Some time back, Swamplot's Allyn West and his commenters were discussing Houston's never-ending quest to become more of a tourist town. Not everyone is on board with that mission, least of all Swamplot commenter Old School, who believed Houston's relative lack of tourists was a boon for the city. "Tourists clog up restaurants, bring out supid T-shirt shops and fill the streets with silly duck boat cars and double decker buses," he wrote.   

 Well, at least one of the things Old School abhors about tourists has arrived. Behold!

Seated out in front of La Carafe Sunday afternoon, this behemoth appeared as out of a vision and rumbled past down Congress, an open-top tomato-red double-decker bus that looked straight from Trafalgar Square or Piccadilly Circus or Upper Ramsbottom Crescent or wherever.

It's a cool sight, if more than a little hallucinatory. Houstonia colleague Katharine Shilcutt says she thought she was high the first time she saw one.

The bus is brought to you by Houston City Tours and they bill it as "The first open top London Double Decker Tour Bus in Houston." Tours leave from the George R. Brown Convention Center thrice daily -- at 9:50 A.M., 11:25 A.M., and 12:45 P.M. There are six stops along the circuit: the GRB, Market Square Park, City Hall / Houston Visitors Center, the Downtown Aquarium, Hermann Park and the Museum District. Tickets are a bit steep: $29.95 for adults, $25.95 for seniors, $19.95 for kids and a buck for infants. Riders may hop and off all day long for the price of a single ticket, but the bus heads back for the barn around two P.M.

"Admire the most symbolic and breathtaking sites, gaze up in wonder at the monumental Chase Tower, and be delighted by sights of the colorful Theater District," Houston City Tours gushes at their Web site. "You’ll get a taste of high culture at the Museum District, home to some of the world’s most famous works of art."

 Well now.

Houston City Tours is offering a special deal right now -- a free ride aboard the bus with the purchase of a ticket to Space Center Houston.  Click here and scroll down a bit for details.

Five local sites for future historical markers, remembering people, places and things ranging from tragic to well, mostly just sticking with tragic...But that's history for you. 

Never Poke A Bear

Place: 1002-1004 North San Jacinto.

What Happened There: On December 30, 1905, enraged that a Fifth Ward saloon-keeper dared name a bar after her, hulking, wild-eyed, hatchet-wielding anti-alcohol zealot Carrie Nation smashed up her namesake tavern.

Quote: "I requested that my name be taken from the place several months ago, and I told the proprietor that if he did not change the name I would come back and wreck the place,” Nation told the Houston Daily Post.“He promised that he would change the name. He failed to do it, and I had but one recourse. I am not a man and could not whip him; I did not want to use a pistol on him, and I simply wrecked the saloon."

What It Looks Like Now:

Wow, the building is still there! 

The Ever-Elusive Birthplace of Rock and Roll?

Place: Possibly 612 Westheimer. Bear with a little conjecture here...

What Happened There: In 1949, somewhere in Houston, alongside his Hepcats, 19-year-old Fifth Ward native Goree Carter recorded "Rock Awhile," a hard-charging electric guitar-driven romp. Decades later, the late New York Times pop critic Robert Palmer cited it as the very first rock and roll song ever recorded. Sadly, Carter soured on the music business about five years later and all but retired from public performance in 1954 and died in 1990.

In 1949 many of the top rhythm and blues and country performers in the area recorded their music at ACA Studios, where the sessions were overseen by engineer Bill Holford. Carter recorded for Sol Kahal's Freedom Records label, a relatively well-financed operation, so it seems a strong possiblity that "Rock Awhile" would have been cut in what was then one of the area's most sophisticated studios. ACA moved a few times, to Washington Avenue and then to Westpark, but in '49, it was near the Westheimer curve. (We await word from local music scholar Andrew Brown: watch for updates.)

Quote: Robert Palmer, on "Rock Awhile": "The clarion guitar intro differs hardly at all from some of the intros Chuck Berry would unleash on his own records after 1955; the guitar solo crackles through an overdriven amplifier; and the boogie-based rhythm charges right along. The subject matter, too, is appropriate—the record announces that it's time to 'rock awhile,' and then proceeds to show how it's done. To my way of thinking, Carter's 'Rock Awhile' is a much more appropriate candidate for 'first rock and roll record' than the more frequently cited 'Rocket '88'…"

What It Looks Like Now:

Is the birthplace of rock and roll a Lower Westheimer parking lot? It very well might be.

Jelly Roll Morton's Bayou City Sin Den

Place: Fuller Street, which no longer exists. This marker would be placed somewhere near I-45 North at West Dallas.

What Happened There: In 1914, this was the home of pioneering jazz man and piano lord Jelly Roll Morton, who came to Houston from New Orleans to play music, run a haberdashery (mostly as a front), and, in the parlance of the day, "sport." (Read: gamble, pool-shark, hustle the local yokels, pimp and enjoy the favors of wild women.)

Quote: (Here's Morton explaining his decision to leave Houston, just ahead of the long arm of one officer Peyton of HPD.) "I was tired of Houston anyway. There wasn't any decent music around there, only Jew's harps, harmonicas, mandolins, guitars and fellows singing the spasmodic blues—sing a while and pick a while till they thought of another word to say. So I said, 'Okay, Peyton, goodbye to you and your ratty town. I'm going north.'"

What It Looks Like Now:

At least Morton would have a straight shot beating feet north out of town.

Catfish Reef

Place: 400 Block of Milam 

What Happened There: In the mid-20th Century, the block was known as Catfish Reef, one of Houston's foremost tenderloins.

Quote: Taken from Sig Byrd's Houston:  

"The Reef is bi-racial. The light and the dark meet here. Generally speaking, the odd numbers, on the east side, are dark, the even numbers light; but the exception proves the rule.

What It Looks Like Now:

Today's Catfish Reef: where parking is not that cheap and nothing else whatsoever is available. 

