Here’s a first entry in what appears to be an impromptu, informal competition among Swamplot readers — to track down and photograph the narrowest findable gap between townhomes — and then speculate on what methods might be employed one day to repair or repaint the exteriors of the adjoining walls. The photo here shows a pair of townhomes lining Cage St. just north of Melva St. in the lower Fifth Ward, amidst a slew of similarly dimensioned homes in a larger complex. Think you can find a gap in the Houston area tighter than this one? Send pics and addresses to Swamplot’s tipline.
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Do Not Touch!
One of those 2 “Houston” locations a small, Kentucky-based movie-theater chain named Xscape is building will be in The Woodlands, reports Adolfo Pesquera. Last week, investment firm Patoka Capital 
“None of these places achieve anything like the feel of a real town because they abandon all of the design elements which actually create that feeling. There are no real walkable main streets with mom and pop stores lining the sidewalks. No town squares at the heart of real (albeit small) downtowns. It’s all just strip malls and McMansions along freeways and 6-lane collector roads.
If you want a small town feel you have to start with traditional pre-WW2 urban design.” [
One Houston summer in the early 1960s: “My brother and his friends were playing, pretending they were WWII soldiers and they were running around shooting fake machine guns and then they would go over and jump in the bayou pretending it was a foxhole. And I went over and I heard them talking . . . they were going to build their own bomb. And I told them you know you better not do that. . . . The next thing I know I see them in the garage and they’ve got a bunch of my dad’s leftover firecrackers and they’re splitting them open and pouring them into this big prescription bottle. I tried to find my mother. And she ended up being next door. When I ran next door I was standing in the backyard and I heard this loud boom and looked at where the explosion came from and it was right where my brother and his friends had been playing. I heard sirens in the distance and a helicopter started flying real low over the pipeline. . . . Shortly after that there was a knock at the door and it was the police. . . . they said that 
“In 15 months of reporting on Houston’s suburbs and exurbs,” writes Mike Snyder, “
