dragonfly

Since I was here starting '55 may I toss out what I know. The site across Church from the L&C was where the Maxwell House burned around New Years '62 and where I got yelled at by a cop for being behind the yellow tape the next day. Give a year or so for the cleanup, let's say the earliest for the photo is '63. The Third National Bank building which rose on the site was completed in '67. So can we surmise that the photo is from '63~'66?

Wow thx for all that. OK in the photo here on the left you will see the apt bldg I lived in aged 23/24 with two other guys. You can kind of see that there was a courtyard down the middle of the footprint with the two wings facing in with formerly wooden balconies that had been cut down, French doors nailed shut. The building was white. We lived on the left wing top floor. There was an old German couple on the first floor whose names I still recall, who put up with our loud partying. Large bedrooms with a large dining room which was my room with a bay window facing down 24th. On the first floor rear of the wing in this view were two beautiful women I met, one of which I took out a few times with zero expectations b/c her boyfriend was Dan Fogelberg who went on the road a lot, giving me a chance to be seen with her. Dan was at her apt many times and would bring his buddies over and play acoustic in the living room. He became famous, she eventually married him,, they moved to Colorado and had babies. Then I read in Rolling Stone album review in the '80's that she divorced him because of his going on the road, with all the temptations associated. I was not that surprised given this little vignette: I worked doing sound at Muthers, a large rock venue on Lafayette which among many other national acts hosted Quicksilver M.S. , Skynyrd,, Freddie King, and Bruce Springsteen. One night beforementioned beauty (maiden initials P.S. who unbeknownst grew up near me on Jocelyn Hollow) accompanied me for a show I worked. One of the waiters started badmouthing D. Fogelberg not knowing the relevant connection. She got upset and protested at high volume "he's my boyfriend", and he guffawed, also at high level "you too?" A few years after P.S. divorced him I saw that D. Folgelberg died. (2007, age 56). He was part of the '70's Nashville songwriter folk/rock music lore, like J. Buffet, Kristofferson, David Loggins, Billy Swan and Dobie Gray. Seems like more than half of the famous musical stud icons that I used to envy so much as a young female focused guy myself, many them died before 60. Here is an unkind album review mentioning the Fogelbergs' divorce as a major theme: The Fogelberg Files: Exiles – The Old Grey Cat Should mention that there were two more (that I knew of) similar 3 story apartment buildings further down 24th towards Charlotte across from the park, abandoned for quite awhile before teardown.

They have 2 locations between Dallas and Houston, the largest in Madisonville. The biggest in the chain are Madisonville and Wharton TX, identical sf. I took my sister to the Madisonville site when we were driving to Dallas about 10 years back, and didn't say anything to her about it. She got lost and it took us awhile to find each other. She told me that she walked up to a clerk kind of dumbfounded about not finding me and asked her "what kind of place is this". Now she can go to the one just opened in AL, I think on 65 north of Birmingham where she lives. Buc-ee's opens up largest store in Madisonville, Texas | ClutchFans

I'm going to intervene since I was there, coming of age and fascinated by big human stuff,, getting engineering trained. So in '67 there were two 20 story buildings completed. One was the Third National Bank headquarters on the Maxwell House former site at Church across from L&C and the other one is that ugly thing near James Robertson pkwy, maybe not quite 20. The National Life building at 31 stories was complete in late'68 (and the prototype for the 2 taller Shell buildings in Houston and NO). So by 1969 the city had 4 complete high rises and one under construction on Deadrick, a state office I think at 17 stories. That UBS tower was announced in early '72 by First American NB. And the Hyatt House completed in '75. I left for the last time in '75 so can't date stuff since then except for the major exciting thermal plant announced in '74 which I guess ended up not that exciting. BTW the Snodgrass tower got a famous visitor in the early '70's when Ringo Starr was quoted in an elevator; a joke that made it to a page in the Tennessean. He was probably visiting McCartney who lived on a farm near Mt. Juliett for half a year. There may have been an observation deck at that time.

