The Spirit of 2005: Astroworld

AstroWorld is one of the most depressing theme park stories around. What began as a complement to the Astrodome (the "Eighth Wonder of the World") in one of the biggest American (and possibly the world) cities ended when a lazy CEO decided that the declining park was worth less than the land it sat on.

I mean, this was the park that built the first "river rapids" ride! Perfected the suspended roller coaster! This had it all!

Regrettably, I have no personal stories about Astroworld, as I never went. The closest I could say is seeing a multitude of theme park rides in September 2005, hidden in the trees, just off the south 610 loop. And then it closed. And then it was gone.

I also have a circa 2000 map that I got at the Texas Rest Center in Orange, TX (just near the Louisiana border). It (the brochure, not the rest center) can be seen here, in my Flickr photostream. I may scan a better version of the main map in the near future.

You should read the Wikipedia page for it.

In a way, in the early days, it resembled other modern theme parks, including dolphin shows (commonly associated with SeaWorld nowadays). It even spawned an adjacent water park called Waterworld in 1983.

Unfortunately, the park went downhill. Upkeep and attendance dropped off. One reason was possibly a crime spike in the 1990s, and more pressing, the fact of Six Flags' acquisition in 1987. It was around that time that it started declining...

Then Six Flags started to have financial problems, merged Waterworld into Astroworld in 2002, and announced in September 2005 that it would be closed and demolished at the end of the season.

On October 30, 2005, Astroworld had its last day in business, and was razed almost immediately after. It was gone. The land was sold off, but it was never developed: the economy went downhill, and the land continued to sit unused.

Someone actually filmed a short film using old footage he had, and even though it plays out like what happens when you consume mind-altering substances (it's supposed to be a dream sequence), it's pretty good.



Clicking on the video shows you other YouTube footage of Astroworld, including old commercials!

To this day, I wonder about the fate of Astroworld had it not been closed entirely.

I figured three things would happen (I posted this on HAIF)

1. Hurricane Ike would've damaged the park, just like what hurricanes did to Cypress Gardens. A small theme park company would have a hard time repairing it, thanks to...
2. The recession. A lot of theme parks suffered during the recession, though to my knowledge, nothing closed (or did it?)
3. Dungeon Drop, which in real life, moved to Six Flags St. Louis in 2006 and renamed Superman Tower of Power. A year later, a virtually-identical ride in Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom malfunctioned and cut off a teenager's feet.

However, after 2005, Astroworld was demolished. Even though some rides were sold to other parks, several were so damaged during demolition, they could not be salvaged.

At this point, I'd try to wrap up the post with something regarding The Spirit of 2005, the continuing series. But I'm not, and you'll see why.

The fact remains: after October 30th, 2005, Houston was never the same again.






And, now, five years after the end of Astroworld, comes an end to Two Way Roads.



It's been a good three years...much less than Astroworld's thirty-seven.


Two Way Roads was founded in February 2007 as an "open personal journal" of sorts. I could write whatever I wanted, add new things, and get comments. Initially, this was the premise.

Maybe I wasn't so clear before, but this blog is about pretty much anything I'm interested in...abandoned railroads, places and roads, McDonald's, video games, Apple, retail history...or cool thoughts. At various times I attempted a website, then eventually closed down and opened a Wikipedia account. After seeing blogs like Labelscar and X-Entertainment, as well as an article in WIRED magazine, I knew my time had come. I tried to avoid cliché things like ultra chat-speak, about my friends and enemies. I only hope to achieve some moderate form of popularity. Tomorrow, perhaps, we shall see a *longer* article on McDonald's food and why the redesign is a bad idea. Later, we'll also discover which groups of people deserve an applause and which ones don't. We'll pit blogs against MySpace. We'll even sell our wares on CafePress. So, sit down, buckle up, and head into the northbound lane of Two Way Roads.

--"What this blog is about" (removed post)

TWR was supposed to have an overarching travel theme, but I guess it didn't really work that way. Early posts were generally terrible affairs: I tried to create insightful thoughts on a few topics, but they generally sucked.

But what could really take the cake would be a combo Palm/Nintendo DS. It could feature a dual compatible SD slot/DS card slot, and starting it up brings not the seizure warning and DS menu screen, but a familiar and large Palm screen. The sides of course, could feature all the ABXY buttons plus the Palm buttons, and the very bottom could be used for Graffiti in Palm mode.

