Poppahop

You are not missing anything. This is why the nation's economy is tanking. Everything costs too much money, and people were going into debt paying for it all. Now the bills have come due.

Houstoned's Modest Proposal

Warren's has been a downer lately. At Jimmy's, I like to just have a quick beer alone in the great outdoors.

Warren's has character. The Porch bars do not. Million dollar sales have nothing to do with the quality of a bar, in my view. In fact, many of the crappiest bars in town have the highest sales. Those bars -- Sam's Boat, the Porch Bars, Pub Fiction -- are full of people who think they are having fun. And if they think they are having fun, they are not old enough.

I have a picture of my mom, Bidy Lomax, hanging out backstage with Jerry at one of those shows.

Houston: Su trabajo es su credito.

The creator of jazz music lived there for awhile

Children Possibly Found on Net

The Ashby U-Tote-Em was where I bought beer underage from 1984 to 1986.

There are about ten Sunny's over on the near Southwest side still. I seem to remember seeing a Baby Giant or two on the near North Side in the last few years.

In Your Motor and Transmission

I showed the commercial to a friend of mine, and she said she hoped they had an STD clinic on site, preferably close to the pool for convenience.

Classic '80s Stuff Here

Scott Terrace rules Xmas

The Chron: "The white bag one of the dead men had been carrying contained a large amount of cash, apparently taken from the house, Corbett said."

Does anybody else find it odd that the two guys were South American and that they seemed to know that there was a huge pile of cash in that house? Who keeps huge amounts of cash in their house?

I'm pretty sure that's just a different part of Houston. That Quick Saver Supermarket is in Fifth Ward.

Sippie Wallace lived long enough to star at the Juneteenth Blues Festival at Hermann Park in about 1985. I was there. I think Whitmire dubbed it Sippie Wallace Day and the whole nine yards. She also appeared on Letterman around that time. She spent most of her middle age and elderly years in Detroit. "I'm a Mighty Tight Woman" was another of her hits. Her sister Hociel Thomas was also a blues singer; Hociel wound up killing another of their sisters in a fight and was acquitted. Hociel and Sippie were the daughters of George W. Thomas, a deacon at Shiloh Baptist Church on Lyons Avenue. Their nephew Hersal Thomas is credited as being the inventor of boogie-woogie piano music, which he accomplished before dying at 17 of food poisoning. Esther Bigeou, another of the attractions at the Washington, was a Creole singer from New Orleans billed as "The Creole Songbird" and "The Girl With The Million Dollar Smile." She died in 1936.

"Stay away from the Mission District at night unless you like a dense urban experience. You'll be glad that it hasn't reached Houston yet." Some of the worst advice I have ever seen on this board, and I have seen plenty.

What's misleading about it?

The East End Trek

Has some good points, too

Yeah, I know how you feel. Tonight I got on the Bellaire bus at Med Center Transit Center, and we waited FIVE MINUTES before we left the station. I mean we just sat there, doing nothing. The driver was on there. Other passengers were on there. Most importantly, I WAS ON THERE. Doesn't Metro KNOW WHO I AM? Who cares about their stupid schedules and all that riff-raff that expects a bus to come by at a certain time? Metro is supposed to be about ME. That's why it starts with M-E.

Thanks JHC. Yeah, after you clarified the location of the Weingarten's I figured it must now be the Sellers Brothers store. That one is several notches above the Davis Food City that closed. There's a Spec's next door to the Sellers Brothers, and a dollar store, and a Burke's Outlet in the strip. There's a Shipley's down there still near the strip mall and a funny little restaurant run by a Korean family that can deep-fry the hell out of anything you want two different ways. (London-style or Cajun.) It's really good, but every meal you eat there probably takes 12 hours off your life. Further south, closer to Shearn, there's a Vietnamese-run "You-buy, we-fry" seafood store that is said to be very good. I've only bought raw seafood there, and it was good. Bleak as my portrait was, I meant to leave you feeling somewhat encouraged. Things have turned around a lot in just the 15 months I have lived near there. What's more, the difference between now and 10 years ago is huge. That little pocket of ghetto is getting smaller every month. Cruddy apartments are being replaced by nicer townhouses, and there's even a Catholic Montessori school back there now too. Farther south, there's a huge Jewish school (the Weiner School) and some of the ball fields for the newly merged West U and Brays Bayou little leagues. Yes, it's still kinda sketchy around Bellfort, but again, nothing like it was five or ten years ago.