More out-with-the-old and in-with-the-new when it comes to Houston in 1987. Here's a little round-up of some of the headlines from that month.

* Remember Joske's? In mid-April, the department store that had its origins in San Antonio was sold to Arkansas-based Dillard's Department Stores Inc. The Joske's name would soon vanish from the retail landscape.

From Daniel Benedict's article on April 14:

Dillard's Department Stores Inc. has agreed to buy the Joske's department store chain for $255 million in cash, thereby making its long-anticipated entry into the Houston market.

The Little Rock, Ark.-based chain reportedly has long been interested in entering the Houston market, and its interest in Joske's has been rumored since January, when Allied Stores Corp. of New York announced that Joske's was for sale.

In a statement released Monday, Allied announced the sale of the 27-store Joske's division and the four-store Cain-Sloan division to Dillard's. Allied operates 11 Joske's stores in Houston.

[...]

Perhaps the most difficult problem Dillard faces with Joske's is the same one confronting all retailers in the state, especially in the Houston area. Retail sales in Texas were off in 1986 and are likely to be off again this year.

But changes in retailing affected Joske's, too. The chain in the 1970s had the reputation of being an upscale department store, but the invasion of such high-end retailers as Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue redivided the marketplace.

* The future for a Prince's Hamburgers location in Midtown was in doubt as Metro considered its light rail options. Mind you, this was in 1987. The Red Line that now cuts through the property opened in 2004, and the restaurant was displaced by the Metro transit center south of the Main Street Sears store.

Here's an excerpt from Alan Bernstein's article on April 10. Note, the South Post Oak line never left the drawing board.

METRO'S PROPOSED electric rail car system would displace relatively few buildings, but at least two businesses rich with Houston tradition are directly in its path.

One is Prince's Hamburgers No. 10 at 4509 Main, a nostalgic, neon-laced fast-food place that helped start the national carhop fad from the same location in the 1940s. "I'd be heartbroken if they put a transit station there," owner Liz Flores, who started work there as a carhop in 1950, said Thursday. "But you can't stop progress. I understand that, too."

The other is Stelzig's of Texas, 3123 S. Post Oak, which sells western wear, saddles and the like, attracting attention from drivers on Loop 610 West with its 10-foot outdoor statue of a horse. Stelzig's has operated in Houston since 1887. Its downtown outlet moved to the Galleria-area spot 2 1/2 years ago.



[...]

At Prince's Hamburgers, Flores said she was planning to spruce up the restaurant, which has seen better times but still features waitresses who take food orders at car windows.

"Now I don't know if I should do it or not," she said. Two cooks have worked there for more than 30 years, "and it's for those people I wanted to keep the place going. With a little polish it could look a lot better, but where could we build another one?"

The restaurant at Main near Richmond was opened by Douglas Prince in 1934. His sons' company, Prince Food Systems Inc., retained ownership of the land under the restaurant and is offering the plot for sale. So, Flores acknowledged, a new owner could build something else on the property, and the restaurant would be gone whether or not the Metro project is built.

In the days before air conditioning and television drew people indoors, the original Prince's and its outlets were places to see and be seen. Burgers, shakes and fried shrimp were the main fare.

Another Houston drive-in is credited with starting the carhop concept. Supposedly, though, it caught on across the country after a brightly uniformed Prince's carhop was crowned America's first Carhop Queen at a Galveston pageant. It was 1941, and her picture appeared in Life magazine.

* This year - May 24 to be exact - U2 will play NRG Stadium as part of its tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of "The Joshua Tree" album.

The band played Houston 30 years ago this month to support that album.

Marty Racine's April 8 review noted a decline in the sound quality at what he called "the Big House on the Southwest Freeway," aka the Summit.

Outfitted in basic black-and-white and eschewing any visuals, the band lit into the first two songs off "The Joshua Tree" - "Where The Streets Have No Name" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". The band then dipped into an oldie, "Gloria", before retreating to "Joshua"'s Bullet The Blue Sky, a left-field observation on U.S. Central American policies.

By the eighth song, U2 finally arrived on what could be considered a hit, "Sunday Bloody Sunday".

The group, which in this synthesizer age can be considered a real basic rock band, with its two guitars, bass and drums, then delivered " Surrender, With Or Without You" and two more oldies, "New Year's Day" and the Martin Luther King tribute "Pride In The Name of Love".

It was a good, if not great, show. Lead singer Bono summed up the band's primary task of reaching the vast reaches of The Summit: "It was very good for you to come out and see us."

The innocence, for such theater, disarmed their albums' seriousness. But the message, whatever it might attain in pop circles, was lost in the acoustics.