Houston News Blog

​Both Rocks Off and our predecessor in the music editor's chair have written about what a travesty it is that there is no official marker honoring perhaps the most famous and influential musician to ever call Houston home, country-blues icon Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins. Along the way, we've both mentioned that we're hardly the only ones that feel that way either.

Now Houstonian R. Eric Davis has taken the next step and filed the necessary paperwork with the Harris County Historical Commission to erect a Texas State Historical Marker on the Project Row Houses property in Third Ward. Known as the "King of Dowling Street," Hopkins is buried in Forest Park Cemetery, across I-45 from the neighborhood where he spent most of his time in Houston.

An Illinois native who moved to Houston in 1993, Davis and his daughter went to Forest Park last August to find Hopkins' grave and originally, he says, "couldn't do it." After getting some "very specific" instructions, they eventually did. Having been there ourselves, Rocks Off can say firsthand that it's pretty easy to miss.

"We were stunned," Davis says. "We found his headstone and it's this 12-18 inch slab of granite. I was taken aback that this was the only memorial this guy has, for all that he did."

Son Lam

Dancers enjoying Halloween at Rich's

​Hair Balls received an email this morning that longstanding Houston dance club Rich's had been shut down. So far all the information we have been able to gather has come from social-networking sites. The incident appears to have happened Saturday night between 12:30 and 1 a.m., as tweeted by @djebonix and @EATitORstarve. @keithdavisjr, who got there after Chris Brown's concert Saturday to find it shut down, and several others tweeted the reason was for nonpayment of taxes. @TheOscar, to @MsTano1, tweeted the club, which opened in 1983, will reopen Thursday.

On Rich's Facebook Page, the following exchange occurred on the Wall:

Chris Payne: "What's up with the signs on the door saying that the property was seized for upaid taxes?!?"

Rich's Houston: "Paperwork issues, the club will be back open again on Thursday."

Our sister blog Rocks Off left a voicemail for Rich's owner and e-mailed the source of the tip. At the moment, we have not heard back from either one.

We will update this story as soon as we have further information. If you know anything, please leave it in the comments or email chris.gray@houstonpress.com.

​PLEASE TAKE NOTE: The Houston Ship Channel will not be the scene of a terrorist attack tonight, one that will involve FBI agents, huge law-enforcement motocades, sirens, lights, all the good stuff.

If you see such things, don't start running for the hills. It's a drill, baby.

"Late this evening into early Tuesday, the Houston FBI office will be conducting a practical training exercise in some areas of the Houston Ship Channel," agency spokeswoman Patricia Villfranca says. "Additionally, there may be a law enforcement motorcade running between Ellington Field and the Ship Channel during the exercise. All local law enforcement agencies in the affected areas have been notified."

Terrorists, also take note: Tonight would be a really, really bad time to blow up the Ship Channel.

​For years, the studs of the Houston Fire Department have been selling charity calendars to gay men all over the city. Possibly some women buy them, too.

Now -- to top off a year when female firefighters have alleged harassment and abuse by colleagues and lack of support from supervisors -- the women are getting in on the act.

Benefiting the fight against breast cancer, the Houston Women Fire Fighters Calendar is filled with pictures of sweaty women holding fire axes and hoses and other fire stuff. Unlike the men, they are not topless. Like the men, they are adorned with artful smudges to indicate their firefighting abilities.

(Just more evidence that sexy calendar season is in full swing.)

The idea was started "on a cocktail napkin," where all good ideas start, according to the website.

Put the blame on "Jeannice," according to the site.

​The chain that publishes the Houston Voice and other gay-community papers nationwide -- including the venerable Washington Blade -- has gone kaput.

Gawker and other media are reporting that Window Media, the financially strapped company that owns more gay news titles than any other chain, has shut everything down.

The Houston Voice website now gives you an error message, and the phone "is no longer in service."

In Atlanta, where the chain has two publications, a sign on the door says "It is with GREAT regret that we must inform you that effective immediately, the operations of Window Media, LLC and Unite Media, LLC have closed down."

