Tag: houston

Trademark infringement accusations run amok

The Houston Chronicle recently reported on a Houston restaurant being the recipient of legal bullying by none other than McDonald’s. Yes, the “billions and billions served” gargantuan international hamburger joint, whose food in some circles is synonymous with “#$%&”, has accused the one-location Jus’ Mac of trademark infringement.

I’m sorry if my bias is showing. I liked the food at Jus’ Mac from the one time I got to eat there months ago, and I’m a supporter of local businesses when feasible. I’ve never been a fan of McDonald’s, and while the hard boycott hasn’t been there for a while it’s always been “why eat at McDonald’s when I can go to Little Big’s, Tacos A Go-Go, Last Concert Cafe, Chipotle, Taco Cabana, etc?” (Yes, McDonald’s used to own part of Chipotle, but does no longer as of 2006.)

To me, this is clearly an attempt by McDonald’s at intimidation, and at first glance it certainly smells like intimidation for intimidation’s sake. I think McDonald’s’ well-intentioned attempt to protect their trademarks is failing miserably in the execution department. As we learned from the “hot coffee” lawsuit, common sense appears to be lacking in the legal department at McDonald’s. (For those unfamiliar with the hot coffee case: several previous suits were settled for small amounts and McDonald’s did nothing to keep them from happening; McDonald’s tried to settle for a laughably low $800 in response to Stella’s generous initial demand for $20,000. Ultimately, McDonald’s paid out an amount “less than $600,000” but we can assume much higher than the $20,000 Stella originally sought.)

Anyway, if you believe them, McDonald’s seriously thinks that people will mix up macaroni-and-cheese dishes with a Big Mac hamburger or any other of their menu items that have “Mac” in the name. I find this hard to believe; the restaurants are certainly different enough in style. I certainly think it’ll be difficult for McDonald’s to convince a jury there’s potential for confusion. That’s the problem, though: by the time it gets to a jury, McDonald’s has probably already bankrupted Jus’ Mac with legal costs. I know I’m not the only person who sees this as a travesty compared to real justice, yet this kind of war of attrition is exactly what our “justice system” has turned into.

So if you live in or plan to visit Houston, swing by Jus’ Mac at 2617 Yale and check it out. And pass the word to McDonald’s that what they are doing isn’t cool at all.

A “number 1” ranking Houston can do without

CNBC recently reported on the worst speed-trap cities in the US. Houston was at the top of the list, which was enough to get KHOU-TV (our local CBS affiliate) to pick up on the story. CNBC used the website speedtrap.org for the raw data to generate the rankings.

It’s a topic I’ve visited before on this blog when KTRK exposed a very dubious speed trap on Shepherd Drive near I-10. CNBC refers to this investigation in the caption showing Houston (it’s a shot of I-10 near downtown on a stretch of freeway closed for some reason, as one of the HPD officers is facing the wrong way). I remember my blog post about this story as one of the rare occasions I had something really good to say about a law enforcement officer; specifically, Precinct 6 Constable Victor Trevino. (To be fair, he wasn’t very flattering towards HPD in his comments.)

Anyway, suffice it to say this is another area of distinction which Houston would do well to shy away from. I am reminded of Houston making the top of the “fattest cities” list (as compiled by Men’s Fitness magazine) back in 2001 through 2003. And I will admit at the time my figure was more voluminous than I would have liked (suffice it to say, I need not have worried about picking up the nickname “slim”). And it still is a bit, but I have lost at least one pants size since then (today I usually wear size 40, then I wore size 42).

Unfortunately, for this particular problem, I can’t really help out, except to raise awareness. And no, the problem is not motorists with heavy right feet. The problem is greedy local governments, and police departments willing to write tickets for the dubious “crime” (okay, technically it’s an “infraction”) of exceeding an arbitrary posted limit. Which, by the way, is usually set below the maximum safe speed. In some cases, quite far below.

Examples of underposted speed limits in the Houston area that come to mind (biased a bit towards my neighborhood and roads I currently travel or formerly traveled with frequency):

