IronTiger

For some reason I thought Babee Os and Babes Cabaret were interchangeable, sorry about that.

I had major trouble uploading these, and two of the larger ones don't show up in Mobile.

So, in my continuing series on the Houston Post 1989, here's some more ads and other things. What I found most interesting was that of the several "adult" clubs advertising, all of the addresses lined up to still "adult" entertainment 25 years later. There was even an article on the police raiding La Bare, which is still operating under that name to this day. The Service Station at 6166 Richmond Avenue. I wonder if they let customers "pump their own gas"... (apologies for the preceding lack of taste). This is now Centerfolds. Bogey's Showgirls at 6340 Westheimer Road is now Scores Houston. (The reason why the rest of these are super-large is I had to use an external source to host, ran out of space) Babe's Cabaret recently closed, but it hasn't been anything since (5614 Hillcroft) 2618 Winrock Blvd. was Caligula XXI, which is now Vivid Live. These are all in the "sketchy" part of Richmond, which I guess developed during this decade.

I was thinking something more akin to "Blade Runner", to be honest.

Greenway Plaza, then "Lamar Weslayan" (or Weslayan Lamar?), didn't become Greenway Plaza on accident. I think I may have mentioned this in the high-speed rail thread, but here it is again (see the Houston Today PDF for the source on this): Greenway Plaza's developers were essentially able to blackmail the neighborhood into giving up. The neighborhood had already been reduced by US-59, but the subdivision was protected only with deeds that prevented commercial growth, lasting about 15 years (a time that was coming up soon and about to expire). After that, houses could be converted to businesses or business lots like others in Houston. They were able to sweeten the deal by buying the houses at market value, as well. In other cities, the whole process of trying to buy out a neighborhood for a new commercial development wouldn't have been worth it, because they wouldn't have the leverage regarding the deeds.

They're already gated, empty, and overgrown in the rendering. Is Houston missing that soul-crushing blight found in older cities? Don't worry, developers will bring all those things to you...TODAY!

I've heard that the merchandise mix arguably changed for the worse after the bankruptcy, and the cafes probably were the first to go (Garden Ridge emerged from bankruptcy in 2005, about the time you claim the cafes were phased out). So, in my "IronTiger looks at the Houston Post" series, here's an ad from the Garden Ridge Pottery World Imports" era (1989). Enjoy!

I think I've read that the soil isn't an issue. Besides, if the soil was that much of a problem, we shouldn't have supertalls downtown because of foundation issues. As for elevated, besides the "ADA compliant stations" problem, I have a running theory that nobody really likes elevated structures for their aesthetic value. I'm pretty sure there's a great number of people who still think that, say, the Pierce Elevated is ugly and an eyesore but has a real purpose, and that same principle is used for why GO/OF was so against the HSR, or why Harrisburg wasn't fond of the original overpass idea. You could argue over how wide or how tall those structures are, but I think the core principle is still there.

Despite Houston and Dallas being younger than old line cities in the East Coast, all American downtowns in large cities were deteriorating. Houston and Dallas were no exception.

I think the random high density buildings in some neighborhoods is still preferable to a dense, collected downtown with miles of sprawl. That's what I absolutely hated about Tampa...

North, near Greenspoint Mall

You contradict yourself in your first three sentences! (from Wikipedia)So 45% White, 7% Black, 35% Asian (a third of that is Indian), 11% Hispanic, 2% everyone else. Here's the Super Neighborhood info on Gulfton: 75% Hispanic, 11% White, 9% Black, 7% Asian, 1% everyone else. The biggest two majority groups COMBINED in Sugar Land are just five percent more than the single biggest majority in Gulfton.