​We have become all too lax in keeping up with the National Enquirer; most of the "celebrities" who are getting fat, having affairs or going to rehab in its pages are pretty much unfamiliar to us. (We know there's a dude named Gosselin who's very bad, but we don't know why, nor care.)

Luckily, the estimable local blogger Slampo is more dedicated. And he brings entertaining word that the Enquirer has raised serious questions about the death of Houston's legendary John O'Quinn.

And by "serious," we mean "utterly ridiculous."

"Mystery Shrouds Death of Edwards Contributor," reads the headline. The Enquirer, of course, broke the story of sleazebag John Edwards' affair, and remains hot on the case. To the point that the paper wonders if it isn't awfully convenient that O'Quinn, who was a big contributor to Edwards, died.

​November brings with it Thanksgiving, which in turn brings with it the annual Houston Press accounting of the Turkeys of the Year here in Houston.

Last year was easy, of course: any year that includes the e-mail antics of District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal is pretty much a no-brainer. When a year includes a free-spending, high-living president of a financially crippled school, like TSU's Priscilla Slade, the selection process is also relatively simple.

But what about 2009?

In sports, we had an incredibly bad Astros season, a couple of no-show Rockets stars, and the usual Texans dance between high hopes and despair.

In politics, there was Peter Brown, spending his wife's money like Priscilla Slade on a Cribs bender, only to finish close to fourth place in the mayoral primary.

Photos by Olivia Flores Alvarez

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Tanks and other military vehicles came down Smith Street at lunchtime today, along with drill squads and a few political honchos, all part of today's Veteran's Day Parade.

Hair Balls was stationed right by the Houston Public Library, not that it was hard to find a spot since the crowd was pretty thin. (It was nothing like the throngs that are expected for the Thanksgiving Day parade or what we see during the Rodeo. This time it was mostly just office workers on their lunch hour.)

We asked Ned Norris, who was standing nearby, why he came out to the parade, and he had a quick answer: "I'm just here to pay tribute to the people who fought in the wars. Anybody that put their life on the line for people that they don't even know, they deserve for somebody to come out here and clap [for] 'em."

At just thirty four-years-old, Norris is much too young to remember the draft or WWII. He acknowledges the perception that service men and women from earlier -- and more popular -- conflicts like WWII, for example, came home to a very different atmosphere and attitude than today's fighting men and women.

"That's true -- and that ain't right. Everybody has a chance of dying when they're out there, no matter what the cause is or what the name of the war is."

Two key players of two teams decided to break important news in odd ways this week.

Steven Tyler, aging frontman for Aerosmith, dropped word that he was quitting the band (maybe; no one's clear) not by calling his bandmates, but by mentioning it to a British interviewer.

Tracy McGrady, aging forward for the Houston Rockets, announced he'd be coming back from injury soon (maybe; no one's clear) not by telling to management or his teammates, but in an interview with a sportswriter. (An American sportswriter, at least.)

What ever happened to communication?

Who was the worse transgressor here? It's Tuesday, meaning all important answers come in chart form.

Photo courtesy UT

​Well over a year ago -- back in May 2008, when Hillary Clinton was still a viable candidate for the Democratic nomination -- the UT Health Science Center here in Houston hired Dr. Larry Kaiser as its new president.

How much does he love Houston? So much that the UT Board of Regents is about to consider an agenda item that will continue paying Kaiser commuting costs from his Pennsylvania home until August 2010.

"For personal reasons, Dr. Kaiser and his family have been unable to permanently move to Houston and hence the extension of this provision of his employment agreement," Dr. Kenneth Shine, UT System executive vice-chancellor for health affairs, tells Hair Balls.

We're pretty sure "personal reasons" means "can't get a good price for his house back east"

Anthony deBruyn, spokesman for the regents, tells us there's no cap on how much commuting costs the university will pay. He also doesn't have a figure on how much they've paid so far.

Photos by Katharine Shilcutt

​When we heard that there was going to be a happy hour -- a happy hour -- in the old Alabama Bookstop on Monday night, Hair Balls simply had to be there. After all, it's not often you get to visit the emptied husk of your childhood and relive your dying love affair with literature while drinking a cold beer.