--An excerpt from a removed post, "The Palm Conumdrum"

The first year was not a bad year: I marginally improved, and I enjoyed it. I talked about some of the trips I took: Cherry Hill Mall, Corpus Christi. Spam caused the comments to be temporarily closed, and a popular post was created: Yoot Tower Tips, which was derived from an insert in Yoot Tower's CD. It went on to become one of the most-visited TWR pages.

By the end of 2007, the original plan, to become like a high-end version of X-Entertainment was thankfully dumped, and by Summer 2008 TWR started to reach maturity. I made a good post (with more photos, and not just one photo I found on the Internet) when I went to Waco, and created what would be the most-commented post ever. It turned to be successful because of the high number of hits post-Ike in regards to The Mall of the Mainland...the short version is I went to the mall a few weeks before Hurricane Ike, and it got worse after Ike. Unfortunately, no one really cared about the previous post. A few weeks later, I decided to review an open-source SimTower per a suggestion. It was also a very popular page.

After noting the success of it, I thought about running the blog strictly on user-submitted ideas. But it didn't work. Summer 2009 also ran into problems. This time I tried to make spin-off blogs, including a proposed webcomic. It was also at the time Pseudo3D's SimCity 4 was founded, and the time I changed my name to Pseudo3D because Jonah Norason wasn't my real name (and it sounded stupid). Why I chose "Jonah Norason" is a secret known only to myself. Summer 2009 also didn't "work" because my family decided to do some cosmetic renovations that really didn't increase functionality, but caused fumes 24/7. So the blog work was delayed for the fumes to die down.

December 2009 saw a flurry of new activity after a particularly weak fall, and it first focused on computers. A side note was that I was first re-discovering abandonware on a revitalized iMac G3 and a new Macintosh Garden. Those were good days.

In 2010, bolstered by the many posts of December, I decided to try to make a post every day. It would be really cool to find a blog that updated every day that wasn't a commercialized network, and I was hoping this process could bring in new readers searching such a blog.

That lasted for three months. In that time, I felt committed to my blog, but in a bad way. Time constraints severely limited some posts, while others were filler. New series were tried, including Games Not Played, Saturday Night Blogging (a few posts of it had been done in 2010), Sourceforge Review, Pokémania, another travel post with promises of a series, and more. A lot of good ideas were lost in the continual need to update every day. They were developed poorly and promptly buried.

The final post of this sort was on April 1st, where I had an April Fool's Day post. On April 8th I got a strange comment on that post, but given the odd lateness of it, mentioning Obama (I never mentioned politics in the blog, and that was one rule I kept), and never posting elsewhere, I wondered if it was my brother or cousins trying to pull a prank on me. They denied it.

Throughout April, I tried to post pictures with every post (even though I stopped updating daily), but ended it two months later.

Then the Nero Wolfe post was released in June 2010. It actually got a comment...and I realized this was what TWR needed. So yet another topic was drawn up. "Variety Without Politics" was the new catchphrase for TWR. I thought it was a good idea, and prepared new posts that would bring the assumed non-commenting readers into the blog. I installed a StatCounter widget at around the time to monitor readership. But it turned out that most readers were random Google searchers. Unfortunately, the demand never materialized, and I soon slacked off on the content anyway. Then I tried to mimic Vintage Computing in the fact that I narrowed ideas (down to games and computers, mostly) and tried to add a "Comment Discussion Starter". That flopped too. Soon college settled in, and I tried to write a bunch of new posts. They did not generate much momentum, and with the continual stress of college, it was very disheartening and demoralizing to check my email and find there was a new collection of spam comments that needed to be monitored but no real comments.

A brief surge of popularity came in when the Macintosh Garden temporarily went down, but it did not result in a blog comeback. On October 7, I announced a hiatus partially to determine if I actually had any legitimate readers. No one cared. I evaluated my options. Two Way Roads was getting stale. It had failed to find a niche of any sort. The title was somewhat misleading. And it was my first blog. No one keeps blogs forever.

However, here are some of the posts I had held and was intending to post later this fall. A few have been posted (regarding The Learning Company, Cyan Worlds, and Blobbo). But here are others.

"The Atari Brand Slave Trade"

If you didn't know, the current Atari Inc. holds no relation to the Atari Inc. of yesteryear. Here's what happened.