Well, gee, if you watch a crime show on TV, guess where it is? In all seriousness, though, NYC was notorious for crime in the 1970s, and there are still major parts of both cities that are still very sketchy, to say the least. Furthermore, there are multiple studies linking density with crime, and especially poverty with crime. (I would also associate aging infrastructure, though I'm not sure if there's hard studies on that) And if what you're saying is true about people moving back to Gulfton, then if gentrification continues to hold, then the slumlords will sell out and evict everyone living in those apartments for nicer, newer apartments, and the process begins anew. Know what? Forget it, it's not worth arguing and de-railing the topic over, as everything reply, no matter how factual, just represents a challenge that needs to be replied to

Media Play? From accounts, it was kind of like Hastings.

Hello again! Recently I was browsing through some old Houston Post microfilms at Evans Library on campus (I did graduate) and found some cool ads and articles, which I'll be posting as time permits. I don't think this is *complete* (I'm pretty sure there was one at I-45 and Beltway 8 at some point), but here's the Phar-Mor locations in town as of June 1989, transcribed from an advertisement verbatim complete with wording idiosyncrasies (yes, "I-59"). Please don't actually call the numbers. ------------ THE COMMONS AT PRESIDIO SQUARE Bellaire Blvd. at Highway 6 Across from Fiesta Mart Store Ph.: 568-6591 Pharmacy Ph.: 568-5269 THE COMMONS AT WILLOWBROOK Tx. 249 & F/M 1960 Store Ph.: 890-3266 Pharmacy Ph.: 890-0488 SOUTH GESSNER SQUARE I-59 & South Gessner Store Ph.: 995-5681 Pharmacy Ph.: 995-4068 ALMEDA SQUARE Gulf Freeway & Kingspoint St. Store Ph.: 943-9918 Pharmacy Ph.: 943-9963 MEMORIAL CITY SHOPPING CENTER 980 Gessner Next to Montgomery Ward Store Ph.: 467-2400 Pharmacy Ph.: 467-8561 MEYER PARK SHOPPING CENTER South Post Oak Road at Route 610 Store Ph.: 729-6600 Pharmacy Ph.: 729-6661 OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK ----------------

Back when I was in college, there were lots (almost exclusively with very few exceptions) of one lane roads with bike lanes on either side, not shunted off to one side. I think that unless there's total separation (like, say, a bike path being built on a railroad right of way), it should be on either side. Then again, it wasn't all that fun to be biking down a road and see a bus barreling right toward you. Tough call.

Believe it or not, such giveaways were common in the 1970s and 1980s. Sign a lease, get a 12 gauge shotgun! Well, some tasty restaurants aren't enough to absolve a neighborhood of its problems. But the thing is, if you are a fan of denser development, you don't want to have an endless sprawl of 2-story cheaply-built apartment complexes. One of the reasons it's so full of crime is that IS so concentrated, not unlike government-funded high-rise projects for the poor that are now universally acknowledged to be failures, and because there are just a handful of separate owners, there's now huge low-rent areas with no other better land values to off-set it (that's how Sharpstown is in a much better position, because there are S/F homes to balance with apartment buildings.

I've never seen charm in Gulfton today or ever. Building huge, multi-block low-rise apartments was a recipe for disaster...probably was a cheap and efficient tactic for the fast-growing city in the 1970s, but there's no way that could've worked out well.

I don't remember posting such an article, it might've been someone else. In either case, I think a huge part of Houston resistance to light rail is placing them along streets, which not only really screws up traffic patterns and creates business resistance ("customers can't turn left into my business", etc.) but that the more it extends outside the core Main Street corridor, it starts getting into diminishing returns because it tends to have many stops and stops at lights just like cars do (making it, in effect, a really expensive BRT). Look at the "master plan" and tell me what a pain it would be to go from Uptown to Downtown. On the other hand, we have resistance to any other kind because (usually) it's even more expensive, which threatens the whole "Houston being a relatively affordable place to live" status quo. This is all complicated by a variety of other factors, including METRO's incompetence, the whole "tunnels will flood" fear (disproved for the most part, at least under normal circumstances), the "ridership is everything, therefore we must place it on road corridors like METRO thinks", and the lack of straight, continuous utility ROW/railroad ROW to place it along a la Dallas (Westpark notwithstanding).

