See South Park in pictures in our slideshow.
Troy Fields
The Kims turn out 400 to 500 burgers a day.
Groovehouse
Burger Park offers a $4.32 cheeseburger combo with fries and a slush.
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Seven days a week, the Burger Park food stand turns out 400 to 500 burgers a day. It isn't part of a chain, national or regional. It isn't known for its gourmet cuisine. It doesn't have gleaming granite countertops or even indoor seating. But for Texans who like their patties thin with plenty of cheese and fixings, Burger Park produces a very nearly perfect burger.
Its owners are a couple, Oak Kim and her husband Gil, who came to Houston from South Korea in August 1979 and purchased the place from its original owner in 1995.
They have operated all this time in a part of Houston world-famous for its notorious excesses. Burger Park, on MLK Boulevard, is in the heart of South Park, an area bounded by Loop 610 and Sims Bayou, Cullen and Mykawa. South Park became the stuff of legend as it almost cannibalized itself in the '80s and '90s with violent robberies and drive-by shootings. The pedophile rapper South Park Mexican didn't help its reputation when he was convicted and sent to prison for 45 years in 2002.
Some say the crime levels are down now because there's nothing of worth left to steal.
Yet some have stayed the course. And so did this lone hamburger stand with its fries and slushies and special $4.32 deal for a combo — catering mainly to neighborhood people. The couple is Korean-American, the neighborhood almost solidly black, although Hispanics have been moving in increasingly. Whites are missing, long gone to newer suburbs.
None of that matters to the 62-year-old Kim. She says she loves her customers and they love her right back.
"I don't have any problems at all," she says about the neighborhood. "I hire security guard because you never know. Nowhere is safe. But we never had a problem."
"People are sometimes drunk, I just talk to them nicely. Sometimes they ask for free food, I give them a little package. I have good reputation. Mostly people are very friendly." When her husband, Gil, is out for the day, the customers ask about him. When he's there, he's dispensing hugs to customers in line. That is, if they don't get to him first with embraces of their own.
In fact, the Kims hope that their son will take over operation of the place in about five years and carry on the tradition. They look beyond the bombed-out yards, the abandoned elementary up the street, the rusting signs and see not only an acceptable present but the potential, if not the promise, of a good future.
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It's hard to believe it now, but South Park started out as a suburb.
The neighborhood was created in the 1950s for middle-class whites and their baby boomer kids. A reflection of the postwar time period and of the homebuyers themselves — who were mostly returning war veterans — the streets in South Park are named for famous World War II battles and generals: Pershing, Mountbatten, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and even Bataan, the infamous death march in the Philippines.
The one-story homes had cedar shank siding; some more affluent homeowners were able to afford aluminum. Lawns were well-kept and children rode their bikes everywhere. Famous people were growing up here: movie actress JoBeth Williams and basketball's Clyde Drexler.
"Everybody looked after everybody," recalls Ralph Gonzales, 60. Gonzales, my stepfather, grew up in South Park until graduating from Sterling High School in 1968 and moving to Alief, where he became a Houston Police Department officer soon after graduation. He's been married to my mother for 20 years now, and it's always been known that he grew up in South Park. But he rarely speaks about it apart from my mother teasing him about being head cheerleader at Jones, and one of the most popular guys in school. Memories of his old neighborhood seem somewhat painful when viewed through the lens of what South Park has become today.
When I told him that I'd been visiting a burger joint in his old neighborhood for a few months, having fallen in love with their burgers and slushes, he was initially irritated with me for going over there alone, especially at night. Once the paternal protectiveness subsided, he began to reminisce with me about South Park one evening. Gonzales is a big and boisterous man, six feet tall with a gun still permanently holstered on his hip. But he speaks softly about South Park.
"I never felt alone or frightened. There was some adult out there always looking after you. As a kid, I felt safe."
Before Burger Park, burger stands like Price's and Kip's Big Boy ruled the neighborhood, as did places like the one-screen King Center Drive-In and Palm Center, a majestic shopping center on Griggs Road anchored by a JCPenney. Boy scout lodges and small, family-owned businesses rounded out the area, with the occasional pawn shop and drive-through liquor store attesting to the solidly blue-collar nature of the residents.
In 1968, the street that Burger Park is located on was still called South Park Boulevard. Loop 610 — just to the north of Burger Park — was still brand-new. It was the construction of the Loop that many former residents believe was the first nail in South Park's coffin. "You would've thought that it would make the area grow, but it didn't," Gonzales said.
