November 17, 2009 – 2:46 pm
Organizer (and Free Press Houston editor) Omar Afra calls it:
This will be the last Westheimer Block Party. However, the next one will be the return of the Westheimer Street Festival. It may take 2 months or it may take 2 years but this festival has outgrown our singular capacity. There can only be a return of the Westheimer Street Festival. The streets must be shut down, the city must get behind the event, and I can no longer personally foot the bill. Our staff can no longer handle the capacity of the growing festival and squeezing all of these people into the same block is becoming hazardous. The streets must be shut down. We have an on camera commitment from Annise Parker, that if elected, she will support street closure if we can find financing for necessary portopotties, police, and clean up. She even shook my hand on it. But we need the community involved. So whoever is elected, we are asking for a big community turnout at the first city council open session the new mayor presides over. We need 500+ people to swamp city hall and show city officials that there is indeed a large constituency that supports arts and music. We will let you know when this transpires but we NEED your support. We love this community so much and want to see WestFest grow but it cannot in it’s current form. We will be forming a non-profit to meet this challenge which will be made up of only Jedi’s who have an unyielding love for arts and music. It is time to take BIG steps and we will do whatever it takes to shut down the streets. . . .
Photo of Behind Buildings performing at last weekend’s Westheimer Block Party: Ramon Medina [license]
Read more about: 77006, Attractions, Lower Westheimer, Streetlife, Streets
September 14, 2009 – 12:10 pm
A reader snaps this photo of the former pink Taco Cabana drive-thru at the corner of Montrose and Westheimer, “now painted white w red stripes at the bottom” — and asks if we know what’s going in there. Fortunately, another reader has the answer:
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Read more about: 77006, Fast Food, Lower Westheimer, Montrose, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Retail
August 31, 2009 – 2:18 pm
“Looks like someone’s getting ready to build,” reports a Swamplot reader about this lot on the corner of Westheimer and Helena, at the very lowest end of Lower Westheimer:
All of the brown earth you see in the photo was formerly a tree or bush of some type. See the steel gate I’m taking the picture through? Just on the other side of it (about 3 yards from the steel gate), there was a chain link fence that provided shade, shelter and ‘hideability’ to local bums. If I had taken that photo the day before, you would have seen a lot of brush, bums and beer cans.
Even the bushes in the ’sidewalk’ area (the sidewalk stops at this lot) were removed.
It could just be a beautification or bum-preventative project, but due to the midtown/downtown/Montrose location, I’m guessing that someone plans to construct a business there.
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Read more about: 77006, Avondale, Landscape, Lots, Lower Westheimer, Montrose
August 13, 2009 – 3:41 pm
John Nova Lomax reminisces: “This was Oil Bust Houston, and it looked then like Montrose might become a full-on slum. There were no condos along ‘Theimer (as it was often called by the mullet set) and few fancy restaurants. From Montrose Boulevard all the way to what is now called Midtown, Westheimer was lined with little more than one “modeling studio” after another, and it seems like there were even more tattoo shops than there are now. The denizens and visitors to these businesses (not to mention the street hustlers, drag queens, punks and Guardian Angels that still lurk in the area) provided plenty for the hordes of suburbanites – getting their first taste of freedom and big city life – to gawk at from the safety of their Blazers and Cutlasses. . . . on weekend nights, Westheimer would be bumper-to-bumper from Bagby to well past Buffalo Speedway, and sometimes all the way out to the Galleria, a phantasmagoria of teenage hormones and sound-collisions: car-horns, engines revving, and squealing girls, the hiss-and-almost-subsonic bass rumble of ‘Paul Revere’ booming from a Jeep Cherokee interlocking with a Honda CRX chirping out that inane ‘Two of Hearts’ pop ditty or the root canal Teutonic skronk of that ‘Warm Leatherette’ monstrosity.” [Hair Balls]
Read more about: 77006, Houston History, Lower Westheimer, Montrose, Streetscapes
An update on recent comings and goings:
- Now Open: “A small group of cocktail freaks,” including former Beavers bartender Bobby Heugel, have at last opened the doors of Anvil Bar & Refuge on the Westheimer Curve. The location was originally a Bridgestone-Firestone tire shop, but was known more recently as the home of the Daiquiri Factory and Sliders.
