The bar taking over for Downtown’s shuttered State Bar and Lounge opened quietly yesterday. That’s pretty good timing for a new establishment in an older haunt that’s a flight up from street level: Lawless Kitchen and Spirits is now serving food and drink on the second floor and over-the-sidewalk perch of the Rice Lofts building, carved from the former Rice Hotel at the corner of Texas Ave. and Travis St.
Here’s the streetside balcony, a suitable platform for viewing traffic, parades, flooding, or anything else of interest —from a safe distance above ground:
Lawless Kitchen and Spirits
The owners of fellow just-shut-down Willowbrook Mall bar Revolver are now in possession of the remains of Outlaw Dave’s Worldwide Headquarters, Houstonia’s Katharine Shilcutt notes. And a reader tells Swamplot the new owners are already busy making changes for an in-town Revolver revival: “Someone is doing outside renovations (tore down wood fence and pouring slab for patio) right now, and a truck with an exterior logo that reads ‘Revolver sub-BOURBON social’ has been parked outside for a week.” Revolver, which may or may not upgrade from sub-Bourbon to the hard urban stuff, is now aiming for a summer opening. 
Melange Creperie will be taking over for the Eatsie Boys at the 1,200-sq.-ft. former Kraftsmen Bakery space in the same ivy-covered Campanile complex that houses the Black Lab at 4100 Montrose Blvd., according to a 
The Stag’s Head will be closing later this month, the owner of the Shepherd Plaza pub at 2128 Portsmouth St. reports. “
An official opening date has finally been set for Houston’s 2 new light-rail lines — and it’ll be later than the expected early-April debut. 
Montrose watchdogs worried about the aura of chain-store sameness about to descend on the center-of-it-all corner of Westheimer Rd. and Montrose Blvd. once the 