  • Jones Road from FM 1960 to Grant Road. Signed with a 40 mph limit, when the limit is 45 from the northern outskirts of Jersey Village up to FM 1960. This one makes no sense; the area north of FM 1960 is, if anything, less built up than the area south of it.
  • Jones Road from Grant Road to Lakewood Crossing Boulevard (just north of Cypresswood). The limit is posted at 30 mph here. While I understand Jones runs through a residential area here, it’s still a thoroughfare to Louetta and Texas 249, and almost everyone does at least 35, if not 40 or higher, through here. At minimum this should probably be posted at 35 mph (unfortunately, I suspect too many residents will balk at a 40 limit).
  • Briar Forest Drive between Gessner and Dairy Ashford (former). This is a former underposted limit but deserves mention because it’s one of the best examples. The City of Houston finally came to their senses on this one, after irate residents got sick of the HPD speed trap at W Rivercrest and/or E Rivercrest. It was posted at 30 mph, then 40 mph, then lowered again to 35 mph where I would assume they still are today. I would have liked to see the 40 mph limit stay but 35 mph is still an improvement over the original.
  • FM 1960 from Texas 249 to US 290, Texas 6 from US 290 to Clay Road. Posted at 40 mph, but it’s the de facto main drag for much of the area, and it’s still a major state highway. I’m pretty sure this used to be posted at 45 mph at one point.
  • Shepherd Drive/Durham Drive from Larkin Street (just north of I-10) to where an intersection with West 9th Street would be. I realize it’s short, but this could stand a slight speed limit increase to 40 mph, maybe even as far north as West 11th Street, if nothing else just to reflect the reality that people go a little faster over this stretch. Oh wait, then HPD couldn’t write all those tickets here. You know what, that’s too bad. I say let those cops (especially the “ticket champion” Officer Matt Davis) earn their living doing real law enforcement, not harassing motorists.
  • Stretches of W Hardy Road/E Hardy Road bordering the Hardy Toll Road between Beltway 8 and I-610. Given this is now the service road for a busy tollway, the speed limits need to be re-evaluated, along with the stop sign at Hill Road that’s probably a holdover from the days where the urbanized area stopped shortly outside I-610 (I’m guessing here, because I wasn’t yet born).
  • US 59 mainlanes through Humble (former). This was a notorious underposted speed limit at one time: 55 mph in a stretch that easily deserved a 65 mph limit. Thankfully, the City of Humble finally gave up on this source of revenue, much to the relief of the area’s motorists.
  • The Sam Houston Ship Channel Bridge (Beltway 8 over the Houston Ship Channel). Not only is the 50 mph speed limit here out of touch with reality, this is the most expensive stretch of the Sam Houston Tollway ($2.00 cash/$1.50 with EZ Tag, versus $1.50/$1.30 elsewhere). I can’t think of anywhere else where I can pay so much for the privilege of seeing a “SPEED LIMIT 50” sign. The kicker? There’s no way to enforce the speed limit on this bridge, outside of using aircraft (which, even if legal in Texas, is rarely done).
  • I-10 just east of downtown Houston (former). I don’t remember exactly where, but there was a stretch with a posted limit of 55 mph. Actually doing 55 mph was an invitation to get tailgated or have obscene gestures made at you. Finally, the city came to their senses on this one as well.

I’m sure there are others, but these come to mind most readily.

What not to do as a newscaster, demonstrated by Owen Conflenti

This one has me shaking my head.

As recently reported by MediaBistro’s TVSpy blog, KPRC-TV anchor Owen Conflenti recently made an obscene gesture while on camera, apparently directed at someone else in the studio. Mr. Conflenti thought his display of “the bird” was out of frame; unfortunately, he was quite wrong, as evidenced by the screenshot. The video’s missing (more on that later) but a lower quality copy is, however, available as part of the guyism.com story.

It’s one thing when an average person does something like this, but a professional newscaster should have a much higher standard of conduct. However, there are things that make this blunder in judgment worse: the absolutely abysmal handling of the incident from a PR standpoint.

First, as mentioned previously, KPRC-TV falls back on a ludicrous copyright claim for what is clearly a fair use of their broadcast. Due to the way YouTube takes down videos, there’s no way to even find the uploader and ask him/her to contest the copyright claim. (Hopefully he/she is out there reading this blog.) Shame on KPRC-TV for using copyright to interfere with the criticism of the on-air conduct of one of its news anchors.

Second, Mr. Conflenti and the VP of news at KPRC-TV, Deborah Callura  does what everyone in PR is trained not to do when confronted with an inconvenient question: say “no comment.” Ms. Callura could have simply stated something along the lines of “this is unacceptable conduct from an on-air personality and we will take steps to ensure it will not happen again.” Mr. Conflenti did eventually apologize (as evidenced by this follow-up story on TVSpy):

“I’m sorry to everyone for my offensive gesture on television last week,” Conflenti told the Houston Chronicle. “My actions were careless and unprofessional. I can assure my viewers it will never happen again.”

However, this didn’t happen almost a full week after the initial incident. This is an unacceptable delay for someone who is in the business of communications.

The silver lining to this cloud is that it’s a near-perfect case study for those entering the communications business, with a crystal clear lesson: don’t make obscene gestures (or use obscene language) when there’s any chance of you being on camera, and apologize quickly if you do and it gets noticed.

(An aside: I will admit my initial reaction was to find it a bit humorous. That does not change the fact that it is a story about unacceptable conduct by a communications professional, and I want to be sure my readers understand that.)