- Closed: In advance of that new 25,000-sq.-ft. Spec’s opening up in the former Linens ’N Things in Weslayan Plaza, owner Christopher Massie decided to shut down Cepage Noir, his considerably smaller wine shop on Times Blvd. in the Rice Village.
More twists and turns:
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Read more about: 77004, 77005, 77006, 77479, Lower Westheimer, Montrose, Nightlife, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Retail, Rice-Village, Riverside-Terrace, Sugar-Land
January 19, 2009 – 2:53 pm
Stopping briefly at the Sunny Flea Market and the Cedar Lounge, and passing by Dance Town USA, John Nova Lomax decides a weekend evening on Airline Dr. is a familiar scene: “Even on a Sunday, the street is livelier than most in Houston - in fact, it reminded Beebe and I of nothing so much as lower Westheimer circa 1986, albeit en español. Teenagers still cruise the northern stretches of Airline in their cars, many of which sport speakers mounted in their grills, the better to share their norteño tunes with all those around them. (It’s loud, but since norteño is pretty much devoid of resonant bass frequencies, it doesn’t bulge glass or rattle your fillings.) There’s near gridlock at some intersections and the same sort of fleeting, duration-of-a-stoplight sexual tension (and thus its traveling partner — potential violence) ‘Theimer was known for back in its teenage hormone-drenched alleged heyday.” [Hair Balls; previously]
Read more about: 77037, Airline Dr., Little York, Lower Westheimer, Streets
November 21, 2008 – 9:17 am
First came Katz’s, then Biba’s One’s a Meal. Now Alison Cook maps the coming convergence of 24-hour restaurants in the heart of Montrose:
In December, a critical mass of late-night eateries will coalesce near the storied Houston intersection of Montrose and Westheimer. The debut of Little Big’s, a new slider shack from the guys at Reef, firmly establishes the crossroads as the go-to address for clubgoers, nightcrawlers and late-shift service personnel in search of something to eat.
Little Big’s, construction of which is underway at 2703 Montrose–the former Ming’s Cafe–looks straight across the street at BB’s Kitchen, the terrific little po’ boy and breakfast place that stays open until 2:30 am Thursday, 4 am Friday and Saturday. It’s my favorite late-night spot in town.
Cook also notes a second Little Big’s location will open in Hermann Park this spring.
Photos of Little Big’s, under construction at the former Ming’s Cafe, 2703 Montrose Blvd.: Alison Cook
Read more about: 77006, Lower Westheimer, Montrose, Nightlife, Openings and Closings, Restaurants
November 18, 2008 – 12:57 pm
Just scrub away all that glitzy makeup and the former location of shuttered Rouge restaurant — at 812 Westheimer just a block east of Montrose — works fine as the new home of Biba’s One’s a Meal, says Alison Cook:
. . . the Biba’s folks got busy, banished the wine-dark swank, whitewashed the place and covered Rouge’s tables with blue-and-white checked plastic. Add a flotilla of Aegean photo murals, put on the sound track from Zorba (I am not making this up) and you’re good to go Greek. Or American, as the Biba’s menu and sign helpfully remind us, referring to the breakfast and burger fare that has seen many a local wastrel through the dark hours before the dawn, when a souvlaki or moussaka just don’t seem quite right.
Eighty-six the Beef Wellington with Mushroom pâté, bring on the chili cheeseburger with fries: The fates of restaurants make great economy-size metaphors, no?
I particularly enjoyed the way the formerly snazzy bar area is now filled with dinette furniture, as if the dining room redo–with its pretty wooden chairs and gleaming wine wall–just ran out of gas. What made it even better: a long table running the length of the room was filled with men of a certain age having a long, late lunch that looked right out of the old country.
Photos: Alison Cook
Read more about: 77006, Lower Westheimer, Montrose, Nightlife, Openings and Closings, Restaurants
