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Is it me or does the chicken look like one of the Hanson Brothers from Slap Shot?

Today it seems absurd to even put a finger in the bayou, but in Houston's early days the bayous were the centers of recreation in the Heights. Highland Park (now Woodland Park) dammed Little White Oak Bayou to make a lake for boating and had an artesian well that pumped out 75,000 gallons of water a day. The lake was stocked with bass and trout from fisheries in San Marcos. Combs Park had a natatorium just off of White Oak Bayou (about where the Heights Mediation Center and the storage facility is east of Heights Blvd on the feeder). One of the theories on the naming of Buffalo Bayou is that it was named after the abundant Buffalo Fish that could be seen in the water. Buffalo Bayou used to be spring fed before Houstonians drained out the aquifers for drinking water and poured tons of fertilizer and dog poo onto their yards to drain into the bayous. So, the water was actually clear. (the other theory is that buffalo were seen roaming along the bayou on their way down to the coastal prairies). And when James Audubon came through Houston, he saw dozens of ivory billed woodpeckers along the bayous.

I wonder how they are going to manage capacity. This place is going to be packed on weekends. Houston is actually a pretty lousy city for little kids. There are a few museums and a few trampoline parks and that is about it for indoor activities. So, I would imagine that once word gets out on all the mommy facebook groups about this place, it will be wall to wall kids.

New grab and go concept from the chef who used to run Azzarelli's (more accurately the reincarnation of his grandfather's restaurant by the same name). It is what is going in the new building at 4606 N. Main St., one door north of Tampico. Sign went up recently and looks like they will be opening soon. Not sure whether there will be dine in there will be. Website only talks about grab and go. Nice looking building, though. https://www.triolaskitchen.com/

This implies that there was something wrong with the original look of the craftsman architecture and design of the original housing stock in the Heights. That is what is so aggravating about the Modern Victorian Farmhouse fad. It is that it is a fad and in 5-10 years, everyone will be painting their houses and changing trim and interior design to meet the next fad fed to you via HGTV.

They did not have an espresso machine and just served drip coffee. It never seemed like the coffee service was a priority. The retail packaged beans seemed to be what they focused on.

Shepherd Chicken Sandwich District, meet the White Oak Korean Barbeque Quarter.

Heights has seen a massive influx of multifamily units and almost every single family home has been flipped into a high end humper house or the dreaded Modern Victorian Farmhouse new construction. Add to that similar gentrification in the GOOF and you have a tremendous boost in demand for retail, which has resulted in some big projects like Heights Mercantile, MKT, etc. Gentrification in Montrose has been ongoing for many years and did not have the same sort of light switch moment that the Heights has had over the past decade. Montrose is a much smaller area and does not have room for the same kind of multifamily expansion. So, the retail side of development in Montrose has not been as fast and furious as the Heights. Plus, Westheimer is just a very odd duck for development with a lot of very small lots that have been very slow to congeal into a contiguous and walkable shopping/restaurant district. So, you have an odd mix of very high end restaurants and retail sharing the same street with tattoo parlors, vintage clothing and antique shops. The trend is definitely towards upscale, but it has been pretty slow over the years. Development in the Heights has kind of reached a bit of an impasse on the single family side. Most everything has been flipped in the Heights proper, Sunset Heights, Norhill, Shady Acres and Woodland Heights. East Sunset Heights and Brookesmith have been slow to gentrify compared to the rest of the Heights. On the retail and multifamily side, things are peaking with a lot of the big tracts getting gobbled up (insert your favorite Kroger on 20th street redevelopment rumor here). Montrose just seems to be on a very long slog with very little room left for any big developments. The original single family homes are often very nicely updated and will every now and then hold enough value to keep builders from tearing them down. So, it will continue to be a mish mash of original architecture, town homes and new large single family homes.

This is great news. Silver St. is a great short cut from the hike and bike path to Buffalo Bayou. The only problem was cutting across Washington Ave at Silver.

Don't get me started on when Lights in the Heights was just a few hundred people. And I will see your Kaldi Cafe and raise you a Beer Island.

At the rate they are going, there will be Common Bonds in truck stops next to Baskin and Robbins.

Just the other day, I was reminiscing of the days before everything blew up in the Heights and remembered getting ice snoballs from the truck on 20th and Rutland and could not remember the name. I miss Mam's Snoballs and getting the tomato and goat cheese sandwich at Crickets.

