Houston News Blog

​Can the Tremont House catch a break?

The charming hotel down on Galveston's Strand made it though Ike, if not unscathed at least with its head held high.

But its flooding problems weren't over. An allegedly drunk and disorderly customer at the bar decided to provide a little storm surge of his own, according to the Galveston County Daily News:

A historic downtown hotel sustained at least $100,000 in water damage, some to "irreplaceable items," when a guest ripped a water pipe out of a wall, police allege.

Lyle Robin, 22, of Porter, was charged with resisting arrest in connection with an incident about 11:50 p.m. Saturday at The Tremont House, 2300 Ship's Mechanic Row, Galveston police Capt. Jeff Heyse said.

Robin, who was in Galveston to attend a wedding, and two friends were told to leave the hotel bar after being accused of being intoxicated and disruptive, Heyse said.

What the hell is it with Galveston and weddings?

​Okay, is the moral of this story a) Love can overcome all obstacles, or b) Cats are too proud to walk a bit to get back to their owner?

Your decision no doubt rests on whether you're a dog or a cat person.

But it's the feel-good story of the early part of the morning: A Webster cat, who took off in fear during an evacuation as Hurricane Ike approached, has been found and reunited with its loving owner.

That owner is Juliet Pennay, who was in France when all this was going down. We can only hope Juliet's middle initial is C, because J.C. Pennay (or, we guess, Tar-shay) and Webster just go together.

Simon the cat was living with Pennay's mom when he took off as the family tried to get out of Ike's path.

​The list of Galveston Catholic churches that the Archdiocese wants to tear down is out, and it's somewhat grim reading.

The Galveston County Daily News reports that Archbishop Daniel DiNardo wrote island parishioners of the plans, not making everyone all that happy in the process.

Among those that might soon be gone to church heaven:

Our Mother of Mercy on Bolivar Peninsula. Members there are suing to stop the move, and a mediation session is scheduled for Friday.

Holy Rosary in Galveston? Ancillary buildings torn down, but not the main church. Same with Sacred Heart.

​Hurricane Ike has just officially become Yet Another Storm That Couldn't Beat Murdoch's Pier.

The historic shop, on a pier stretching out over the Gulf, has had a soft re-opening and is expecting to be fully operational by the end of the month, the Galveston County Daily News reports.

Some of the glitches still to be worked out include phone problems, so we weren't able to reach the owners, but they told the News that the east side of the building, which includes the gift shop, is open.

The state of Texas doesn't permit any new piers to be built, so this is officially a "renovation," we guess, of the place. But seeing as it was all but wiped out by Ike, it's quite the renovation.

Murdoch's has a long history with storms since it opened in 1910.

​The public housing in Galveston, like a lot of other stuff on that island, took a pounding from Hurricane Ike.

The Galveston Housing Authority has a proposal out that would rebuild the 569 housing units lost to the storm, and held a public meeting on it last night.

How did it go? Let's let the Galveston County Daily News describe it:

The public meeting hosted by the Galveston Housing Authority on Monday ended in a shouting match between people who support the plan to rebuild 569 public housing units and those who oppose it.

Encouraging poor people to live in Galveston is a bad idea, opponents of the plan, who were mostly white, said. But without public housing, the island's nurses, teachers aids and service industry workers will have nowhere to live, supporters of the plan, who were mostly African-American, said.

Yes, well. We're sure this will all end nicely.

Marie Creasy is the manager of the Poop Deck on Galveston's Seawall, so she's been at Ground Zero for the past year's efforts to recover from Ike.

As far as she can tell, things are back: "Everybody seems to be putting their lives back together, and those that aren't putting their lives back together are leaving, they're going somewhere else."

Take a look at Galveston and its surroundings, one year after Ike the Bastard, in this week's feature story by John Nova Lomax.

​The middle of September is going to be an Ike-anniversary overload, but we kinda like the way the Little Woodrow's in Rice Village is going about it -- they're taking themselves back to those brutal, electricity-less days after the storm by cutting off the power on Friday, September 11 and Saturday, September 12.

