meangreendork

When Willowbend first opened, I wasn't really that into it, it was really aimed at women, and I couldn't buy from a lot of the stores since I simply couldn't afford (though my girlfriend at the time could buy whatever she pleased). It's not as bad now, with more stores that a guy can reasonably walk into and not feel out of place, but for me, I'm not really motivated to go there since it's a little out of the way. I still haven't visited the Razor Ranch site. It looks like it'll beat GTM into the ground and leave it empty or a vacant lot. There's hope in the surge of activity on 288, though. Once they're done with the road improvements, it should bring more traffic back to the area, and the GTM's old land can go to anyone. I don't know who would go there since most chains are headed to Razor Ranch. In some larger cities, duplicate stores in one city isn't a bad thing and that supports more than shopping center, but Denton isn't at that place yet. About that road work on 288: If I remember properly, that road work started within 2 years of the high-5 work at the 75/635 join and the work at the high-5 was completed faster and without the kind of hassles at the 288 site. It's kind of sad, especially with that section of 288 that goes towards the WalMart and Super Target. Rather than taking out the overpass and having to build the road twice, I'd like to think they could've done it a simpler way, but I'm no city planner and I could be wrong. There's a poster child for the dead malls thing--- Dixie Square in Harvey, IL. This was the scene for a part of the Blues Brothers movie. The mall shutdown in 1978 and it still stands, decrepit as ever, 30 years later.

I found this website today when I surfing on Wikipedia. DeadMalls.com It's got a listing and comments for a lot of defunct, soon-to-be-defunct, and possibly defunct malls for the US and Canada. They've got info about the BigTown, Forum303, and oddly, Willowbend. Looking at some of the malls, I noticed that they look a lot like GTM, and in some cases managed by companies like Simon. What really gets me is that a lot of these defunct malls are victims of weather or other malls opening in the same city that overtake that old mall. GTM really doesn't have an excuse for being what it is now. It's got the ability to be the first-stop shopping place for over 50,000 students and residents of Aubrey, Roanoke, and the other nearby towns. Makes me wonder if a better company will improve GTM or just raze it and make it a better place. Big Town Photos

"To answer your question about our future with Dodge, we will compete with anyone as long as he is here, because he believes we can compete with them and doesn't downgrade NT." Sounds familar...sounds like Coach Hayden Fry!

They can talk trash all the way until gameday...or at least until TD puts up his first big win. They got 35-0 on our team last fall, simple as that. But, we got a new coach with a new program. It could possibly be 35-0 on their team this fall. Dodge is an entirely different species of coach than Dickey, and his staff is an entirely different species of coaching staff than Dickey's. They don't know what they're up against, just like everyone else on the schedule.

Why do we let students vote on what fees they wanna pay? Who knows. There's that part of me that wouldn't want to pay for a service I don't use, but there's another part of me that understands why it's there.

Whew! 6'7"? Can we try to pick this girl up?

I was telling my girlfriend about this...she said, But we're unpacking that day." I told her, "No, we're not. Our roommates can unpack, but we're watching the game. I don't care if they unpack as we're in the living room watching, but we're watching...and maybe drinking beer."

I saw the highlights and there's no reason not to extend this kid a scholarship. He's got a killer SAT score, and he's got a killer streak on the field. I don't care if he's undersized because he's going to pick up at least another inch in the next year and at least another 20 pounds. Tomlin is fast, covers extremely well, and hits HARD. Even at 6'0", 200, he would still fare well on the college field. You've seen the highlight reel guys, he's good, let's not look a gift horse in the mouth, eh?

"Johnny Quinn Is A Class Act" Oh, we already know.

I'm with you here. I think that the vendor the school is buying t-shirts from has an inaccurate color. It's probably the closest thing they have to the right green, I bet.

Coach got me up to speed on the Michigan/Delaware/Princeton thing. Same helmets, but uniforms should be more different, different stripes, panels, something. Dunno how so, but they're awfully close. Michigan's got a darker uniform and lacks collar and sleeve stripes. Princeton has the helmet in black/orange and with quad stripes on the shoulders with side panels. It actually looks kinda cool, especially in white. Makes me think of the Bengal unis. I also thought most of us were okay with white helmets? It's pretty close to what UNT had way back when wasn't it?

