In Houston, the Galleria (located centrally just outside the 610 loop at Westheimer) has long been the ne plus ultra of retail shopping, filled with high-end shops for designer clothing, jewelry, etc. While other malls built out, the Galleria built up, with four floors around a large open atrium and an ice rink. The Galleria was where rich people shopped.
My most vivid memory of the Galleria was my family taking us there to see Star Wars, where it was playing in one of only 50 theaters nationwide, right after a rave write-up in Time magazine.
A long time ago in a decade far away, Time magazine, Star Wars and the Galleria were all important.
We got there in the early afternoon, and not only was the next showing sold out, the line for tickets stretched all the way around the ice rink and halfway up the other side. It turned out that all showings until midnight were already sold out.
Needless to say, we didn’t see Star Wars that day.
Instead, we saw it a month or two later at the movie theater in Greenspoint Mall. Greenspoint was still pretty new at that point, built out on north IH-45 at Gears (later Greens) road just the year before, at a time when north Houston was experiencing rapid growth but there were still miles and miles of green fields interspersed with tracts of tall pine forests. It was a mall anchored by large department stores Sears and Foley’s (a Houston-area department store chain that Macy’s would purchase and largely ruin), which would later be expanded to include Joske’s (a Dallas department store later bought by Dillard’s), JCPenney, Montgomery Ward and Lord & Taylor. Greenspoint was a good mall where middle class Houstonians shopped.
As Houston grew, new malls opened in the northwest (Willowbrook) and northeast (Deerbrook). That, age and changing demographics changed the character of Greenspoint over the years. It went from being a mall where middle class Houstonians shopped to one where gangbangers shot at each other and your hubcaps got stolen. (Word was that if you reported getting your hubcaps stolen to the HPD, they didn’t even ask how many if it happened at Greenpoint; they just assumed it was all four.) Thus Greenpoint became know as “Gunspoint,” and stores started closing. Macy’s was the last anchor tenant, and closed in 2017. After that it was mainly known for the carnival in the parking lot. It’s actually unclear to me whether Greenspoint is still alive or not; I sort of assumed Flu Manchu killed it off, but there are tweets from people this year that talk about visiting, so maybe not.
What brought back all these mall memories was the fact that there was a shooting outside the Galleria yesterday. Video below. (Language warning of the “black people talking about other black people” variety.)
Don’t ask me why don’t I go to the galleria….. CUZ NIGGAS DO NOT KNOW HOW TO ACT. pic.twitter.com/U9TTs7Zkgi
— Freckled Face Fuck Around and find out Doc (@DrKeezyWagz) April 17, 2022
Which brought this up:
— prohibitedweapon (@321ThroatPunch) April 17, 2022
More opining:
They shut down Sharpstown Mall and all people who drink codeine out a coffee cup and breed Pittbulls with chains around their neck been invading the Galleria
— Deuce (@DeuceThomas) April 17, 2022
Sharpston was a now-dead mall that was close to the Galleria (at least in Houston terms, around five miles away).
This sort of broad daylight shooting at the Galleria would have been unthinkable thirty years ago. But it’s all too thinkable with the general rise in Harris County crime under Soros-backed DA Kim Ogg, Harris County judge Lina Hidalgo, and hard left activist judges. (Houston mayor Sylvester Turner is also a Democrat, but he notably rejected calls to defund the police back in 2020 and his policies don’t seem to have been a driver for the crime increase.) But it’s the Democrats in Harris County government whose policies are responsible for putting violent felons back on the streets.
Decline is a choice. Democrats activists have decided that getting their hands on the money and putting felons back on the streets in the name of “racial justice” is a far more important goal that keeping law-abiding citizens safe from crime.
Tags: Crime, Democrats, Galleria, Greenspoint Mall, Harris County, Houston, Lina Hidalgo, Texas
We lived in Houston from 1988-2015. Greenspoint was a normal mall initially, then was called “Gunspoint” once things deteriorated in the 90s. We went there once around 2012 and the mall was downright creepy. I’ve never been in a building that felt dead — many empty stories, plus thrown-together stores that sold Obama memorabilia and the like.
Our corporate headquarters was in the Galleria area until a few years ago. The area was synonymous with wealth. Hard to believe it has gone down that quickly.
I was probably in that line around the skating rink. Fond memories of those theatres, got to see ‘Jaws’ there, and an oddball film called ‘Monty Python And The Holy Grail’ as well.
It is sad to see the rapid deterioration of the city where I once lived. In addition to the ills you cite, I submit the Katrina re-settling from New Orleans and the Ike re-settling from Galveston. In both cases, those re-settled were the ones responsible for the crime in their former homes, and they did flourish in their new digs. Paid for by Uncle Sugar, of course. The City was happy to take the money, and the slumlords were happy to take it, too. The poor citizens were left to deal with the sharp rise in theft, rape, and murder.
