COMMENT OF THE DAY: SHARON TYLER’S TILES “I have to agree this house is over the top and she went ‘architect’ nuts with it. I actually live in one of the few other houses that Sharon Tyler built in West U. She built a few others and acted as the ‘architect/builder.’ I have to say the house is built super solid and has a timeless design to it. The bathrooms did have the Sharon Tyler signature floor to ceiling 2×2 tiles and that got old as soon as the 90s hit. Hoewever, in one of the bath remodels I brought a tile vendor to give me a quote to knock down all the tiles and put something more current. The guy liked the Sharon tiles so much that I thought he was going to hit me with a bat for wanting to tear them down. So to each its own. However, I have to say that having lived in a Sharon Tyler house, I have the outmost respect for that woman. No detail was overlooked and I understand she oversaw the construction herself and it was not uncommon for her to stop at the construction and asking to start from scratch on a particular job if she was not pleased with the work. And it shows, the house is solid quality construction.” [west u rez, commenting on Living Large in Houston, Before Her Homes Got Not So Big]
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: WESTERN AIR “. . . in cities old enough to predate water systems it was common for the favored side to grow upstream. Even after city sanitation, flood control, and car ownership that makes it possible to live ‘way up a hill without having to have the leisure to live so far from things – and even where that legacy doesn’t hold over in property investment – air quality is generally better higher up, nevermind views: so that in North America, where our water often flows to the east and south, even newer cities often favor west and north. Especially north. Nashville, Monterrey, East Bay, Memphis, and others where the east or south is higher ground, or cities where race riots took place after city sanitation came around, prove the rule by suggesting how much it takes to buck it and confirming why. Think about it and see why else you can come up with!” [Austin, commenting on Comment of the Day: The Common Divide]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE COMMON DIVIDE “. . . regarding the splitting of houston into east/west, is there any city in the US where the east side has higher average incomes and more infrastructure spending? seems that with most every city i can think of the east side is generally much more destitute than the west.” [joel, commenting on This Week, Houston Begins Slicing What’s Left of the Katy Prairie in Two]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THERE GOES THE CHURCH, THERE GOES THE STEEPLE “Yes, the stained glass is being salvaged. The old pipe organ went to UT and many other art pieces were saved. It is unfortunate to see this go, but it is just a building. The Church is the people. Mark 13: ‘1 As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” 2 “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”’” [Jeromy Murphy, commenting on Mod Richmond Ave. Church Ready To Fall for New Apartments]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SQUIRREL WARS “That is exactly how my arch nemesis taunts me from my front porch! He is brazen but sharp. I saw him recently bending over a large pot once filled with aloe vera plants. He was hanging half out of the pot because he ate all the plants and couldn’t drag his bloated self out. He did, however, make it to the oak when seeing him through the window ran out to confront him. No luck. I’d sware he sat there grinning at me and flicking me with his tail! We’re going into our 5th month. Going to be a long Fall. . . .” [Jai Woods, commenting on All the Cool Squirrels Are Doing It]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THINKS HIS POOP DON’T STINK 
“That’s weird. [pot-bellied pig] poop doesn’t really smell much (not like a hog farm, where the hogs are fed to bursting). It’s kinda similar to rabbit or deer (remember these are prey animals). Wilbur may be overfed? Or not eating proper PBP food, which is like rabbit food pellets – alfalfa + protein mix. We rake the poo up & put on the compost pile or mix it directly into the garden soil. It does not burn the grass. Or attract flies, really. Maybe the neighbor is smelling something else? An 8-month-old PBP will produce about 20 little balls of poop a day on the proper diet. Sorry if this is TMI, but I feel I owe it to Wilbur to produce some facts from a long-time responsible pig owner. I can smell our neighbor’s dog’s poop next door – and the wandering cat’s – but the pigs’ is not nasty at all. I was kind of worried when we got our first one that it would be a problem, but it is not. And our neighbors will tell you that too.” [Flake, commenting on Spring Potbellied Pig Dispute Hits the Courts] Photo: Wilbur Sardo