In 1972, the original Atari Inc. was founded.
In 1976, Warner Communications Inc. acquires Atari. It is still an independent company.
In 1984, Warner closes down Atari. The most profitable divisions include the computer, video game, and arcade divisions. The arcade division is retained and rebuilt as Atari Games Corporation, while the computer and video game division is sold to Tramel Technologies Ltd., which renames to Atari Corporation.
In 1985, Atari Games was sold to Namco Ltd. (makers of Pac-Man), washing the hands of Warner by no longer having Atari.
In 1986, Atari Games is bought back.
In 1993, Time Warner (the result of Time Inc. buying Warner Communication) buys back Atari Games Corp. under the division "Time Warner Interactive". Atari Games maintains identity, but it loses the consumer game brand (Tengen)
In 1996, WMS Industries buys Atari Games from Time Warner. Meanwhile, Atari Corporation, which had since dropped computers and focused on video games, merges with JT Storage Inc. to become JTS Corporation.
In 1998, Atari Games went with Midway Games as WMS Industries spun off Midway. Meanwhile, JTS Corp. sells the Atari name to Hasbro Interactive (a division of Hasbro, obviously). This was done through a company called Hiat XI Corp., which was specifically created to buy the Atari name. Hiat XI Corp. renames to Atari Interactive Inc.
In 1999, Hasbro Interactive faces a wave of losses and slashes studios, including Atari Interactive. It is then absorbed into Hasbro Interactive fully. Meanwhile, JTS Corp. closes.
In 2000, Atari Games is renamed Midway Games West to avoid confusing the two Atari names, as Hasbro is using it.
In 2001, Hasbro Interactive is spun off as Infogrames Interactive Inc., a subsidiary owned by the French company, Infogrames SA. This is not to be confused with Infogrames Inc., another video game company they owned. Infogrames Inc. was GT Interactive Inc. from 1993 to 1999.
In 2003, Infogrames wanted to focus on the Atari brand they picked up and renamed Infogrames Interactive (Hasbro Interactive) to Atari Interactive Inc., while Infogrames Inc. became Atari Inc., which was totally unrelated to the original Atari Inc. Both became indistinguishable in game branding. Meanwhile, Midway Games West was shut down by Midway Games and absorbed what was left of it.
In 2009, Infogrames SA, which owned Atari Inc. (GT Interactive) and Atari Interactive Inc. (Hasbro Interactive) renamed to Atari SA. Namco Bandai Holdings Inc. (Namco's merger with Bandai) starts to acquire Atari, including the entire Austrailia division. Unfortunately, they get tied up in losses (like Atari SA) and the merger is put on hold. Meanwhile, Midway files for bankruptcy.
2010, Warner Bros. Entertainment gets much of the assets of Midway, once again getting parts of the Atari dream.

So as you can see, Atari split and the name was in the hands of no less than seven parent companies. Eight, if you count Warner Communications and Time Warner to be separate companies.

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"There's no fare like American Fare!"

K mart opens American Fare - hypermarket
Discount Store News, Feb 20, 1989 by Donald Longo

K mart Opens American Fare

Features Upscale Apparel Brands, Low Prices

STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga.--At a time when monotony rules much of retailing, K mart has launched a new hypermarket unlike any other store in the United States.

American Fare, opened here late last month, features a trendy casual apparel mix with labels that would be the envy of the most upscale discount.

The hypermarket, which expects to generate more than $100 million in annual sales, also features custom-designed fixturing in apparel and some hard lines departments. These hightech-look black fixtures are on locking wheels for easy maneuverability.

"We can reconfigure a department overnight," said Dan Lafferty, general manager, operations and personnel.

Despite the upscale apparel, the new store is very sharply prices on hard lines goods. On a wide range of products, from cookware and microwave ovens to automotives and sporting goods, American Fare had lower prices than the nearby K mart or Wal-Mart discount stores on identical items.

Distinguishing characteristics include: . Emphasis on fulfilling the shopping needs of "New Collar" consumers. These consumers have sophisticated taste, but limited budgets and time for shopping; . Extensive spotlighting throughout the store, especially in apparel. There are more than 600 spotlights in the children's area alone; . Unique children's sizing walls. One each in the boys' and girls' departments allows a child to stand next to a silhouette which is color-coded to tags on merchandise that fit that particular silhouette size.

Similarly, foot sizing imprints are located on the floor of the children's shoe department; . Diaper changing stations in both women's and men's rest rooms, further evidence of the store's responsiveness to changing consumer lifestyles; . Special American Fare hosiery fixtures that organize hose by size, not brand. The department does not use any vendor displays; . An undulating spiral banner that visually links the toys and children's wear departments.