It’s funny to see Crooked Sylvester listed there. He is an Old School Urban Thief, and well versed in the old saw: “Don’t crap where you eat.” He keeps a decent screen of Plausible Deniability and at least makes an attempt at keeping crime under control, because he knows the graft dries up if there’s no deals to skim. Little Lina and her henchmen have no such scruples…
The Laptop Left thinks “Racial justice” is a great thing as long as it stays with The Poors.
“There’s two kinds of malls in America, malls white people go to and malls white people used to go to.” — Chris Rock
There are too many interlocking dependencies going on for any of this to be “accidental”. They relax criminal enforcement; crime goes up. They deinstitutionalize the insane, put them on the streets, and make it nearly impossible to get dangerous people out of the community. They eviscerate law enforcement; they refuse to prosecute criminals for the gun laws they demanded.
Go take a look at how many firearms crimes were actually prosecuted in Chicago over the last decade. They have draconian laws in place about possession, ownership, and so forth–Yet, when they catch an illegally-armed robber, they never prosecute the gun-related crimes. Here in Seattle, after the recent passage of a law making it illegal to “transfer” (everyone who voted for it thought it meant “sell”, but the law reads “hand someone a gun without going through a dealer, first…”) weapons, there are exactly zero investigations or prosecutions of any of those egregious weapons “handouts” documented during the CHAS/CHOP fiasco. The one prosecution related to weapons came out of some middle-class dumbass kid who stole an M4 carbine out of a police cruiser… And, that was it. Egregious violations of their new law; no prosecutions or even investigations. Go figure.
And, ya wonder why things are going south, in terms of quality of life? It’s anarcho-tyranny, all the way down.
My most memorable moment at the Galleria: It was December, 1990, the peak of Christmas shopping and parking was at a premium. After circling for 45 minutes to find a parking spot, I walked to the elevator. Just then a conspicuously wealthy, 30-something woman in a new Mercedes convertible pulled in diagonally, parking across two handicapped spots. As she stepped into the elevator, a man said, “You can’t park there!” She smiled sweetly, lifted her middle finger, and in a sugary southern drawl said, “You all have a nice day now,” as the elevator door closed. The man walked over and and keyed the entire length of her car.
Oh good Lord, deja vu: You’re talking about the exact place my dad took me to see Star Wars. And now it’s Mad Max adjacent. Sigh.
There was one huge difference: dad kept taking me and my best friend to see Star Wars AFTER it had become a dollar movie…except when it became an After-Show movie it moved across the street from the Westheimer mall. I think you know where it is: I think it’s still there. I was reading your post with a mix of nostalgia and genuine disgust at the Democratic party.
About Star Wars, I thought I had the best dad ever: now I realize he was just using us as an excuse to see it himself. Seeing Star Wars at the tender age of 6 was genuinely wonderful.
Honestly? I don’t know how ANY malls survived Amazon, Covid and Critical Theory. Here’s how bad it is: They have YouTube spelunkers who break into shuttered malls and marvel at the Ancient Far Away Dinosaur times of….2003. Or even as far back as 1997. If you can believe that anything from before 2017 still exists.
Watching the videos of those old malls is enlightening, too. I notice the “ancient” malls of the early 21st century all had vast stacks of DVD’s all over the floor and in huge numbers of musty boxes: they were SO USELESS by the time the malls closed the employees didn’t even bother throwing them away: a testament to how quickly file sharing sites made places like Blockbuster Movies. I remember stories of places in the 80’s that sent the law after people who didn’t turn in movie tapes.
I sometimes wonder if anything from these centuries will survive. I didn’t think rock and roll could possibly die, but it went from world conquering to nothing in just a few years. Seeing what happened to THE social gathering places of my youth (Baybrook Mall for me) makes me think “unless a video from our age survives, future generations won’t even know we existed”.
“It’s anarcho-tyranny, all the way down.”
No, it isn’t. If a white person commits any of the same crimes these feral joggers are being let out on, they get denied bail, and get the book thrown at them in in court.
It is weaponized criminal justice, and it is being weaponized at white people.
If you want it to change, certain people have to be made to leave office. That Houston DA, for example. Why is she still in office? Judges that go light on criminals, why are they still on the bench? These people have home addresses. Maybe it is time for people to camp out on their front door and demand their resignation.
@unknownsailor;
Go look up the term. I’ll wait.
Note that it embodies exactly what you just said–The law-abiding get prosecuted for minor transgressions while the truly criminal skate.
I’ve seen the number of actual prosecutions for Illinois FOID (Firearms Owner ID) possession by gang members in Chicago… It’s as near to zero as to be indistinguishable. Meanwhile, otherwise law-abiding citizens who get picked up for having a gun without a card? Prosecuted and jailed.
I went there in the earlier 2000’z.
Alota hot housewives, exspensive SUV’s and Cars and way to much perfume.
And the Din-Do’z show up and…
Wreck everything.
Yup.