Not all the power -- the refrigerators will still be running, manager Timothy Orr tells Hair Balls. And it's quite possible that if it's a sticky-hot day, the post-Ike re-enactment will magically include air-conditioning.

But other than that, it's back to the blackout.

"I'm a little nervous -- I don't know how it's going to be received," he says. "But we just want to do it so people don't forget what it was like."

What it was like, for Little Woodrow's, was actually pretty good.

​Ike's anniversary is coming up, an event which will be well-covered locally. We're doing out part with the September 10 issue; until then we'll be posting some Ike-related items to whet the appetite.

In the 1950s the famous comedy team of Abbott and Costello developed what is probably their most popular routine, "Who's on First." The premise of the comedy routine is that Bud Abbott is identifying the players of a make believe baseball team for Lou Costello, but the team players names, for example "Who" is the name of the person playing first base and "What" is the name of the person playing second base, come off as non-responsive answers to Costello's questions.

The routine went something like this:

Costello: "Do you know the name of the first baseman?" Abbott: "Who's on first." Costello: "That's what I'm asking you, what is the name of the person who plays first base? Abbott: "No, What's on second. Who's on first."

On September 13, 2008, my house, along with thousands of others, was heavily damaged when Hurricane Ike swept through the Gulf of Mexico with the surge of a category four storm and landed in Galveston Bay. I spent the better part of the following year working with FEMA and the Houston Housing Authority (HHA) while my home was being rebuilt.

During this period there were times when I felt as hopelessly lost in a bureaucratic system filled with a comedy of errors as Costello did in trying to interpret Abbott's explanation of the fictional team roster. In my attempts to navigate the process of acquiring transitional housing, more often than not, like Costello, I found myself back on first base.

I've used America's favorite past time as an analogy to describe the sequence of events that took place in my own version of "Who's on First." In an attempt to stay in character, and protect the innocent, I have replaced the given names of the HHA staff with those used by Abbott and Costello.

September 13 -- Hurricane Ike hits Galveston Bay. The song "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" plays in the background as the announcer takes the mic.

September 22 -- FEMA/HHA establish the Disaster Housing Assistance Program-Ike (DHAP-Ike) to help citizens displaced by Ike find temporary housing. The players enter the field.

Photo by Daniel Kramer

​Kemah is at a crossroads where some residents want to keep the city an eclectic, fishing-village-type place, and others want to turn the town into a mini South Beach, with high-rise condos lined up along the shore.

That's what Robin Collins, a city councilwoman, told us at the city's second strategic planning meeting this weekend. Collins has lived in Kemah most of her life -- her husband used to be mayor -- and she favors keeping the city the same.

She added, "How many of us wouldn't bolt if someone came in and offered us a million and a half for our homes?"

Hair Balls went to this meeting hoping to learn something a little more than we did at the last meeting, where residents basically just complained about lighthouses and parking meters. Unfortunately, other than the conversation with the councilwoman, the only thing we learned is that the most important issue in the city, as decided by the council and the Kemah Community Development Corporation, is drainage.

​The pattern seems to be holding up -- in the year after getting hit by a major storm, when you're all tense and on edge for hurricane season -- you get a break.

The Colorado State University storm forecasters (Motto: Why Do We Care About Hurricanes In Colorado?) have once again cut the number of predicted hurricanes in 2009.

Ten tropical storms will form over the remainder of the season, and only four will turn into hurricanes, they say. (They said in June there'd be five.) Two will be major hurricanes.

El Nino and other highly technical stuff has kept any named storm from forming this year. Usually, according to the feds, there are 11 named storms and six hurricanes.

Of course, it only takes one, as they say. But it's always nicer to have the estimates go down rather than up.

Photo by bbaunach

​Whenever a city suffers a blackout for any extended period of time, you can be sure that journalists will trot out the old story about a "baby boom" happening nine months later.

It's definitely been enough time for any local Ike babies to get themselves out into the big ol' world, so -- just how big was the Ike Baby Boom in Houston?

Not so big. In fact, it was pretty much a bust.

