Murphy Building At 9805 Katy Fwy.

[Gary]

The only awkward thing about that area is the lack of connection between Memorial City and City Center. There's the I-10 frontage road, or you can drive through the neighborhood around the middle school.

The neighborhood option is really quite charming to me. I enjoy the short drive over, it's relatively peaceful and has some great trees, homes and yards.

[infinite_jim]

Another wavy blue line in the night sky.

[TheNiche]

<insert comment stating urbanity requires fragmented ownership>

There's something to be said for that. For some reason, I had never sensed a purpose for me to have to visit CityCentre until very recently. When I did go, I found it to be really bland and tasteless. It was so orderly and contrived as to be wholly off-putting. The restaurants were expensive, well decorated, not very good, and crowded by affluent people and wannabes of all races colors and creeds. It was soooooo BORING!

But there was something else. It was as if there were a weight bearing down on my soul. The private streets and common areas are exclusive to a particular category of person, are expensively landscaped and manicured, are deviously cloistered from external influences, are all branded under a single biohazard-like logo; there were images of gigantic happy people everywhere; it was like a theme park of sorts, and I felt put upon to buy something if only as a price of admission. I did what I was there to do, which was to purchase crappy food and watery cocktails in nice environs at tremendous expense. And then I got the hell out of Dodge.

I felt unwelcome there, but also entrapped.

-----------------------------------------------

People think Wal-Mart is necessarily a suburban kind of place, but I do not necessarily think so. It is a store in which everyone can feel welcome, not put-upon. Expectations are low, the quality is low, but the prices are low too. Everyone is equally welcome, from any neighborhood, from any culture, of any means or lack thereof. And if you can't find what you're looking for, you can walk right out the door, see where the exit to a public right-of-way is at a glance, and drive on down the road. It only takes a couple of minutes to escape. It's highly intuitive. So Wal-Mart exists at a different scale than most stores, but all that it is is still just a store that fronts a public street.

By comparison, CityCentre, and all these other developments being put up by MetroNational and Midway Cos. are more akin to a master planned community than just typical suburban tract housing. And that's what I don't like, are MPCs.

The difference between an MPC retail village and a retail strip such as Westheimer or Bellaire or the Gulf Freeway or Kirby or FM 1960 is a delusion of exclusivity, brought about by a fenced off simulation running at a sufficient scale. That is all. I suppose that it makes some people feel special.

[woolie]

Yup. I've been over there a few times. It took me a few days of reflecting on my most recent experience to fully describe the "creepy, uncanny valley" aspect of City Center. At the end of the day, it's just another shopping mall, but in the shape of a "traditional urban center." But it's just a thin veneer, and doesn't reflect any core values or commitment to the concept of the city. It's appropriating this image to give people certain expectations and associations, when in fact no such thing exists. In a real public space, you have rights (expression, photography, association..), and any special rules that exist were created by an ultimately accountable public agency. None of that exists in a shopping mall, even if it looks like a high street. Further, in a real city, the land is subdivided, and it becomes much harder (or impossible) to restrict certain types of businesses, hours open, etc. In a shopping mall, it's a single landlord that can set rules for the entire complex -- "take it or leave it." So everything always feels so sanitized and bland.

[crunchtastic]

Not dissimilar to the feeling I have in The Woodlands. I infrequently have to go for work socializing, and can never escape this niggling fear that the when it's time to go home the gates to I-45 will be shut and I can't get out.

[livincinco]

I'm curious to hear if this group has the same feelings towards West Ave which I view as a very comparable, if less successful version of City Centre which doesn't seem to draw nearly the same level of scorn in this forum. With the exception of one truly imaginative restaurant (Pondicheri), I would argue that the experience in the two places is similar.

I don't share your opinion, but I understand it. If it doesn't appeal to you, then you shouldn't live or shop there. However, I do think that it's reasonable that you recognize the appeal of this kind of experience to many people.

There are still a number of vacancies in CityCentre, maybe they will add a tattoo parlour, a liqour store and a sex shop to give you the level of comfort that you seek.

[TheNiche]

I'm curious to hear if this group has the same feelings towards West Ave which I view as a very comparable, if less successful version of City Centre which doesn't seem to draw nearly the same level of scorn in this forum. With the exception of one truly imaginative restaurant (Pondicheri), I would argue that the experience in the two places is similar.

