Explaining Arábella’s ‘Manhattan’ Theming; The Wunsche Bros. Fire Effect; More Bucks for Bayou Parks

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Photo of Downtown: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool

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  • The Cane Island project is going to be interesting. $3.79 per $100 valuation = $22,740 in property tax for a $600K home. The same valuation in Kelliwood, for instance, at a $2.62 rate. Throw in a HOA of approx. $1300 per year and say $3K for insurance and you are sitting on an monthly nut of $4,500 for your new crib on the prairie that won’t have anything you could really call a “tree” for another decade. And wait until you get your first water bill!

  • I have no rational reason to think this, but the accent ‘a’ on that project name comes off as super douchey. Like they’re trying to hard to be — I don’t know — ‘worldly’ ? “European” ? “sophisticated”? Nothing wrong with going for that — but when its obvious you’re trying for that, you’ve failed.

  • @Cody,

    The accent also makes for really strange pronunciation. Is it supposed to rhyme with parabola?

  • @mike
    That’s a hearty calculus. Do you work for the county, though?
    I ask b/c I want to know whether your ‘monthly nut’ quib was a simple typo or more of a Freudian slip.

  • I too am critical of the diacritical. Sounds weird when you try to say it; same rhythm as ‘parabola’?

  • @Y’all: I found this on Wikipedia regarding the accent A in Spanish:
    .
    ‘In Spanish, á is an accented letter, pronounced just the way “a” is. Both á and a sound like /a/. The accent indicates the stressed syllable in words with irregular stress patterns. It can also be used to “break up” a diphthong or to avoid what would otherwise be homonyms, although this does not happen with á, because a is a strong vowel and usually does not become a semivowel in a diphthong. See Diacritic and Acute accent for more details.’
    .
    So if I’m reading that correctly, we pronounce the “a” the same as we would in “arabella” (which would be stressed like “aruBELLa”) but we move the stress to the 2nd syllable, so it’s pronounce “aRUBella”.
    .
    Arubella-dub-dubella!

  • @Angostura and Gisgo, I already said that last week.

  • Air-UH-bella, rather than ‘Airah-Bella” – I assume.

  • Pretty sure in Houston the accent will make it be pronounced uh-rabble-uh.

  • @DNAGuy, monthly nut is an old term for the amount of money it costs for something, in this case living expenses. Lots of links if you do a search.

  • Usually I am only deeply misunderstood by my family. Accused of being a county employee….as if there was something wrong with that. I am getting old when what once was a colloquialism is considered puzzling. For Pete’s sake, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.