Cobra

Anyone remember or better yet was an allumni of St Christopher's Catholic school , located on the Gulf Freeway at Park Place . I went there from 56 to 58 . It was already an old building back then . It was demolished around 1960 or so . And yes the nuns were tough !

J W, if you happen to read this, you might like to know that "St. Chris" is still there. You might be mis-remembering the address; the church isn't right at the intersection of the freeway and Park Place, it's actually a couple of blocks NE on Park Place. Their website is here: http://www.stchristopherhouston.org/index.htm

Before Sams Club there was Gemco. It was membership only and had Eagle Grocery stores in the back section. It was the first Super Center.

I am almost certain that it was not a membership-only store; I paid for my games with my own lawn-mowing money and didn't have any sort of card when I was 13. I also remember my parents talking about whether it would make sense to pay to get a Sam's Club card, after Sam's moved into the building that Gemco left vacant. I think that was the first time we'd ever heard of a store that required membership.

That building is still standing, but it's been a flea market for about 10-15 years--longer, I think, than any other store tenant at that location!

Never been to Mall of the Mainland... is it worse than Almeda??

I haven't been to MoM in a couple of years, but I used to love shopping there because you could get great parking and didn't have to fight any crowds in the stores! Of course, I always figured the mall would die a quick and painful death. I'm amazed it's lasted as long as it has.

I remember when it first opened. I used to go to movies there because it was the first THX-capable theater in this part of Houston. Anchor stores were Dillard's, Sears, and J. C. Penny. Not exactly the latest fashions from Paris, but good stores for the blue-collar population in the area. The mall was probably 40% occupied when it first opened...LOTS of empty spaces. These empty storefronts were shielded by tall sheetrock walls, and were covered with generic "coming soon" signs (one genre per sign, with approximately one sign per empty store space; there were many duplicates as you walked around the mall):

After about two years, mall occupancy was up in the 60-70% range, and they finally took down the old, tired, "Coming Soon!" signs. They weren't fooling anybody anymore.

About five years ago, they built a three-story Foley's, which is now a Macy's. For a brief time, I considered MoM to have a better anchor selection than Baybrook, since MoM had all the stores Baybrook had, *plus* they had a Foley's!

I still like shopping there at Christmas time. Christmas crush crowds are smaller than an average Saturday's crowd at Baybrook...

I've been trying to find a decent chinese joint near this area. The only other one that I heard about that I haven't had a chance to visit is the one by the Moulon rouge on Monroe.

Haven't been there in years. Drove past it some time back, and while the place never did have much curb appeal, the years have not been kind. I don't think it'll be featured in Zagat anytime soon.

ricco67, did you ever pay them a visit?