I don't share your opinion, but I understand it. If it doesn't appeal to you, then you shouldn't live or shop there. However, I do think that it's reasonable that you recognize the appeal of this kind of experience to many people.

There are still a number of vacancies in CityCentre, maybe they will add a tattoo parlour, a liqour store and a sex shop to give you the level of comfort that you seek.

I haven't had cause to visit West Ave., so I will not comment on it.

I do recognize the appeal of CityCentre to a huge number of people. I'm not against it as a matter of public policy. Zombies should be allowed to have a place like this, if only to keep them out of my neighborhood.

And to be completely clear, I'm not specifically complaining about a lack of seediness in a place like CItyCentre; the whole place is a pressure cooker of zombie sensuality, thinly veiled. It's that it makes me feel isolated and trapped in the belly of a lie. I'd feel more accepted and a part of society at a Wal-Mart, at Underbelly, at the Greyhound Bus Station, in a Hobby Lobby on 1960, at a Chinese restaurant on Bellaire that has no English signage or menus, or any English-speaking staff, at Petrol Station, at a Taco Bell in Dickinson, volunteering to attempt to sing in the choir at a Baptist church in the 5th Ward, or even shopping at the Galleria or at Northwest Mall.

At least where the traditional concept of a mall is concerned, it was designed with function-driven purpose. Shoppers wanted air conditioning, and so they got it. And mega-malls like the Galleria elevated the experience to something that is fairly unique and original.

In contrast, CityCentre is a lie. It is fiction for zombies; savvy marketers told them that they desired not to be air conditioned or sheltered from the elements while they shop for expensive goods, that neo-traditional gimmickry would make everything right; and so the zombies complied and the landlord's operating expenses were reduced and the landlord and his zombies were happy.

[livincinco]

I haven't had cause to visit West Ave., so I will not comment on it.

I do recognize the appeal of CityCentre to a huge number of people. I'm not against it as a matter of public policy. Zombies should be allowed to have a place like this, if only to keep them out of my neighborhood.

And to be completely clear, I'm not specifically complaining about a lack of seediness in a place like CItyCentre; the whole place is a pressure cooker of zombie sensuality, thinly veiled. It's that it makes me feel isolated and trapped in the belly of a lie. I'd feel more accepted and a part of society at a Wal-Mart, at Underbelly, at the Greyhound Bus Station, in a Hobby Lobby on 1960, at a Chinese restaurant on Bellaire that has no English signage or menus, or any English-speaking staff, at Petrol Station, at a Taco Bell in Dickinson, volunteering to attempt to sing in the choir at a Baptist church in the 5th Ward, or even shopping at the Galleria or at Northwest Mall.

At least where the traditional concept of a mall is concerned, it was designed with function-driven purpose. Shoppers wanted air conditioning, and so they got it. And mega-malls like the Galleria elevated the experience to something that is fairly unique and original.

In contrast, CityCentre is a lie. It is fiction for zombies; savvy marketers told them that they desired not to be air conditioned or sheltered from the elements while they shop for expensive goods, that neo-traditional gimmickry would make everything right; and so the zombies complied and the landlord's operating expenses were reduced and the landlord and his zombies were happy.

Thank you for enlightening us in the error of our ways. I thought that I was just having a nice dinner out the last time I went to CityCentre, however I clearly failed to notice the Matrix like tubes that were attached to my back when I entered the area.

Certainly the sanitized, Americanized food at Taco Bell is reality. The Chinese restaurant in Bellaire that has no english on the menu to exclude non-Chinese customers is simply an effort to be "authentic". The "farm to table" and organic food movement that Underbelly espouses was developed with no thought to marketing to the disposable income of a certain demographic group.

The fact that the spectrum of your own experience does not create an interest in CityCentre does not make the people that visit there "zombies". They have different experiences, different means and different desires than you. The fact that they are different does not make them less authentic. CityCentre, like WalMart, Underbelly, or the Galleria, has created a "reality" where some people are comfortable to spend their disposal income and depart feeling like the result was worth the cost. That is capitalism.

