11/27/17 2:15pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT THE WEATHER “I lived in Washington, DC for 8 years and the typical Washington summer day is every bit as miserable as a Houston summer day. (There are somewhat fewer of them, of course.) And all summer, the streets were crowded with people walking. In the dead of winter, when it was 20 degrees out, the streets were full of people walking. The difference is that the city was built for walking; sidewalks rarely vanished mid block. Pedestrian crossings weren’t a mile apart. There were relatively few city streets eight lanes wide to get across. Obviously the central city density was a big part of that, but funny thing: people seem to actually like walking. Part of that time I lived in Arlington, VA, which is about like the Heights in density, and I thought nothing of walking 15 minutes up the street to the Metro station or the main boulevard where the shops and cafes and whatnot were. I also would regularly visit friends in Takoma Park, MD, another surburban-ish area, and . . . people walked. When I was in college in upstate NY, people walked (most students didn’t have cars on campus, because why would you have a car on campus). People walked 20 minutes downtown on subzero nights to go drinking. People trudged up the giant hill to campus in snow and wind. They could wait for the campus shuttle bus a lot of the time . . . but mostly they didn’t. They walked. There are very real reasons that people don’t walk as much in Houston, but the weather ain’t one of them.” [John (another one), commenting on Comment of the Day: Walking Is Not Native to Houston] Illustration: Lulu

08/05/13 3:15pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: IT’S TOO MUGGY TO WALK HERE “IMO people in Houston do not walk as much as they do in other cities. I have a friend who lives at West Ave and drives to Whole foods across the street, stuff like that. This is why Houston hasn’t had more ground floor retail in the past and we require 2375646523 parking spaces per 200 unit apt complex. Now everyone blames the heat for not walking, but I blame it on laziness and crime. If you build a walker friendly area that is safe like on west gray or west ave then people will come.” [benny, commenting on Comment of the Day: Would Ground Floor Retail Work in the Rice Village?] Illustration: Lulu

06/03/13 1:30pm

‘WHERE’S OUR SHADE?’ Shade, Houston Chronicle columnist Lisa Gray writes, is “cheap, efficient, and delicious.” Spurning the air-conditioned tunnels on a walk Downtown, Gray stops to cool off beneath “the deep sheltered walkway in front of the Post Rice Lofts,” she writes, and starts to heat up with questions: “If Houston knew how to create such excellent, pedestrian-friendly shade in 1912, when the Rice Hotel was built, why don’t we make more shady places like that a hundred years later? Where are new buildings’ sheltered walkways, their canopies and loggias, their arcades and awnings? . . . Why do we make do with little patio umbrellas, scrawny canvas awnings over doorways, narrow overhangs that work only if you hug the building at noon?” [Houston Chronicle ($)] Photo: Finding Camelot

05/01/13 4:00pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW TO MAKE A HOUSTON SUMMER THAT MUCH HOTTER “I thought it was crazy to schedule an outdoor music festival in summer, too, and then I went one year and found myself surrounded by 10,000 girls in barely-there bikinis, and realized that an outdoor summer festival in Houston is, in fact, a stroke of genius. (And the heat wasn’t bad at all that year — the second Summerfest, I believe.)” [Anse, commenting on The Montrose Bar Where Souls Will Be Exchanged for Cocktails?]

03/27/13 11:30am

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE HOT MANTRA “It hasn’t been ‘too hot’ to cycle comfortably for nearly six months. It’ll be reasonably comfortable for nearly two more, until we near the end of May. Summer will suck, but thousands will still be cycling. The same is not true for large swaths of the country which are currently sitting under feet of snow. Houston Summers are less inhospitable to outdoor activities than Winters are in many large cities; and our Spring and Fall are as good or better than most. The ‘it’s too hot’ mantra is tired, lame, and false. [jon, commenting on Designing Houston’s Bicycle Underbelly]

10/12/09 10:40pm

From his perch high in the (formerly AIG) America Tower on Allen Parkway, Swamplot reader Stephen Cullar-Ledford forwards this latest dramatic scene, which aches for suitably metaphorical captioning.

A few months ago it was fog, this afternoon it’s a rainbow over downtown . . .

Photo: Stephen Cullar-Ledford