porphyrula

Thank you for telling us. Domy hosts some really cool stuff that flies under the radar of a lot of people.

Well, they host me, which is about as far under the radar as you can fly! Here's the link to their movie page : http://www.domystore.com/houston/htx_films/

On June 16th I will be showing some 16mm film of Houston from (I think) 1967. This is a more or less random selection of raw camera and working footage from a Houston Chronicle promotional film titled "Houston Counterpoint" showing various Houston landmarks and street scenes.

This silent footage runs about 20 minutes and will be shown before our regular monthly show, starting at about 8:15 PM, in the garden behind Domy Books / Brasil, Westheimer at Dunlavy.

Program information is at http://www.cinemabomar.org/Schedule.html

Come take a look!

Actually, I heard Waugh was named for WWI. So many guys from that neighborhood came home from France telling stories about that "waw" they fought in "over there", they put that word on a street. They spelled it "Waugh" to make it look like it was named for somebody, instead of being named for the "waw".

My recollection is that the Waugh family money came from lumber. They had a mansion in the Westmoreland area which was still there the last time I looked (a couple of years ago) with a historical marker of some sort on the iron railing surrounding the house. I need to go see if I can find it again.

Yeah, and maybe the aliens built it after they finished the pyramids. I didn't think that I had to come out and say it but, apparently, I do - THERE IS NO POSSIBLE WAY THAT THIS IS THE DONNELLAN VAULT.

Whew, that makes me feel better.

I gotta agree with you, but it was certainly fun getting to that conclusion!

I was at Rudz on Tuesday for lunch and there were people in those townhomes on the NE corner putting in insulation. So they are doing something with it whether they are supposed to or not.

Yes, work is indeed proceeding, although slowly. I was sitting outside Rudz one recent afternoon when a guy in an enormous pickup zoomed up, parked, grabbed one of the flyers, and went running around jabbering at the workmen before zooming off again. I felt like I was witnessing the invisible hand at work!

I have a German friend who is always disgusted by the amount of telephone poles and power lines we have in Houston.

I hope he's not planning to travel to India...

I wonder how many more post needed to win. Hope is this one but i 'm just dreaming.

I'm dreaming too...

Nice photos; but as always they manage to not capture one good shot of a Metro bus. Interesting look at a city in transition though

I have some 16mm footage of a Houston bus barreling through downtown in a cloud of exhaust. I guess it's from the late 60's or early 70's. Also shots of airplanes taking off and gridlocked freeways, all through a thick haze. No way to convert it to video, though.

Yea, but there was no love lost there either, honky. Talk to some TSU kids from the 60s and get it from the horses' mouth. No counter riots, but lots and lots of tension.

And don't forget the race riots at Camp Logan during WWI.

Houston is good, but it ain't perfect like you think.

And don't forget Joe Campos Torres and all the other meskins that HPD used to drown in the bayou.

i remember the distinctly dangerous air about the place in the mid-late 80's/early 90's. I for one LOVED it. artists, musicians, pushers and junkies...it's always quite a mix for new ideas. i can distinctly remember running back and forth between Emo's, Goat's Head Soup, Hoi Polloi in the Heights and The Vatican on Washington. They were headytimes...but you felt alive...and the neighborhood was YOURS.

Alas! That old devil nostalgia!

If you come back for a visit you'll be gobsmacked at how much Washington Ave is changing.

or a nail salon, dry cleaners, cell phone place combo. I really hope not, though too!

Instead what we have now is a half completed block of townhouses mouldering away for who knows how long, until they are finally torn down. It reminds me of the townhouses that were built on Montrose at Bomar back in the 90s that sat half done and crumbling for what seemed like years.

I have to hand it to the Hyde Park Civic Club for the way they've been able to stop other incursions of townhomes into the neighborhood, although not always before demolition. If it weren't for their efforts several lots on my street would now be townhouses, i.e. big stucco garage apartments with fancy countertops.

But as a long time resident of Hyde Park who remembers the Pik-n-Pak well, I expect that the neighborhood is doomed, even if a few clusters of bungalows somehow survive. The city's long term plans for this neighborhood are for a much higher population density, and even though some amount of attention might be paid to "neighborhood protection" in the end Montrose is going to be completely redeveloped. Much of what brought me to this neighborhood is already long gone, having been driven out by the gentrification which is now in turn under seige by mass housing developers.