From reading your other posts, I know that you think that you're "real". You live in a part of the city that's "real" while I live in a part of the city that is "artificial". If you have the means to frequent Underbelly and Petrol Station, then you and I both live in a way that the majority of the world would recognize as artificial and out of touch with reality.

[TheNiche]

Thank you for enlightening us in the error of our ways. I thought that I was just having a nice dinner out the last time I went to CityCentre, however I clearly failed to notice the Matrix like tubes that were attached to my back when I entered the area.

Certainly the sanitized, Americanized food at Taco Bell is reality. The Chinese restaurant in Bellaire that has no english on the menu to exclude non-Chinese customers is simply an effort to be "authentic". The "farm to table" and organic food movement that Underbelly espouses was developed with no thought to marketing to the disposable income of a certain demographic group.

The fact that the spectrum of your own experience does not create an interest in CityCentre does not make the people that visit there "zombies". They have different experiences, different means and different desires than you. The fact that they are different does not make them less authentic. CityCentre, like WalMart, Underbelly, or the Galleria, has created a "reality" where some people are comfortable to spend their disposal income and depart feeling like the result was worth the cost. That is capitalism.

From reading your other posts, I know that you think that you're "real". You live in a part of the city that's "real" while I live in a part of the city that is "artificial". If you have the means to frequent Underbelly and Petrol Station, then you and I both live in a way that the majority of the world would recognize as artificial and out of touch with reality.

Your ways are not in error, merely different. I am not criticizing capitalism, the enjoyment of wealth, or an individual's freedom to enjoy wealth as they so choose. I fully acknowledge that marketing efforts influence every kind of person, including myself. I am not against advertising; actually, I'm fascinated by it.

However, when I eat at Taco Bell, I enjoy having a full meal for less than $3. I'm there for a reason. When I eat at the non-english-speaking Chinese restaurant, I'm there to explore, to 'pick one' and cross my fingers; I frequently have dishes that don't taste good, but I usually also enjoy the experience of trying something new and walk out happy and full. The ethnocentricism (purposefully downplayed at CityCentre) and possible spit in my hotpot does not concern me. At Petrol Station, the $10 rancor burger is actually a good deal if you consider the amount of meat, cheese, bacon, and the egg (fried to my specification). It's frickin' huge. The price is a bargain, and the product is very satisfying. When I eat at Underbelly, I eat the goat and dumplings braised in a Korean BBQ sauce. It's tasty, I don't care where it came from. If the only place that I could obtain that dish were at CityCentre, I'd go to CityCentre to get it.

But that's just the thing, there's no reason to go to CityCentre unless you're a zombie. The price is high, the product sucks. All that's left in the scheme of human desire are placement and promotion. (Brains... Brains...)

And don't get me wrong, it's not about a part of the city being real and a part being artificial. Wal-Mart is real. Fuzzy's Pizza is real. If I worked way out west on I-10, I'd probably live in the Katy area, too. It's also worth saying that there are lots of urban zombies. They seem to especially like the Washington Avenue corridor, although they are dispersed throughout the central city.

[Gary]

The snobbery of MSNBC watching Houstonians is bourish...

[livincinco]

I get your point, but I object to your absolutes in categorizing what is real and artificial because that's subjective to an individual's taste. I like to try new foods and restaurants as much as anyone, but not every meal has to be a statement. Your comments categorize me as a zombie simply by spending an evening in that facility or by going to a restaurant that doesn't match your standards of what value you should receive for your food.

Your willingness to eat different things is admirable, but we all have limits (my own personal limits have been reached several times, most memorably with whale sashimi and again with fertilized duck embryo on a half shell). As a result, I'm more hesitant to denigrate others for their own personal limits even if they are not as wide as mine.

In the end, I really don't see a huge difference between going to the Yardhouse for a burger and going to Petrol Station for a burger although the burger at Petrol Station is arguably a better value. Besides, I actually like to sit outside and walk around after dinner, even during the summer.

I will continue to go to CityCentre and I will continue to be a zombie. In the happy event that restaurants at CityCentre add raw brains to the menu, my zombie existance will be complete.