I can say where I want it to come from with one big caveat. The U.S. government. The caviat: Not only does the DEA need to take psilocybin and MDMA off schedule I but the primo addiction remedy ibogaine should be also. The homeless are almost all severely mentally ill (why I say this below), and self medicate with an array of drugs, trying to manage the best they can. They intuitively know that they want other modes of seeing things. Their treatment needs to be underwritten the U.S. government but local government needs to step up also and provide facilities for inpatient treatment. The homeless can be easily enticed into this short term, and after a couple of successful sessions will be motivated to stay because of the results, and the gratification of some enhanced self knowledge that comes from the treatment(s). So I was the owner of a large property with numerous buildings at Harstine Island WA for 20 years, that I sold in 2021. Over a 20 year period I saw Seattle go from the next San Francisco to becoming a truly dystopian place, kinda like San Francisco. By far the worst aspect was the common sight and sounds all over downtown of severely disturbed individuals accosting and harassing anyone and everyone every hour of every day including violent attacks. This became the rule in the last 5 years and I experienced it. This is why I surmise that virtually all homeless are dealing the best they can with personality disorders, the majority in the severe category. If you watch the videos "Seattle Is Dying" and "The Fight For Seattle" from KOMO-TV, the first one includes a proposition that the McNeil Island abandoned correctional center be used to treat the homeless. I saw this facility from the water on a boat ride from my island up to Gig Harbor. The reason why this can't work from the present paradigm standpoint, is that nobody would volunteer to go for boring treatment at an isolated place like that in the current climate. But if you could entice the homeless to go for a a 2~3 week stay, by agreement, and the enticement would be powerful treatment sessions with psilocybin or ibogaine, maybe combined with strictly therapeutic massage, really good food and recreation, I'm 90% sure it could work, and word of mouth among the homeless should be highly positive. So Seattle and other Sound townships actually have at hand a possibility but the current schedule I status and the current failed paradigm for treatment is hindering the solution. Hopefully this will change, as the first thing from the Biden admin that I am happy about is the announcement of their support for the decriminalization of psilocybin and MDMA directed at psychotherapeutic application: Biden Administration Plans for Legal Psychedelic Therapies Within Two Years (theintercept.com)

Love their ingenius take on the tail logo invented by Continental in Houston - b4 they were picked up by United. Being in a different sector is I'm thinking how they got away with it. I always took the tail logo of Continental to be sort of a boost to the Houston visibility. Now if only United would ditch their Chicago headquarters like Boeing is doing, maybe we can get it back. Interestingly enough from my standpoint, I used to see the Continental headquarters every day driving up PCH to my job at Hughes Aircraft near LAX from my house in Redondo Beach in the '70's. Then they got bought by TI Airlines and the TI name got ditched for the classier moniker, and I moved from Austin to Houston where I rented a 1905 built 2 story Montrose frame house. I saw their relocated headquarters every day from my 2nd story bedroom. OK maybe TMI but for business history chumps, I'll add in a Nashville connection - first L&C then National Life got bought by American General; that headquarters occupied a couple of shorter towers next to Continental. Then Continental moved to downtown, and AmGen moved into the taller vacated tower. So then I could see the American General name from the window, and would muse how they had paid my dad's salary at L&C, and my tuition at MBA. Then the whole thing got swallowed up into AIG (NYC) and here is that tower now, renamed the AIG Life Bldg. So Tennesseans significantly contributed to the building of the giant firm. BTW I watched on a Saturday when AmGen hired a chopper to install the flagpole, announced in the paper beforehand. They also flew the Texas flag, but then they were a Texas company, AIG isn't. Excuse the penchant for stories but when you seen a bunch, ya kinda want to write it down. AIG, Allen Parkway at Waugh drive. Allen Parkway named for the Allen brothers, real estate agents from NYC who sold land around what they eventually founded as City of Houston. Brothers not nearly the legend of James Robertson and John Donelson but at least they named it for a legend, the former TN governor who defeated Santa Ana at San Jacinto river to the east.

