston buildings, although since it is 21st century there probably wasn't a lot to choose from. Instead of the Hobby Center I would have selected that new tall one (name escapes me at the minute) in the Med Center.

I've used Nationwide Movers a few times and have been pleased with them each time.

Mrs. Bag and I drove by on Christmas Eve and it was open for business. There's still a sign that says "Golden Room", but there's big "K" on the front of the building for whatever that new name is.

They've taken a quaint little restaurant that felt like someone's old house and turned it into an industrial cafeteria with furnishings from Ikea. The food we ordered was exactly the same and our favorite waiter was there, so we're deeply thankful, but remain bewildered by the motivation for the remodel. Will more people eat Thai food if it's served on formica tables with no table cloths?

Sounds like they are cloning Kanonwam / Telephone Thai.

Note duplicate topics merged.

Preservationists have been expressing alarm about the whole shopping center, not just the theater. They could buy the whole shopping center. For that matter, they could buy the whole shopping center if that's what it takes to preserve just the theater. But of course, it's much easier (and easier on the personal pocketbook) if one can get the government to use its police state power to do your "work" for you.

Yesterday I was reading a column about predictions made for 2008. Nobody really foretold Obama, the commodity price explosion/collapse, and the financial panic and bank crisis. Still, ignoring the lesson of this I would say that Editor's predictions sound reasonable at the moment.

The retro 1986-style roof on this thing really bothers me. Isn't it too soon for a 1980s postmodern architecture revival?

We rip open the presents with our teeth.

I don't know if it ever made it to the level of a fad. The only other example that comes to mind is Habitat in Montreal.

There is no half-built highrise. The building under construction was 4 stories. I don't think that would be considered a high-rise even in Dallas (which FWIW, DOES have at least one half-built high-rise; I guess Dallas really does get all the cool projects, don't they?). We really are a joke of a city. Dallas gets cool half-built highrises... We're stuck with a measly half-built 4-story building.

What on earth does Dallas have to do with anything here?

Shuttle made a flyby a few mins ago.

How do they get the shuttle on top and off of the 747?

I saw it this afternoon and liked it quite a bit! I was really pleasantly surprised since I wasn't expecting much. Keanu was fantastic I thought. His odd screen persona is just right for playing an alien. Jennifer Connally was OK, but the Kathy Bates character was too one-dimensional and her talent is a bit wasted. As I feared there was too much CGI, but nevertheless the story is more low key and dark than one would expect from the previews. Gripes about CGI aside, the CGI spaceship was brilliant! Have to disagree with the previous post on Gort. The robot if anything was cartoonish and had way too much screen time. The direction and pacing was great - it just flies by. And yes, the kid is muy annoying

Three stars overall. It will never be a classic like the original, but that would be a tall order and it does a good enough job of updating the message of the old one.

I wonder if there are any economists out there that have put together a 'tall building index' to use as an indicator of when real estate is about to go belly-up as an asset class.

Not quite the same, but there is an architectural billings index published to gauge development activity. As one might expect it is at a record low (although it only goes back to 1995).

So they gave up on the original design with the star-shaped fountain in the center. It's an improvement over the surface parking, but I would rather the facility were on the corner than in the middle of the green space. It looks a bit lost the way it is laid out.

Just by reading the language in the blurb you can tell that reporting for jury duty there will be an unpleasant process, what with the "organized program in a secure perimeter" and all.

High Street should have continued. You are serving a clientele that is not truly being affected by the current economy.

How so? I would have thought most people are affected in some manner, even the target audience here, which is presumably River Oaks/Afton Oaks/Galleria residents.

What I don't understand is how it would be canceled if construction had already started.

He quit. He objected to something I wrote in the Toronto thread, so he wrote an insult and asked me to delete his account. I locked it instead of deleting it in case he wants to come back. It is for that same reason that I'm not re-posting his message here -- even former HAIFers have their privacy respected.

It happened during a turbulent time for HAIF. The presidential election was not good for the forum. I received e-mails from a number of people saying they wouldn't return to HAIF because of the discussions going on in the Politics section. For some reason they couldn't simply NOT read that section, so they gave up HAIF altogether. Politics is a very small section of HAIF, but a lot of people saw only the posts that were against their particular viewpoint so they threw the baby out with the bathwater.

I'm not sure what to do in 2012. Ban political threads from August through November? Make Politics invitation-only? I don't know. At least I have a few more years before I have to worry about it again.

I can understand why people were leaving though. The problem is that in an online forum political arguments have the effect of sucking the air out of the room. For whatever reason there are a lot of people who can't let go of it and feel that the world must hear about their political beliefs in every post. If a board becomes too dominated by politics it will be as tedious as the Chronicle's user responses sections.

I agree, vote for merge.

Done!

Well, according to that article it's not dead-dead, just on hold.

Doesn't surprise me, now that the R-bomb has officially been dropped. Confident in these projects is low, the only way to get that confidence back is to have more early leasers and solid numbers to go by.

If anything this can become an "on hold" thread... seems like we need one

Included also are the cancellation of Turnberry Tower, the on hold status of Sonoma.

I'm sure coming soon to the on hold list will be West Ave. Phase II.

I'm sure other haif'ers can name out plenty more.

I chose to stay optimistic however. This may be a bump in the road, but the road doesn't stop here.

I think projects are rarely "officially" canceled, they just sort of go on hold and never come back, like the Shamrock downtown. Dozens of projects never made it back from the local crash in the 1980s. I'm thinking we can start another installment of the "Unbuilt Houston" topic.