COMMENT OF THE DAY: HIGH WATER BECOMES US 
“Does anybody else feel Houston looks really great in a flood? Other cities have mountains or snow or awesome historic architecture, colorful boisterous festivals . . . But from what I see, flooded Houston is green and peaceful — the perfect spot to live!” [movocelot, commenting on Comment of the Day: A Better Way To Tell If Your Home Is Going To Flood] Illustration: Lulu
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: A BETTER WAY TO TELL IF YOUR HOME IS GOING TO FLOOD 
“My neighborhood flooded in Allison in 2001, and then again on Monday night. I can’t tell you how many ‘so much for the 100-year flood plain‘ comments I heard walking up and down the street.
What it really means is that it is a flood (or more properly a storm, or my favorite, ‘rain event’) that has a 1% chance of happening every year. So what that really means is that if you live in the ‘100 year flood plain’ you have a 26% chance of flooding during your 30 year note. And for many of these areas the 100-year storm on which these maps are based have 100 years or less of accurate rainfall data.
A better rule of thumb is to remember: (1) if you live near a bayou and it rains A LOT, you will probably flood at some point. (2) if it’s raining A LOT and the road you are on dips below the grade of the adjacent roads, it’s probably going to flood and (3) if it’s raining A LOT where you are in Houston, you can count on it flooding.” [Txcon, commenting on That Place on I-45 North of Downtown Where the Cars Always Seem To Hang Out After It Floods] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHERE’S HOUSTON’S REAL-TIME FLOOD MAP? 
“Has anyone posted a map of the residential streets that flooded yesterday? I’ve seen neighborhoods mentioned wholesale, but I also understand it was hit-and-miss from street to street. Thank you!” [Heather, commenting on Houston Floods Again; Kingwood’s Rise; How the East End Got Its Rail] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHERE THE HOUSTON PEAFOWL HANG 
“Additional peacock groups: in the Rivercrest subdivision 77042 – approximately 1 block West of Gessner, North of Westheimer Rd., on the south ends of E. Rivercrest & W. Rivercrest. Access from Briar Forest Dr. one light north of Westheimer, use Gessner as access is blocked @ Westheimer; Also on the East side of Austin St., just north of Rosedale St., 77004 (north of the Children’s Museum, in the Binz District). Also, east of Dairy Ashford, north of Briar Forest Dr. — there are lakes tucked into the Ashford Forest subdivision and there’s a flock of Pea Fowl aka peacocks. I used to live in far North Harris County — near Hooks Airport on 100 acres, which had 12 peacocks- 1 female and 11 males. The mating ritual is hilarious.” [Padraig, commenting on New Vargos on the Lake Won’t Serve You Dinner, but You Can Cook in the Kitchen Yourself, and Stay a Whole Lot Longer] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE RENT RUSH 
“One of the reasons rents have gotten pretty high in the last decade is people finally realized that owning a house is not what it’s cracked up to be. You can have a pretty decent apartment inside the loop for $2k a month which will only buy you about a $200k house which means you get an old small house between the loop and beltway, or a decent new house outside of the beltway. Also, you don’t start building real world equity in the house until after year 7 and coincidentally average time people live in a house is 5-7 years. Renting also allows for extreme flexibility in case your job changes, you create little clumsy clones of yourself, or simply don’t like changes in your neighborhood.
There was a study that showed that during the great recession there was a much higher rate of unemployment in Home Owner vs. Renters because after losing their job, Home Owners either were unable to sell or refused to sell their homes and simply move to an area with better job prospects.” [commonsense, commenting on Houston’s Most Expensive, Deadest Neighborhoods; The $10 I-10 Toll; Drinking from Lake Conroe] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOME IS WHERE THE CHEMICAL WASTE IS 
“I lived there from 1984-1990, from 2nd to 7th grade. I remember there being a ton of empty houses by the end. They never finished the neighborhood either, given that the problems occurred and people knew about it by the end. You’d have entire streets with 4 or 5 houses on it. My friends and I would play baseball, or football in those empty lots. We’d hit baseballs through windows of abandoned homes, and it’d be a dare to ‘go into that ghost house’ to get the ball back.
I remember going back in 1993 or so, and the entire place was empty, boarded up. It was sad. My dad and I hopped the fence and walked back to where our house was. We were there for about 5 minutes when the police came and wanted to know what the hell we were doing. Apparently, it’d become a place for squatters.