I worked in the housekeeping department there, summer job '67, started at $1.25 and got a raise to $1.40 when the minimum wage got bumped up. I hated the job. I was friends with the son (who I was also in a band with) of Dr. Richard O. Cannon who was the hospital Director (CEO equivalent and of course M.D.) . Now consider, the circular new wing near the top of photo, all modern and everything, was called the "round". When it was built it was a big thing, like VU hospital got bumped up a notch, a source of pride, like Nashville got bumped up when the first Baskin Robbins opened on Harding Rd. near the 70/100 split

Is there some reason to get personal on here? Impressive though, the touted expertise. BTW yours truly in the company of various media reportage finding this report interesting too, or I wouldn't have come across it. And interesting how contributor finds it interesting too even putting the word in quotes. Yes, office workers in the D.C. metro, the most uniformly uniparty region in the country, have this surprising characteristic of behaving in the counterparty manner on the job when the counterparty gains the top executive office. Always dumbfounding. Like Trump got 4% of the city vote in 2016. And the Virginia 'burbs are the reason that state votes D in all presidential races since 2004, the only southern state to do so.

Probably true except for the Maxwell House which had no sprinkler system headsmack, and was a mostly wooden structure floors included. Like the Omni Mount Washington in New Hampshire if you've seen it. BTW remember discussing possible undercounting the TN census? Well lookey here, the Uniparty running everything admits it, and interesting which states are undercounted and which were overcounted. Quote: "We estimated undercounts for Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas. We estimated overcounts for Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Utah." link: Census Coverage Estimates for People in the United States by State and Census Operations

So if you look at the shop on that right side, I'm 99% sure that is Karl's (Fine? ) Shoes, although I can't read the whole sign. The proprietor was Karl Robinson who lived with his family next door to us when we moved to Currywood Dr. in '56. He was maybe 15 years older than my parents (45~50?) and pretty sure he built the house, one of the early stakeouts in West Meade Farms. Their house was the first one built on Currywood Dr, which at that time ran from Robin Hill Rd to Bresslyn Rd, two blocks. When West Meade Estates was developed, approx 5 years later, Currywood was extended with an impressive descending run, coming out near Davidson Dr. & I-40. Thinking about it, Karl was maybe one of the oldest guys to build in West Meade and the style looks it, I don't know of any other example in West Meade at the time with dormers and 1-1/2 stories and half basement/garage plus the large size. It sold last year for around $800k. The area was full of split levels, ranches and somewhat dreary boxy 2 story brick ones back in the day. Plenty of teardowns there. Was Karl one of the first to buy into the subdivision, I think so. Our house was 6413 to the left. Sorry for the image size, maybe someone can tell me how to resize.

Not so fast. That $1 billion does not include educating non-citizen, parental accompanied children, so based on the non-accompanied, non-citizen children education costs, we could be talking another $250 million over that $1 billion, based on the page from the AG office (which list costs totaling way over $850 million indicated in the title): AG Paxton: Illegal Immigration Costs Texas Taxpayers Over $850 Million Each Year | Office of the Attorney General (texasattorneygeneral.gov)Houston-area deputy killed: The barrage of bullets was captured by his own dash and body-worn cameras, court records show - CNN Also the county appraisal of my property is adjusted for homestead exemption. Apparently one way to assess this exemption is to list the value of the portion taxed. According to a couple of websites my house is estimated value of $514k . A house down the street with 200 sf less than mine sold for $504k in August. So going on a $514k the amount of property tax I paid portions out to 1.5% based on this sentence: "Homestead exemptions remove part of your home's value from taxation, so they lower your taxes." from the comptroller's site: Residence Homestead Exemption Frequently Asked Questions (texas.gov) In the spirit of tribute I bring up: So far as all the other costs accruing to a border state, we've lost 2 law enforcement officers in Texas this year, directly related to the flood of illegal immigration made de facto legal by extralegal fiat policy. They just buried a state trooper who was killed in an accident at the border trying to do what the border patrol doesn't do any more as the border patrol is now a processing agency. Then yesterday was the funeral of a Harris county constable who was murdered by an illegal alien from El Salvador. You know the country that bases MS-13 -- you can see the photos here: Houston-area deputy killed: The barrage of bullets was captured by his own dash and body-worn cameras, court records show - CNN You can even find the video of the barrage of bullets ending this officers life, I've seen it on a cable network that shows stuff. Admittedly the perp was not a recent border crasher but a fugitive in the country for 25 years. Somehow I missed that vote on whether or not vetting immigrants for criminal background is a good idea or not.

