COMMENT OF THE DAY: A GUIDE TO NORTH SHEPHERD’S AUTO PARTS 
“North Shepherd is a complete car continuum from south to north. Start with new cars: Tommy Vaughan Ford at 11th. Just north of there are the used car lots, one after the next. Keep going for repair shops and auto parts stores. Continue on for the pick-a-part places (BYO tools).” [Miz Brooke Smith, commenting on Comment of the Day: The Coming North Shepherd Transformation] Illustration: Lulu
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE COMING NORTH SHEPHERD TRANSFORMATION 
“I live off N. Shepherd and it is hideous, but I think that restaurants and bars will be replacing those car lots over the next ten years if the economy holds. It’s already happening: Feast and the Down House owners are teaming up to open a Thai place called Hunky Dory between 18th and 19th. I saw another large car lot has closed nearby and is for sale. There is too much money in that area for it to be Houston’s Hooptie Bazaar.” [John Nova Lomax, commenting on Comment of the Day Runner-Up: Houston Can’t Keep Up] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE DEEP, RICH BEAUTY OF HOUSTON’S FEEDER ROADS 
“Houston is ugly, but there are hidden benefits to this ugliness. I was in the NE this summer going from DC up the Eastern seaboard visiting friends and family. Feeder roads do not work out east because freeways are frequently dug out of the hilly terrain and there isn’t any flat land along side the freeways to build. The result is that a lot of the freeways are just lined with trees. While this is attractive, it also gets boring after a while. There isn’t much difference between the trees in DC, Philly or Boston. Houston’s endless feeder road developments make driving around town much more interesting. You can observe the various layers of strip mall sediment that lines the highways: from fresh new bundles of Academy Sports, HEB and Toys R US to middle of the road, tired Kohls-anchored strip with Cici’s pizza to the ramshackle strips with the accident and injury clinic, Pho noodle #3 and tax/bankruptcy/notario and divorce ‘law’ firm. There are ooohs and aahhhs at sites like Luz de Estrella on 59, Gallery Furniture on I-45 and an ad hoc gallery of steel sculptures on 288 south. And in between all of that, miles and miles of car dealerships. Never a dull moment on Houston’s highways.” [Old School, commenting on Comment of the Day Runner-Up: Houston Can’t Keep Up] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW TO LIGHT UP THE ASTRODOME 
“It just occurred to me that the best use would be to turn the Astrodome into a giant Concentrating Solar Power plant — you know, the kind with all the mirrors pointed at a tower. Simply chop off the top, install the tower, and replace the seats with mirrors, and you’re done. A rough, napkin calculation says we should get over 2M W, enough to power almost 1,000 homes. Wikipedia says CSP costs $4/W, so about $9.5 mil for the project. This would make the Astrodome a true symbol of the future while keeping the history mostly intact. Reliant Energy could then promote next door Reliant Stadium as being 100% renewable powered all year.
There was talk of turning it into a conference center with photovoltaic solar panels on the top, but converting it to CSP means much more power per square foot generated, especially if you use the stadium’s natural bowl shape (25% efficiency for dish-shaped CSP vs. 15% for regular solar panels). [Derek, commenting on Anyone Got a Better Idea for the Astrodome?] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: HOUSTON CAN’T KEEP UP 
“Every relative or friend of mine who has visited from another city comments similarly on Houston: ‘It has a dirty, third world vibe.’
This was true for me when I first came here. Houston is ugly. It’s dirty, muddy, with broken pavement and cheap architecture and badly maintained infrastructure. Even its proponents talk about how ugly it is. It doesn’t look like most other American (or even Texan) cities. I go to Austin or Dallas and think ‘wow, everything’s so clean, so well-maintained.’
Houston is just badly maintained. This isn’t a value judgment — I think the lack of maintenance makes it kind of interesting.” [MW, commenting on Comment of the Day: Who’s Making Carrion of Houston?] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHO’S MAKING CARRION OF HOUSTON? 
“I love reading comments from our real estate investor and developer friends who do not see or understand the value in salvaging older homes/buildings. I also love reading their complaints about COH’s minimal/laughable pro-development ‘restrictions’ as some sort of tool of communistic oppression. I guess if I agreed the profits and bottom line of real estate investors/developers are more important than the quality of life of every single other person in Houston, I could possibly see their points. However, because I don’t care about their profits or their bottom line, I don’t see their points. Instead, I see these people and their friends as vultures, slowly picking away at the bones of our city. My community does what little it can to swat away the vultures, and I am heartened to see others in other communities doing the same, but unless the City’s short-sighted attitude toward development at any cost changes, we can count on ‘development’ eroding the rest of the inner loop.” [mel, commenting on Comment of the Day: The Qualities That Make Houston So Special] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WOODLAND HEIGHTS BACK IN ITS NAKED FOLK DANCING DAYS 
“When I first moved to Woodland Heights in the 80s, responsible parents were more likely to strip naked and perform a tarantella on the Houston Avenue overpass than to send their kids to Travis, and I got burgled frequently enough to do my very own comparison test of TVs.