Hair Balls got actual birth figures from the Hermann Hospital System (eight big hospitals for births), Texas Women's Hospital, LBJ and Ben Taub; we also talked to Methodist. While some saw an increase in births in June/July 2009 over the previous year, others saw drops.

"We are not seeing anything that can be attributed to an Ike baby boom," says Jennifer Hart, spokesperson for Hermann. "It's just normal summer numbers."

Hair Balls traveled to Kemah last night for what was billed as a "strategic planning meeting" to develop a plan for the city to move forward after losing $400,000 in revenue due to Hurricane Ike. We mainly wanted to talk to someone from the city about why the only budget-saving measure so far has been to lay off four police officers, but we were also curious how the city would be saved.

We failed at both.

The meeting, between the city council and the Kemah Community Development Corporation, seemed to be headed in a good direction before it started. About 80 Kemah residents showed up -- more people at a town meeting than ever before, according to one resident -- and the city brought in the "very highly recommended" Gary Mitchell from consulting firm Kending Keast to lead the way.

Things unraveled quickly.

Photo by Daniel Kramer

Maybe you heard, but Hurricane Ike smashed up Kemah pretty badly, and things aren't looking too good for the city these days.

Sure, the vaunted boardwalk is coming back, and the local Wal-Mart is scheduled to reopen today, but the city has reported about a $400,000 loss in revenue after Ike-related damage closed the boardwalk for three months. So, city officials have planned a "strategic planning meeting" to decide how to address the shortage of money. It's scheduled for 7 o'clock tonight at the Jimmy Walker Community Center, at 800 Harris Ave., in Kemah.

The police department already laid off four officers, dropping the police force to 19 cops, a move designed to ease the budget woes, according to the city. Furthermore, the city planned to name a new police chief in April, but that position remains vacant, apparently to save money.

But not everyone buys the city's explanation.

Oh Galveston, when will your Hurricane Ike suffering ever end?

News has come down that the last bowling alley on the island, the imaginatively named Island Bowl, will not reopen. Roof damage during Ike and struggles with insurance money have proven to be too much to over come.

No bowling. Are there two sadder words in the English language? Yeah, probably. "President Bush" comes to mind.

But now Galveston, which once sported three alleys, lies totally bereft of rentable shoes, greasy food and the joy of bowling leagues.

Island Bowl actually was born out of a hurricane -- it used to be Seahorse Lanes, until Hurricane Alicia blew ashore in 1983.

The Flagship Hotel, that iconic building on a pier in Galveston, seems to forever be endangered. It now looks like it's more endangered than ever.

The strange, twisty tale of the now semi-battered building might be coming to a conclusion, the Galveston County Daily News reports. Landry's Restaurants, Inc., which owns the building, is looking to sell it or demolish it, the paper says.

In its place would be....another Kemah Boardwalk-like "attraction," with restaurants and overpriced rides.

The company is in talks with a potential buyer, who they describe to the News as "serious." We're guessing that means it isn't Daniel Yeh, who owned the rights to manage the hotel for a long while and let it slide. Yeh was convicted of scamming FEMA after Katrina, even though his own attorney offered such sterling descriptions of him as "He can function. I mean, he's not like...a raving lunatic. He's not Anthony Hopkins. But he doesn't have the ability to discern things [and] can't make executive decisions."

The Scientist, a magazine that takes a skeptical look at goings-on in the medical industry, has a new report out on UTMB-Galveston's treatment of faculty in the wake of Hurricane Ike.

Color them unimpressed. (Free registration may be required.)

Or, maybe impressed -- just not in a good way. If you're tossing around terms like "show trials," it's generally not too positive a report.

Only a couple of the former University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) faculty members who challenged their terminations made in the aftermath of last year's Hurricane Ike have won their appeals in what some are calling "show trials," although some of the defeated professors have been rehired to the same or similar positions.

"The way that the whole thing was set up and executed, I think it was a farce," Roger Vertrees, a former non-tenure track associate professor of surgery who had his appeal denied, told The Scientist.

UTMB's layoff of thousands of its employees included about 120 professors; 30 appealed their pink slips, The Scientist reported. Of the 18 cases heard so far, only two professors have won.

