If Beyoncé still wants this deeply discounted Piney Point Village mansion for her mother, she might have to bring back Sasha Fierce and grab a paddle: It’s going up on February 19 for auction. The 21,640-sq.-ft., 4-kitchen rental property near Briar Forest was listed as recently as January 3 at $5.9 million — and, says the website of California-based auction house Premier Estates, that’s just where bids will start.
CENTERPOINT SAYS NO BIKE TRAILS WITHOUT ‘ADDITIONAL LIABILITY PROTECTION’ 
Houston lawmakers Sarah Davis and Jim Murphy have each introduced a bill to the state legislature that would have more bike trails built here along CenterPoint-owned utility rights-of-way, but the energy provider’s response seems to StateImpact reporter Dave Fehling a little overprotective: “a CenterPoint media liaison said it would permit trails ‘if — and only if — the Texas Legislature provides additional liability protection to CenterPoint from people entering its rights of way.'” Fehling adds: “What has resulted, though, are bills that would give what lawyers say is almost blanket immunity to CenterPoint Energy should someone get hurt on company property while using it for recreation, even if CenterPoint was ‘grossly negligent.’†[StateImpact; previously on Swamplot] Photo: StateImpact
Houston artist Bert Long passed away of pancreatic cancer earlier today. He was 72. This photo shows one of Long’s most recognizable pieces: “Field of Vision” is located across the street from Emancipation Park on the corner of Elgin and Bastrop, next door to the Eldorado Ballroom. Born in the Fifth Ward, Long worked as a Hyatt Regency executive chef before pursuing an arts career. “Bert would walk in anywhere. He’d do anything,” Long’s friend James Surls tells the Houston Chronicle. “He was unabashed and unafraid.”
Photo: Allyn West
COMMENT OF THE DAY: EXTREMISM IN DEFENSE AGAINST EXTREMISM IS NO VICE “Although I agree some of Ayn Rand concepts are a tad to the extreme, it is a necessary tool to combat the concepts on the opposite side which are even more extreme such as Carl Marx and the Occupy Movement. These days you cannot persuade people to your side by simply being centrist and laying out facts and figures, you HAVE to have a certain level of Theatrics and Overly Dramatized Dramatizations.” [commonsense, commenting on Comment of the Day: A Rand Retort]
Before Daniel Anguilu started redecorating Midtown, he tagged trains — and, apparently, he drives one, too, says a press release Metro released yesterday: The official housepainter of Houston Texans linebacker Connor Barwin works as a light-rail operator. (Interesting, isn’t it, that so many of his murals — including the ones pictured here, on the for-sale former Mental Health and Mental Retardation Authority building at 2850 Fannin — can be found within walking distance of the Red Line?) Anguilu’s moonlighting work can be seen — you’ll have to go inside, though — at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art through February 17.
In related news, Metro says all stations will be closed this weekend for rail construction and maintenance.
Photos: Candace Garcia
A tipster tells Swamplot that a parcel of the Memorial Club Apartments property at 904 Westcott  is “confirmed” as the future site of Houston’s fourth Trader Joe’s. Organized around the Rice Military roundabout near Memorial Park, the apartments are split down the middle by Westcott; the photo above shows a view from the roundabout looking east toward Washington.
All winter this Hermann Park high point has been fenced off while crews have worked on Miller Outdoor Theatre’s heavily used seating (and rolling-down) area to update drainage and irrigation systems, among other hill-improvement-type activities. The project, funded by the city, has a budget of almost $261,000. This photo shows a little patch of progress; though performances start back up in April, the theater warns you not to get your hopes up: the hill could remain closed through May.
