COMMENT OF THE DAY: BOSTON. IT’S WORTH IT TOO. 
“I live in Boston which is pretty much the anti-Houston, moving there as an adult fleeing some of the things Blue Dog celebrates. Born and raised in sprawling Omaha, Nebraska, with its struggling downtown and leapfrogging subdivisions, I came east seeking the density, the option of subways and streetcars and walking because of the relative proximity of destinations, the historic architecture of row houses and institutions, the amenities of a major gateway city with an urban vibe. You’d hate Boston, the high cost of living, the terrible traffic on our chaotic layout of colliding streets, the lack of space, and the cold winters. I don’t like those things either, but I’ve decided to live with them because of the things I do like. You’ve made your choice too, and you intelligently don’t deny that you live in flat, sprawling, hot-humid, ten-lane-wide highway beribboned mass of strip mall scattered anonymity because you like it. And no snobby eastern elitist transplant so blinkered, he can’t appreciate the collective expression of American freedom that is Post Oak or The Woodlands or Sugarland or cul-de-sac-paradise-of-your-choice will . . . convince you otherwise. Midtown does seem to me kind of nice though :-)” [Robert H, commenting on Comment of the Day: The Real Houston Is Outside Those Tiny Urban Islands] Illustration: Lulu
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: ENJOY THE RIDE 
“Houston: the wonder city that showed the country how laissez-faire economics, conservative values, and lax planning lead to growth and prosperity.
It turns out Houston was just benefiting from another bubble and a siphoning of wealth from the rest of the country via higher gasoline prices.
The shale boom was supposedly proof that peak oil was dead and we can keep building car-dependent cities. Houston was riding into the future in its new Mercedes.
It turns out that shale was only accessible at prices too high to pay to maintain strong economies around the world. When consumers cut oil demand, the shale, deepwater, and tar sands dry up.
We’re on the slope downward, folks. Oil prices will likely spike again when demand returns, Houston may boom temporarily, but consumers aren’t going to be able to pay for it forever. After the spike, demand slackens, prices drop, and expensive new oil projects are cancelled. Production drops, demand outstrips supply, and we hit another price spike. Over and over it goes until we one day wonder why we can’t afford to open the oil taps as wide as we could in the 2000-2010s. The thriving economies will be the ones that depend least on oil.” [Carpetbagger, commenting on Oil Price Plunge Leads to Stock Downgrade for New Greenway Plaza Owners] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW MT. YUPPIE WAS FORMED 
“When this place opened, there was a ‘oh no, here come the yuppies‘ reaction. Now, years later, it is closing and people are complaining about how the Heights is losing its character. Basically, a reprise of ‘oh no, here come the yuppies.’ It is really just the process of yuppie sedimentary rock formation. Yuppies get older, have kids and become boring. Their hangouts go out of style and go out of business. Then, the next layer of yuppies comes in and opens new businesses and the prior layer of former yuppies groan about the neighborhood losing its character.” [Old School, commenting on Sunset Heights Wine Bar The Boom Boom Room Will Close Forever This Friday] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW TO GROW THE CITY MONEY ON TREES 
“Hedge funds would blush at these returns. What did it cost the city to plant these suckers? $1k at most . . . And they got $50k apiece for them? Now I’m not saying we should celebrate the loss of these trees, but I hope right now some keen eager young city arborist is planning some oak plantings along the most outrage-worthy corridors in Houston, where they will best rankle the franchises of the future. How old does a tree have to be to elicit outrage? Maybe 20 years? At an eye-popping 22% IRR, perhaps some strategic tree-driven investments can make future union pension negotiations a bit easier . . .” [Sebastian Good, commenting on City Nets $300K Settlement for Late-Night Kirby Dr. Wendy’s Oak-Axing Incident] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW REAL ESTATE TRAILBLAZERS REALLY CAN BURN UP THE TRAIL 
“There are very real consequences for having a NIMBY-smashing attitude for developers. Yes, the developers usually get their way, but they often end up ruining it for the next guy. Ashby developers will get to build, but the next guy might not because of the high-rise buffering ordinance that passed in the wake of the Ashby uproar. 380 agreements flowed like a river to Walmart and Kroger, but community uproar has meant that only Costco has since been able to get a similar deal despite some healthy opposition in city council. And there has only been one 380 agreement in 2014 outside of the downtown urban living initiative (which does require first floor space to be retail ready). There are a whole host of development regulations that have their root in NIMBY activism: drainage detention, tree ordinance, and parking minimums, to name a few.” [Old School, commenting on Comment of the Day: Don’t Let the Locals Get in the Way of Your Project] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: DON’T LET THE LOCALS GET IN THE WAY OF YOUR PROJECT 
