Today's TWR Post, Brought to You By...

The Old San Francisco Steakhouse, once with several locations in Texas, has been reduced to just one in San Antonio (the Old San Francisco) distributed a map of Houston in the 1980s. While you cannot get an ice cream sundae for free or visit the restaurant in Houston, you can view this map.


Sorry for the slight distortion.




Wow. You can see how the Galleria and Memorial City Mall have grown since their early 1980s incarnations (the Memorial City Mall anchors at this time were Sears, Montgomery Ward, Lord & Taylor, and Foley's) but sadly, both the MKT railroad (paralleling I-10) and the Old San Francisco Steakhouse are completely gone.




Nothing to see here, with the minor exception of Westwood Mall and Sharpstown Center. Westwood is now an office complex, and Sharpstown is in bad shape, with an upcoming remodel plan to make it Hispanic-oriented.





If you squint on Northwest Mall, you'll see the script "Foley's" written. A nice touch (by the way, the original map was a bit darker and higher-res than this scan, but not too much). Also note Hanna-Barbera Land and Greenspoint Mall.





Sadly, the 70s looking Holiday Inn is still there though sources indicate it recently traded hands to Crowne Plaza (another Holiday Inn brand). Astroworld is NOT there, sadly, not under ANY name.



Gussie who?



I've neither driven through Washburn Tunnel or visited Gulfgate Center. Well, I will never be able to do the latter.


The ""sunken subdivision" is just east of here.




A steakhouse with the 1800s equivalents of strippers? What were those "saloon women" called anyway?

Anyway, that was the Houston map that I've been wanting to scan since around October (literally). For more vintage Houston, check out the HAIF's "Historic Houston". While not the foremost place for Houston history, there are many vignettes and stories not found in other, likely more comprehensive websites. Or download Google Earth and drag the time slider back to 1978.

And oh, on This Is Why You're Fat they featured the McDonald's Holiday Pie (née the Custard Pie). I had it in 2002, but I don't think I can get it locally. :(

Deliciously unhealthy-looking, isn't it?

TOMORROW: We wrap up 2009 by comparing it to 2008, 2006, 2004, and 1999. Predictions, resolutions, fireworks, and lots of booze (kidding) will follow.

Late Xmas Gifts to you

On Christmas, you read about my list of gifts, but today is your turn. While you may have gotten gifts for Christmas (or Hanukah, Kwanzaa, or Generic Secular Holiday Gift Exchange Day) you didn't get a gift from your favorite blogs (I certainly didn't, maybe I just don't visit enough blogs), so I will give you one.

The first surprise is a disk image of a fairly rare CD-ROM...the MacAdvocate CD! You can read about this rare beast here. It has Apple commercials, wildly outdated information, and more. But now you can download it thanks to my Mac Garden alter-ego Temporary Joe (it was originally ps3d but I lost the password). Click here and follow the link for the mirror.

I had a second "gift" in mind, but I decided not to post it because I didn't scan it in time. It does have to do with Houston history, however.

TIL: Not All Hope Is Lost?

In response to previous post:
Further poking around reveals a few artifacts: drivers and ancient OSs can be found here and some card manuals can be found here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=50099. Still, we don't know if the entire TIL has been recreated. Stay tuned.

And look: even this old tip faithfully recreated.

OK, so it wasn't nearly as bad as we thought. Still, it's very difficult to navigate through, plus Nintendo hasn't put up their games list like they were supposed to a few years ago. When did they pull that stunt? 2007? Nevermind, that's for another day.

Some of you may have worried about "removing things". I will just be going through the blog and archiving some terrible old posts. And my website is up but I can't connect to FTP. Grrr...AGAIN!

Geocities

Today marks the day Geocities is shutting down. I'm not going to ramble on how it marks the end of an era, et cetera, or what the rest of the Internet is doing (see Wikipedia for that), I will some of the Geocities I remember.

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Alley/2247/Poke.htm
This was one of my favorite sites back in the day...when I was really into Pokémon, our modem only was 56k (and you could hear it dialing up...does PPP mean anything to you), and I could only have 15 minutes of Internet time.

www.geocities.com/richiesite/index.html
This was another Pokémon site but not one of my favorites. Devoted and named after a minor character in the animé, it had problems (stretching it across multiple servers, like "/richiesite2" caused problems when Yahoo deleted the others) and some cool information but nothing that couldn't be found elsewhere.

http://www.geocities.com/mcburgers_com
This was a site made after Geocities discontinued the "neighborhoods" but this disappeared around early 2004 (wow, has it already been five years?) I think I covered this in another (older/more embarrassing) blog post. You'd think it would be a rip-off of Todd Wilbur's work, but there was actually some thought put into it, such as how to make it taste McDonald's like (if I recall correctly, the Big Mac recipe required wrapping in wax paper, microwaving it, and then letting it sit a few more minutes...and no, they weren't sarcastic).

Sadly, these are the only Geocities sites I actually remember visiting. Still, I will miss Geocities.

Goodbye.

Disneyworld Part V/New Blog Launch

Next blog post I do, we'll put more than one page on there. Now, despite me saying stuff, the next blog is to be launched...Pseudo3D's SimCity 4. This time, no preview posts!

Disneyworld Part IV

...long before Celebration, Florida...

Anyway, due to a "renovation" project, the two budding blogs are now temporarily unable to update, and two more remain in the pipeline. I was considering a "Best of the Bowl" blog showcasing great commercials, including this shocking one from Jack in the Box.



About a month later....


Ah, Jack, we'd knew you come back. Last time it took you 14 years.

Disney stuff continues tomorrow.

Disneyworld Part III: In Honor of 1988...

Disneyworld Part II

Food and music this time. Sorry, it's Magic Kingdom only, not the whole DisneyWorld.

Guess What's Next?

The rest of the brochure starts tomorrow...or possibly today!