A thin line between vandalism and art: the graffiti controversy

CultureMap Houston recently reported on Houston’s new Graffiti Mobile and a photo opportunity featuring the truck and Houston Mayor Annise Parker. The story describes the event and contains a few key quotes from Mayor Parker which I would like to address:

“I have mixed emotions about being here,” Mayor Annise Parker told the crowd. “This is a great new graffiti truck and we are going to do wonderful things with it. The bad news is that we have to do it at all… As we get more aggressive, they [graffiti artists] seem to get wilier and find new places to put graffiti.”

[…]

“This is a feel-good event,” Parker said, “but since the media is here, I think we need to make a really strong point: Graffiti is a crime. We spend tens of thousands — in fact, I think it’s about a million dollars a year cleaning up graffiti. Those are your tax dollars we’re spending.”

A previous story on Culturemap Houston takes a different tack and features an interview with well-known urban artist GONZO247 of Aerosol Warfare. These quotes in particular stand out (from Carolyn Casey, the education program director for Aerosol Warfare):

“Awhile back, they [City Council] had a meeting open to the public, and they specifically invited all the art people and us because they said they wanted to discuss the graffiti problem,” Casey says. “We thought they were being open to an idea of ours, but they really just called us all there to tell us to tell our friends to stop doing it. They weren’t open to new ideas, and said that as long as they’re spending money on abatement, they’re not going to spend any money on programs.

“But the city’s going to continue spending money on abatement if they don’t have a real solution for it. We see vandalism as different from art, and they consider them to be one.”

I think it’s rather cowardly and pathetic on the part of our city’s government to blur the lines between vandalism and art. There is a huge difference; the most obvious component of the difference between the two is the consent of the owner of the property being “decorated.” If the owner approves, it’s art; if the owner has not consented, it’s more than likely vandalism. I would usually define most lower forms of graffiti such as “tagging” as vandalism. In fact “tagging” is usually what comes to mind when most people think of graffiti. I believe this is a shame as there is a huge difference between legitimate street art and marking one’s “turf” with spray paint. The latter is more directly compared to the behavior of animals who urinate to mark their territory. Unfortunately, spray paint is more visibly noxious and permanent, as well as more difficult to clean up.

I do not support vandalism. I support art, and more importantly I support public awareness of the differences between vandalism and art. If the government of the City of Houston cannot understand the difference between the two, I believe they have failed us all.

Ode to Houston’s switched-off red light cameras

Just under two weeks ago, voters in the city of Houston, Texas, defeated Proposition 3 by a fairly wide margin, bringing the city’s controversial photographic enforcement of traffic signals (red light cameras) to an end. This morning, at 10am, as mentioned in a post to Swamplot and a story on KPRC’s (Channel 2) website.

And not a moment too soon. The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions, and while the intentions of installing red light cameras may be good, the implementation and eventual result was bad. For one, any time you have money changing hands for something like red light violation fines, there’s an incentive for greed at the expense of safety. Even if the city or county governments don’t get the fines. Even if they go to local hospital trauma centers. Greed is greed.

You’ll have to just trust me on this, but months ago I once had occasion to make a trip by bus to the Willowbrook mall area, where one of the red light cameras is installed at State Highway 249 and FM 1960 (which is now named Cypress Creek Parkway in addition to its FM number, but was not at the time). I got to observe the intersection enforced by the red light camera. Most of the red light runners were not the “zoom through trying to beat the light” type that usually come to mind when someone mentions “running a red light.” No, these were people trying to sneak across on the tail end of a yellow, going by my estimation 20-25 mph (maybe even as low as 15 mph in some cases), well below the limit of 35 mph on the exit ramp/service road for FM 1960. These were not the menaces to safety that got the red light cameras up to begin with.

To make matters worse, after pacifying the angry citizens with a promise that red light cameras would not be used to issue tickets to right turn violations, the city reneged on this and quietly started ticketing them too. Why? Greed! Pure greed! My mom got one of these tickets.

The Houston red light camera era overlapped significantly with my run as a courier/messenger in the Houston area; thankfully, I never got a ticket from one, either on or off duty. However, knowing the cameras were there and I risked a rear end collision every time I stopped on a fresh yellow light just to make sure I didn’t get a ticket did nothing to ease my already stressful life on the road.

Maybe now that the people have spoken, the city of Houston can time yellow lights properly on traffic signals, a move proven to increase safety. It won’t make the city any money, of course, but wasn’t this whole thing about safety to begin with?

It should be noted that Baytown also voted out the red light cameras in the same election. However, other cities such as Pasadena, Jersey Village, and Humble, appear to be retaining their cameras at least for the short term. It is my sincere hope that these other cities seriously consider following Houston’s lead and put the matter up for referendum in the next election. It’s time to make the entire greater Houston area safer–by getting rid of the cameras and actually focusing on safety, not money.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to hunt down my recording of “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead.” Good riddance, red light cameras. You won’t be missed.