The Eloquent Colonel Sydnor's Slave Market

Place: Congress Avenue between Fannin and Main

What Happened There: For about the last 15 years leading up to and including the Civil War, former Galveston mayor John Seabrook Sydnor bought and sold slaves on the site. We should never forget this.

Quote: Taken from The City of Houston from Wilderness to Wonder, by O.F. Allen: "I have seen that eloquent auctioneer sell many slaves. He was an expert as an orator in the description he gave of the qualities and abilities of the slaves he offered for sale; and often attracted large crowds at his place by his eloquence and voice."

What It Looks Like Now:

In 1928, Houston found itself in the national spotlight as never before, and as it has seldom been since. That was the year Jesse Jones brought the Democratic National Convention to the upstart Baghdad on the Bayou.

 To welcome the hordes of visiting delegates, reporters and gawkers to town, the brand-new (and, alas, short for the world) city magazine the Houston Gargoyle published a visitors’ guide to the city’s admittedly then-mediocre dining and amusements.

“[Visitors] will find no infinite variety such as is available in the metropolises,” allowed the unnamed Gargoyle scribe, “but neither should they perish of hunger or ennui.”

Much of the dining scene was ensconced in the big hotels—at that time, the Bender, the Brazos, the Rice, the Lamar, the Warwick, and the Plaza. In each of those hotel restaurants, guests could be assured of (how’s this for a specific pointer?) “good food, well-cooked and politely served.”

The Rice Roof was designated as “the downtown rendezvous,” its atmosphere and bill of fare “swank” and its prices high.  (Establishments were rated “swank,” “good but unpretentious,” or “fair.”) The Warwick (today’s Zaza) was for “the boulevardier” and featured dining “high in the air,” the better to “catch any vagrant breezes.” 

It too was swank, as was the al fresco restaurant behind the Brazos Hotel (on the foot of Washington Avenue): “[The Brazos] receives its guests in a graveled, leaf-bordered court, reminiscent of Old Mexico, under the open sky. The hotel is noted for its beefsteaks.” (None of the other hotels were reported to have a specialty, so we can only wonder what was on their menus.)

Loggia adjoining the Brazos Court restaurant.

‘Cue believers had exactly two options. Haines Stand (on Webster near what is now the Gulf Freeway in Third Ward) and Shane’s Stand on Polk near what is now Super Happy Fun Land in the East End. Seafood lovers could choose between the Lewis Oyster Parlor on Rusk or embark on the grueling 20-mile drive to the San Jacinto Inn, which continued dishing out its bounty of family-style fried shrimp and oyster feasts for another 60 or so years.

Houston was not yet the Creolized culinary gumbo pot it would one day become. Mexican could be had at Original Mexican at 1109 Main, where Felix Tijerina still worked, a year from opening what would one day become his Tex-Mex empire. And that’s it, save possibly for some tamale vendors in the streets.

An unspecified variety of “foreign dinner” was the bill of fare at a place at 1411 Main called Golden Pheasant. Along with Original Mexican, that was all the Gargoyle had to say about ethnic eating in the Houston of 1928.

 But there was more of the exotic—as always—down on Telephone Road. There at an unspecified address stood Kuei Pei Fu Pagoda, a Chinese-themed restaurant/nightclub featuring Chinese food, orchestras, and a small dance-floor.

And aside from vaudeville and motion pictures at the city’s five “theatres,” and polite dances in hotel ballrooms, the Kuei Pei Fu Pagoda was exactly half of Prohibition Houston’s nightlife.

“Of nightclubs we have but two,” lamented the Gargoyle. “Neither one is exactly a hum-dinger, but they will serve very well as places to go when the city’s night life falls dead.”

Fast-growing, but no hum-dinger after dark.

The other was the Log Cabin Inn in what is now the Pecan Park area.  “This rambling log structure, with its big open air veranda, has a really attractive setting among tall pines on the side of a deep ravine, wherein dwells a giant bull-frog who bellows hoarsely to entertain the guests.” (Like a  Rainforest Café, but for real!) The orchestra at the Log Cabin was fronted by a “deep-voiced woman singer.”

By day, you could swim at any of Houston’s four public pools: the Heights Natatorium, Hot Wells on Washington Avenue, Albert Sidney Johnston High School, or head way over to Magnolia Gardens on the San Jacinto River. Golfers had six courses to choose from. You could ride a pony on Almeda or watch others do so at Rice’s apparently frequent on-campus rodeos. There was baseball at brand-new Buffalo Stadium in the East End, and at 2210 Houston Avenue, there stood the offices for the 36 acres of “Houston’s Coney Island”: Luna Amusement Park, somewhat dangerous and often controversial. (Two guests and a stuntwoman died in two separate incidents in a single day in 1924.)

And that was pretty much all 1928 Houston had to offer. “Houston: come for the foreign dinner, stay for the giant bull-frog at one of our two nightclubs.” We’re imagining that the national press corps greeted this assignment with as much anticipation as America’s sportswriters did that one time Detroit got the Super Bowl.

Not the hottest ticket around.

It's funny how this works, but every mode of ground transport makes you see a different Houston. Cars focus you on the macro—billboards and buildings and such. Buses focus you on your traveling companions or reading / listening material. Walking tends to channel me toward whats on the ground. For a while there when I was a dedicated pedestrian, I was assembling quite the Found-worthy cache.

Cycling kind of offers a melange of all of the above. Here's a few photos to show you what I mean...

Houston's ongoing real estate boom has offered little in the way of inspiring architecture. All these Neo-Tuscan condos and faux-Mediterranean mid-rise megaplexes might get the job done as far as providing basic shelter and having tony Inner Loop locations, but the vast majority of them are about as satisfying and worthy of mention as an $8 bottle of CVS Merlot. Most developers in the Heights, River Oaks, Upper Kirby and Montrose seem content to wrap the city's streetscapes in the outdoor equivalent of doctor's office wallpaper, smooth jazz in stucco and Tyvek. None of them make you slow down and wonder WTF and smile...