After a week of practice runs, the 244,000-square-foot hypermarket complex officially opened here, 18 miles east of Atlanta, on Jan. 29. The opening day turnout easily fulfilled company forecasts that between 70,000 and 100,000 shoppers would arrive, despite the lack of traditional advertising blitz and pre-opening hoopla.


American Fare is a joint venture between K mart, which owns 51 percent, and Bruno's supermarket company. While K mart and Bruno's buyers helped place the first orders for the hypermarket, American Fare now has its own buying staff, located in Troy, Mich.

Unlike other hypermarkets in the United States, American Fare expects to sell a larger percentage of higher-margin products in comparison to sales of lower-margin commodity goods.

For example, the store has a relatively small health and beauty aids department but devotes extensive space to its lawn and garden area.

"We're not going to make our money selling tons of toilet paper," commented one American Fare executive as he led a group of reporters through the store.

By selling wool sweaters by Jones New York for $76, Rafaella blazers for $60, Modula jumpsuits for $44, and Zenith 31-inch color TVs for over $2,000, American Fare expects to generate larger tickets with fewer unit purchases than most mass retailers.

And unlike other hypermarkets and many discount stores which use diverters to offer customers a smattering of upscale brand name apparel, all merchandise at American Fare is ordered directly from the manufacturers.

"Our drawing and sketches convicted vendors who don't normally sell to hypermarkets and discount stores to sell to us," said Ted Peterson, of the design firm Peterson & Associates, Chicago. Peterson, whose firm designed the store, added that other conventional department store vendors have agreed to supply their prestigious labeled merchandise to American Fare after touring the store.

"The store is going to shake up the entire industry" in terms of who vendors will and will not sell to, commented a visiting retail executive of a competing chain.

Among the apparel brands sold at American Fare: . Women's--Danskin, 16th Street, Calvin Klein, Palmetto, L.A. Gear, Puma; . Men's--Pacific Coast Highway, Bugle Boy, Laguna, Slazinger's Billy Connor Signature, Sergio Valente, Bill Blass, Wrangler, Cherokee; . Children's--Beverly Hills Polo Club, Legendary Bon Homme, Hush Puppies, Hang Ten, French Toast, Camp Beverly Hills, Pizazz; . Infants' and toddlers' Curity, Gerber, Oneita Kids, Camp Beverly Hills; . Footwear--Wolverine, Capezio, Pony, Dexter, Puma, Candie's, Converse, L.A. Gear, Kangaroos.

Store hours are from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Customers can go through any of 61 custom-designed front-end checkouts, eight of which are express lanes. Twenty other registers are located in service departments within the store.

American Fare sells goods at one of three different pricing levels. Most merchandise is sold at the "Everyday Fare Price." In addition, special purchases of goods pass the savings on to customers; and goods are sold at clearance.


The hypermarket plans no price-item advertising. "All advertising will be institutional, spotlighting the Everyday Fare Price strategy," said James Glime, American Fare's managing director.

One operational savings is the use of shelf-edge pricing throughout the store. All merchandise, including apparel, is UPC coded. An NCR scale/scanner automatically enters the correct price, reducing human error at the register.

The giant hypermarket divides its 213,000 square feet of selling space among food (74,550 square feet), apparel (35,000 square feet), and hard lines (104,450 square feet). The rest of the footage is in the mall area, which includes a music and video store, a food court, a full-service bank, a hair salon and two stores operated by American Fare: a pharmacy and a card store.

An important aspect of American Fare's merchandising strategy is selective dominance. According to Glime, with just 45,000 total sku's, the hypermarket can't hope to be competitive with other discount and specialty stores in product category selection.

So, rather than try to compete head on with a selection to match a sporting goods chain like Sports Town, American Fare attempts to present a dominant selection of fishing, camping and hunting equipment, but just dabbles in team sports equipment. The CE department is strong in phones and VCRs, but light in audio equipment.

Records and tapes and greeting cards were other areas where the company felt it important to be strong. Separate stores were set up in the mall due to the limited sku's and space of the hypermarket.

A florist's shop in the horticulture department, a dominant category called American Greenhouse, creates floral arrangements and sends flowers anywhere in the country.


During the 20 months of planning prior to its grand opening, American Fare conducted extensive focus group and demographic studies in Atlanta and other markets. The result is a store that goes to great lengths to satisfy customer needs.

"American Fare is designed to allow customers to shop the way they want," said Glime. "There is no forced path. If a customer wants to shop for food today and apparel next week, that's OK, too.