Delware could've at least made it a point to use a different uniform design. Their uniform is a set of ringer stripes away from being Michigan's uniform.

I'm really impressed! Maybe they can fight our school for that fight song, too.

WTF? I don't know what that's all about. Normally those logos have something to do with the city or country hosting the games, but I don't see it. At any rate, it's ugly and that color is gawdy.

I'm still amazed at the Delware ripoff uniforms. I thought only high school and middle school teams did that. Looks like Nike pawned off bad stuff to Oregon State, too: The white/orange are cool, I got no love for the black/orange.

Delaware:: Now that's an entirely original uniform. I wonder if they've ever played Michigan with that on. I'm also not a fan of those letters; maybe they need a thin white outline, or maybe it's the shade of blue and the shade of yellow clash. I think Michigan uses a darker blue, closer the helmets. I don't know if I could take myself seriously wearing football uniform so close to someone else's. Even the Rhode Island rams have it better, especially since Delaware's mascot is the Blue Hen. Wyoming:: I sure hope that's a throwback uniform, because Brown uniforms are out, ask the San Diego Padres. When I was a kid, I always thought the SD Padres were the guys that couldn't make the SF Giants roster because they sucked too bad. At any rate, the color scheme is really bad and his jersey looks like it was made by the same people that did the black Dickey jerseys. Oregon:: Their yellow shoulder version of this isn't too bad, but those steel-plate diamonds gotta go. They have some cool cuts to their uniforms, but I think the colors are all wrong, especially when the scheme is 90% yellow. Either way, those steel-plate things aren't working.

The last I did research on this, a ClearChannel board on a less-traveled freeway was about $3k. I35E, especially through Dallas is gonna be something like 15k. Still I wish our school would do it. Here's hoping that it would in fact get more butts. The concern I have is that our product the last few years wouldn't attract many, even with Dodge at the helm.

You focus time on students and you also have research programs.

Rick's already taken the hammer to the individuals responsible. Mind you, he got his due for his lack of responsibility...and he's no longer active.

You know, when a school or something names their sports team or chooses a mascot, they do it because they want to almost draw and use some the admirable qualities of that mascot. It's why no one chooses the gerbil as a team or school mascot. Seriously, this PC crap makes us have to communicate and live by these exact standards where people will get up in arms because they're so thin-skinned. There are things worth being upset about, like true racism. The "Arkansas State Indians" title isn't one of them. I'm also pretty sure most Native Americans probably don't care or don't mind. I'm betting it's someone who isn't even remotely Native American going crazy about this.

I'm down with this. The folks that own the restaurant have had it for almost 30 years, I heard. It'd really stink for them to lose it all. Maybe the extra money will let them really branch out and maybe chain a little in the Denton area. I could be okay with access to Tomato pizza in different parts of town. Makes me think of that Japanese company that existed for hundreds of years before shutting down sometime in the last 2 months.

GTM has a really, really good plot of land. Well, it will be when Denton's roads department gets their crap together and finishes the work on Lp288. The road is great real estate, but the problem with the mall itself isn't the stores, but the way the mall itself was designed. Sadly, that probably wasn't done with a good budget. I'd flatten the property and try to build something else there.

You mean "Asian" team? Nah, doesn't look like it, the goalie was Asian, and a few others were, but it looks like the team had their share of white kids. Besides, the kid pulling his shirt was pretty white, too. I think they wear all grey or something like that. Anyways, it wasn't a real big brawl, and the guy that took the first swing looks to have taken the first guy's kick a bit too seriously, especially since it looks like it was unintentional AND the big guy faceplants into the wall, too. I gotta say, that's a sloppy gorilla punch he threw. I'm sure that's a textbook right hook. The kid that threw the punch was pretty stupid to do that, and the other kid's team was stupid to join in and not break it up. Also, this really doesn't belong in the UNT Football thread, unless you count it as European football, so UNTPlaymaker, keep it mind. I know we've had big stories break and had threads in the UNT Football forum about them, but this definitely isn't that important.

Another was born recently. My boss saw it running in the trees near the Admin.

Stebo's right. The SBC isn't the problem right now. It doesn't matter what conference we'd be in at this point because the problems would still be there, and it'd still be in Dodge's hands to fix them. Right now, the most important thing is Dodge and winning. Once he starts to rack up the wins against SBC and OOC opponents, conferences will take care of themselves.