rental me this

Trendy is an understatement. A house near us in Woodland Heights was sitting on the market for a couple months. The owner painted it completely white (like primer-white, including the trim) and re-listed it for $25k higher. Went under contract for full asking price within 10 days. Not my taste (and you have to be careful not to look at it directly on a bright sunny day), but people will clearly buy anything white.

"La Habra stucco" is a nice sounding word for EIFS, which no one should be excited about. And I'm guessing "architectural metal panels" is code for corrugated metal.

I just hope they ditch the billboard.

The parking lot entrance and "loading berth" on Dorothy could be problematic. That's a very narrow street with open (and deep) drainage culverts. Assuming the loading berth is for deliveries, large trucks will not fare well on Dorothy. I can't imagine the neighbors will be thrilled either. There are 4 more houses not pictured immediately north of the parking lot (to the right in the rendering) before you get to 14th street.

The band is called Sparklehorse. And its touring days are over. To address your underlying point, I would go to a show on 19th street, and if I saw a cool piece of furniture in the window of a shop nearby, I would absolutely stop in for a better look. I'm not in my 20s anymore, but that just means I have money to spend on nice things, like furniture. I think the mistake here is stereotyping people who enjoy live music. Contrary to the assumption, we're not all drunk kids.

The bust was bad. I was a kid then, too, and it at school it seemed like there were 2 groups of kids - those whose dad had been laid off, and those whose dad was about to be laid off. Mine survived round after round of layoffs at Shell, took a huge pay cut and called himself lucky. We used to drive up to the Spaghetti Warehouse sometimes for dinner, and I remember thinking how sad and empty downtown looked. We used to go look at fish in the bayou near Allen's Landing, but it got too creepy and our parents wouldn't let us go down there anymore. Went away for school, kicked around in Austin for a few years after that, and came back to Houston in the early 2000s... it was a little embarrassing to have to ask somebody what "Midtown" was. I don't love everything that's been built here in the last 15 or so years, but Houston feels more like home now than it ever did. So, I think we're doing something right.

Per the WH bulletin board, it's been bought by the owner(s) of Hearsay. Word is that it is being remodeled and will reopen as a "park-oriented walk-up/bike-up tavern." I don't have any independent confirmation of this besides the buzz on the bulletin board. I'm curious to see what happens, as it's right around the corner from me.

Gotta chime in on the lack of good sushi in the Heights. I've tried it a couple times at Thai Spice and was pretty underwhelmed. My pieces were very dry and tastewise, boring. The 11th Street Kroger rocks by comparison, which ain't saying much. It would be great to get an actual sushi place in the hood.