“Good idea, let the Peasants with Pitchforks have an Illusion of Choice. Let them pretend to participate, let them vent some hot air, and then throw them a bone to the side so while they bark over that, you build what you were going to build in the first place. Don’t forget, they don’t have any legal standing in this matter, they’re merely a construction nuisance like graffiti or defecating raccoons, just to be handled as a normal course of business.” [commonsense, commenting on A New Sign of Future Development Appears on Heights Hike-and-Bike Trail Site] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOUSTON’S REAL ESTATE BOOM IS OVER 
“I’d like to see newer articles start noting that the jobs boom is already over and at this point it’s just the construction industry finishing off contractual commitments before we wrap it up and call the show over. past this it’s only retail & service sectors jobs growing which have a negligible impact on the overall economy anyhow due to the large supply of non-workers in the population and readily available labor. i’m not calling a downturn or anything here, but with drilling activity in the gulf starting to ease up (see hercules note [yesterday] morning about cutting personnel) and falling oil prices barring new onshore fields from starting up i’m not seeing any way for current growth trends to continue. fed pulling out of buying bonds will start hitting mortgage rates and drying up the cash closings that have helped stoked the fire as well so will be interesting to see if any slack appears in the market in the coming year.” [joel, commenting on AmREIT Takeover Approved; Bringing Gino’s East to Houston] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: TURNING HOUSTON INSIDE OUT 
“It might be that the best outcome for Houston is for the Inner Loop to have an exurban quality of life. Send commuter rail out to the suburbs — not for the suburbanites to commute to downtown — but for the Inner Loopers to commute outbound in the mornings to densely clustered (out of necessity) suburban tall office towers surrounding the stations, and then back into town in the evenings.
This is more viable than the traditional idea of New Urbanist suburbs with transit connecting them to a downtown core since politically none of Houston’s suburbs are on board with cultivating a small town ambience, but are ok with letting office builders do their thing.
To be sure, suburbanites would still commute to downtown but it will be seen as an aberration. Downtown will still have things to do after dark, but other areas of the Inner Loop, connected by LRT/buses/cars/bikes/sidewalks, will do a much better job of providing the QOL aspiring exurbanites may crave.
Suburbanites will, of course, still commute to a large extent to the office towers in their suburb. But they will do so by car, and won’t care about the urbanist quality of life (in other words, nothing will change for them).” [anon22, commenting on Here’s the Freshest Satellite Photo of Downtown Houston You’ll See All Day] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SCHOOL CHOICE 
“. . . You have hit upon an issue that is at the core of not only the perception of school quality but also a prime driver of the residential real estate market, especially in the suburbs (and thereby a driver of retail and office markets as well). In my admittedly qualitative, non-scientific observation of the dialogue surrounding schools, the general public perception of school quality is not nearly driven as much by teaching methods, administrative / management styles, or teacher qualifications, as by the demographics of the students themselves. In the greater public’s mind, affluent demographics = good schools, with the demographics being the more independent variable (though there’s obviously a feedback loop as more affluent home buyers will be drawn to schools with already affluent students). Private schools are obviously not as related to real estate (with Strake Jesuit as an example), but the perception issue seems as relevant.
To put the issue another way, is a student from an affluent household likely to perform worse academically if he/she attends a school with less affluent demographics? My sense is, many people seem to think so and make school enrollment decisions accordingly. Perhaps this assertion is justified by empirical data and experience, I don’t know.” [Local Planner, commenting on How The Woodlands Has Gone Astray; A Suitable Houston Honor for the Inventor of Air Conditioning] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: ANOTHER REASON WHY WE GIVE THANKS ON THANKSGIVING 
“If the Pilgrims had landed on the Island of Doom (Cabeza de Vaca’s name for Galveston) the Karankawas may well have simply eaten them. So the first Thanksgiving would consist of long pig festooned with buckle hats.” [Memebag, commenting on Houston’s Baby Boomer Housing Shortage; Cooking Up a Third Coast Thanksgiving] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID ABOUT STRAKE JESUIT 
“If people want to self-segregate and move somewhere like The Woodlands, great. I’m glad they are free to do that. What I don’t understand is the myopia that self-segregation can create, when people forget that anyone would ever value anything else over clean and shiny (and white) suburbs.