Photo courtesy Historic Naval Ships Association

In April Galveston's popular World War II sub the USS Cavalla reopened after fixing damage caused by Hurricane Ike. Its companion ship, the USS Stewart -- a destroyer escort -- was still closed, however, due to the storm surge that lifted the boats and then settled them back down a little bent out of shape.

The Stewart is back in action as of today, though, and once again Seawolf Park has both its boats ready for tours.

The tours are highly recommended, by the way, for anyone with any interest in The Big One. It's an eye-opening look at how sailors lived and fought back in the day.

KUHT's big summer drive to make up its Ike-caused shortfall began a little over two weeks ago, and it's already a big success.

The station says it aimed to raise $550,000 (these figures always seem fluid) and they surpassed it, bringing in $632,867and adding 1,570 members to the current 39,000.

That's a lot of Far, Far More Doo-Wop Than You'll Ever Need DVDs. (Actually, we don't know what the big collectible was this time around.

"We're deeply grateful to everyone who contributed to the success of this drive-members, local businesses and foundations-over 80% of our $9 million dollar operating budget comes from community support. We simply could not do what we do here at Channel 8 without their help," says John Hesse, General Manager at HoustonPBS, in a release.

Good Morning America's Robin Roberts reported today on the first day of hurricane season from a fitting place -- Galveston. 

Standing amid the detritus left behind by Ike, and set to a soundtrack of plaintive acoustic slide guitar, Roberts expertly delivered the mandatory post-storm platitudes, such as "People here refuse to give up."

The broadcast of course included footage from Ike's first days, because as pleasant as Roberts is, there really wasn't anything exciting for her to do. After the footage, we suddenly saw Roberts talking to Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas, who offered the very mayoral "everybody's helping everybody."

We don't know if Thomas said it, or if GMA had to edit for time, but there was nothing along the lines of "Everybody's helping everybody, except the freakin' Galveston County Daily News," which Thomas blamed for single-handedly crushing her Hurricane Recovery Committee by pointing out that the head of the committee's son has a financial interest in the East End flats development. It's for that very reason -- pesky reporters -- that Thomas barred city employees from talking to the media. After all, what right did anyone except the mayor have to find out about how bad people's homes were hit?

NEWS FLASH!!!!!!!!! (MUST CREDIT HAIR BALLS!!!!!) Today is the beginning of the hurricane season.

While the rest of the so-called mainstream media will ignore this important milestone simply because writing or airing stuff about hurricanes in Houston results in cheap increases in ratings and clicks, you can depend on us to stoop that low.

This week will bring The Only Hurricane Guide You Will Ever Need. There's a lot of stuff about hurricanes that normally gets overlooked by such guides (Example: Stock up on batteries! Who knew?). We also offer tips on how best to deal with FEMA (Mostly, pray as hard as you can that no hurricane hits here.)

We couldn't cover everything, of course, so here are some questions (and answers!!) every Gulf Coast resident should know:

How many hurricanes will there be in the Gulf this year? What categories will they be rated at? And, just to follow up, where will landfall be?

In order: a) Four. b) 2, 3, 3, 2. c) Biloxi, Lake Charles, Brownsville, Mexico.

Hendley Market, Galveston's destination shopping place on The Strand for knick-knacks, sweets and other things you never knew you needed, is finally reopening after fixing its Ike damage.

"We are back in business after getting rid of that bad old Ike hangover," their announcement says.

They also note what Alanis Morisette would no doubt call ironic -- shortly before Ike hit, we here at the Houston Press cited them for being the place for "Best Hip, Fun or Nostalgic Gifts."

Here's what we said:

Hendley Market is the perfect place to buy '60s-era toys and wax lips for kids, knitted catnip-filled toys for cats, old coins for house-sitting neighbors and embroidered linens for co-workers. There are antique oddities such as medical instruments, quirky old books, gift items that hark back to the Victorian Age (in a good way, not a chastity-belt way) and Mexican retablos. It's a charming haven from the usual "sun 'n' sand" beach tourist claptrap predominant on an island.

As the reopening announcement noted, "we were forced to close before anyone could actually get to see for themselves how amazingly accurate was this designation."