[luciaphile]

Real/Not Real/Zombies - aaargh! The unnecessary hostility, all in the service of some very bad ideas. The Niche's perfectly valid preference for working class people has lent his libertarianism a strand of unfortunate - and unnecessary - populism, that he himself doesn't always seem to know what to do with: perhaps a small sign of the shortcomings of libertarianism as a philosophy. Livincinco's entirely correct impatience with that populism (beware of those -isms you know by their trail of dead) is laced with contempt for the idea that one should make no value judgments about the fruits of capitalism. Livincinco, where did you get that idea? Why not? Surely the market is not so fragile as that! It's ridiculous: "Someone paid for that" "Oh, of course, then I'll shut my eyes and pretend I have no thought about it!" The guilt you were weaned on in school, and/or the resentment you have probably come to feel about it, muddy your posts and obscure the obvious, given that you both haunt an architecture/urban planning forum: you have a common and not-insignificant desire - that Houston be a worthy place to spend your adult lives and the best it can be given its many challenges. Overhanging it all is Robert Venturi laughing at us, for being easily bamboozled, for taking seriously "Leaving Las Vegas" - everything in America is a cartoonish reinvention of something from somewhere else; so, inferiority complex firmly in place, we forfeited the idea of aesthetics entirely. If you are uncertain on this point, I am not: letting Venturi overrule Aristotle was a spectacularly bad idea. That the word authenticity you throw around (in currrent parlance unmistakably a stand-in for The Good) has become THE shibboleth of our time is an indicator. Why should cities like Houston be forever doomed to a sort of childlike "real place/not a real place?" limbo, where people with taste are discouraged from engaging with the city and leaving their mark on it? How the hell would that interfere with a booming oil-and-gas industry? I don't particularly care about Houston, but I care about the American West and I am so tired of this idea that we are not resident here, we are just temporarily trashing it, see, we've completely altered the way people relate to their surroundings - and anyone who cares about, and regrets, our built landscape is eccentric or un-American or doesn't know their Adam Smith. I feel certain, sight unseen, that City Centre is ridiculous - the spelling is not auspicious - but if that is unfair, I'll substitute my town's iteration, the Domain. It's stupid not because it's fake (what else was it likely to be?), nor even because the fakery is unconvincing, but simply because it was badly done and absurdly placed. No ideology required, no zombies invoked.

[jgriff]

Citycentre is a working class mall. There's no Chanel, Tiffany or Louis Vuitton like the Galleria. It's full of middle class families. It's not a place for snooty people. Sometimes it seems a little honky tonk to me.

[TheNiche]

I get your point, but I object to your absolutes in categorizing what is real and artificial because that's subjective to an individual's taste. I like to try new foods and restaurants as much as anyone, but not every meal has to be a statement. Your comments categorize me as a zombie simply by spending an evening in that facility or by going to a restaurant that doesn't match your standards of what value you should receive for your food.

Your willingness to eat different things is admirable, but we all have limits (my own personal limits have been reached several times, most memorably with whale sashimi and again with fertilized duck embryo on a half shell). As a result, I'm more hesitant to denigrate others for their own personal limits even if they are not as wide as mine.

In the end, I really don't see a huge difference between going to the Yardhouse for a burger and going to Petrol Station for a burger although the burger at Petrol Station is arguably a better value. Besides, I actually like to sit outside and walk around after dinner, even during the summer.

I will continue to go to CityCentre and I will continue to be a zombie. In the happy event that restaurants at CityCentre add raw brains to the menu, my zombie existance will be complete.

Every meal (or any act of consumption) is a statement, a purpose. The statement might be, "I am hungry, need food NOW, have $3 to spend. Oh look, there's a Taco Bell." It might be, "I want something greasy and indulgent tonight...with bitter beer." If there is no purpose, and if you're willing to acknowledge that similar goods are available of better quality at lower price elsewhere, then...WTF?

And as for walking, anybody can walk around pretty much anywhere if they want to. Goodness knows why anybody would want to walk around CityCentre, though. That's just so normal, it's weird. And I say that because it seems to come so naturally to the thoughtless, to those inclined to activity without purpose.

[TheNiche]

Real/Not Real/Zombies - aaargh! The unnecessary hostility, all in the service of some very bad ideas. The Niche's perfectly valid preference for working class people has lent his libertarianism a strand of unfortunate - and unnecessary - populism, that he himself doesn't always seem to know what to do with: perhaps a small sign of the shortcomings of libertarianism as a philosophy. Livincinco's entirely correct impatience with that populism (beware of those -isms you know by their trail of dead) is laced with contempt for the idea that one should make no value judgments about the fruits of capitalism.