Finding exceptions is getting harder and harder, but hey, that's what we're here for. I've come up with pictures of five of the most joyfully eccentric edifices in town and asked Houstonia arts editor Michael Hardy to add his comments to my own. And we'll also include the critiques of Houston's foremost architectural historian Stephen Fox, author of the indispensable AIA Houston Architectural Guide, now in its third edition.    

And we begin with...

Image: Google Maps

The Penguin Arms, 2902 Revere

Stephen Fox calls the Googie erstwhile apartment building "zany," and defers to John Kaliski for further comment: "It seems either poised for take-off or imploding even as one views it." Hardy sees it as "Philip Johnson’s Glass House after being crushed in a horrible industrial accident." I see the grill of an enormous late '50s Cadillac about to squash me, or a 1970s Cylon buried up to its head. 

Moving on, we have the...

Image: Google Maps

Chong Hua Sheng Mu Gong Holy Palace, 3695 Overture Drive

Fox gives us a thumbnail history of this derelict temple: it was intended as the centerpiece of a Hong Kong-based Taoist compound. (The sect's leader was deported, and the Holy Palace alone was all that was completed.) He continues: "The building's dramatic, stair-step section, cradling a gold anodized aluminum geodesic globe, imbues it with a science-fiction aspect in the midst of a partially developed multi-family housing community dating from the early 1980s." Hardy likens it to "LA’s The Getty giving birth to Epcot Center" and "Richard Meier and Buckminster Fuller’s illegitmate love child." I first encountered the Holy Palace five years on an outward-bound metro bus before walking the length of Richmond back downtown, and it was the strangest thing hiking buddy David Beebe and I saw all that day and night. Back then, there were two smaller orbs flanking the larger one (where did they go?), and I likened it to Hank Scorpio’s World Domination Command Bunker, while Beebe surmised that it might be the private residence of a very weird Saudi sheik.

Sticking with holy places, we have....  

Image: John Nova Lomax

Southeast Worship Center, 144-149 Winkler Drive

"Proclamation of the word is that this little church is all about," wrote Fox in his second edition, back when it was known as Freeway Baptist Church, even though it's not on a freeway. (Fox seems to have excised this entry from the newer one.) I call it the Church of the Open Book, while Hardy deems it "Postmodernism at its finest. A church that would stand proudly beside a Las Vegas casino. Or, a post office crushed by a giant bible—symbol of church versus state?"

One last holy place, this one actually on a freeway...

Image: Google Maps

El Templo Regional de la Luz del Mundo, 8312 Eastex Freeway

Fox reveals the Eastex edifices surprising historical forebear. He says that it is a "Mexican-Texan version of the neoclassical Church of the Madeleine in Paris and adds that it "astonishes with its marble Ionic portico, storiated pediment, and brazen gilded dome." (Barely visible above.) All in all it brings a "Baroque frisson" to the Eastex feeder road, he writes. I once wrote that it was "a giant, golden-domed slab of Greek Revival wedding cake," and like me, Hardy is having trouble seeing where God fits in amid all this over-the-top stentorian splendor: "The Supreme Court building as reimagined by Donatella Versace," he cracks.  

And we close with...

Image: Google Maps

Bellfort Square Office Building, 6711 Bellfort

Citing its anodized gold aluminum mullions, green aggregate precast concrete panels and warped penthouse, Fox calls this "one of the zaniest buildings in Houston." Hardy is equally dumbfounded: "Paging air traffic control! Only in Houston would an architect think 'what this generic office block really needs is an observation deck.'" I've always thought this looked less like an airport than a 1960-vintage train station in some place like Bulgaria or Novosibirsk, Russia.

So what is this list missing?  

Essentially contending it remains the hive of scum and villainy that neighbors (and police) have long reported it to be, the State of Texas and Harris County attorney Vince Ryan have sued the real property known as 1901 Richmond (formerly one of several Skylane complexes in the city) and its owner, Fat Property LLC. Ryan and assistant county attorney Celena Vinson contend that multiple aggravated assaults and drug offenses have occured on the premises between August of last year and this month, a time period that also saw police summoned to the property about 100 times. According to the suit, all that nefarious devilry constitutes a common nuisance, one the complex's owners knew about and have done too little to abate.

The state seeks an injunction forcing the complex to post a bond of between $5,000 and $10,000, clean up the crime or forfeit the bond and shut down for a year.

"It kinda calmed down there a couple of summers ago, but this past year it was bad," says Kurt Brennan of Sound Exchange, the venerable record shop catty-corner from the complex. "It was like an episode of Cops outside our window every day. There would be like four cops surrounding some guy on the ground, gesticulating wildly, telling some elaborate story. It was pretty entertaining really."

According to DPS records, no fewer than four registered sex offenders live in the complex's 40-odd units, which seems a little lower than that total was in its super-sketchy Skylane heyday. 

Apprised of the newly-filed suit by Houstonia, Fat Property head Cody Lutsch said that the complex is now about 1000 times better than it was before he bought it two years ago. "I have no idea why they would be filing a lawsuit," he added. "Obviously I will defend it, and I have no reason to think I would lose."

Lutsch has been snapping up and sprucing up downmarket Montrose and Midtown apartment complexes in recent years and even won a Swampie from Swamplot.com for his 2012 turnaround of a formerly decrepit Midtown complex on Holman Street.  

Image: Greg Wood

There were high hopes Lutsch could do something similar with this complex, which was also once amusingly known as "the Houston Medical Apartments," but to hear the state tell it, cleaning up the Richmond Skylane has proven to be a Sisyphean task, even for somebody with Lutsch's money and credentials.

We once spent a memorable evening there during the Great Hurricane Rita scare of '05. The night the storm scraped past to the east, and the city was all-but-empty and in a state of near-anarchy for those who remained behind, an old guy had wheeled a cooler full of beer and a 1980s vintage hi-fi stereo from his unit to the curb. There he blasted 50 Cent, the Temptations and Marvin Gaye to his companions—a couple of downward-spiraling strippers—and passersby alike. 