COMMENT OF THE DAY: NOW EVEN THE SQUIRRELS ARE PLANKING “The other day I watched as a squirrel dug out a spot at the base of a smallish red oak in my front yard. I must have been about 10 or 12 feet from him. After he got it just as he wanted, he splayed out belly down in the depression he had created. I wondered if it was cool to his stomach, or what would make him do that. He didn’t seem to care about me. Was not the least bit frightened.” [PYEWACKET2, commenting on Houston Tree Massacre Body Count]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: RETAIL JUSTICE “I agree . . . It would have been much more efficient for the county to have just rented space in a strip shopping center. Maybe they could have found some place with a drive through. May we affirm your conviction? Would you like fries with that? Just imagine the possibilities.” [J., commenting on Inside Downtown’s Brand-New 1910 Courthouse]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: TOURISM, THE FINAL FRONTIER “Let’s face it, if you’ve ever been to Space Center Houston, it’s mostly geared towards elementary school field trips. It wasn’t til just a few years ago, one of the *real* crown jewels of America’s leftover space hardware, a complete friggin Saturn V, was even given a roof to protect it from the elements for posterity. I love NASA and remember being able to run around all over the campus with nary a locked door as a kid, but JSC simply hasn’t kept up with being a top toursist destination, domestically or internationally. Much like other ‘attractions’ in Houston, people see them incidentally when here visiting relatives or on business, they’re not destinations in themselves. I swear I think more people come down 45 and 59 from other states to see Galveston than Houston. Maybe we need to build that giant dome over the Loop after all to get some tourist cred.” [SL, commenting on Why No Shuttle for Houston? Because Space Center Houston Isn’t So Big with the Tourists]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: YOU GO RIGHT AHEAD “When I first visited Texas in 1980, the TxDOT signs said ‘Drive Friendly.’ I thought this was a charming sentiment, so when the opportunity came to move here, I looked forward to ‘driving friendly’ with all the other Texans. Imagine my surprise when I got here, and went looking for those ‘Drive Friendly’ signs, only to find they had been replaced by ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’ . . . whoa. OK. My then-new husband told me that just meant that a gunrack gives you the right-of-way.” [Claire de Lune, commenting on Don’t Mess with Don’t Mess with Texas]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: JUST MESSIN’ WITH YA “More than once, a non-Texan has cited ‘don’t mess with Texas’ to me as an example of what they perceive as Texans’ aggressive, arrogant superiority complex. I love the sheepish look I get when I tell them, ahem, it’s an anti-littering campaign, and not something we made up to sound like bad-asses. . . .” [Katk, commenting on Don’t Mess with Don’t Mess with Texas]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THAT WILL KILL THIS “We are excitedly discussing the replacement of bookstores with clothing stores (no matter how generic the former or how euro-cool the latter) . . . I’ve been rooting for an H&M in Houston for years, but I never thought it would be moving in to the empty shells of half the city’s booksellers. This is sad.” [Ares, commenting on H&M in Houston: All in the Malls]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: ENTERTAINMENT VALUE “I hope the driver pays every penny of the damages, minus comedy royalties.” [Sid, commenting on Stuck in Kirby Traffic Again, Not Going Anywhere]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BOWLED HIM OVER “I learned to swim there too, some of my fondest memories are from the Westland Y. My favorite: I was leaving swim lessons without my glasses (I was blind as a bat) and was running to my mom who was waiting in the car. I plowed into a really tall guy and knocked the wind right out of him. Hit him right in the breadbasket with my head. Couldn’t see him but I heard him laugh. There was no mistaking that laugh…I had run over Channel 2 weatherman Doug Johnson. I was mortified. My mom saw it all happen, but refused to get out of the car. She had the hots for Doug and she was on day two of “no washing your hair†after getting her giant bouffant permed at the Beauty Bunch. You know what they say, the higher the hair the closer to God, and my mom was really, really close to God back then.” [Heights Weirdo, commenting on More Rides to Gym]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: LOOKING FORWARD TO MISSING YOU TOO “It’s weird to think that Rice Village had, at various times, a porn theater, a reggae bar, and a former gas station converted into a barbeque place called the Poor Man’s Country Club. A lot of the funkiness has gone, but that’s what the residents in the vicinity want. It’s an upscale neighborhood–and that tends to push out some of the more marginal businesses. But new funky neighborhoods are always coming into existence, so while I mourn the disappearance of great, unique neighborhood businesses, I welcome new ones elsewhere. Who knows — 20 years from now, Radical Eats might be a beloved neighborhood institution in a gentrifying neighborhood.” [Robert Boyd, commenting on Po’ Boys Priced Out of the Village]