"Our goal is to provide a broad assortment of merchandise in a comfortable, exciting environment at prices that will bring them back."

One finding of the research was that shoppers considered public address announcements in the store distasteful and annoying. Therefore, no "Attention, American Fare shoppers" announcements will ever be heard at the hypermarket. Instead, shoppers hear pop music modulated to be louder in some departments, such as apparel, and less noticeable in other areas, such as automotives.

American Fare has followed the lead of the Auchan hypermarket in Houston and Wal-Mart's Hypermarket USA in requiring a 25-cent deposit on shopping carts. Lafferty said this system reduces cart theft and, more important, lessens the chance of customers' cars being scratched by loose carts in the parking lot.

A second, downsized (160,000-square-foot) American Fare will open late this year in Charlotte, N.C. Because demographic and focus group studies in Charlotte are likely to uncover some differences from Atlanta consumers, American Fare officials expect the second store to differ somewhat from the premiere version.

---
Downsizing time at K Mart. (K Mart Corp. gives up hypermarket format favoring smaller-sized 'combination' format named Super K Mart Center) (Brief Article).
Daily News Record 22.n84 (May 1, 1992): p.p3(1). (208 words)
Show details

Full Text :COPYRIGHT 1992 Fairchild Publications, Inc.
ATLANTA -- After opening its only American Fare in the Southeast, K mart has abandoned its hypermart format in favor of a smaller version -- a "combination" store it calls Super K mart Center. While K mart is "very happy" with American Fare, David Marsico, director of combination stores, reports the discounter will not be opening any more.

"We feel we're successful no matter what the size," he explains, "but we think the 150,000-square-foot Super K mart Center size is easier for the customer to walk."

Neil Thall, retail consultant and president of Neil Thall Associates, Atlanta, adds, "K mart found that American Fare is not a good prototype. It's just not making it." The main problem, he notes, is locating a unit in large metro areas where there's lots of competition, and K mart is counting on consumers to buy food, clothes, etc.

Besides the smaller size, the Super K mart Center differs from American Fare in that K mart operates the grocery rather than Bruno's. "They have what K mart has--apparel, hard goods and garden center -- blended in with food," reports K mart's Marsico.

---
Regrettably, it was not to last. Bruno's, a southern supermarket Kmart worked with, pulled out of the deal in 1992. The stores were then soon closed or divided rather than converted into Super Kmart Center.

In Stone Mountain, American Fare closed in 1994 and reopened as two stores: Kmart and Cub Foods.

The Stone Mountain Kmart closed in a round of 2000 closings. The Cub Foods closed in 2001. Two other American Fare stores also opened in the early 1990s, and closed later.

Ironically, Cub Foods would later be under the same corporate umbrella as another hypermarket, bigg's. But that's another story.

Like this post? I'm intending to add more posts, like the Auchan in Houston post.

---------------------------------------------

I was never able to find enough articles or information on it. Sorry. Our next aborted post is...

"The Candidates"

Remember the second railroad mystery? I've got a few candidates, but none of them make a lot of sense.

Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery isn't that far out of the way from Interstate 10, and has that dense feel I remember, plus a circle.

View Larger Map

Sadly, the only railroads on campus are at the bottom and were abandoned years ago.

Mobile Naval Complex doesn't have anything to speak of.

--

It was never finished (the post, that is).

OK, so we've got that all out of the way. The Spirit of 2005: Popular Mechanics will be released sometime as a non-blog post, which I will make clearer soon.

In conclusion, check out Pseudo3D's Website, a simple HTML page (it will load on practically any web browser!) that explores some of my other projects and blogs. I hope you enjoy it. My new blog, Carbonizer isn't Two Way Roads II, in fact, it was structured with very different rules in mind than TWR.

As for a real replacement to TWR...we'll have to see. It's still too early to tell. I envision creating new "sub-pages" that play out like really like "flagship" TWR posts. Everything else will go into Carbonizer.

This, by the way, is the true ending of TWR, but I plan to put up a post sometime in November that just simply explains the blog is closed. During that time, comments will likely be shut down, and posts will be limited to one per page. The true "final post" will lead to links to some of the more popular posts and some of my personal favorites. I'll also maintain TWR, but I don't know whether to put up the archived posts or remove them. Some posts will be deprecated by newer content elsewhere, and I don't know what I should do about that.

Anyway, I hoped you enjoyed TWR.

Thanks for the past three years.

Signed,

The Unnamed Webmaster of Two Way Roads Known As Pseudo3D