The Cinema Arts Society and 29-95.com hosted last night's happy hour in an effort to promote the upcoming Cinema Arts film festival and to encourage Houston residents to maintain and preserve the old structure. The Alabama Bookstop -- now simply the Alabama Theatre once again -- still has the same bright marquee outside, the familiar teal-and-salmon color scheme inside, the elegant murals on the walls and the same old faded carpets. But the cavernous theater now stands almost entirely empty. It's much easier to see now where water damage has taken hold in some areas and where years of deferred maintenance has left its marks.

We remarked to the Chronicle's Dwight Silverman, who was there supporting sister venture 29-95.com, that the place seemed somehow much smaller than before. Without the shelves of books to provide perspective, Silverman noted, it's difficult to gauge the size of the theater.

​You know what's shocking?

You go out to appear on The Jerry Springer Show, and you get involved in a fight where police are called.

That's like going to see a Michael Bay movie and -- instead of the insightful character study you were expecting -- there's a bunch of explosions.

An unnamed Houston man found out the hard way that things can go wrong on the Springer show -- or even just on the outskirts of the Springer show.

Cops in Stamford, Connecticut were called to a local hotel to referee a dispute between guests who were in town to appear on Springer. Two were from Alabama and three were from the Houston area (including one from Channelview, of all places), Stamford police Lt. Sean Cooney tells Hair Balls.

The dispute was over whether Hegel was too systematic in his discussion of Kantian dualism. Or, perhaps, whether someone stole a wallet and some prescription drugs.

​Todd Mason is the vice president of real estate services for Metro. At the time of his hiring, there was some concern that by hiring Mason and dabbling in big-time real estate development at and around Metro properties, the transit organization was extending itself far beyond its mission statement, which reads:

METRO is an innovative regional transportation organization of dedicated employees committed to partnering with the public and private sectors to provide the safest, highest quality services and mobility solutions that exceed our customers' expectations while creating economic growth.

Consider those fears well-founded. Apparently, Mason is now attempting to decide who gets to ride the light rail and who doesn't.

​Heartbroken fans of Clifford Pugh, Shelby Hodge and Heather "Shopgirl" Staible take solace -- the trio of ex-Chron lifestyle scribes have a new home online at Culture Map Houston, which debuted a few hours ago.

"CultureMap, a new online magazine and "mapazine" -- the first of its kind -- headquartered in Houston, TX -- brings hyper-localized intelligence and insight to each city that it covers," trumpets the intro the little blurb on the "About Us" page. (Update: Staible continues to write for the Chron. Our apologies.)

So expect lots of gritty reporting on the seamy underbelly of this sprawling, brawling port city...the lives of sex slaves in near North Side cantinas, the shattered remnants of injured oil-refinery workers' dreams, heartwarming tales of human triumph out of the miserable Southwest Houston apartment-strewn dystopia, and explorations on the death of blue-collar America down around the Port of Houston. As Balzac was to Paris, Dickens to London, so Culture Map will be to Houston...

Or not. Here is how CultureMapHouston continues to explain its own raison d'etre:

Photo via Deadspin

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Photo by Blake Whitaker

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Photo courtesy "Mary's, Naturally" Closed

​Mary's, the bar that many people think of as the gay bar in Houston history, is no more, a victim of unpaid rent.

But there's a scramble going on to try to keep as much of the place as possible, as a way to preserve a cornerstone of Houston's gay past.

A Facebook page has been set up to encourage ways to get artifacts from the 40-year-old place.

"The old sign with Ronald Reagan smoking that hung in the bathroom?" writes one commenter. "The old 'Mary's' sign that hung outside the building on the patio? What about any of the artifacts stored in the back building? Or some of the items from the back patio, like the motorcycle and statue?"

Tim Brookover, an activist in the gay community, is urging the GLBT Community Center board to get active in saving whatever can be saved.

The third annual Montrose Crawl took over Westheimer on Saturday night as crowds of Halloween revelers lurched from bar to restaurant to bar. With the attendees encouraged to come in costume, it was as if Arne's and Party City had simultaneously exploded onto the streets of Montrose. Needless to say, it was difficult to pick our favorite costumes of the night, but here are our top six.