I've said over and over again that my comments have nothing to do with capitalism or public policy. (Also, I am not a member of the Libertarian Party. Those people are crazy. And libertarianism is not a philosophy.) Poor people can have bad taste too (and plenty of it!), it's just that they cannot afford to articulate it in ways that are quite so visible and obnoxious, or that are worthy of discussion.

My stated preferences and examples run the gamut from working class to affluence, and they also transcend cultures completely; that is intentional. It is to show that my mind is open to new things, to unexpected things, to good things, and to illustrate that CityCentre underperforms in every manner conceivable. That affordability is a consideration, that the venue is popular in spite of high prices and low quality, is the cherry on top of the argument; I wouldn't go so far as to use the label, "zombies," without the argument being fully articulated.

But "zombie" is just a label. It is imprecise, perhaps. Do you have a better suggestion on what to call these people?

[luciaphile]

Went swimming and am all chillaxed now. It's returned me to my usual state of savage indifference.

I don't know who "these people" are, The Niche. Are they The People Who Didn't Talk to You in High School? The People Who Use the Word Chillax? The People Who Do Not Eat at Taco Bell? Oh no, I fall in that category. I guess I have no choice but to eat your flesh. (Okay, once years ago I took my kid through the the drive-through because repeated TV ads during the Saturday baseball game on Fox for something called the "Cheesy Gordita Supreme Crunchwrap" had worked on his imagination. Does that give me any street cred?)

I am recalling something, the only thing I remember, from classroom reading of Voltaire: the anecdote about the man who was sent to the Grand Inquisitor because it was noticed that he pushed aside the bacon on his plate...

"First they came for the people who did not eat fast food, and I said nothing, because I often bought $3 burritos..."

I am going all reductio ad absurdum on you because I don't know how I could possibly have left the impression that I wish to label people one way or another.

Please don't misunderstand - I don't mean to suggest that "nothing human is alien to me." Quite the contrary, though I admire people who really incarnate that. In fact, those words - "these people" - were kind of echoing in my head and I suddenly remembered an occasion I used them, to myself, involving a different demographic than your $12 luncheaters (just gotta say, for the love of Pedro, The Niche, if you're eating at Taco Bell in a city full of taquerias, you're the loony consumer). It has a Houston connection, it was the day the people of your fair city fled the hurricane and came here, to stay in high schools and such. I had volunteered for the Red Cross (they were marvelously efficient and hardly needed anyone, really). At the end of a - for me - surreal day, watching a thousand people drive up in SUVs and parade in with all their belongings, their endless kids, dogs, birds, queries of "Can you go get some heart medication for me? Where is the dog food? Don't you have air mattresses?"; their complaints about the free cafeteria meals the school was providing with no prior notice on top of feeding its students; their simmering tensions with one another over the placement of sleeping bags and the use of outlets...all I could think was, who are these people? They are so strange to me. Have they no family - none whatsoever - or is it so fragmented, that they have nowhere to go but here? Who would choose this, in whatever extremity of need, which they don't exactly seem to be in, if they had a car to go somewhere else? I would set up a tent - I would sleep in my car - I would do anything at all but I would never join this herd...The moral of the story is not, alas, that I suddenly realized we were all the same,really, underneath. No. We're more different, until we get to the grave, than I had even thought. (I do think - it helps me to think - that the loss of certain taboos, the decay of cultural norms, that has been weathered so effortlessly by the well-off, but whose effects have been so much harder on the underclass, exacerbates these differences; and I did not feel any difference from others as a child, during the time those "experiments" were fairly new.)

But feeling that way, saying "these people" - it is something to be on the watch for. It is not something to indulge. It is definitely not following the better angel of one's nature - I think, but as you like.

[Gary]

chillaxedI don't know who "these people" are, The Niche. Are they The People Who Didn't Talk to You in High School?

Me thinks someone hit the nail on the head.

[woolie]

The snobbery of MSNBC watching Houstonians is bourish...

I don't watch MSNBC, because I hate television. I do, however, only listen to KUHF, which consists of public radio content from NPR, BBC, DW, etc.