Things change.” [mollusk, commenting on Comment of the Day Runner-Up: Looking Sharp] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE QUALITIES THAT MAKE HOUSTON SO SPECIAL 
“Only in Houston can a building be ‘impossible’ to renovate to another use; and the citizens believe it. Try telling that BS to New Yorkers, Parisians, Bostonians, or even the folks in NOLA. Houstonians are a rare breed of gullible; and developers here (including MDAnderson) are a rare breed of lame.” [JON, commenting on The Last Remaining Piece of the Prudential Tower] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: LOOKING SHARP 
“The Bellairefication of Meyerland is pretty much complete except you actually get a sizeable lot. It’s only a matter of time before Southwest Houston’s astronomical growth reaches Sharpstown and other once forgotten communities.” [robertrulez, commenting on The Ups and Downs of a Meyerland Contemporary] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: IS THIS THE REAL ASTRODOME PLAN? 
“The KHOU talking heads last night floated the suggestion that this vote is merely ‘air cover’ for Harris County to wash its hands of the Dome. Are they going to go through the motions of ‘supporting’ the plan, but with extremely faint praise, see it defeated, then trot out ‘the people have spoken’ while scraping it off? Are our elected County officials smart enough to pull that off?
And if somehow it actually passes, some of their friends get to make some money! Is this what they call a ‘win-win’?” [Al, commenting on Sports and Convention Corp.: We Have Ways To Make You Like Our Astrodome Plan] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: IN THE THIRD WARD ART ZONE 
“I live in Riverside/Third Ward. I’m a painter. My upstairs neighbor is a painter and kind of a well-known musician in Houston. A block away lives another musician that was often played on KTRU. A block from me in the opposite direction there is a house where my friend and some other female artists live. On Oakdale there’s the house-turned-artspace Alabama Song that frequently has shows and lectures. Most of us lived in Montrose and other areas before and moved here because it’s less expensive and the spaces are larger. My studio now is pretty awesome. Many of our friends are looking into the area as well for similar reasons, as well as Eastwood.” [is, commenting on Comment of the Day: Getting Ahead of the Game in the Third Ward] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: GETTING AHEAD OF THE GAME IN THE THIRD WARD 
“The developers are usually the 3rd or 4th step in gentrification. My understanding is that it goes like this: First are usually the lower income artistic types who give the area a ‘vibe.’ Then come slightly higher income artistic types who find fixer-uppers and start increasing property values. Then come the affluent who scrape the lots to build their own houses. Finally, the developers come in to build on any remaining semi-large contiguous lots. I don’t spend much time in this part of town, but I’m not aware of much of steps 1 or 2 happening there yet (but am open to being corrected). This feels more like developers trying to sell the area as being gentrified, make a quick profit (nothing wrong with that), and then leave the purchasers stuck with condos that will be underwater for the next 10 to 15 years. So if it is gentrification, I would call it ‘Astroturf Gentrification’ — from a distance, it might look like the real, but up close, its really pretty fake and inferior to the real thing.” [Walt, commenting on New Townhomes for a New(ish) Blodgett St. in the Third Ward] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOUSTON’S 6 TRULY WALKABLE NEIGHBORHOODS 
“. . . [Y]ou can have walkability even when density is just moderate. Small town downtowns are walkable even though most folks arrive by car. Many commercial neighborhoods in streetcar suburbs built before 1950 are this way. What makes them walkable: comfortable street design (sorry but 40 mph is too fast), frequent safe pedestrian street crossings, ample sidewalks in good condition, pedestrian-oriented buildings that aren’t separated by big parking lots, on-street parking (what Houston lacks in too many places), decent night lighting, and relatively small block sizes. Houston has subsets of these features in numerous places but the whole package is very rare — 19th @ Rutland, Rice Village (mainly just strip malls mushed together), Harrisburg @ 67th, the Historic District downtown, and the main gay bar area in Montrose (awful or nonexistent sidewalks though and lacking night lighting) come close, plus of course Bagby @ Gray. Hence developers building them from scratch (West Ave, River Oaks District, CityCentre, etc.) to satisfy demand.” [Local Planner, commenting on Comment of the Day: Sorry, but Houston’s Never Gonna Be Walkable] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SORRY, BUT HOUSTON’S NEVER GONNA BE WALKABLE 
“Unlikely Houston will ever have the density or transit similar to the world’s great urban centers. The inner loop would have to triple in density (current average 5-8k/sq.mi), just to start on that path. Houston is growing, but I don’t see the population tripling any time soon. Think about how many housing units would be required; where would they go? In the predominantly single family neighborhoods? At best, the current trend will continue for a few more years until growth plateaus, and we’ll see Houston basically as it looks now; houses with occasional 4-8 story apt. blocks, maybe reaching ~10k density in some areas, but never the 20k+ necessary for real walkable neighborhoods.
Also, the heat and humidity. That’s never going away.” [outtahere, commenting on Comment of the Day: Downtown Orthodontia] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: DOWNTOWN ORTHODONTIA 
“I think it looks like the goal is to create a cluster, rather than a monolith. That makes sense in that part of town. As is, to me Houston’s skyline seems to suffer from a ‘gap tooth’ effect created by all of the standalone buildings. I think more blocks with multiple height buildings on them would make our skyline look more interesting. If everything stands out, nothing stands out . . . they can’t all be masterpieces like Pennzoil or Transco (Williams).” [DBG, commenting on A First Look at Some of the 33-Story Apartment Tower Hines Wants To Build in Market Square] Illustration: Lulu