An example of what bothers me so much: I was leaving a Strake Jesuit football game earlier this year, and a Woodlands dad and I fell into conversation on the way out. He commented “this is such a great campus. Too bad it’s in this neighborhood.†As a SJ parent, I didn’t have any choice but to answer him politely, so I murmured something about how the lower property costs made it possible for the school to buy more land to improve and expand. But in reality, I was just incensed by his comments — still am, actually. What, a working class neighborhood doesn’t deserve something nice like a private school campus in it? The school has nothing to offer the neighborhood, and vice versa? The neighborhood has less value in absolute terms because it’s not wealthy, or aesthetically pleasing? What is it about living somewhere like The Woodlands that changes the way a person thinks, that they can look at the (abundant) life going on outside their clean little bubble and not recognize its value? I don’t have an answer to this question — it just bothers me an awful lot.” [Vonnegan, commenting on How The Woodlands Has Gone Astray; A Suitable Houston Honor for the Inventor of Air Conditioning] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE BEAUTY OF THE FAMILY SEDAN 
“The perceived blandness of modern office buildings has nothing to do with the lack of vision or enthusiasm of developers, it has to do with where the money comes from today. Decades ago there were eccentric millionaires and corporations with money to burn on monuments of their own egos, but these days money only comes from carefully calculated, vetted, reexamined, audited, and risk assessed finance packages. Throw in a healthy dose of anti-wealth and anti-corporate profit sentiment in the US and you have the real estate equivalent of a Toyota Camry — simple, functional, non-offensive, and very forgettable.” [commonsense, commenting on New Spec Office Building on Montrose Blvd. Will Sit Atop Southwest Fwy. Wall Vines] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: TERRAZZO FOR FLIPPERS “
Poured terrazzo floors like those in that house are nowadays so astronomically expensive that the only new residential construction they are seen in today are high-end, architect-designed custom homes built for extremely wealthy people.
I wonder if people who replace poured terrazzo floors with hardwood, travertine, or whatever realize that they are discarding something very expensive for something much cheaper.
It even makes business sense. Even flippers could increase their profit margin if instead of replacing terrazzo, they just educated their buyers about how valuable these floors are. (Things that are revealed to be rare, expensive, and hard to replace have a way of magically becoming very attractive).” [august15, commenting on This Not-Screwed-Up-Yet Meyerland Ranch Mod, in Almost Original Condition, Is Available for $460K] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: ONE WEIRD TRICK TO AVOID VALET PARKING 
“Oh, and if you want to valet your car for free, ride a motorcycle; most valet services aren’t insured to park motorcycles, and they’ll tell you to park over there (really close, but out of their way). Try to toss them the keys and they won’t accept them.
So yeah, motorcycle means you can go to places like this that practically force valet, and park right up close. This requires a motorcycle and usually all the accouterments that come along with it though, but I’ve never had someone tell me to go park somewhere else. Basically, if I know it’s valet, I ride, if it’s self park, I’ll usually just drive.” [toasty, commenting on New Galleria-Area H-E-B Will Feature an In-House Restaurant; Behind the Movement for a Swimming Hole in Houston] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: WHAT IF THEY HAD KEPT HOUSTON HOUSTON BACK THEN, TOO? 
“I hate watching this complacency about Houston’s problems. Yeah, we’re not like Boston or San Jose, and in some ways that’s good, but there is a lot we can do to get better without losing some sort of the mystical ‘Houstonness’ that makes us special.
To those marveling at how great and ‘vibrant’ Houston’s flaws are, would you like to go back to 1980 when billboards were three times more crowded along our freeways? Would you like to rip out all the trees that have been planted along those same freeways? Would you like to remove the historic restrictions in the Heights and Sixth Ward and watch those neighborhoods turn into Rice Military? Do you want to see another giant revolving gas station sign atop a downtown skyscraper? Shall we return Hermann Park to its former scraggly state, or put the sewage back in Buffalo Bayou?
If the answer to these questions is ‘No,’ then you must not be a fan of ‘Keeping Houston Houston,’ because before all that happened, Houston was a lot more ‘Houston’ than it is now. I would argue that the way it is now is a vast improvement, and that we should keep going in that direction.” [Mike, commenting on Comment of the Day: Still Waiting To See How Houston Is Going To Turn Out] Illustration: Lulu
