names

This park would be a good opportunity in the future to bridge-cap over I-69 like Klyde Warren Park in Dallas.

Yeah, I went there..

Another parking lot bites the dust..

The streets are pretty bad, but apparently not bad enough to get people to slow down over said potholes. 

Why did they cut down the trees in the ROW?

It's become a lone modern art masterpiece.

There's still the Melrose tower..

Days Inn should be converted into a high-rise mausoleum. 

He can block rail, but can he get Richmond re-surfaced & paved?

Such a waste.

I gonna miss getting lunch at the ET grill ("eat grill").

Must be a different design entry. The park has "MIDTOWN" spelled out similar to the I :heart: Houston sign on I-10.

You can see through the Lars Bang addition now with windows taken out on both eastern and western faces.

The old building looks encased in glass formaldehyde, like Stone's 2 Columbia Cir. by Allied Works' for MAD. 

and boxes too.

What boxes?

That was a april fool's joke..

Those geothermal drills/impacters on the parking lot side look pretty cool. It's also kinda Houston serendipity that they have 4/5 of a block, makes for some interesting boundary conditions.

Nothing is official just yet. Still have to go to MEPS.

The ASVAB test is basically an IQ and aptitude test covering things like mechanical ability' date=' organization and work efficiency, reading comprehension, and the like. It's designed to seperate the people able to re-wire a circuit board from the mouth breathers.

ASVAB has quite a few different scores that it spits out once it's graded but I believe the 'G.T.' score is the one most look at as a basic indicator of the testees ability to perform brain surgery and/or put food in their mouth when they are hungry and dress themselves with their underwear on the inside of their clothes.

I believe 60 is the low end and with a score like that you can pump gas, make a burrito, and point and fire your weapon in the general direction of brown people. Your essentially a high functioning excitable fixed gear enthusiast with a score like that but you're still good enough for the military.

90 - 110 is above average and you're probably capable of doing just about anything in the military while 120 and above is way above average and you won't even be offered shitty jobs once you have your sit down with the recruiter at the MEPS station. You will be offered jobs that can be very lucrative in the civilain sector so you will be offered big bonuses tacked on to longer then average enlistments.

Once your test has been graded you'll have a sitdown with a MEPS recruiter who will pull you back in an office cubicle and present to you a piece of paper with a bunch of jobs on it like 'helicopter rotor washer', 'fuel technician', 'chalk block'. Never select these jobs unless you want to make bread pudding all day, wash dishes, fill fuel tanks, or basically just stand around trying to look busy. these are 'Needs of the Military' jobs and they are offered to everyone who sits down.

the good jobs are in the computer and you have to ask to see them. they will be dictated by your ASVAB score and there is no getting around this so even if you want to fly Apache's really really bad if you have an ASVAB score of 70 the closest you will ever get it filling it's fuel tank.

as for how the different militaries dictate job placement i know this...

Air Force - they will let you pick a career field dictated by your Asvab. You will not be able to pick a specific job. so say you really want to work in Network management on the IT side of things. you can pick that field but you might end up pulling and digging trenches for cat-5 cable through a war zone. air force...additionally everyone at one time or another wishes they had joined the air force instead of army/navy/marines/coast guard. their bases are always in big cities next to big airports or in amazing places like the mediterrain or some coastal tropical island.

Army - you can pick your specific field and job. you will get stationed in shit holes through out your career. You will wish you had joined the air force.

Navy/Marines - I believe you get to pick your specific field and job but i could be wrong. i didn't even talk to either of their recruiters because I know I don't like sitting on a boat in the middle of the ocean for 6 months out of the year and Marines are always deployed to conflicts and war first.

let me know if you have any other questions.[/quote']

Juke is a style of dance, popular in the early-mid 90's on the southside of Chicago.

He failed his physical, they are bringing up Harris instead.

http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/sports/nba/091222-rockets-harris

In weird sort of way I want WAZ to get what he thinks is right i.e. public hearings, so that I can create an architectural PR firm to game public sentiment like FOX news. I'll be a millionaire!

Edit: Ultimately it doesn't matter if you consider it a "smart" or "dumb" development. It's their property and WHO ARE YOU TO TELL THEM WHAT TO DO WITH IT?

having the city facility there at least kept those two blocks stable. hopefully things won't get worse before someone actually buys the property.

The church across Main also provides a stabilizing presence.

Can't say I'll miss that semi-brutalist bldg, but on the bright side I never really had much trouble finding a parking spot there. It will probably sit on the market for a couple quarters and get sold off into two properties unless some real chutzpah comes along.

I know, im not talking about you. I'm talking about other people here. Im not going to say names 'cause its pretty obvious.

Hey I represent that!

I capitulated to privatization argument. If we spend another 5 years debating this, it's just going to be too late by then.

I think I'll go down there this weekend and do some Beaux-Arts renderings of it in it's current glory, ala Boullée.

So turn a former public arena into a private studio, right?

On the face of it my reaction was to say this is a bad idea, but pride is always the last shoe to drop so I think this is really the best choice on the table. My disclosure is that I absolutely loathe vacant buildings, especially significant buildings that make me feel like I'm living in the dark ages and the enlightenment simultaneously as I see Reliant stadium and the Astrodome from the south loop. I wish we had the stuff it takes to make that jump from neglectful inevitability to former spirit of it's construction. It's future is also connected to the former astrowolrd lot, such sad shape these two, like forgotten dreams as a faded background to bulky absorbed newness of the Reliant complex.

Will the people accept the sacrifice of the Astrodome? To learn that if nothing happens and it remains vacant, and eventually demo'd, that finally it may be time to reflect upon having some teeth for local historical preservation laws.

I'm sure folks who grew up in the '30's would resent that their children from the boom years represent culture considering most of the developments listed are products of the boomer generation (crack, assault weapons, etc). As such your culture was largely formed from the value systems of the '30's generation, so to claim that the culture of that time period is yours when you were tabla rasa is disingenuous. The real culture of the '60s was and is now the counter-culture revolution, your posting on a product of it's conceptual paradigm now!

I believe we are living in the most clandestine epitome of freedom now and tomorrow is truly a brighter future considering the undercurrents of real culture today. Anything else is simply propaganda and being disconnected never felt so good.

I've done better hand renderings on soaked cocktail napkins! Somebody should get fired.

No comment on the master plan.

Nice idea, bad execution.

The cross is out of proportional scale w/r/t the height of the horizontal cross in relation to the height and width of the bldg. The horizontal cross is slightly too high and lends a visual effect of being top heavy. It's location of being adjacent to an elevated freeway does not deter this effect, but rather enhances it, as most often viewers are moving directly through space towards the bldg. The paint job on the exterior is mostly indiscriminate over it's coverage of diverse materials from metal details to the masonry facade.

It looks unprofessional.