Photos by Trish Badger

​Number Six goes to this lovely lady, er...handsome man, er...extraordinary person who dressed as our favorite SNL character from the 90s: It's Pat!

Halloween weekend was cause for much merriment and mischief making. Whether at Rich's or the Roxy, the House of Blues or the streets of Montrose, a cosplay convention or an erotic ball, fun was found all over the city this weekend. Check out our favorite photos below.

Photo by Son Lam

​The huge Houston Press Halloween Bash at the House of Blues brought out guys and ghouls from all over the city. See more photos from the event here.

Photo by lcrf

​Hair Balls is always worrying about reducing our carbon footprint -- in fact, we're constantly using aerosol-spray cleansers and dusters to reduce it like a mofo -- which is why we were stunned to learn in the Houston Business Journal that beloved burrito builders Chipotle Mexican Grill will be installing solar panels in about 75 stores throughout Texas....but not in Houston! (And they're even teaming up with Houston-based Standard Renewable Energy to do so.)

Unlike Encore in Dallas and CPS in San Antonio, CenterPoint Energy wouldn't provide rebates for the installations, SRE spokeswoman Kelley Wright told Hair Balls. Which can only mean one thing: Centerpoint wants the polar bears to die, right?

Halloween used to be a holiday for innocent kids to dress up in truly cute costumes. Then it became a holiday for women to dress up in sexy costumes, and men to dress up in whatever costumes would most likely result in them hooking up with a tipsy Sexy Nurse.

And now, of course, it is also a holiday where people feel the need to dress up defenseless dogs.

They did it last night at the Hotel Derek, in an event called Howl-a-ween, to benefit Citizens for Animal Protection. Yet these citizens, supposedly concerned with protecting animals, subjected their pets to the following outrages.

What did the dogs have to say about it? We gathered some quotes.

Photos by Liana Lopez

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Photo courtesy GHCVB

​Houston may be fat, polluted, sprawling and ugly, but it's got one thing going for it, according to Forbes magazine -- it's one of the safest cities in the country.

Say what? Don't they read our Bayou Body Count? What, you go ten days without a murder and all of a sudden you're Eden?

Apparently, the designation doesn't have anything to do with odd recent spurt of non-murderousness.

Forbes looked at violent crime (see above), workplace deaths (refineries are so safe), traffic death rates (well, hard to die when you're not moving in a jam) and "natural disaster risk" (Bingo!!!).

The magazine added all these factors up and determined -- somehow -- that Houston is the 38th-safest city in America. Which, ummm, may not be as great as it sounds.

Photo courtesy White House Flickr group

​Let them bitch all they want in Chicago about getting shut out of federal stimulus funds for "smart-grid" power projects. Here in Houston, we're kicking ass.

The federal gummint, that socialistic, fascist Big Brother, announced today how it is spending $3.4 billion of your grandkid's money, and Houston's two largest power companies were big winners.

CenterPoint is getting $200 million to help with a nearly $640-million project to install 2.2 million smart meters and "more than 550 sensors and automated switches that will help protect against system disturbances like natural disasters."

Reliant gets $20 million towards a $65.5-million project to install smart meters.

The CenterPoint check is tied for being the biggest announced today, with Baltimore also getting $200 million.

​We here in Houston are going to be besieged by rats -- not just the four-legged kind, but the ten-legged, ten-armed, sucking-talentless kind, too.

How else to interpret two announcements? One: "New Report Ranks Cities At Risk For Rodents This Year -- Houston Is Number Three." Two, from the official website of the black-hole of metal known as Ratt: " PREPARE FOR AN INFESTATION! LEGENDARY HARD ROCK ICONS ANNOUNCE INFESTATION AS TITLE OF NEW ALBUM DUE MARCH 2010 THROUGH LOUD & PROUD/ROADRUNNER."

Since the second item is in all-caps, it is obviously more important. And since the first one comes -- as could be fully expected -- from a company that pitches merchandise to fight rats, both discussions of rat(t) infestation are probably equally substantive.

Sure enough, the "new report" ranking cities comes from d-Con, "America's number one selling brand of rodent control products." Their helpful solution to the fact that Houston's warm weather, "associated lush vegetation, deterioration of structures and heavy sewer flows" will increase the rat population?