Contact the city council member's office, Bike Houston, Houston Heights Ass'n and Buffalo Bayou Partnership if you wan to start a ruckus. Planning Dep't will approve plans if it meets code and doesn't care whether it is a good idea or a bad idea.

Haven't been to Throughgood since Soul Taco closed. Just not the same without a George and Aretha on flour.

Not seeing a high priority on comfort in the current furniture choices. Sure, people are free to decorate their house however they see fit. But I am also free to point out how totally lame it is to live in one of the grandest MCM houses in the city and not even bother to decorate it appropriately. MCM architecture and MCM interior design were meant to be complimentary to each other and pull it off better than any other period of design and architecture. It is just sad that whoever had enough money to buy that place certainly had enough money to fill it with beautiful MCM pieces but simply chose to keep their frumpy English and French antiques. Lame.

How do you live in a MCM masterpiece without a single stick of actual MCM furniture?

More on the Revival replacement: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/food-culture/restaurants-bars/article/Louisiana-inspired-cafe-to-open-in-Revival-17342667.php

Agricole seemed to lose interest in Revival when they expanded to the east side. It was still good, but in its prime it had some magical dishes like the smoked gulf by catch and the kolache specials. When Kolache Shoppe opened, I couldn't get my son to eat there because the kolaches weren't as good as Revival's. I do look forward to something new that is Revival adjacent that will hopefully breathe some fresh new light into the space. The Heights is starting to run a bit short on good new places from local chefs versus getting the second or third location of a popular Austin restaurant or a national chain that the foodies like.

For those of us who do not live under a rock, we have been watching with horror as the vapid home flipper industry (in particular a certain couple from Waco who shall remain nameless here) has adopted the modern Victorian farmhouse as the sine qua non of home architecture and interior design aesthetics. This cheap fad extended well beyond new builds and flips into painting every house white with black trim regardless of whether it is a MCM, Victorian, Craftsman, Contemporary, Modern or anything in between. But in a neighborhood filled with charming craftsman architecture, painting everything white is akin to the bleaching of a coral reef. And the WLN reference was a joke.

Stop. Painting. Everything. White. In. The. Heights. White Linen Nights is a once a year festival and not a commandment to paint every freaking house white.

Shepherd Chicken Mile Chicken Heights Cluck City The Chicken Ranch

If you care about bird conservation, you should be 1,000 times more concerned about habitat loss than windmills. And there is a significant amount of habitat loss that is due to climate change. Oil and gas waste pits are actually a bigger threat to birds than windmills. That is why Trump suspended enforcement of the migratory bird treaty at the behest of the oil and gas industry. Get rid of fossil fuels with windmills and you may have a net positive when it comes to bird deaths. Houston is a choke point for several flyways for spring migration. Not so much in the fall. But when birds migrate, they like to find good strong winds aloft to ride like a conveyor belt across the ocean. Most birds during migration do not get any lower than 150m and most are up several hundred meters to a few thousand. Most of the time, birds will be way above the windmills during migration. There is some preliminary research that showed some success painting wind turbines black. Birds strike the blades because they have a hard time seeing them when they are moving fast. Painting blade black seem to help the birds see the blades and reduce strikes.

When I first got to Houston over 20 years ago, I landed at Briarwood on Winrock. My next door neighbor was a South Texas College of Law adjunct professor. A nice retired couple with a meticulously cared for 1980s Mercedes Benz lived in one of the townhome units above me. The complex got sold and renting standards all but abandoned. There was an Asian drug gang that sold whatever you needed out of one of the townhome units. One night there was a SWAT standoff with someone who holed themselves up with a couple of pit bulls. Just after I moved out, someone nearly decapitated their friend in a grizzly murder that some thought was terror related. Even as the single family homes across the way gentrified into $1 mil+ lot value, the multifamily and retail development along and around Westheimer in this far west Galleria Area neighborhood have seen very little movement compared to so many other parts of Houston. You could build a small city out this way by taking out the old garden style apartments and converting the strip malls to mixed use. But this area just never keeps up any momentum.

Dan Electro's has bookings posted that go through September. Hopefully, the new owner will let them stay and keep lease terms reasonable.

Property is on the market. Listed as having month to month tenant with option to purchase vacant or with the tenant.