BREW LOW, SELL HIGH 
A Woodlands entrepreneur plans to open one of those beer bars where the prices fluctuate like a stabilized stock market — near Hubbell & Hudson at 24 Waterway Square next month. Owner Steve Jackson got the idea after he visited the Berliner Republik bar in Germany about a decade ago. But his description makes it sound like prices at his new establishment, which he’s calling The Exchange, will only be adjusted every 20 minutes: “We’ll have monitors and a ticker throughout the bar with a countdown clock,” he tells the HBJ‘s Allison Wollam. “Our patrons will have to decide if they want to buy the beer before the 20-minute mark, or take a chance to see if the price will go up or down.” If all goes well, Jackson says, he’s going to want to open five additional locations elsewhere in the Houston area. [Houston Business Journal] Photo of pricing screen at Die Berliner Republik: Beatrice Obwocha
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Openings and Closings
Woodland Heights hangout King Biscuit Patio Cafe closed its doors on Saturday night. Sources tell Swamplot that cafe owner Roger Aggoun’s lease was not renewed. Now b4-u-eat is reporting that building owner Pat Quinn — who opened the place at 1606 White Oak in 1982 but later sold it — plans to team up with the former owner of Fitzgerald’s to reopen the restaurant. Sara Fitzgerald retired last year from running the live-music venue at the other end of White Oak; she opened Fitzgerald’s in 1977.
Photo: Renny Glover
Not even 3 years after the store merged with a local competitor, the owners of Harold’s in the Heights has announced it is going out of business. Harold Wiesenthal founded the independent men’s clothing shop in 1950, a date its storefront at the corner of 19th St. and Ashland St. still screams daily to passersby. Since 2008, the store has been a part of Norton Ditto. Wiesenthal’s successor — his son Michael — left the company early last year.
- About us [Harold’s]
Photo: Gordon Tillman
THE LEFTOVERS AT PHIL’S TEXAS BARBECUE 
Katharine Shilcutt at the Houston Press confirms what readers have been telling us: that Phil’s Texas Barbecue closed for good on Tuesday, leaving behind a large and now-vacant BBQ-and-picnic-style spread at the intersection of Heights Blvd. and Washington Ave. Former energy executive Phil Stephenson did manage to leave the corner a fair bit cleaner than the way he found it: Carving a 7,000-sq.-ft. restaurant space out of the former Southwest Muffler and Brake building took 9 months. Phil’s opened last June. [Eating Our Words, via Twitter; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Houston Foodie
Ding! That’ll be all for the Buffalo Grille — or its 26-year location at Bissonnet and Buffalo Speedway, at least. The restaurant closed at 2 o’clock today, minutes after serving its last meal (an order of chicken enchiladas, if you have to ask). Next assignment for the building: to go away, and leave behind a few more concrete parking spaces for the H-E-B Buffalo Market.
Sometime next week, a slightly larger Buffalo Grille will reopen a mile to the west at 4080 Bissonnet, on the Academy St. end of the Randall’s shopping center, Weslayan Plaza. Inside will be an even-more-enclosed version of the restaurant’s enclosed patio, plus space for an eventual actual outdoor patio next door:
When it opens this summer, the new Microsoft Store in the Houston Galleria will be the company’s 10th retail location. Won’t that be awfully close to the Apple Store? That’s been part of the game plan since the folks behind Windows, Office, and the Xbox hatched their retail scheme in February 2009. The only Microsoft stores so far are in the booming metropolises of Scottsdale, Arizona; Mission Viejo, San Diego, and Costa Mesa, California; Lone Tree, Colorado; Oak Brook, Illinois; Bloomington, Minnesota (at the Mall of America); and the company’s hometown of Bellevue, Washington.
Photo: Microsoft
A buyer has at last been found for the carefully constructed Forbidden City exhibit at the shuttered Forbidden Gardens attraction in Katy. Well . . . for a portion of it, at least. Ben Cornblath is director of the museum and cultural center that closed under mysterious circumstances in February, then held an open-to-the-public selloff of many of its holdings. He tells Swamplot that a group of people in an “environmental” company associated with the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo has expressed interest in . . . that big shed that’s been standing over the model and protecting it from things like sleet, Hurricane Ike, and the Houston sun. The park is still awaiting the company’s bid. Cornblath says such structures appear to be a rare commodity around the metropolitan area, and this one has a strong track record of sheltering an entire miniature Middle Kingdom city for nearly a decade and a half. But getting the steel structure out of there won’t be easy: The move may require a crane.
What about that thing beneath the sought-after roof, the one-twentieth-scale model of Beijing’s Forbidden City?