[woolie]

I'm curious to hear if this group has the same feelings towards West Ave

Anyone can easily buy up land adjacent to West Ave and build whatever they want. There's no Master Planned Community Corporation to deal with. So, it's not the same at all. In fact, it's through this exact process that West Ave came to exist, in the middle of a highly developed area, to begin with.

[TheNiche]

I don't know who "these people" are, The Niche. Are they The People Who Didn't Talk to You in High School? The People Who Use the Word Chillax? The People Who Do Not Eat at Taco Bell? Oh no, I fall in that category. I guess I have no choice but to eat your flesh. (Okay, once years ago I took my kid through the the drive-through because repeated TV ads during the Saturday baseball game on Fox for something called the "Cheesy Gordita Supreme Crunchwrap" had worked on his imagination. Does that give me any street cred?)

I am recalling something, the only thing I remember, from classroom reading of Voltaire: the anecdote about the man who was sent to the Grand Inquisitor because it was noticed that he pushed aside the bacon on his plate...

"First they came for the people who did not eat fast food, and I said nothing, because I often bought $3 burritos..."

I am going all reductio ad absurdum on you because I don't know how I could possibly have left the impression that I wish to label people one way or another.

Please don't misunderstand - I don't mean to suggest that "nothing human is alien to me." Quite the contrary, though I admire people who really incarnate that. In fact, those words - "these people" - were kind of echoing in my head and I suddenly remembered an occasion I used them, to myself, involving a different demographic than your $12 luncheaters (just gotta say, for the love of Pedro, The Niche, if you're eating at Taco Bell in a city full of taquerias, you're the loony consumer). It has a Houston connection, it was the day the people of your fair city fled the hurricane and came here, to stay in high schools and such. I had volunteered for the Red Cross (they were marvelously efficient and hardly needed anyone, really). At the end of a - for me - surreal day, watching a thousand people drive up in SUVs and parade in with all their belongings, their endless kids, dogs, birds, queries of "Can you go get some heart medication for me? Where is the dog food? Don't you have air mattresses?"; their complaints about the free cafeteria meals the school was providing with no prior notice on top of feeding its students; their simmering tensions with one another over the placement of sleeping bags and the use of outlets...all I could think was, who are these people? They are so strange to me. Have they no family - none whatsoever - or is it so fragmented, that they have nowhere to go but here? Who would choose this, in whatever extremity of need, which they don't exactly seem to be in, if they had a car to go somewhere else? I would set up a tent - I would sleep in my car - I would do anything at all but I would never join this herd...The moral of the story is not, alas, that I suddenly realized we were all the same,really, underneath. No. We're more different, until we get to the grave, than I had even thought. (I do think - it helps me to think - that the loss of certain taboos, the decay of cultural norms, that has been weathered so effortlessly by the well-off, but whose effects have been so much harder on the underclass, exacerbates these differences; and I did not feel any difference from others as a child, during the time those "experiments" were fairly new.)

But feeling that way, saying "these people" - it is something to be on the watch for. It is not something to indulge. It is definitely not following the better angel of one's nature - I think, but as you like.

We're still on Taco Bell? Jeez. I'll have to log this for future discussions with hipsters. All it takes is to throw a specific Taco Bell in Dickinson into the mix alongside Underbelly, Petrol Station, and Chinese restaurants whose names I don't know, and I'll get called a libertarian, a populist, and inferences will be made toward antisemitism or similar persecutorial behavior. What's with that!?

Interesting story about the hurricane. Whomever such a collection of people were that they are worth of being discussed, they are also worthy of a label so as to facilitate repeated communication regarding them. It's about linguistic efficiency, nothing more.

I don't know who "these people" are, The Niche. Are they The People Who Didn't Talk to You in High School?

And just to address Gary's agreement with this statement, actually a lot of my Facebook friends from back in that era are precisely the type to engage in conspicuous and purposeless consumption. They'd love CityCentre if they lived here and knew it existed. They were boring then and they're boring now, but only now they can articulate the full extent of their uninteresting existence because whereas they had been fairly poor, they are now enabled with disposable income and and social media. I suppose that it's good to have a sort of zombie origin story associated with them.