"Our manager left and we're poor folks," said one of the ladies. "We just don't know how to act," she smiled. "Yeah," I replied, hoisting a Lone Star tall-boy. "When the Man evacuates, you must celebrate."

Fast forward to today, and the new phrase is: "When the state litigates, you must abate."

Excluding bars, of the many locations in Houston that I've been told to visit, few have left me fulfilled. The Beer Can House, the Williams Water Wall, the various Adickes statues—all nice sites, but none truly iconic.

Allen's Landing, however, fills me with awe. No, it's not the Grand Canyon, but the confluence of White Oak and Buffalo Bayou is everything that’s missing from almost everywhere else in this ever-expanding Houston.   

It has history; as the site of Houston's founding in 1836 by the Allen brothers, it is the original center of the city where cotton and timber entered and parted. It was the economic and cultural base for this developing port town. There is a particular view of Main Street from the water where one can imagine how Houston was once a tightly constructed pedestrian city like those of the northeast or Europe. Alone by the nearly stagnant water, the sense of history is palpable.

Second, the bayou is wild. Many look at our bayous and mock them for their muddy complexion or their pollution, but I find them inspiring. Their beauty is in their ruggedness, and the exotic feel that they maintain in the middle of an increasingly refined city. The overgrowth along the un-channelized bayous attests to the hot pulsing life force of the sub-tropical region. Less maintained sections of the city have signs of this lush vitality creeping up their brick walls with vine growth, but Buffalo Bayou is the pinnacle of the wilderness that still exists in Houston.

Finally, Allen's Landing is not a fabrication. Yes, it was constructed by man, and yes, it has been repaved and is in the process of an revitalization, but Allen's Landing itself is not an attraction designed by a housing developer or petrochemical company. We can build amusement parks and design landmarks, but it is history, natural beauty, and uniqueness that make a place worth visiting.

Plans are afoot to convert the old Sunset Coffee Building (also once known in a more psychedelic era as the Love Street Electric Light Circus Feel Good Machine) into a public venue/office space and a boat rental shop. In the Houston Chronicle earlier this year, Susan Keeton of the Buffalo Bayou Partnership stated that post-redesign "this beautiful slope ought to just attract people, too many, almost."

I cannot help but agree with her, especially with the recent revival of Market Square Park taking place a mere block away. But for now, this precious destination is left abandoned and unlit, appropriated by the homeless. It deserves to be recognized as the icon that it is, and if we'll let it, Allen's Landing can serve as the living heart of the growing cultural capital that is Houston, Texas. 

A site called Ucityguides.com claims that Houston is the ugliest city in the first world and the seventh most hideous metropolis on the planet, trailing only Mexico City, Guatemala City, Amman, Caracas, Luanda and Chisinau, and barely more fetching than Detroit.

Here's what they had to say about us:

Houston, we have a problem: You're ugly. This is the United States' fourth largest city when it comes to population, but the attraction sure isn't scenery. There are many other ugly American cities (let's face it -- American metropolises aren't exactly beauties: Atlanta, Cleveland...), but this one should win the title of ugliest of them all, with a large impoverished and homeless population (close to one in five families live below the poverty line) and a cityscape with no formal zoning regulations.

Well now, we can do better than that. Zoning, poor people and that completely played-out "Houston, we have a problem" crack is the best they can come up with?

Obviously they haven't seen the following spots from our proud city of crude people and refined oil, or we would be number one in the whole wide world.

Look out Guatemala City, and Adios Amman, prepare to get out-uglied H-Town style.  

Image: Google Maps

Ella Boulevard's "Trans Fat Alley." (Not pictured: Carl's Jr., Raisin' Cane, KFC.)

Image: Google Maps

Broad majestic Westheimer.

Image: John Nova Lomax

Our waterways.

Image: Google Maps

A typical Wallisville Road cantina.

Image: John Nova Lomax

Broadway Bridge over Brays Bayou

Image: John Nova Lomax

The Houston that this bot creates is as surreal as the smurfy fire hyrdrants.

So last night we were hipped to the web bot What Would I Say, and it's been like Internet-based crack to us ever since. If you consent to hand over your Facebook log-in to the site, it will instantly cull through all your Facebook status updates going back years and generate a Mad Lib of your psyche, something very much like you might actually type next on your page.

Very much, but not quite, as we shall see...

Anyway, I have been on Facebook and more or less addicted to it for five years now, and I tend to post about Houston a lot. Here are some of the weirdest and funniest posts the WWIS bot generated from my rantings about the city. Some of these WWIS posts were likened by one friend of mine to being comparable to "getting a local tour from a frothing meth-addled guide."

1. "Eureka Yard at TC Jester. Latma at Stella Link. Wake Forest at a distance, chanting for my fingers that I am trying to show based on the Houstonia blog." 

2. "Style, panache, grace under every bed in the Heights." (Hubba hubba.)

3. "I wonder if it ran like it had hitched a ride on the most disastrous misadventures of Joel Osteen, but he's not easy at all."

4. "What a great way Clear Lake, I have lived with their worthless insights."  

(Note: Sorry Clear Lake. You are my favorite suburb, honest.)

5. "Don't worry about Santa Muerte, I decided to flip the script and the Eastex is even less embarassing than alive." (Is it?)

6. "Montrose still made me weep." 

Note: It does, not least because of this: 

Image: John Nova Lomax

7. "Well, they let Cajun citizens celebrate their Thanksgiving Dinner and would actually argue two sides of any way it came from Houston."

(We're letting Cajuns celebrate Thanksgiving now? Katy bar the door...)

8. "Houston, the biblical definition of The Wire."

(Note: Dayum.)

9. "Paycheck's tribute to the show Moonshiners as elicited from Pepe Fiesta."

(Note: Pepe is the official name of Fiesta Mart's parrot mascot. Johnny Paycheck was the honky-tonk legend known most widely for "Take This Job and Shove It." I would love to see a parrot-produced show like this. And yes, I am obviously a Fiesta fanatico. )

10. "Now Gwendolyn Zepeda, who is stealing a yerberia and also with me."