BAYOU PLACE TURNOVER NOW COMPLETE 
Curtain! The oldest tenant at Bayou Place downtown — and the only venue left from the original 1997 retail lineup at the revamped former Albert Thomas Convention Center — closed last week. Mingalone Italian Bar & Grill, with its balcony view of the Wortham Center plaza from across Texas Ave., had a 14-year run. Photo: Mingalone
Reopened yesterday after almost 2 years of construction and renovation: The Oak Forest Library at 1349 W. 43rd St., sporting 2 new brick-and-glass wings on the buildings west side, around a new outdoor reading room. The original building’s signature green tile mosaic wall still faces the Oak Forest Shopping Center’s continuous W. 43rd St. parking lot, but a new second entrance for the neighborhood now peeks out from behind a much greener space on Oak Forest Dr. — across the street from Oak Forest Elementary:
Opened over the weekend: a 1,500-sq.-ft. space at 6115 Kirby in the Rice Village that its owners are claiming is the country’s first non-toxic retail paint store. The Green Painter, a project of green-building supply house and organic-mattress showroom New Living, takes over a former tile store next door to its parent company. Partner Jeff Kaplan says most of the paint and coatings sold at the Green Painter — including its own NOVOC brand and a lower-priced line of contractor-grade paints — won’t have any volatile organic compounds at all, but the store does carry one line of paints for cabinets, trim, and exteriors that qualifies as a low-VOC product.
- Paint & Coatings [New Living]
- The Green Painter [Facebook]
- Buckets of green for painters [Houston Chronicle]
Photo: Adam Brackman
As of this morning, Historic Houston has been able to raise only $13,000 of the $50,000 executive director Lynn Edmundson had figured the organization would need to keep its North Montrose building-parts salvage warehouse in operation for just 3 more months. After this weekend, she tells Swamplot, she will have lost all employees other than her crew. That means the warehouse at 1307 West Clay St. will only be able to be opened by appointment. This Saturday from 10 to 4, though, she’ll be holding a last-ditch 50-percent-off sale with a bonus: All purchases will be tax-free.
As a nonprofit, Historic Houston is allowed to hold 2 sales-tax-free sales a year. Similar events put on by the organization in past years have been “pretty big successes,” according to Edmundson. “There seems to be something about not paying taxes” that really encourages people to buy, she says.
19TH ST. IN THE HEIGHTS NOT QUITE READY FOR THAT SIXTIES VIBE Contrary to a few emailed and published reports claiming that it opened for business yesterday, the Heights Ashbury Coffee House still needs “a few more weeks” before it’ll be ready, owner Katy Whelan tells Swamplot . . . after an initial “YIKES!” The space at 242 W. 19th St. will be the new home of Staci Davis’s Radical Eats and Deborah Morris’s Juicy in the Sky with Vitamins juice bar. “We promise you we are ALMOST THERE,” writes Whelan. “We will be offering lots of specials for the wait.” [Previously on Swamplot]
A MIDTOWN BEER BAR IS BORN Who’s the mama? “A craft beer bar will be coming to Midtown in roughly the same time it takes to conceive and gestate a baby. Except this baby’s father is one of the most esteemed bar owners in town. And the baby will have a diet primarily composed of small-batch craft beers. It’ll be taking up residence next to another beloved bar, right along the light rail, making this small section of Midtown suddenly infinitely more intriguing.” [Eating Our Words]
IT’S OFFICIAL: ROBERT REDFORD, SUNDANCE CINEMA TAKING OVER THE ANGELIKA, HOLDING YOUR SEAT 
Robert Redford’s Sundance Cinema will spend $2.25 million to renovate the 36,000-sq.-ft. former Angelika Film Center space in Bayou Place downtown, according to today’s official announcement from the Mayor’s office. The new movie complex is scheduled to open on November 1 in the former Albert Thomas Convention Center at 510 Texas St. Underground parking will still be free, but movie showings will have reserved seating only. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo: Aaron Carpenter
EVERYTHING WAS GOING FINE AT THE BERRYHILL IN CINCO RANCH — UNTIL THIS HAPPENED 
The Berryhill Baja Grill in Villagio Town Center — that Tuscan-themed shopping center in Cinco Ranch — has closed. “Not hugely newsworthy,” a Swamplot reader admits — except for one little part of the story. According to a lawsuit filed earlier this month by Villagio Partners, the restaurant hasn’t paid its rent in twenty-seven months. Berryhill moved into the shopping center in August 2007 but the franchise’s operators haven’t paid at all since the beginning of 2009, according to a filing with the Harris County District Court. [Ultimate Katy] Photo: Villagio Town Center