[worldlyman]

There's something to be said for that. For some reason, I had never sensed a purpose for me to have to visit CityCentre until very recently. When I did go, I found it to be really bland and tasteless. It was so orderly and contrived as to be wholly off-putting. The restaurants were expensive, well decorated, not very good, and crowded by affluent people and wannabes of all races colors and creeds. It was soooooo BORING!

But there was something else. It was as if there were a weight bearing down on my soul. The private streets and common areas are exclusive to a particular category of person, are expensively landscaped and manicured, are deviously cloistered from external influences, are all branded under a single biohazard-like logo; there were images of gigantic happy people everywhere; it was like a theme park of sorts, and I felt put upon to buy something if only as a price of admission. I did what I was there to do, which was to purchase crappy food and watery cocktails in nice environs at tremendous expense. And then I got the hell out of Dodge.

I felt unwelcome there, but also entrapped.

-----------------------------------------------

People think Wal-Mart is necessarily a suburban kind of place, but I do not necessarily think so. It is a store in which everyone can feel welcome, not put-upon. Expectations are low, the quality is low, but the prices are low too. Everyone is equally welcome, from any neighborhood, from any culture, of any means or lack thereof. And if you can't find what you're looking for, you can walk right out the door, see where the exit to a public right-of-way is at a glance, and drive on down the road. It only takes a couple of minutes to escape. It's highly intuitive. So Wal-Mart exists at a different scale than most stores, but all that it is is still just a store that fronts a public street.

By comparison, CityCentre, and all these other developments being put up by MetroNational and Midway Cos. are more akin to a master planned community than just typical suburban tract housing. And that's what I don't like, are MPCs.

The difference between an MPC retail village and a retail strip such as Westheimer or Bellaire or the Gulf Freeway or Kirby or FM 1960 is a delusion of exclusivity, brought about by a fenced off simulation running at a sufficient scale. That is all. I suppose that it makes some people feel special.

To be blunt, I can enjoy the "contrived" construction of City Centre yet enjoy the raw urbanity of downtown Houston on a Saturday night.

I love those options here.

Last Saturday night, the wife and I went strolling around downtown, had some late coffee at Minuti. We definitely saw tons of people sleeping on or loitering around the sidewalks of the Harris Co. Administration building (they didn't seem dangerous), but the number was alarming compared to other times we go downtown. Downtown is happening on Saturday night. Guys playing guitar at Molly's patio, hipsters loitering outside no-tsu-oh, hip hoppers walking to their clubs of choice, model-type girls trying to lure patrons to the latest Latino bars...characters of all types walking around...downtown is still great...I love that urban vibe when I want it.

But sometimes, it is nice to go spend a few bucks and strolls over at City Centre or Sugar Land Town Square.

The Saturday before, at City Centre, the wife and I enjoyed some Red Mango beverages and sitting in the plaza, enjoying some lovely summer evening breeze!

What's the big deal, really? I don't feel welcome or un-welcome at City Centre. But I don't feel shut out if I go up to Monna Lisa to get a view. I might exchange some stares with some of those lovelies out there and all that...but...

I don't begrudge some of the things you reflect on...but to me, City Centre is what it is. Namely, A viable destination alternative to take the wife when we do not feel like going to downtown or the Montrose or New Chinatown for some late night imbibing.

----------------------------------

Now, Wal-Mart really sucks. I only go when it is absolutely necessary.

[jgriff]

Hipsters don't go to Citycentre. Hipsters eat Pho. There's no Pho in Citycentre. Citycentre is full of middle class people with families. I don't see rich people or Hipsters there. I see 40 year old parents who have given up on being cool brining their kids to play in the lawn and have a cupcake.

Edit: I started thinking about it and realized that I haven't been to every place in Citycentre. Maybe there's Pho there that I don't know about. I know that hipsters wouldn't eat Pho there though. To really get the full hipster Pho effect you have to eat it at a dirty hole in the wall restaraunt and brag to your friends about how great the $2 Pho is. The eating of the Pho is not nearly as important as the autenticity of it and the making sure all your friends know how authentic and cheap it was.

I'm sure the real hipsters will come out now and tell me that Pho is so last year and we've probably moved on to something like Korean street corner silk worms or something.