My home in Houston is appraised at $423k and my tax is $7,629.50 or 1.8%. Sales tax here is 8.25% and not levied on food. Also it should be said the the burden of educating, social services and treatment in emergency rooms of non-citizens comes out of our hides down here. In other words because of our location we pay an outsized share of the cost of the government failure to treat the border as a border and the associated wink and nod to the third world.

Well yes, I understand, since we have 2 TX metros each with 2 airports and I live in one of them. With spectacular air service to the world, especially at DFW. But having moved here from Austin in '89, I'm still plagued with literal dreams of finding, after all these years, a hill of some kind here. Of which there were plenty in Austin. It's kind of like a game running out of somewhere trying to convince/trick me in my sleep that it finally happened. But there is no escaping this: urban amenities are hugely enhanced by opportunities for outdoor recreation especially like the ones in Nashville within the metro area too which are better than what we have in Houston IMO. Although the extensive hike and bike network here is growing and becoming a world class feature enhanced quite a bit by the topography ironically.

Try driving to the mountains in half a day from Dallas like you can in Nashville. Try buying a hilltop home in Dallas with a view of the city or lush landscape. More than a day's drive to the Davis Mountains or Guadalupes from Dallas and when you get there, no waterfalls unless you happen to hit after a rare rain. Your best trip to a waterfall from Dallas is maybe Hamilton Pool or Krause springs outside of Austin. Tons of waterfalls with attendant great hiking within 2 hours of Nashville. Can't think of anywhere in half a days drive of Dallas I would care to hike. Oh and lest we forget, I think you have a choice of maybe a couple of hundred recording studios in Nashville. Maybe someone can verify a more accurate number. At least you have the Gulf coast 5 hours from Dallas.

OMG Harvey's so glad the building is preserved. Would go shopping there a lot from primary school with mom through graduation. Fred Harvey was who bankrolled the fab Nativity display every year at the Parthenon and commissioned the figures in the display. Question in regards to the Rutledge Flats photo. It is my understanding here in Houston that a stick frame structure can rise 5 floors with fire resistant lumber, 4 floors with regular lumber. Is that a national code, if not does that code apply there? We have scads of block apartments over a wide area and a few that rise 8~9 stories with metal framing. When I moved here in '89 there were virtually no 4~4+ story block apartments, lots of 2~3 story complexes plus residential high rises at that time. Just about all of the 2~3 story complexes inside the 610 loop on the west semiloop area have been torn down.

Thank you profusely. I live in one of the states prominently mentioned in the piece, not accidently. I am occasionally on this board noticing certain individuals lambasting the TN legislature as a bunch of doofuses to be ashamed of. Every time I read stuff like that on here, I think my God, you guys sit at your keyboards licking your chops at the good fortune of Middle TN and never mention the ppl who made it happen except to disdain them or the ppl who voted them in, for pro-growth policies? Forget for the moment the fiscal discipline your state and my state legislators represent. Why is the health care sector big in Nashville? One answer: HCA started it, that's right, a private company that wouldn't have started up but for the late entrepreneurial guy by the name of Dr. Frist Sr. Who at the time was employed at a private university med center, one founded by a religious denomination. And the sector has taken off like it probably never would have in a place like Illinois. Relatedly, why did the auto sector in the state hit it on all cylinders starting 40 years ago? Because a private foreign company decided to take a chance building trucks in a southeastern right-to-work state with no income tax, in Smyrna. The first foreign automotive company to locate in the SE. The South is now bustling with happy auto workers not having to subsidize with union dues politicians they don't support ideologically. Here you go I can't resist: let's look at a comparison of two neighboring industrial states, one of them holding on to population better than the other one which is losing population to Tennessee because of unsustainable fiscal policies: https://www.theepochtimes.com/taxes-separate-thriving-missouri-from-dying-illinois_3918621.html I can add this. Nashville is becoming sort of a hub for conservative punditry, the domicile for: Roger Simon (founder of PJMedia), Candace Owen, Carol Swain, Tomi Lahren, Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire company (don't scoff there are several hundred employees), and Clay Travis. These people are constantly on a couple of, let's face it, hated news networks with huge audiences. With guess what skyline constantly on display for the nation to see, driving more publicity for your city every day and night. And I must give a shout out to Rebecca Bynum who heads NewEnglishReview.org based in your city. Her website is every bit as high level as quillette.com with the addition of high art and culture to the offering. So just for balance I include this very much hostile reaction in the NYT from a woman who apparently thinks Nashville should be just for people like her, and not like the rest of the Middle Tennessee in spite of her and everyone else's fortune, that is those lucky enough to have invested in local real estate. Driven by forward looking state fiscal policy: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/18/opinion/parler-nashville.html I mean it can't be all that bad, Joe Rogan has surely helped with the Austin publicity and reputation for forward free thinking.