(Note: WWIS sometimes throws your friends in there. Zepeda—pictured below—is Houston's poet laureate, but has not, to my knowledge, ever heisted a yerberia. Nor are we together.)

Image: Julian Bajsel

Is this the face of a yerberia thief?

11. "I wonder if that Avenging Angel tombstone is watching dolphins dancing to the media era."

(Note: The Avenging Angel—seen below—is one of the most famous monuments in Glenwood, Houston's loveliest cemetery.)

Image: John Nova Lomax

12. "Anyone remember the details about when Kevin McHale got caught by Brother Casey?"

(Note: As all graduates of Strake Jesuit will remember with mixed fear and grudging admiration, Brother Casey was the school's long-time prefect of discipline. Back in his playing days with the Celtics, Rockets coach Kevin McHale got in a scrap at a Nils Lofgren show at Rockefeller's. Casey was not on the scene. )

13. "TOP NOTCH POT OF factors—overdevelopment, overpopulation, Yuppification, hubris, the social media era." 

(Note: this was partially inspired by a meal at Chinatown's Mala Sichuan restaurant and partially inspired by my usual rants about all these condos going up everywhere.)

14. "Houston not a bad Earth Wind and Fire pit."  

(Note: Wow, Earth Wind and Fire pits! Genius! And Houston is totally a funky Earth Wind and Fire-pit of a city!)

15.  "It was perhaps inevitable that Donald/Deedoodle Duck would walk at 5 pm to 4525 Beechnut Street, Houston." 

(Note: pretty fair opening line to a Pynchonesque postmodern novel there...Thanks Bot!)

16. "Airline Drive takes me to YOUR job."

(I hope not for your sake.)

 Feel free to add yours to the comments!

When world-classily touting the world-classiness of our world-class city to all the world's classes, local booster types seldom mention Houston's gay scene. (Except to mention how world-class it is for us to have now twice-elected a LESBIAN MAYOR.)

That may change now that Buzzfeed has deemed Montrose the ninth-finest gayborhood on the planet, just behind New Orleans's Faubourg Marigny and just ahead of the Fruit Loop in Las Vegas. (We didn't know it was called that either.)

The site touts the TC's Show Bar's drag shows as can't miss events, and also stresses the area's artsy leanings in the Rothko Chapel, the MFA, and the CAMH, and all the free galleries.

Then there's the thrift stores along the Westheimer curve and the folk scene, which, truth be told, has seen much better days. (Alas: Townes, Guy, Lucinda and Lyle are long gone, Buzzfeed.) Dive bars like Lola'a, the West Alabama Ice House and Poison Girl are also singled out for praise.

But wow -- that number nine ranking puts us four slots ahead of San Francisco's Castro. Who'd a thunk that?

Give me an iPhone, a podcast, and a sturdy battleship of a bike, and I am in hog heaven, especially on Houston's backroads. Here are the souvenirs of my latest forays. (You can see October's camera dump here.)

 Shady Acres Is The Place For Me.

Cottage Grove Monolith

Hempstead Highway Burger Joint (Deceased)

My daughter Harriet loves to ice-skate, so yesterday my wife Kelly Graml Lomax and I decided to take her to Discovery Green's seasonal rink. Since I don't love to ice-skate but very much needed some exercise, I rode my bike down there while they took the car. Here is what I saw on my way there and back and at Disco Green, including a trip to Phoenicia, scenes from the war of old-timers vs. newcomers to First Ward, some seasonal cheer, and video of the most existential trumpeter who ever lived.

 Center Street Sunday Morning Still-Life, With Monopoly Money And Tiny Gift

Yuletide Avenue Of Oaks, Discovery Green

Zamboni Break

Staff And Skaters

Post-Skate Shawarma

A Selfie With Baggy

Whose Shoes?

First Ward Condofication

First Ward Condofication's Discontents, I

First Ward Condoficiation's Discontents, II

First Ward's Condofication's Discontents III, Or One Million Bottlebags

VIDEO BONUS!

Forlorn Horn I

Forlorn Horn II

Seven years ago, seized by the desire for travel and bereft of both the funds and the time necessary to do so,  I started walking across Houston. I'd ride a bus out to the end of the line and then walk back downtown. I wanted to be a stranger in my own hometown, get some exercise, and maybe find "the Sole of Houston."

Naturally enough I chose Westheimer as my first route.

After that David Beebe—then a Houston musician, now a Marfa politico / musician / radio jock—became my usual companion on these hikes. Fueled by the sweet soul music of KCOH coming out of a transistor radio, street tacos, cheap beer, wine, and tequila (and occasionally a can of powdered snuff), together we ambled the full lengths of Richmond, Long Point / Washington Ave., Shepherd, Bissonnet, Telephone Road, Clinton Drive, Harrisburg, Airline Drive, and Bellaire Blvd.  

The marches went on in blazing heat and freezing cold, bright sun and darkest night. No matter the conditions, no matter how sore and tired we got, these hikes were a blast, a sense of playing hooky from your own life if only for a day and still in your own hometown.

Here are a few of the best pics from those jaunts...

Image: John Nova Lomax

Somewhere in the East End

Image: David W. Beebe

A reconfigured Chuc-Wagun on Harrisburg, now demolished.

Image: David W. Beebe

El Torito, demolished for the East End light-rail line.

Image: John Nova Lomax

Down and Out on Telephone Road. Behind this vacant building, we found chicken coops and other remnants of a cockfighting arena.

Image: John Nova Lomax

Houston's finest Shipley's sign is at the Bissonnet location.

Image: John Nova Lomax

The light at the end of the Airline Drive hike.

Image: John Nova Lomax

Beebe befriends an Aldine-Bender Muffler Man.

Image: David W. Beebe

Interior: Harrisburg Country Club. Big news of the day: DA Chuck Rosenthal resigned in disgrace, as he failed to heed the sign here.

Image: David W. Beebe

East End Car Part Art.

Image: David W. Beebe

Aldine, Texas: a dead baseball diamond.