"When preparing your home for winter, the first step is to stock up on baits and traps, like d-CON(r) Ready Mixed Baitbits and Quick Kill(tm) Glue Traps," one of the report's authors said.

Okay. But which would be worse, having an infestation of rats or Ratt in your house?

From the tame to the terrifying, this weekend was full of thrills. Check out the weekend in photos below.

Photo by Craig Hlavaty

​Star Wars In Concert came to the Toyota Center on Sunday night, bringing an entire symphony orchestra, chorus, laser show, cases of memorabilia and even Anthony Daniels with them. Our review of the concert is over at Rocks Off. And for more pictures, check out our slideshow.

Photos by Brittanie Shey

Entrance to the Donnellan vault below the Franklin Street Bridge

​Texas Traveler has spent the better part of the month checking out some of the creepiest, oldest, most interesting parts of Houston and it's neighboring cities, and to wrap up the month we have a few more tales to tell you about. Below, five Houston haunts you may not have known about.

Donnellan vault
Fancy a drink at the Brewery Tap? Be sure to walk a few feet west to the Franklin Street bridge and look over the railing at the northeast corner. You'll see some old red brickwork, the entrance to the Donnellan Family vault built in 1849. Texas Traveler has mentioned this before but here's the full story.

Family patriarch and early Houston settler Tim Donnellan, who died in 1849, was the first to be buried in the vault. Seventeen years later, after the end of the Civil War, Tim Donnellan's son and a friend found some unexploded ordnances in the bayou. One story claims the artillery was dumped into the water after the Confederacy surrendered, but another story claims a Confederate ship carrying the weapons sunk in Buffalo Bayou near MIlan Street. Either way, the weapons were still live, and one shell exploded, killing both Henry Donnellan and Charles Richer (sometimes listed as Ritchey).

Both bodies were added to the crypt, eventually joined by Emily Donnellan, the family matriarch. In 1900, all the bodies were moved to Glenwood Cemetery, but the vault still remains and is easily accessible when the bayou waters are low.

The Face
The Face is one of those stories that sufficiently freaks Texas Traveler out, thanks to our extremely overactive imagination. (And we're not talking about this guy.) Yes, yes, we know all about the Elvis waffles and the Virgin Mary sweat stains -- you can read anything into a Rorschach test that you want. But have a look at this picture and tell us if you don't see what we see.

There are two backstories here. Some people believe The Face, on the harbor-side wall of Ewing Hall at UTMB in Galveston, is that of Jean Lafitte, the remnants of who's home, Maison Rouge, is just a few blocks away at 14th and Avenue A. Other people believe the face belongs to an old man who was a stalwart holdout against the sale of his property to the University of Texas Medical Branch. As soon as he kicked the bucket, his children cashed in, and he's said to haunt the resulting building.

The story doesn't end there. If you look closely above the face, you can see that the topmost panel of the building is darker than the rest. According to fable, the face used to be on this panel. UTMB tried to paint over it, but soon the face appeared on the panel below. That middle panel was sandblasted -- you can see it's a different texture than the rest of the building. But that only caused the face to move down again. Read the comments on this blog post from Galveston locals who've encountered The Face.

Dave Rossman for the Chronicle

​In case you were worried that the departure of Shelby Hodge would hamper the Houston Chronicle's tireless devotion to covering the inanities of rich, pampered self-obsessives in our town, fear not.

Molly Glentzer is on the beat, and among her first offerings is this masterpiece: "SWAT Team Storms Mansion As Part Of Gala Fun." It featured the photo to the right, featuring two jolly folks wackily posing "with one of the SWAT team's sniper rifles."

In the trademark Hodge-ian style, the report continues:

Forget ball gown drama. The second annual Houston Police Foundation Gala shook up all of River Oaks Oct. 17. Fireworks exploded above Tilman and Paige Fertitta's spread as helicopters buzzed the gardens, SWAT teams scaled the mansion, and "shootouts" and "bomb scares" erupted.

Sounds like Saturday night in the Fifth Ward.

We're just so glad these folks had so much fun. It's what makes Houston Houston.

