Concerts, a visit to a South Main amusement park and MTV dropping by the Cadillac Bar were just some of events that occurred here in August 1986.

* It may not have the thrill rides of AstroWorld, but, somehow, Kiddie Wonderland was still keeping youngsters entertained four decades after it opened on a mostly undeveloped stretch of South Main.

Sure, the paint was peeling, the rides were rickety and the animals moved at a more leisurely pace, but that didn't seem to matter to the parents who took their kids there. For some, they were doing what their parents had done in the days when Kiddie Wonderland was the amusement park for Houston's children.

From reporter Vivienne Heines' Sept. 1 story:

Barbara Baker, 40, accompanies her three children to the park several times each year. She and her husband both came to Kiddie Wonderland as youngsters and she says she wants her kids to share that experience.

"We're trying to live a simple life in the middle of this big city. Riding a horse is something simple they can do - it's not bad for them, it's not going to give them nightmares or weird dreams ... I try to find enriching things to do," she said. "And there isn't any place in town like this."

Kiddie Wonderland, which sits on six and a half acres of land owned by the Ben Taub family, is easy to miss behind the crush of cars and greedy swell of businesses and industry that surround it on busy South Main. But that wasn't always the case.

"When the park was first built, it was nine miles out of the city on a little dirt road, with cotton fields all around. There used to be a driving range right next to it," Downman said. "Now there's one of the nicest hotels in the city."

Established in 1946 by O.D. and Elizabeth Drane of Houston, Kiddie Wonderland catered to Houstonians eager for diversions to help erase memories of the recently ended World War II.

Although the park was sold to Joe Maguire in 1968, much of Kiddie Wonderland is the same as when it opened. There are the same rides, albeit more faded and frayed - the tiny tot airplanes with machine guns on both ends, the pint-sized Packards, the white boats sitting in greenish water, the 73-year-old C.W. Parker merry-go-round. Only the Pixie Plaza is new, added about eight years ago.

Fares remain relatively low, too - 35 cents for rides, 70 cents for a trip on the pony or in the donkey cart.

* Mayor Kathy Whitmire tangled with the city's sanitation workers over an increase in garbage collection routes by 20 percent just as the Solid Waste Department was cutting about 160 positions. The increased workload came just after a 3 percent pay cut months earlier as well.

In mid-August, hundreds of sanitation workers staged a wildcat strike. Less that one-fifth of the city's garbage trucks made their rounds -- accompanied by Houston police -- once the strike got underway.

In response, Whitmire fired 150 sanitation workers. But after some negotiations between the mayor and council, the workers were later suspended without pay for 30 days.

* MTV dropped by the Bayou City (Cadillac Bar, to be exact) to tape an episode of its docuseries, "Amuck in America."

As reporter Bruce Westbrook wrote:

They're amok - so amok they can't even spell. They are MTV's "Amuck (sic) in America" crew, tooling down the country's highways and byways for six weeks this summer, celebrating the channel's fifth anniversary and searching for the answer to the eternal question, "What is the worst truck stop in America?"

This week in Houston the question was, "Who has the best tequila in Texas?" and the judging was done at the festive Cadillac Bar, where the Amuck crew crashed after traveling much of the day from their previous stop in New Orleans.

The 11-member group includes two drivers, a publicist, seven production people and MTV VJ Alan Hunter. He is the star of Amuck's reports from the road, which are telecast daily on the half-hour from 11:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., but everyone gets into the act. This is an everyman's show, shot from everywhere.

"We try to be professional, but we're really acting like responsible children," Hunter said. "We are going slightly over the line. We just want people to live a little bit and have a good time. And we want things to be as spontaneous as they can be."

* ZZ Top played the Summit for three nights at the end of the month.

From Marty Racine's Chronicle review:

ZZ Top, the band that started out of Houston and Dallas more than a decade ago, returned for a "homecoming" for the first of three Summit shows on their wildly successful "Afterburner" tour, and while I've heard them play better shows, the hometown climate Monday pulled them through.

So what if the music is all about "TV Dinners" and other such trite, easy marks, The Summit was howling to rock 'n' roll Monday night, the kind of rock 'n' roll that we used to know in the early '70s, when boogie riffs defined the spectrum of partying-down. It was loud and proud, and it felt good.