Absolutely not.

Judging by his photo in the back of the 2013 edition of Moon Handbooks Houston & the Texas Gulf Coast, author and travel writer Andy Rhodes seems like a nice guy. He lives in Austin—a strike we're willing to forgive—with his family, and has been the editor of The Medallion, the Texas Historical Commission's magazine, for over a decade.

But then you read this line and something seems a little...off: "His ideal weekend includes a visit to Houston's Museum District, followed by a trip to Mustang Island for swimming and fresh seafood." That's a little over three and a half hours—a pretty long drive for swimming and seafood, even on a weekend. But maybe Rhodes just really likes to cruise the Texas highways; I don't know.

What I do know is that Rhodes doesn't exactly have the grasp of Houston I'd hope and expect from a long-time travel writer and self-professed Museum District fan. His inclination to drive to Mustang Island after a day spent walking through the MFAH and the CAMH somehow makes sense in the company of some of his other, stranger recommendations for a visitor to the Bayou City.

1. Houston isn't the fourth largest city in America, or anything.

Says Rhodes: "Visitors and residents benefit from the city's enormous international population, offering authentic fare from all corners of the globe, including specific regional varities not found in most midsize cities." Who you calling midsize?

2. Houston is smoking.

Rhodes wrongly asserts: "This being Texas, the options also include a fair number of home-grown varieties, including some of the state's finest barbecue..." With all due respect to Killen's BBQ, Corkscrew, Gatlin's, and Pizzitola's...we know our place in the barbecue firmament; Houston is not a barbecue city—we have considerably more talent in other areas.

3. You can share a meal at Oxheart!

No mention at all is given to the fact that Oxheart is a tasting menu–only restaurant where the dishes rotate out with considerable frequency. Instead, Rhodes suggests sharing a "dessert treat of tomato tart on shortbread crust," which can't be ordered a la carte, and praises chef Justin Yu's famously subtle dishes for their "bold flavor combinations."

4. Forget what we said above about home-grown varieties.

Rhodes suggests downtown visitors head to Corner Bakery Cafe for breakfast—a chain restaurant that can be found from San Diego to Salt Lake City. Sure, The Breakfast Klub (which is in Midtown) gets a nod, but what about the amazing Macondo Latin Bistro? Or Niko Niko's in Market Square Park? Or Barnaby's? Or Irma's? And if you're randomly including Midtown in your purvey, why not suggest Harry's? Or Natachee's? Or Tacos a Go-Go?

5. You know: the Montrose-Kirby corridor.

I'm not sure what this area of town is supposed to be exactly, but it seems like Rhodes's catch-all designation for Montrose, River Oaks, Rice Village, West University, and Upper Kirby. They're all roughly the same place anyway, right? Here, Rhodes manages to make some good recommendations, with all the standards making an appearance: Uchi, Underbelly, Hugo's, Backstreet Cafe, Mark's American, Da Marco, Hay Merchant, Churrascos, Indika, and Local Foods, among others.

But sprinkled throughout are strange non-sequiteurs, like this appraisal of Underbelly's Korean braised goat and dumplings: "...a wonderfully savory meal brimming with rich flavors you'd never expect from goat meat." Have you eaten goat before, Rhodes? How about the suggestion of Fajita Pete's for Tex-Mex? Or Ra Sushi for Japanese—without a single mention of Kata Robata?

6. "The Heights"

In Rhodes's book, The Heights really means the Washington Corridor and/or Shady Acres. As a result, no real Heights restaurants are even mentioned save Happy Fatz on White Oak. No Down House, no Revival Market, no Zelko Bistro, no Shade, no Liberty Kitchen, no Glass Wall. It makes no sense to specifically call out one of the city's richest dining neighborhoods, only to completely disregard its best offerings.

Instead, in the "Heights," we're told to eat at Sushi Tora, Mam's House of Snoballs, and the Bernie's Burger Bus that's...occasionally parked at Little Woodrow's.

7. You know what's really worth the drive? TopWater Grill.

No, wait. It's totally not. Yet that's the sole seafood destination Rhodes lists in his "Greater Houston" section. If you're going to drive that far, go to Gilhooley's. TopWater is so painfully average as to be perhaps the biggest embarrassment on this list.

8. "Houston has a sizable Chinese population."

While this isn't untrue—Houston has over 72,000 Chinese residents—we're not known for our Chinese cuisine, as Rhodes is suggesting with this statement. We're known for Vietnamese, thanks to having the second-largest Vietnamese population in the country. Despite this, Rhodes fails to send readers to Chinatown at all. Instead, he suggests three restaurants nowhere near our most fascinating dining corridor: Fung's Kitchen, Yao Restaurant & Bar, and Kim Son. (Earlier in the book, it should be noted, Rhodes did throw a bone to Chinatown—except that he listed it as existing on Harwin, and being a "concentrated collection of Chinese establishments" with no mention of dining whatsoever.)

9. Doneraki.

Done-freaking-raki. There is no excuse for this. None. At least Rhodes gave a nod to Pico's Mex-Mex and Taco Keto, although he called the latter a "sample of Houston's burgeoning food truck scene," despite the fact that it's 15 years old, and incorrectly placed it in a Kroger parking lot. 

10. No Ninfa's. No Tony's. No Pondicheri. No Triniti. No Haven. No Cove. No Reef. No Hubcap. No Pass & Provisions. No Phoenicia. No Mahatma Gandhi District. No Chinatown.

Look, I understand wanting to direct visitors to some more underappreciated, less busy, "hidden" gems. Houston is rich with those. But failing to mention some of Houston's best and brightest restaurants, cuisines, and neighborhoods—the very things that have made Houston a dining destination—so that you can save room for the more standard fare at places like III Forks Steakhouse, Divino (great wine list; mediocre food), Chama Gaucha, Becks Prime, Mary'z, and the others already noted above makes absolutely zero sense

My suggestion for culinary visitors to Houston: take some of Rhodes's own advice and go with something home-grown. Houstonia's own guide to Houston's top 50 restaurants, of course. Also: the Eater Houston Essential 38, the My Table Ultimate Food Lover's Guide to Houston, and the Fearless Critic Houston guide. 