​For those folks out there wondering if superlawyer Mark Lanier had suddenly -- after all these years -- finally developed good musical taste, you can rest assured: He hasn't.

Tort King Lanier is famous for his Christmas parties, elaborate (if liquor-free) bacchanals that feature kiddie rides, top-notch food and high-priced entertainment.

In the past, the acts have included Miley Cyrus, Dolly Parton, Brooks & Dunn and Reba McEntire. (Dolly and Reba have their moments, but tend to play their safest, most-generic hits at these events.)

This year's act will be....wait for it....Bon Jovi. Otherwise known as the New Jersey JV team, whose only career highlight was being roasted by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. (Highlight: Heather Locklear refusing to answer whether Richie Sambora feathers his pubes.)

​Yesterday, we shared the vision of urbanist and blogger Andrew Burleson, who dreams of a Houston in which we dress for the weather at all times, even at work. It's his view that this would lower energy costs and immensely improve civic life overall.

He thinks we could begin with a Dress For The Weather Week, and after ten years or so of these weeks, Houston could become a city that always, in his words, "lived like it's hot 'cause it is" and "lived in the place that we're at and learned to embrace it."

Burleson says the invention of air conditioning has stopped us from coming to terms with who we really are.

"If a/c had not been invented for 100 years, if you could have taken 1885 or 1905 and paused the world's technology right there, and gave it 100 years of a gap, culture would have changed."

He cites the fashions of the 18th Century versus those of the 19th. "Things were really trimming down," he says. "And then you get to the early 1900s and you start to see Theodore Roosevelt wearing khakis instead of wool pants and the big hats. So you see they were already starting to deal with this [hot] reality, but then air conditioning is like this Band-Aid that came along and people said 'Okay, we don't have to deal with this anymore because we have this artificial cooling device that will make it fine as long as we never go outside.' But never going outside is kind of a big problem."

Nowhere more so than Houston.

Today, we'll explore the benefits of Burleson's dream -- a reborn downtown and Uptown and Houston's emergence as a world fashion capital -- in a little more depth.

First -- downtown revitalization.

​Andrew Burleson hates wearing dress clothes. He also believes this cultural hangover from our distant European ancestry costs too much money, is completely illogical and ruins much of Houston's social life for about half of the year.

"In the summer if you're dressed for work and you go outside it's just murder," says Burleson, an urban designer and real estate consultant and blogger. "Then you go home and change into something that's more appropriate, it's still hot but it's not nearly as bad. So on a weekend I can enjoy going to Discovery Green or on a walk somewhere outside, but not during the week."

As we all know, Houston is famously a city where you can see lots of people not enjoying themselves downtown on a daily basis. Especially during the work week in the summer months, those few that venture on the street for any length of time end up a sweaty mess, so most don't bother. Instead, workers stick to the tunnels and skywalks and stay fast in the embrace of air-conditioned comfort. But since the tunnels close around seven, Houston's downtown empties each day at closing time, and on weekends, the whole district save for a few bars and nightclubs is a virtual ghost town.

Unthinkingly, we've sacrificed our civic center on the altar of conformity to fashions developed long ago in much cooler countries. Another of the more obvious results is very high energy bills. Houston has long been known as "the most air-conditioned city on Earth" for a reason.

Burleson points out, and research bears him out, that women feel cooler than men. Thus we have the absurdity of women needing to take sweaters to work or play with them on days when the heat index tops 100. "We'll go to the movies, church or a restaurant and she will feel like she has to take a change of clothes with her, because she'll be really hot on the way, and then we'll get to the theater or whatever and go inside and she's freezing to death," says Burleson. "She can't sit there and enjoy the movies because she's freezing so hard."

To Burleson, our attachment to dress clothes is not just costly and a pain in the ass, but utterly unreasonable: Here on the cusp of the Tropics, why must we dress as if we are beset daily by cool London fogs?

"We get our fashion sense from Northern Europe, and it comes down to the rest of the U.S.," he says. "Our seasons are linked to that. In September, they start selling sweaters here. Are you kiddin' me?"

"Let's live like it's hot 'cause it is," he says. "Let's live in the place that we're at and learn to embrace it."

Ergo "Dress For The Weather Week."