The presentation has become more technical - vocoders and Linn drums and lasers - but the two guys with brooms for a beard - Gibbons and Hill - filled the stage with their black-and-white outfits and white rug-cushioned guitars, starting off with a torrid "Under Pressure" and dealing a strong hand with "Sleeping Bag" and the one-two recorded punch of "Waiting For The" Bus/Jesus Jest Left Chicago.

As they dipped into newer material from "Eliminator" and "Afterburner", the boys had to work hard to convince us that they have successfully changed with the times and that the boogie still matters. Of course, it doesn't, not really. With the exception of "Legs", a thick piece of wicked rocking-blues at The Summit from "Eliminator", the new tunes are too cute, too cartoonish to be the kind of desperate Texas-regional rock 'n' roll that got ZZ through the first years of "Tres Hombres" and "Rio Grande Mud".

And, for good measure, here's Bob Claypool's review from the Houston Post, complete with an opening paragraph for the ages.

Deep down in their hearts, most Texans under the age of 50 know this for a fact - simply, that when the winds are right, the moon is holding water, and the body is properly medicated (with enough good tequila and Lone Star beer in your gullet), ZZ Top plays about all the music a healthy body can ever need or use.

Now, if you want ethereal poetry or something to toe-dance to, you'll have to go elsewhere, that's true. But, just as sure as Sam Houston liked to take a nip or two to keep away the chill, it's equally certain that the relentless and unpretentious boogie of the Houston-based blues-rock trio is still extremely satisfying to a rock and roll heart.

Monday night, The Top opened a three-night stand in The Summit, came home to a packed-house crowd and ripped and roared through a concert that was classic ZZ - heavy on the boogie, full of wry humor and masterful Billy Gibbons guitar solos, spiced with some very good props and special effects.

I mean, these guys know how to open a show. After a solid opening set from Honeymoon Suite (you can't be wimp-rockers and open for ZZ), and a long intermission, the top of the stage curtain fell down to reveal a big face - combo King Tut and Sphynx, wearing shades. The Tut boy proceeded to snort the stage curtain up his considerable nostrils, revealing a huge dashboard set (complete with speedometer and radio!), and, amid the smoke and lasers, the three boogie boys romped into "Got Me Under Pressure."

The whole show was pressurized, and ZZ, like the classic power trio they are, were wound tight as an expensive watch and were every bit as steady - blitzing through relatively new things like "Sleeping Bag" and "Ten Foot Pole," then reaching back for ZZ-oldies like "Heard It On the X" (the group's tribute to all those border stations that helped raise our musical consciousness long ago), "Waitin' On the Bus," with that perfect segue into "Jesus Just Left Chicago" that caused the crowd to whoop and roar mightily. This was a younger crowd than I expected - kids who seemed more familiar with "Legs" than, say, for "Arrested For Driving While Blind," kids who were turned on by ZZ's recent video success. But, no matter what the group played, the audience was loud and boogieing - albeit with less violence and rowdiness than their big brothers and sisters (maybe their parents?) used to show at the traditional ZZ Thanksgiving shows of a decade ago.

The laser show was terrific, including projections of the famous ZZ hot rod and a very voluptuous woman (during "Legs," natch), the dashboard eventually transformed itself into a spaceship's instrument panel, and the band kept blasting - "Sharp Dressed Man," "Gimme All Your Loving," "Velcro Fly," "Cheap Sunglasses" ("time to reach down in your pocket or purse and get 'em out," Gibbons cried) and a very appropriate "Can't Stop Rocking."

* Foreclosure proceedings got underway against the developers of the El Mercado del Sol shopping center. The public-private, East End redevelopment project had been struggling in recent months to attract merchants and shoppers. Earlier in August, the mall had entered into bankruptcy.

Though the market would sputter on for a few more years, merchants finally moved out in 1989. As the city pondered its next step for the site in 1991, the Chronicle weighed in in an editorial from that year.

El Mercado del Sol was an ill-conceived idea from the start. The city would dedicate federal community development grant funds in concert with money from private developers to build a Mexican-style market-place just east of downtown. El Mercado would become a busy and colorful market center, offering merchants a place to sell their wares to Houstonians as well as to thousands of tourists and conventioneers attracted to the Brown Convention Center.

But it didn't happen - for a number of reasons. The location was bad.

Most Houstonians were not about to drive to it. Anticipated development of hotels and other facilities around the Brown Convention Center never occurred. The city and the developers had a falling out over the financing. Disappointingly, El Mercado del Sol, which could have given the city a charming taste of Mexico, turned out to be a disaster.