By 1995 the entire neighborhood was bulldozed to the ground. Now just an empty field. Yes, my dad lost a ton on that house. But we were part of that settlement that is mentioned. Paid for a small portion of my college, will pay for a tiny portion of my kids’ college. We were lucky in that I didn’t have any defects (that I know of), and my sister seems alright as well, though she had severe migraines at the time. It was a weird situation, especially for a 7-12 year old. But, I didn’t know it was ‘odd’ at the time. I just thought that it was cool, that I could break a window, or climb into a back yard to get a ball back, at a house that sat empty for 4 years. I thought it was ‘normal.’” [Matt, commenting on My Toxic Houston Childhood] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: THE SCREWBALL MIDTOWN GENTRIFICATION COMEDY YOU’VE BEEN WAITING TO SEE 
“The whole fooders trying to gentrify the post-grad frats out of midtown would be a good subject for a Vince Vaughn movie. The frats won’t take loss of their party town laying down. There will be hijinks before the eventual migration of the frat houses to EaDo.” [Houstonian, commenting on New Midtown Whole Foods Market Will Stand Apartments on Its Head, Shut Down a Street, Become Center of Universe] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE ART OF OBTAINING CITY PERMITS 
“When Havel Ruck Projects was commissioned to create ‘Fifth Ward Jam,’ it was under the premise that it was temporary (although 5th Ward CRC decided to keep and maintain it). We needed to obtain a permit to move the shack we used for the piece to the empty lot where it stands today. With the help of Fifth Ward CRC, we met with city permit people and discussed that we were not creating a dwelling, but a work of art. They said we needed a building permit to move the house. We said it was our desire that we did not need a building permit after moving the house because it was going to be made into a work of art. So, saying they never have done this before, they wrote us up a creative permit that deemed the house a dwelling while it was being picked up and moved, but it would be officially deemed an ‘art structure’ after it was on the site, thus allowing us not to need building permits to construct the piece. With a little education and persuasion, the permit people can be pretty accommodating . . . seems back in the day, us artists did stuff and then apologized later.” [Dan Havel, commenting on Saving Houston’s Unzoned Artistic Spirit] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHY THEY WON’T BE LINING POST OAK BLVD. WITH POST OAKS 
“So close! Just imagine how impressive it would be to have a forest of 800 post oaks on Post Oak Blvd. Unfortunately, post oaks don’t tend to transplant well compared to live oaks, which is why we use live oaks in our landscaping instead of post oaks. (Source: Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center)” [GoogleMaster, commenting on Boxed Forest of 800 Trees in Tomball Preparing for March Down Post Oak Blvd.] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE MORNING RITUAL 
“. . . They subject themselves to the wait. They have to sit in their cars, inching forward, seething with rage at the a-hole in front for being slow, cursing the a-hole behind for being impatient, wasting precious minutes of finite existence, instead of sipping a cup of joe in tranquil splendor with the morning digital paper at the kitchen table.
I understand the desire for convenience. I don’t understand how morning rush hour Starbucks can be seen as anything but torture.” [Memebag, commenting on Hedwig Village’s New Freeway-Side Starbucks Drive-Thru Is Coming To Save Your Missed Exit] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THERE’S A NAME FOR IT 
“Someone needs to name the cycle of excitement and disappointment of watching new construction in Houston. The cycle begins with confusion over demo of a current structure, then rising excitement in anticipation of something new and novel, a small dip when you see what is being built looks like a generic suburban building, and the ultimate disappointment and resignation when you find out it is . . . an Olive Garden.” [Lindsey, commenting on New Olive Garden Now in Bloom on the South Side of 59, Near Buffalo Speedway] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE OLD 
“Everything you would want to know about Houston real estate is encapsulated in today’s demo list and the next story immediately after it. A beautiful, classic River Oaks home in outstanding (if not spotless) condition and with plenty of sq. ft. is going to be demoed in order to build some gaudy lot line monster. Then, a tiny turn of the century Victorian bungalow in terrible condition is put on a truck, moved to another location, and lovingly restored inch by inch into a wonderfully creative and artistic work space for a small architectural firm.” [Old School, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: The Fisher Ding] Photos: HAR (3849 Inwood Dr.); KinneyMorrow Architecture (2219 Kane St.)
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT A DIFFERENCE A TWIST IN THE HIGHWAY WOULD MAKE 
“Pretty sure inside the Loop/outside the Loop won’t matter once TXDOT completes the planned half twist there at the 610/59 interchange. Cars will then be able to drive on the top and bottom of the Möbius 610 Loop, which should greatly reduce congestion.” [Memebag, commenting on Houston Chronicle Building Goes on Sale Tomorrow, the Chronicle Reports] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW IT WORKS IN HOUSTON, THE FREE ENTERPRISE CITY 
“. . . That is, and always has been, Houston. That unruly sprawl, those cookie-cutter suburbs, generic strip malls, traffic congestion, that all existed long before the Beltway was built. I grew up here, in a cookie-cutter suburb called ‘Sagemont’ located next to a 2 lane stretch of blacktop named ‘South Belt.’ My dad grew up in a cookie-cutter suburb 10 miles closer in, filled with generic strip malls, just outside what would become the 610 Loop. Today I live in another cookie-cutter suburb farther west, about half way between 610 and the Beltway. Still lots of congestion, sprawl, strip centers, etc. This is Houston, baby.
And just about everything in Houston exists because some powerful person (not necessarily a politician) owned tracts of land. All of those hip dense neighborhoods? They were empty fields that some speculator bought for next to nothing, then bribed . . . er, influenced someone in government to build something, often with tax dollars. That’s how things get done.” [Memebag, commenting on Driving Beltway 8, in Order To Read Houston in the Original] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW THOSE NEW FIFTH WARD DRIVEWAYS CAME TO REACH ALL THE WAY INTO THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET 
“Here’s how you get to this point.
(i) Neighborhood gets built with gravel streets, ditch drainage.
(ii) City goes in and widens most of the streets in the neighborhood in the 1960s. 40′ asphalt, curb and gutter. Baron St. misses out on the neighborhood-wide repave because it has a railroad track in the middle.
(iii) Railroad track gets abandoned, trackbed gets paved over, no one ever improves Baron.
(iv) Townhome developer comes in and wants to put in a driveway. Houston Infrastructure Design Manual says any culvert in City right-of-way has to be 24″ minimum. Developer’s engineer knows if he touches that old 60s curb inlet he’ll have to replace it to current spec, better to match the flowline and save eight or ten large. Culverts go in and look huge because 24″ on top of the existing flowline is above the crown of the road.
(v) Swamplot readers are confused because the 60s-era curb and gutter doesn’t match the existing right-of-way.” [Purple CIty, commenting on Here’s One Way To Get Extra Long Driveways for Your Fifth Ward Townhome] Photo: Swamplot inbox