Several years ago I saw a rendering for a "subway" style light rail station (below ground). Sigh...if only.

I think he was referring more to me where I insinuated that the promises were just rumors. Nevertheless, the article was from 2003! If I had a dime for every announced Houston project since 2003 that didn't pan out, I'd make at least a few bucks (there was one that would renovate the old Holiday Inn downtown into condos, for starters). The first Joe V's didn't appear until what, 7 years later? They probably cancelled all of them (including Fuqua/Beltway 8) and then decided to build Joe V's on the spot after they had created their "Aldi" knockoff, much like Central Market is to Whole Foods. With the exception of a Baytown Pantry-era store replaced by a Joe V's functionally (I believe: can't pull up the specific location right now). Would you rather have H-E-B build and either downscale so much it resemble a Joe V's in all but name, or pull a bait and switch like they did in Pasadena, where it was one of the first full-line ground-up H-E-B stores in Houston built around 2001, only to convert into a "Mi Tienda" a mere five years or so later? Anyway, I digress: I don't think H-E-B will convert it to a Joe V's, at least by that name. I can imagine them building a slightly larger H-E-B (a Pantry in Bryan was replaced by a smaller, low-end store in 2011, a far cry from Montrose Market which opened around that same era), but the reality of life is that stores operate for profit and better (i.e. richer) demographics are going to get the nicer stores, and H-E-B is one of the few chains that operates in both high and low end with the same name. Not everyone is going to get the fresh-squeezed juices, Cafe on the Run, or 500 varieties of yogurt...

More of these phantom promises...did they talk about it in the newspapers, or put signs at their sites? Or did they just own the land with only educated guesses made? After all, H-E-B owns a number of plots around the Dallas-Fort Worth area, including, allegedly, at least one vacant Albertsons, but won't go in until they get a distribution system set up so they can own all of them simultaneously. No one knows an exact timetable on this. This might be how Veterans Memorial @ Antoine got the first Joe V's, H-E-B bought the property, people got their hopes up, and they develop Joe V's instead. Disappointing, absolutely. But unless you can pull up some more proof than hearsay, I'm going to take that as just "rumor goes flat". Again, ownership ≠ new store promised, although if you go to Fuqua and Beltway 8 in Google Maps, there's a mowed patch that is the size, shape, and correct road setback of an H-E-B. Hmmm... Gulfgate is the one that's being kept open for contractual reasons. There was downscaling and rumors of closing either here or elsewhere, and I recall reading a PDF that seemed to back that up. That would be rare, as I've never (maybe except Rockdale, which was an old and small store anyway) seen H-E-B close a full-line store, and even Pantry stores are rare closures without replacement (Federal Road/I-10 and Galveston specifically come to mind). Trust me, if H-E-B wanted to close it and leave it for the dogs (Sellers Bros. or something), they probably would have done so a while back. That is, if it wasn't bound by some sort of contract it made with neighborhood leaders back in 1996, which is plausible but unlikely. That IS a possibility, though I only know of one JV that replaced a Pantry-era store (in Baytown, IIRC). The others were new-builds or renovated (one in a former Service Merchandise!)

Well, if I recall correctly, that building is part of Grocers Supply Co., which I remember reading were going to relocate their facilities to north Houston at the Pinto Business Park, so that isn't the issue. And since the HSR would follow existing lines (at least in parts), there's no reason to assume the Columbia Tap Rail Trail would be affected as well. But yeah, between River Oaks and Afton Oaks, NIMBYs will make that plan difficult.

To get the train into DT Houston without going near the Washington Avenue corridor, why can't they route it down the railroad that goes through Memorial Park and Bellaire, then east paralleling Holmes, and shooting back up the Columbia Tap Rail Trail?

Well, considering the vast outer loop parts of Houston (what, 80% of the city?) NW Mall is pretty close all things considered. It's all relative...