jim1960

MarchFourth-35 piece marching band from Portland is on a national tour including the Hollywood Bowl,the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Knitting Factory in NYC and Market Square Park in Houston...it is a free show at 6:30 friday Oct 19... they are with horns, drums, unicycles, puppets, stiltwalkers, firebreathers and full on theatrical production... art car mentality meets circus soleil but with a world revival brass sound...no beer sponsors so support the neighborhood bars and enjoy a fun show...appropriate from 7 to 70 years old...the city is helping out to point out there is still a cool beat downtown...I apologize if this is considered promotion or an inappropriate post but the purpose is to promote the neighborhood not any particular business...

I live, work and own property downtown... for 12 years now. I have watched the entire story of downtown redevelopment first hand. I don't wish to write a book here but i have a lot of opinions on downtown nightlife. A business at night cannot depend on the random patrons walking the streets to wander in and sustain the place...Sunday through Wednesday is extremely sparce of anyone excepting the homeless which duh don't sustain a business. But i view this lack of activity as an opening for creative ideas to make a place a destination point without all the hassels of finding a parking place on the street. There also becomes a greater sense of ownership and oppurtunity to define niche ideas that might inspire other entrepreneurs to follow suit and give the nightlife a distinctive personality. For one thing the city needs to give Caroline a break over at Warren's and approve her patio permit ( the smoking ban has been a disaster for Warren's and Charbar) Possibly remove the parking inset to become sidewalk giving the necessary access and allowing smoking outside at those two establishments that so much represent the good and unique in downtown nightlife. Grumpy old men got to drink and apparently smoke. One thimg i have noticed about the smoking ban is relatively empty bars with patios make the street seem more alive and the bar more busy( everybody is outside... smoking) The major thing that must happen is with property owners letting go of an outdated rent structure based on the good ol days before the superbowl. And with a lower rent structure some of these creative ideas might have a chance to originate and survive. And downtown will again be an interesting and unique destination point at night

[notsuoh was and still is a visual art piece ... a sculpture using real estate , architecture and community as its medium...it went very underground for three years and definitely there is work to be done to regain its authenticity as a social sculpture for artists to chew the fat and network and create. Downtown historically is the center of houston however for many the beltway @ westheimer is..so it is a concept of an urban center ... the address always was a metaphor for the idea of centeredness 314 Main...3.14 is the value of pi and pi is the relationship of the center to the circumfrence and in the mirror with a couple of gin and tonics 314 backwards spells PIE and notsuoh is houston. Sure the place was a dump but next to the lowest of lows were rick lowe paintings and ike morgans and mark floods and aaron parazettes and dean rucks ... and the place never seemed to be a consumer of culture but a creator...at times it was a cliche of the myth of the bohemian artists staying up late, playing chess smoking cigarettes and being to sensitive or obnoxious. it was overly tolerant of humanity be it homeless, insane, yuppie or emotionally deficient...but the place is real and in one month since the reopening there have been poetry readings on wednesdays and experimental mondays with the lousiest of lounge and eatern european accordion music and pink cloud creating frequencies that made a feeling somewhere between nausea and sea sickness and nights of thai gonging and wednesdays with the free radicals playing jazz and a punk band from tokyo...it is a workshop in progress and yes some of the chaos is locked away on the second floor inacessible to the public and the women's room has lots of tile instead of forty paintings leaning against the wall ....notsuoh is back with a liquor liscence and cappucino and still one of the best mixes of humans you can find