For a few hours yesterday, the lead story at Chron.com gravely warned Houstonians on the dangers of mixing generators and video games. Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston evidently found that this happened often in the blacked-out weeks in the wake of Hurricane Ike, and issued a press release saying so, and the Chron's Cindy George ran with it.

"Many children treated for carbon monoxide poisoning in the powerless days after Hurricane Ike took ill while playing video games," intoned the article's lead sentence. Later, the article stated that of the children treated for monoxide poisoning who gave a specific reason for why they were using a generator, a full 75 percent said it was to power video games.

The very idea...

The article seemed tailor-made to stir up the "My lawn, get off of it" brigades, and it certainly did. Many of the 100-plus comments it elicited were along these lines: What kind of a society are we living in? What kind of parents would harness scarce resources to lavish such luxury on their spoiled brats? Video games? Back in my day, when we had a weeks-long post-hurricane power outage, we played cribbage, mumblety-peg, and shot marbles, and it was more fun than any of that violent mind-numbing balderdash. And instead of having good old-fashioned fun, these kids were literally killing themselves -- so it was averred in at least one comment -- to play their precious Xbox.

Not so much.

Photo by rhaaga

The Balinese Room, several months before Chris Jagger apparently enjoyed a drink there.

Has British tabloid the Daily Mail become the Daily Fail? It sure seemed like it when Hair Balls came across a Texas travelogue by Chris Jagger.

Jagger, the brother of Mick, gathered little moss as he rolled around the Lone Star State last month. (The story is listed as "last updated" on April 28, 2009.) He palled around with legendary 94-year-old blues piano-man Pinetop Perkins in Austin, tracked down a stray steer in the brush on a Bandera dude ranch, and promenaded along the River Walk and took in the Alamo in old San Antone.

And then Jagger headed to Galveston, where his account takes a turn for the surreal.  

"The one watering hole I got to --the Bali Room [sic] - is where the Margarita was invented (apparently it was made for singer Peggy Lee)," he writes. "It is also famous as one of the favourite haunts for Frank Sinatra and his mafia gambling chums during the Fifties. Duke Ellington's piano is still in the ballroom. In the end, the politicians got the better of the mafia and the place now wears a faded charm."

There are two ways to interpret this puzzling account. If we were feeling uncharitable, we could accuse Jagger of phoning in a rehash of some old articles about Galveston.

But since it is Friday, we will credit Jagger with engaging in the kind of droll British understatement by which "a faded charm" could mean "utterly annihilated by Hurricane Ike."

Pretty much no one ever goes to visit the modernistic white pavilion at Galveston's Seawolf Park.

Now they never will.

The building, which is mostly a kind of visual landmark seen by people cruising on the ferry, was heavily damaged by Ike. Since it was a bit of a white elephant, the city's Parks Board has voted not to repair it, the Galveston County Daily News reports.

Now the question is what, if anything, should replace it on the tip of Pelican Island. Suggestions include a hotel, a museum dedicated to the immigrants who entered the US there, an RV park or a restaurant.

This was the hotttness back in the day in Galveston

From 1920 to 1932, Galveston hosted an annual "pageant of pulchritude" on the beach in front of the Seawall. At its Roaring `20s peak, the bathing-suit contest that was officially known as the Galveston Island Beach Revue would entice some 200,000 people (a preponderance of them male, we would imagine) per year, tripling the population of the Island for the weekend.

After a dormancy of 76 years, it is coming back on May 16. The event is being resurrected by a group known as Islander By Choice, professional twenty- and thirtysomethings who are becoming adept at enhancing Galveston's social and cultural life.

IBC's Adrienne Culpepper explains how they decided to revive the pulchritude: "About two years ago, we were looking for ideas for [IBC] T-shirts, and we came across an old pamphlet for the bathing beauty contest. We just thought, Oh my gosh, we should totally bring this back.'  Originally the plan was to do it in 2010, but after Ike, we decided it was now or never this year."