First the bad news: the 'iconic' 30 year old downtown photo seems to be the only view you can see in the national media and so it's the first thing you see in the piece. Then there's the statement "Nashville feels like Austin did 10 years ago" which in the piece refers to the tech scene but which unfortunately is the tag line at the top of this piece about CA residents moving there: https://www.sfgate.com/places/article/bay-area-exodus-to-nashville-tennessee-16698224.php You would think the economic development people would pay for a new photo of the Nashville core and upload to Getty images and be done with it.

It seems 'First American' was in reference to Ben Franklin. First American National Bank, one of big local banks in the 50's 60's and 70's with Commerce Union Bank, and Third National Bank headed by CEO Ben Willingham whose Oak Hill stone mansion was the site of an outdoor Vanderbilt frat party where as a 14 year old I and my 15 yo bandmates played one of our first gigs. I remember my parents, thinking out of earshot of yours truly, discussing the possibility of my young self being exposed to drinking at that party. I surmise based on the name, the son of the young host of that frat party is in commercial real estate in Nashville: https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2018/02/22/owner-of-downtownscmt-building-snags-another.html OK even though my dad was in financial services also (L&C), being a kid I had a vague idea that Tennessee in those days disallowed branch banking across county lines and out of state banks were unheard of. Can any you guys comment on that vague notion? I actually had decent income from playing music and opened a savings account at First American at age 16.

OK I'm pretty sure it was a natural gas reservoir with on site pressure regulation. I was pretty young wondering myself and I don't remember how I found out but that white cylinder would move. Now in case I'm dreaming down here, maybe someone can send the photo to the gas company to verify. I could be way off.

The Daily Wire is based in Nashville, moved from L.A. last year: https://www.dailywire.com/ The New English Review is also based in Nashville, started up there: https://newenglishreview.org/

OK so let's look at a little logic here. Population of Texas is exploding and the consequent job creation blows Mass out of the water. If the MA worker is creating so much value for the US economy, why can't that state blow away both TN and TX in job creation per capita when obviously it doesn't? It doesn't because raw GDP per capita like I said before, can generate nonsense, unless it is combined with the COL and maybe other factors. Also, yes auto mechanics in NYC are likely not making 2x the money of ones in Houston, but they certainly make significantly more without fixing more vehicles, so to say that their marginal contribution to the state GDP is less than NYC investment bankers misses MY point and saying I misunderstand all this is a bogus point, because my point was to introduce some sarcasm into the argument. For a little entertainment if nobody minds. Also given per capita GDP of MA say is growing faster than Texas. So is the COL. I tried to find a COL trend table for the states and couldn't come up with it but suppose the COL increases in MA are trending upward much faster than the other two states, say enough to more than negate the increase in per capita GDP then where are we? I don't have the numbers. So why don't I do this to further illustrate the possible absurdities of raw GDP numbers and their purported explanatory powers. Let's compare Hawaii and TN and their numbers from the table I linked above. Does the average Hawaii resident actually contribute $55,169 to the U.S. economy with the TN resident contributing much less at $46,858? Really, I mean a state with virtually zero manufacturing, contributes 20% more per capita to the U.S. economy than residents of a much larger state with several auto plants and numerous other industrial facilities? I don't think so. This comes back to my 'nonsense' explanation. You could say well, Hawaii has tourism, but then so does TN. Let's look at another example with a different angle, at my locality and a well-known brand. The company Igloo is based here and had a suburban plant at the intersection of the state's biggest road, Katy Fwy (I-10) and Beltway 8, a toll road. They closed the plant, sold it and built a gigantic facility further west, literally in the country near Brookshire. So their real estate tax went way down, and they acquired so much space that they could build all manner of efficiencies into the facility that they didn't have before. Assume a high price for the sold land more than paid for the much larger parcel. Let's even presume that the COL in Brookshire is so much lower than in Houston/burbs, that new hires will work for a bit less while having a higher living standard than their Houston co-workers. As a result of all the previous, Igloo can sell their products for a bit less (adjusted for inflation) than before. Maybe people even come from out of state to work there and live in Brookshire as per job creation. Can anyone really maintain that the per capita product (in dollars) of this workforce, which went down because of this move really caused Texas to contribute less to the U.S. economy? With the company selling products nationwide for a bit cheaper? I think that argument would be absurd on the face of it. This would indicate that products made in lower COL states are made more efficiently than they can be made in higher COL states which is opposite to the argument in the WSJ article. Economics has never been straightforward.