Taking my daughter to and from school, I have noticed something peculiar on my many voyages up and down Dunlavy Street.

Namely, from West Gray clear down the West Alabama, the street is infested with gargoyles.

Most famously, there is the audacity of gargoyles atop the Metropolis lofts next to the post office on West Gray.

Yes, a group of gargoyles is correctly known as an "audacity."

Proceeding south a short block, we come to the corner of Peden and Dunlavy.

Peden Street takes its name from the family of Allen Peden, editor and publisher of a sadly short-lived Jazz Age local city magazine. It's name? The Houston Gargoyle.

Here's how Peden explained his rationale in giving his magazine such an offbeat name.

“There it is, the Houston Gargoyle, looking calmly and a bit cynically on the doings of the town, unemotional of feature as a poker player with a pat hand, but oh, such goings on behind the mask! … Of those ancient Gargoyles which have so long gazed down from the roofs of Paris upon the queer antics of generations of human beings, no two were alike—just so we hope no two numbers of this Gargoyle will be alike.”

Amazing that the man and his creation are memorialized with this city vista.

 Head south four blocks to Indiana Street. Et voila, un de plus gargouille! Zut alors!

In the Middle Ages, gargoyles were used to ward off evil spirits. Apparently that is how H-E-B is employing these avian gargoyles at their Dunlavy store.

You can argue with me 'til your blue in the face that these are decoys and not gargoyles, but they are winged creatures on a building and designed to scare things away. They are most definitely gargoyles to the grackles that would love nothing more than to gain access to this sacred cathedral of food. 

Houston is a city of many repurposings and rebrandings. Old chain Mexican restaurants become Goode Company Taquerias, a Palais Royal on the southwest side was renamed Royal Palace, and the Summit has been exalted as a megachurch. Some of these transformations are thorough and well-done. Others are not, and Hotel 31 — once a Holiday Inn, across 610 from the Galleria — definitely fell in that category.   

First, there's that name, which is as brutally charmless and efficient as it can be. Really, you'd expect to find a "Hotel 31" in an utterly dismal Stalinist Siberian mining town.

And why? Why does it have that name?

We live in a world of things like letters, and those letters can be arranged into words, some of them suggestive of comfort, pleasure and rest. Why not use some of them?

Okay, so you've chosen to eschew letters and words and name your place Hotel 31 anyway. Why not go ahead and put a little more effort into proclaiming that new name than a cheap banner pasted over your uninviting portal?

Sigh.

You will be shocked to learn that Hotel 31 failed to thrive and went under in 2012. Tales of its past still echo on sites like TripAdvisor. Even before it became Hotel 31, travelers were appalled, some saying things like it was the worst Holiday Inn they'd ever stayed in.

I'm not sure when the changeover happened — I stayed there a couple of nights in the summer of 2010 and it was still a Holiday Inn and not a horrible place to my way of thinking.

By November 2011, reviewers started mentioning that it was called Hotel 31 and tagging it with terrible reviews.

Here's Pam D of San Antonio on TripAdvisor: My car was broken into within 5 minutes of checking in. I parked right in front of the hotel went to check-in and walked out no more than 3 minutes later and caught the guy driving away. Called 911 and cops NEVER showed. 

A Brit in town for OTC had this to say:  The hotel wreaks of a bad odour, rooms in need of modernisation, and the gym is a health hazard! Do not use it under any cost unless you wish to injure yourself...I can see why Holiday Inn cut their losses and sold it off as they just do not want to be tarnished by such a terrible hovel! You have been warned!

(Word to the wise: if a Briton calls a hotel a terrible hovel, you should be advised that it probably well and truly is. English seaside hotels offer ample instruction on the concept.)

A visitor from New Jersey: This was literally the worst hotel that I have stayed at in my entire life. I travel a lot for work, so that is saying something significant. 

Another Brit here for the OTC called Hotel 31's idea of breakfast a "mixed bag of nonsense," while another traveler said that a "dead rat" smell billowed from her heater.  

A Norwegian visitor was taken enough with Hotel 31 to give it a three-star review, but he seems to have been a rather easily-pleased sort of fellow.

"...the breakfast is incredible. I love when they make you the fried egg while you can stand there and wait for it."

Who doesn't love watching eggs fry?

By 2012, several guests were accusing Hotel 31 of fraudulently inflating their bills. On May 6 of that year, Hotel 31 got its last review.

"We were there during the week and I swear we only saw one other guest staying there," wrote Shannan P. of San Antonio. "To be honest, it felt a little creepy and I thought we might be in some horrible horror film. When we went to check out, there was no one at the desk and we waited for what seemed like forever, and finally we just decided to get the hell out of there!"

Maybe the employees simply abandoned it...At any rate, the chain link fence went up around the parking lot soon thereafter, and this prime parcel of real estate now awaits its next incarnation.

Did you know that before the Old Sixth Ward was old, people called it "The Sabine"? Neither did I. 

That's just one of many endangered and extinct neighborhood names in the Houston area, many of which I have now mapped.

In Houston, we don't just tear down the buildings, we often erase the area's name as well. And that's a shame, because the names we had in Sig Byrd's day are so much more salty and pungent and evocative than those that have taken their place. (Or in some cases, the areas simply lost their name and never got another.) Where once we could come up with "Catfish Reef" organically, we now pay teams of consultants to spew pathetic wanna-be NYC concoctions like the abominations that are "NoDo" and "EaDo."

Don't get me started... Anyway, here's the map.

Always looking for more. If you see one that's missing, and it is not already designated on Google Maps, please send me the name and the approximate boundaries. 

Yesterday, we published a map of extinct and endangered Houston neighborhood names. Here is that map's companion—a compendium of Houston-area neighborhood nicknames still in use today.