[TheNiche]

There goes jgriff, waxing poetic the way he does.

[jgriff]

There goes jgriff, waxing poetic the way he does.

Ha..

I live near Memorial City and Citycentre. Fortunately not close enough that my property values will be affected a lot by what happens to them. Citycentre is crowded and successful right now. I see no reason why that couldn't suddenly change though. This place is not a guaranteed long term success by any means. I can't imagine why anyone would want to tie their financial future to this place by buying one of those townhomes. All it takes is a few people that are the wrong color, wrong age or wrong income level showing up a few too many nights in a row and the families that are making it a success will never come back. That's what happens to places that are "fake" as Niche puts it. He is correct in that sense and knows far more about real estate development than I do, probably more than almost anyone here.

I've already noticed some of the restaurants going a little downhill. One of them that has a large patio has cigarette burns and mold in the outdoor furniture. If they don't take care of the furniture I don't want to know what they do in the kitchen. I won't complain, I just won't go back. A lot of others will probably do the same.

[TheNiche]

Ha..

I live near Memorial City and Citycentre. Fortunately not close enough that my property values will be affected a lot by what happens to them. Citycentre is crowded and successful right now. I see no reason why that couldn't suddenly change though. This place is not a guaranteed long term success by any means. I can't imagine why anyone would want to tie their financial future to this place by buying one of those townhomes. All it takes is a few people that are the wrong color, wrong age or wrong income level showing up a few too many nights in a row and the families that are making it a success will never come back. That's what happens to places that are "fake" as Niche puts it. He is correct in that sense and knows far more about real estate development than I do, probably more than almost anyone here.

I've already noticed some of the restaurants going a little downhill. One of them that has a large patio has cigarette burns and mold in the outdoor furniture. If they don't take care of the furniture I don't want to know what they do in the kitchen. I won't complain, I just won't go back. A lot of others will probably do the same.

Don't get me wrong, CityCentre is a fantastic development from an investment perspective. Perhaps not over the long term, for reasons you noted (and I wouldn't buy a townhome there, either), but The Midway Cos. have done quite well for themselves as developers, with investors evidently willing to pay a novelty premium.

[luciaphile]

Resentment of the elite and antisemitism are one; but please don't distress yourself, The Niche. I was being utterly facetious, a vice of mine. I am sorry - I would never accuse anyone of that lightly. In any case we have no functioning elite - I would welcome it! And you yourself...

They were boring then and they're boring now...

..are an elitist if there ever was. (With a Facebook friend like The Niche, who needs frenemies?) Truly, the label "elitist" is not meant as a negative, merely a means ...

to facilitate repeated communication... It's about linguistic efficiency, nothing more.

Yes, there were probably about three people worth knowing in your high school class - then. You may ease up a little on the rest as you get older and life beats the radical individualism out of you.

[LTAWACS]

Resentment of the elite and antisemitism are one; but please don't distress yourself, The Niche. I was being utterly facetious, a vice of mine. I am sorry - I would never accuse anyone of that lightly. In any case we have no functioning elite - I would welcome it! And you yourself...

..are an elitist if there ever was. (With a Facebook friend like The Niche, who needs frenemies?) Truly, the label "elitist" is not meant as a negative, merely a means ...

Yes, there were probably about three people worth knowing in your high school class - then. You may ease up a little on the rest as you get older and life beats the radical individualism out of you.

I thought his facebook page was "Brandon Lee" who owns The Niche? Am I mistaken?

[Pleak]

I've already noticed some of the restaurants going a little downhill. One of them that has a large patio has cigarette burns and mold in the outdoor furniture. If they don't take care of the furniture I don't want to know what they do in the kitchen. I won't complain, I just won't go back. A lot of others will probably do the same.

But now that restaurant is becoming "authenic". I mean this is Houston. If your outdoor furniture doesn't have mold on it - it must be contrived and fake.

Beware - that restaurant might become infected with hipsters.

[woolie]

Phở and bánh mì will never go out of style. And it's the best part of living in Midtown. Not only is it fantastically cheap food, it's healthy and delicious. It tastes even better if you get there on your fixie.

[TheNiche]

Phở and bánh mì will never go out of style.

Neither will young Vietnamese girls in short shorts and low-cut blouses. Yum.