What piqued my interest in 2007 was a WSJ feature article on the economic status of Houston which at that time was growing very fast, almost at the same rate as 'Austin at about 3.5+ times the metro population of Austin. These economic figures are fairly difficult to understand and here is what is confusing. The article stated that the Houston workforce was essentially 1/2 the productivity of the NYC workforce which according to the per capita GDP interpretation means that NYC per capita GDP is twice that of Houston. If you drill down that means that cab drivers in NYC produce twice as much as their Houston counterparts, teachers produce twice as much, police officers produce twice as much, as do auto mechanics, etc etc. Is this really the case? Do auto mechanics in NYC fix twice as many vehicles as the ones in Houston? Do average passenger miles driven by cab drivers in NYC equal twice those in Houston? Of course not. The difference between Houston and NYC metros is vast in several arenas. Taxation is drastically different. Land use policy, and availability is drastically different, resulting in housing costs and real estate taxes drastically diverging. Thus Houston metro population was booming in 2007 while NYC metro population was stagnant by comparison. Policy has as much to do with this as does land availability. The same goes with MA and TN. If you are going to compare per capita GDP growth between the two states as the only driver of population growth, you get nonsense in your analysis. Something else has to be driving the difference in population growth between TN and MA and guess what? It is per capita GDP corrected for COL, and below is the spreadsheet that proves it. Corrected for COL, TN per capita GDP in 2016 was $52,355. In MA it was $47,889. In TX, $65,168; in NY $53,766. Link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Fa8tNa48ct5vxz2UdgH-0TTlgms6mKdbO71QinDfQZo/edit#gid=155632612

So over the years in internet discussions I've used both TN and MA growth as illustrations of the difference local policy makers can make to the fortunes of states. The former has been outgrowing the latter every year and so anticipating the swapping of their population rankings has been sort of a background interest. The puzzle is this: I came upon a website that shows that swap in 2021 stats. They also show Mass as fewer population in 2021 than the 2020 census results. Here is their page for TN: https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/tennessee-population and the page for MA: https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/massachusetts-population Anyone know the nitty-gritty on that website and more to the point what is the actual current rankings of the two states?

Yes something seemed a bit weird about that, so I looked for similar night images of the whole US. Atlanta's light splotch is noticeably bigger than the ones for Houston and Dallas/FW, and both latter metros are larger population than ATL by not a smidgeon at all. The Atlanta splotch looks the same size as Chicago and Los Angeles on seemingly all of the photos I found, and I can't come up with a reason unless there is some Georgia manufacturer cleaning up on sales of streetlights that happen to have a lot of upward leakage. Not seriously but this is interesting to at least speculate over.

OK so lets make it local. Tennessee gets ranked on these lists. Just wondering how hunky dory to consider TN defense installations as welfare payments to Tennessee residents in these calculations. You know Campbell, Mid-South, Arnold, and ORNL. I hope you would see this as an intellectual arming of you guys to go up against these bogus comparisons. All federal spending going to a state gets counted just like welfare. Doesn't matter if that spending is on infrastructure to benefit interstate commerce, it gets added into the "welfare" spending on Tennesseans. There's really nothing wrong with publicizing this on here. Don't get the thrust of the second sentence. The point is not altered and applies universally to these bogus comparisons. All defense and infrastructure spending in Tennessee as well as Texas and Arizona gets counted as welfare payouts in these bogus comparisons. Per capita defense contract value going to Arizona is probably a good bit higher than what goes to Texas.