Craig Hlavaty

Agora: Not reopening for a while.

​Houston had quite a few bars close down in 2010. They were your favorite places to drink, mingle, talk to a conquest, bum a cigarette, and spend money you didn't have, and they all mostly left with whimper, or in one bar's case, about a dozen fire trucks.
For every dynamite bar opening this year - Barcadia, Grand Prize Bar, Fitzgerald's, Hefley's, Liberty Station, Moon Tower Inn, Royal Oak, any number of gastropubs - there was something of an equal and opposite bloodletting.

Most bars just coalesce into something else over time. It would have been hard for us to imagine a year ago that right now we would be craving rabbit and pheasant hot dogs, one of our favorite bars would play Motorhead, LCD Soundsystem, and Ke(dollar sign)ha in equal measures, and we would be playing skee-ball drunk in Midtown on a Tuesday.

In 2011 we can expect more openings, including the new location of Dirt Bar somewhere downtown (shhhhh!), the new Walter's (possibly off Tuam, but shhhh!), and rising of a wine and coffee bar near Natachee's on Main by the Island.

This time next year, we could be raving about a new haunt that serves gallon jugs of whiskey and plays Klaus Nomi and Ratt all day. A boy can dream.

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Craig Hlavaty

The jukebox at Grand Prize Bar. Note George Jones, ZZ Top, Lightnin' Hopkins, Prince...

​Imagine that you have been frozen since September, or at least the beginning of the fall college semester. Or maybe you are an adult coming back to Houston to visit the folks, return Christmas presents, see friends and make bad decisions with people you forgot existed. Like that girl you worked with for a few years, but who always had a shithead boyfriend.

You more than likely have this Wednesday through next Sunday to hang in Houston and the suburbs before you have to go back to stupid real life full of teachers, bosses, live-in girlfriends and parole-officer visits. Rocks Off has a handy checklist for you to run through while you are here, so you can go back home and tell everyone how much their city sucks compared to Houston.

Did you know that other cities can't claim ZZ Top as their own? Isn't that messed up?

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Pull up a chair, start a tab and order a round of shots, because this is Rocks Off's weekly roundup of the goings-on in the Houston bar scene. Ups and downs, openings and closings, we will cover it all. Hit us up with any hot tips at craig.hlavaty@houstonpress.com.

Photos by Craig Hlavaty

​Open Tab visited our first bar geared exclusively to karaoke on Friday night while he was in the first of the four costumes we would wear over the Halloween weekend. Yes, the Beebs was in full chubby, sweaty effect. It was a lazy outfit and we had the wig, so there.

Glitter Karaoke off Milam in Midtown is seemingly built for making embarrassing, regretful evenings a reality, and it is fun as hell to watch someone stumble through a Britney Spears song. We went for a birthday, so our friends got a free pass to be stupid, but the rest of you need to practice in your cars more.

And to the guy who sang two Creed songs? You're going to Hollywood.

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Photo by Craig Hlavaty

​Agora Cafe, a popular Montrose drinking establishment and frequent hang-out for belly dancers, burned in a three-alarm blaze early Halloween morning. Our sister blog Hair Balls has tons of photos and the full report.

Photos by Craig Hlavaty

​Thanks, God! The weather this week has been more hospitable than the past five months of hell you put us through, making it easier to drink and smoke outside without our sweat putting out our cigarettes. It's always nice to know you got our backs, except for the whole dead-family-dog thing, and taking away our favorite drunken comic, Greg Giraldo, last week was kinda harsh.

With the better weather, patio and outdoor drinking has skyrocketed all over town. People are even wearing hoodies to bars, for your sake. Our friend Danni was rocking one the other night and it was only 70 degrees. We have been told that once it's hoodie weather, it's time to put the jorts up, but that's just an old hipster's tale, like how you can't wear trucker hats anymore unless you have a huge metalhead beard.

Anyhow, this we week we visited a few new bars and got a chance to catch up with a few oldies while we were at it.

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Pull up a chair, start a tab and order a round of shots, because this is Rocks Off's weekly roundup of the goings-on in the Houston bar scene. Ups and downs, openings and closings, we will cover it all. Hit us up with any hot tips at craig.hlavaty@houstonpress.com.

Craig Hlavaty

​During our travels last week, Rocks Off got to partake in the pleasure that is the Hideaway on Dunvale for steak night on Tuesday, which included the magical blues stylings of Rick Lee & The Night Owls. Lee and his band do ZZ Top, Bobby "Blue" Bland and B.B. King covers. We also witnessed the man playing his axe with the leg of a chair and licking the strings at one point. It was a good night for everyone, and we're sure the guitar had no complaints either.

Decades on Richmond is turning into Jackson's Watering Hole. The long-running gay bar is turning into what looks to be a Washington Avenue-style patio bar. The bar's Facebook page has been chronicling the changes every few days leading up to its re-opening this coming Thursday night. If we ever leave Grand Prize, stay tuned for a report in the next few days.

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Pull up a chair, start a tab and order a round of shots, because this is Rocks Off's weekly roundup of the goings-on in the Houston bar scene. Ups and downs, openings and closings, we will cover it all. Hit us up with any hot tips at craig.hlavaty@houstonpress.com.

Craig Hlavaty

Under the Volcano

​Maybe it's age catching up with us, or just our inner fat kid coming out to play, but lately Open Tab has been trying to find bars with decent food to jam in our gullet before we drink. If it's not enough to go cover bars alone and drink in the corner watching the goings-on, we now get to eat alone. Hell, there is even a Tumblr site for it.

To that end we finally got to step up to the plate at Under The Volcano this past Monday night for their steak night, along with two or three Saint Arnold's pints. UTV's steak nights are a storied affair, and we were more than happy to belly up to a table solo to get down with a rib eye. After all, it did win "Best Steak Night" in last year's Best of Houston awards.

Sadly we had to forgo the free hot dogs that KC from Kay's Lounge had promised he would be having at his Bissonnet dive across the street. What do you think, a steak, mashed pots, salad, and flan or some free chili dogs? Open Tab can't answer that, honestly. KC, see you this Monday night.

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Pull up a chair, start a tab and order a round of shots, because this is Rocks Off's weekly roundup of the goings-on in the Houston bar scene. Ups and downs, openings and closings, we will cover it all. Hit us up with any hot tips at craig.hlavaty@houstonpress.com.

Paul Knight

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• Rocks Off has really been getting into Hefley's off West Gray a few blocks from Cecil's. Hefley's (above) is a two-story country bar with food and drink specials all day, run by the same folks behind Kay's Lounge and a former owner of the Firehouse Saloon.

Hefley's makes a "Shiner Burger" with grilled onions soaked overnight in the titular beer. Couple that with deals on Texas beers and liquor and a British Invasion/classic-country jukebox, and it's like Catnip for us. Sometimes on the upstairs patio you can catch KTRH's Michael Berry - and order the "Michael Berry Burger" off the menu.

• Last Wednesday, we hit up Boondocks for Dollar Well night, Rocks Off's first time in the Montrose establishment in a while. It was like going back to high school with a new friend, pointing out all the places where certain things happened. The jukebox is still running with New Order and the Stone Roses, and all was right with the world.

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