Culpepper says that she and her cohorts are learning more about the event's history every day. The bathing suit contest was once a part of Splash Weekend, the official kick-off and opening of the Island for summer festivities, she says. While she has yet to talk to anyone who either competed in the event or observed -- small wonder, since most of those people would be in their 90s at the least today -- she did hear that one former contestant still lives on the Island in a local retirement home.

Photo courtesy Galveston Historical Foundation

The Strand, downtown Galveston's most historic district, is getting a little help today in its efforts to preserve itself.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has named "The Cast-Iron Architecture of Galveston" as one of its 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

Even before Ike there were worries about the buildings which had been constructed back when Galveston was Texas's main port. But the storm did some major damage,  a Trust V-P reported recently.

The 15 block Strand National Historic Landmark District looks good physically in terms of recovery from the 10 - 13 feet of water that engulfed it during Hurricane Ike.

All buildings have been cleaned out, and rehab work is underway on most. George Mitchell estimates that his 20 plus historic buildings on the Island suffered some $20 million damage with insurance covering about $10 million - he is doing the rest. (One hard lesson learned was that George's 39 elevators were not locked in upper-floor positions as Ike was downgraded to a Force 2, and so when power went off, they automatically descended to their lowest positions...and were wrecked by the ensuing flooding.)

Photo courtesy www.cavalla.org

The USS Cavalla, the World War II submarine that is a tourist attraction at Seawolf Park, has finally reopened after repairing Ike damage.

The storm surge lifted the sub and refloated it, curator John McMichael tells Hair Balls, and when the tide flowed back out it brought with it dirt that has left the sub five feet higher off the ground than it used to be.

"We left it like that; it's more impressive," McMichael says. "We had to add about seven steps to the stairs that go up to it."

Also damaged were parts of the a/c system, and some water had to be pumped out of the ship. The bill for the repairs has yet to come in, McMichael says, but it will have to be paid partly from FEMA and partly from donations.

Photo by Jennifer Reynolds

This Galveston County Daily News photo shows the shape the trees are in

Galveston needed more bad Ike news like it needed more Ike.

But more bad news is being reported: The leafy trees that provided a distinctive canopy over many of the island's most charming streets ain't coming back.

The Galveston County Daily News reports that the salt water that inundated three-quarters of the island during Ike may just have killed off many of the trademark trees Galveston is known for.

Seven months after Ike the trees are still bare, and that's not good, the paper reports:

The lack of new leaves is a bad sign, said Texas Forest Service experts, who had hoped the trees would have shown some signs of life by now. Next week, a team from the state agency will assess the trees on public property -- many of which were planted after the 1900 Storm -- and decide which ones should be replaced.

Everyone's gloomy.

"The trees just aren't coming back as well as we thought they would," said Mickey Merritt, the bayou region urban forest coordinator for the state agency, the paper reported.

Five Catholic parishes serving the Galveston area will be consolidated into one, the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston announced today.

Gone are the parishes of St. Patrick, Holy Rosary, Sacred Heart, St. Peter the Apostle and Our Mother of Mercy. In their place will be a single parish, yet unnamed. (Probably not a front-runner for the new name: St. Isaac Jogues, a/k/a "St. Ike's."

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo said in a press release that the consolidation was the best way to serve the 3,000 homes that had been registered in the various parishes pre-Ike.

"Our proposal is for the creation of a single parish, which will have responsibility for the integration of the entire community into a single worship family," he said, "and for the evaluation and disposition of the church buildings and other assets of the former parishes."

The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA), a last-resort insurer, is dragging its feet on claims filed after Hurricane Ike, and Democratic State Rep. Craig Eiland isn't having it.

According to the Galveston County Daily News, last week Eiland filed suit against TWIA, as have 50 other coastal business owners, for its disproportionate compensation.

Eiland told Hair Balls, "They paid 60 percent, and I believe they should pay 100 percent."

He's been paid $60,000, or the equivalent of three months of business interruption, even though the office he leases for his Galveston law firm has been under construction for eight months.  

Eiland said, "I'd like to get the rest of my business interruption paid."

He said the company doesn't want to pay him more than that because the windstorm damage repairs would have only taken three months, and construction beyond that time is the result of flood damage.