Photo: Miller Outdoor Theatre
IT’S NOT LIKE WE’RE DOING ANYTHING ELSE WITH THE ASTRODOME 
One of Houstonia magazine’s writers, John Nova Lomax, says that Houston, not Austin, ought to be the state capital; “Austin lacks gravitas,” he writes in a Texas Monthly essay this week, laying out his case and making a modest proposal to deal with one of each city’s landmark eyesores: “Slap a statue of Willie Nelson in the Goddess of Liberty’s place atop the granite dome and repurpose it as the Texas Pantheon. Fill it with statues, plaques, and exhibits dedicated to all those exalted icons who were truly Texas cool, and presto: a world-class tourist attraction,” he writes: “As for Houston, well, let’s not forget that it has long been home to a certain Eighth Wonder of the World, now just sitting there running to ruin. The Astrodome’s merits as a seat of government are limitless. It has rail service and ample parking and seating. It has skyboxes in which lobbyists, high above the scrum, could go about their deals. The old ‘exploding’ scoreboard could be reactivated, and we could make state politics a spectator sport. . . . Whenever a legislator started getting a little too grandiose up on the dais, an appointed sinecure (Nolan Ryan?) could power up that bawling, smoking-nosed bull that once thrilled baseball fans. C-SPAN ratings would be off the charts.” [Texas Monthly; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Russell Hancock
COMMENT OF THE DAY: A RAND RETORT “I’m well aware of the resurgent appeal of Ayn Rand, after she had become mainly a stage passed through by the young, shallowly encountering her for the first time. Now her stock seems to be rising even as people have happily embraced statism. I don’t discount the lingering uncertainty about the direction we’ve gone, but I am sorry to see the fanatical Ayn Rand resuscitated as an alternative. Approaches may differ, but her hatred of tradition and, as Chambers noted, her materialism — her approving view of ‘naked self-interest’ — really mirrored that of Marx. The conservative movement was right to drum her out fifty years ago. For myself, I feel intuitively that anyone who wrote as badly as she does, can’t have a mind worth attending to. I’m afraid that is my prejudice, and I can’t defend it, but I’ll never depart from it. More signally, the doctrine of ‘aesthetic selfishness’ is dangerous more for its reach than its fancifully ‘logical’ foundations, whose weakness — nonexistence — others have convincingly demonstrated, although I grant you, that her ‘thought,’ once you get beyond the bright shiny part about individual freedom, is so ugly, eugenics and all, that it has not always brought out the best rigor in its opponents. Owing to my own particular concerns, the legacy of hers I dislike most is the idea that Industrial Man has such capacity to alter nature that he stands outside of nature; that we’ve come to the end of nature. Others have written much worse than she, perhaps, but even if one generously considers her only mediocre, it is disquieting that she has become the Bible for so many. . . . ” [luciaphile, commenting on Could Glenn Beck Bring Independence to Texas?]
HEY, WE’RE DRIVING HERE! 
An online petition aimed at Mayor Parker’s desk has just one demand: Block off a street, once a week, for pedestrian use: “Options abound,” the petition states: “McKinney downtown (between City Hall and Discovery Green), Rice Boulevard (between Main and Kirby), or Harrisburg. Westheimer between Shepherd and Bagby . . . . After seeing such a street in Ciudad Victoria, Mexico, one Houstonian wrote, ‘Just let pedestrians take over once a week. Let a thousand Sunday night walks bloom. Just a simple avenue for families to walk a stretch in the company of others. A boost for local businesses. A reason to get out on a Sunday night no matter the time of year. A space for performance artists and musicians and writers to interact directly with a wider public.'” [Sign On; previously on Swamplot] Photo of utility pole on Harrisburg: Swamplot inbox
One-stop shopping: you can see the signage and new (and presumably sterile) cabinetry through the second-floor windows of The Centre at River Oaks (in Upper Kirby, in fact), where a 25,000-sq.-ft. branch of Texas Children’s Hospital and Pediatric Associates is expected to open in March; the makeover of the shopping center at West Alabama and Kirby began last summer; Ainbinder announced that Ulta Beauty would be operating out of the first floor of the bankrupt Borders; Texas Children’s will sit atop both Ulta Beauty and Brio Tuscan Grille.
Photo: Swamplot inbox
The headquarters of Houston natives and siblings Scott and Nicole Vogel’s Houstonia magazine will be here, the new monthly glossy tweets, at this repainted Victorian at 477 Heights Blvd. The 4,200-sq.-ft. house was purchased in October, city records show. Unveiled earlier this week, Houstonia is expected to debut this March; the masthead will include writers like Robb Walsh and inveterate streetwalker John Nova Lomax, formerly of the Houston Press.
Photo: Houstonia
No more le breakfast, no more le lunch: Catching workers moving equipment out of Le Peep in Shepherd Plaza, a Swamplot reader sends in this photo. That’s a U-HAUL — er, le trailer — backed up to the doors. “Closed without notice!” cries le tipster. “I asked a worker and he said this location is closed for good.” Le Peep has 6 other restaurants in Houston.
Photo: loves swamplot
A Swamplot reader sends in this photo of the shuttered Rice Epicurean on Memorial, 1 of 4 stores (of 5) that the longtime Houston grocer said it would close and lease to North Carolina-based The Fresh Market this year. (The location on Fountain View at Inwood will remain open.) Those splashy signs say that the store’s liquidating its fixtures and “supermarket equipment.” So, you know, act fast! While supplies last!
Photo: Swamplot inbox
COUNTING DOWN TO 11:11 
Chef Kevin Bryant is renovating the former Bibas Diner at 607 West Gray for a new “casual fine dining restaurant” called 11:11 that’s expected to open in March; Greg Morago reports that the building (shown at left) is being updated to include a 100-seat patio and an 80-90 seat private dining section upstairs with a private terrace. The former Capitol at St. Germain and L’Olivier chef, reports Morago, is devising a menu “he describes as ‘Southern coastal.’ There will be an oyster bar, a raw bar program (sourcing East Coast bivalves), sashimi, lobsters, and a ceviche of the day. The restaurant will use Gulf seafood where appropriate, but source from all over.” [29-95] Photo: Allyn West