Please note: with the exception of "Fauxdeo Drive," I did not make any of these up. These were all presented to me as names people whom I polled had actually heard in use, and in almost all cases you can Google up examples of them in print. So don't get angry at me over the often disparaging and/or politically-incorrect nature of these names.

As with our earlier map, if you have any more suggestions, I will be happy to consider adding them. I know this map is nowhere near comprehensive.

And with no further ado, here we go...

So here we have another batch of pics taken on bike rides. Most of these date from the first six weeks of this year, though one was taken a couple of summers back. (Here are the previousinstallments.)

Here's a snow-cone push-cart I found parked behind Jimmy's Ice House in the Heights...

I am a sucker for Shipley's signs. This one on Ella is my second-favorite. The one on Bissonnet near Bayland Park is the best. 

In the Med Center I found this real pelican... 

....a few days after I saw this fake one in Midtown.

 Giant roosters, David Adickes patriot-banana, etc.

 Airline Drive: lots of little Santa Muertes....

 ...and one great big Santa Muerte.

 Burgers, cheap vodka, and sudden death at Durham and 610. 

I came upon this sinister scene in Cottage Grove, across the street from newly-opened Weirdo Video.

Miami Garden, 9540 Kempwood: the gaudiest and trippiest apartment complex entrance in all of Houston. See it at night, when the palms are illuminated.

Here are a couple more from what is left of the Cottage Grove barrio, currently undergoing terrifyingly rapid transformation to something more like Condo Canyons.

This guy makes me think of a composite of Groucho and Chico Marx...

One of the twin cast-iron cobras of Cottage Grove terrifies my daughter, Harriet.

The Dead Palms of North Montrose, described by Ray Redding Jr. as "either a poor man's James Surls installation or an homage to True Detective."

We'll close with the gnaughtiest gnome in Shady Acres...

Houston weather: Stan the Man was not a fan.

Back in the late 1960s, Houston Post city columnist George Fuermann released a series of pamphlets on various aspects of local history. The series included one on early motoring in Houston, another on O. Henry's brief stint at the Post, and another called "Houston in Song and Verse."

I've read a few of them, and my favorite is "Houston Deplored," his round-up of a century-plus of barbs and slams against Houston, a place one early Texas legislator called "this detested, self-poluted [sic], isolated mudhole of a city."

Fuermann introduces us early on to Ezekiel Cullen, who in addressing the Third Congress of the Republic of Texas in 1841, spoke thusly: "That abominable place—that wretched mudhole—that graveyard of men—the City of Houston." (Zeke's grandson Hugh Roy Cullen thought more highly of Houston, luckily.)

Early legislators and other members of the upper crust apparently competed to come up with the ultimate insult, like they were battle-rappers. In 1837, Kelsey Hariss Douglass, the representative from Nacogdoches, called Houston "the most miserable place in the world," and lamented that "we live like hogs."

"Drinking, fighting and rangling [sic] is the order of the day at this place," Douglass added.

In the late 1830s, John Hunter Herndon, an attorney, famously called Houston "the greatest sink of dissipation and vice that modern times have ever known." Sighed Herndon: "What a den of villains must there be here."

A prim historian by the name of Erasmus Mumford weighed the Capital of Texas in the moral balance and found the city wanting. "A moral desert, a hell on earth," he intoned, where "vice of most every name and grade reigned triumphantly." (Mumford also wrote that Sam Houston, though a great speaker, also swore too much.)

A French Catholic missionary by the name of Emmanuel-Henri-Dieudonné Domenech came through town in 1848 and pronounced that "Houston is a wretched little town composed of about twenty shops, and a hundred huts, dispersed here and there, among trunks of felled trees. It is infested with Methodists and ants."  (If it makes you feel any better, Father Domenech was no more impressed with Austin,  "a small dirty town" with "only one wretched hotel.")

Jumping ahead almost 100 years, journalist John Gunther showed that outsider opinion of Houston had not improved much. In 1946, Gunther called Houston a place "where few people think about anything but money." It was also America's "noisiest city" and was beset “with a residential section mostly ugly and barren." That Houston was also, according to Gunther, "a city without a single good restaurant" and full of "hotels with cockroaches."

Frank Lloyd Wright diagnosed us with the clap.

Frank Lloyd Wright was unimpressed with our 1950s skyline: "Houston is an example of what can happen when architecture catches a venereal disease."  

Inspired by Fuermann, we've been collecting this invective from other sources. The next two come from Douglas Milburn's two books about long walks in 1970s Houston.

One of our favorite quotes came from St. Louis Cardinal legend Stan "The Man" Musial: “Houston has three seasons. July, then August, followed by Summer.” 

Did you know Houston made it in to Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"? "I saw the best minds of my generation...who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup."

Fifty-five years later, the best minds of this generation can easily feast on sex and soup here, but jazz is still somewhat rare.

All the Grateful Dead had to see about us was that we are "too close to New Orleans," but Hunter S. Thompson was more effusive in a 2004 article: 

"Houston is a cruel, crazy town on a filthy river in East Texas with no zoning laws and a culture of sex, money and violence. It's a shabby, sprawling metropolis ruled by brazen women, crooked cops and super- rich pansexual cowboys who live by the code of the West -- which can mean just about anything you need it to mean, in a pinch." (That was one of his last great quotes, looking back.)

Houston seemed to hold a special, very dark place in Thompson's heart. He once contemplated setting a twisted and violent novel in a sleazy motel on South Main and on the Galveston Seawall, and it was in the downtown Hyatt that he came up with "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." 

Thomas Pynchon is another titan of 20th Century American literature with a strange penchant for the Bayou City. Because of his references to local landmarks and musicians, some believe he might have lived here incognito for a time. Sure enough, we were mentioned in Bleeding Edge, the master's 2013 opus, and we'll close with that one:

"'He's a greedy little shit,' Eric's head now in a halo of Daffy Duck froth droplets, 'eternity in a motel lounge in Houston Texas with a Andrew Lloyd Webber mix repeating forever on the stereo is too good for his sorry ass.'"