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Thursday, September 6, 2007

The Roller Coaster Next Door

September 6, 2007 – 11:21 am

Roller Coaster on the Kemah Boardwalk Under Construction, June 2007

Worried that deed restrictions won’t protect your home from someone putting up ugly townhouses on your street?

Big whup. On the Kemah Boardwalk, the next-door neighbors of Coy and Carol Killion decided to build a 96-foot-tall roller coaster.

The Boardwalk Bullet is now a few dozen feet from the house. For 12 hours a day, the family listens to the coaster’s squeaks and rattles and the screams of 800 passengers an hour rolling by at 50 mph.

“It’s such a shame, really. We all used to just love the peaceful quiet,” said Carol Killion, who built the house in 1962. “It’s what we enjoyed about it, away from the big city.”

The Killions, of course, still refuse to sell their home to Landry’s.

“As long as I live, it will not be sold to him,” she declared, referring to Landry’s President Tilman Fertitta.

This weekend, the coaster’s noise drove them all from the porch: Killion, her husband, Coy, and her son, daughter-in-law and two grandsons. “You can’t even carry on a conversation,” she said. “I don’t think we’ll even be able to barbecue.”

No public hearing was ever held to inform residents about the coaster.

The city has no zoning, and the coaster met all setback requirements, a Kemah city administrator told the Houston Chronicle in July. Carol Killion said a lawsuit would be just too exhausting.

Boardwalk Bullet photo: Kira Hamilton

11:21 am | Read more about Attractions, Neighborhood Disputes, Neighborhoods: Kemah, Tourism
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Dog Days at Gulf Greyhound Park

September 6, 2007 – 10:37 am

Gulf Greyhound Park

How’s business at the world’s largest greyhound-racing venue? Not so brisk, reports the Houston Press:

The clubhouse and restaurant are now closed. There’s no more valet parking. Ebbs estimates that total attendance at Gulf on a good night is around 1,200. “When I got into it, dog and horse racing were the only games in town,” he says. “I’ve watched the whole gambling scene really blow up since the early ’90s. Greyhound and horse racing have gone from the only games in town to just one of many choices.”

But there’s hope to bring back customers:

Mike Parmetti, Gulf’s Marketing Director, is working on strategies to lure people to the track. Thursday is 50-cent draft beer night. There are Harley-Davidson giveaways and free trips to Las Vegas during the summer. On Fridays, there’s an all-you-can-eat crawfish buffet for $9.95. Then, there’s something called Dog Chip Bingo, advertised with this teaser: “If your puppy poops or pees in the right position, win a prize!”

Any better ideas?

Parmetti and Ebbs think slot machines — called Video Lottery Terminals at the tracks — might be the saving grace of Texas dog racing. They are convinced that slots will bring the dog tracks back to life without creating the sorts of vices gambling opponents fear. “You can’t create gambling problems,” Parmetti says. “If you could, we’d find a way to do it and pack this place out.”

Some Democrats, like State Sen. Rodney Ellis, have shown a willingness to support gambling because it would increase much-needed tax revenue. Year by year, the issue seems to be gaining traction. Without gambling, some say all the Texas tracks could be out of business in the next decade.

Photo of Gulf Greyhound Park: Flickr user HiggieFresh

10:37 am | Read more about Attractions, Tourism
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Monday, July 30, 2007

Houston: A Nice Place To Visit and Flip Real Estate

July 30, 2007 – 9:44 pm

After some “research,” Forbes declares Houston the fourth-best place to flip a house. Meanwhile, Forbes Traveler says Houston is the ninth-most-visited city in the U.S.

Coincidence? Or has Forbes simply stumbled upon the awful truth about our city: visitors, upset by a lack of tourist attractions, have turned to quick real-estate thrills instead.

Maybe that explains the Tremont Tower train wreck.

9:44 pm | Read more about Houston Data, Tourism
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Friday, June 1, 2007

Walking on Bellaire

June 1, 2007 – 10:34 am

Street Sign on Bellaire BlvdOver at Houstoned, professional barfly John Nova Lomax and crooner David Beebe take a long, strange trip down the entire length of Bellaire Blvd.—on foot. Lomax’s conclusion:

If Westheimer is mainly about the fetishes, broken dreams and vanities of Anglo whites, and Shepherd is all about the needs of cars, Bellaire is a world market of a street, a bazaar where Mexicans, Anglos, Salvadorans, African Americans, Hondurans, stoners, Vietnamese, Chinese, Koreans and Thais go to shop and eat.

The report from western Chinatown:

Tall bank buildings are sprouting, with glass fronts festooned in Mandarin. Strip malls fill with Vietnamese crawfish joints, Shaolin Temples, and acupuncture clinics. As we crossed Brays Bayou, a huge temple loomed in the distance, and it didn’t take much imagining to pretend you were gazing across a rice paddy toward a Vietnamese village. A Zen center abuts one of the last businesses in town to carry the all-but-forgotten A.J. Foyt’s once-omnipresent name. A couple of ratty old apartment complexes have changed into commercial buildings, each unit housing its own business.

The rice paddies, of course, have left the neighborhood.

More highlights of their journey, as they walk east: live turtles in the water gardens outside the Hong Kong City Mall; front-yard car lots in Sharpstown; Jane Long Middle Schoolers rushing convenience stores; the “Gulfton Ghetto.” Plus, this illuminating report from Alief:

Alief Ozelda Magee, the town’s namesake, is buried right there, under a slate-gray monument with a touching epitaph: “She did what she could.” And hell, maybe she still is. The adjoining apartment complex, which is rumored to cover some of the graves here, is said to suffer from a poltergeist infestation.

Photo: Cruising down Bellaire, by flickr user corazón girl

10:34 am | Read more about Neighborhoods: Alief, Neighborhoods: Bellaire, Neighborhoods: Gulfton, Neighborhoods: Sharpstown, Sprawl, Tourism
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