This weekend, while New York crowds flock to a recently opened exhibit of Forbidden City treasures belonging to China’s last emperor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Houstonians will have a chance for a much more satisfying and interactive experience with the wonders of the ancients: Crowds here will be swarming to plunder a replica of the massive gravesite of China’s first emperor. It has come to this: Forbidden Gardens, the garden-free (and yes, until now open-to-the-public) little 60-acre museum and cultural center on the Katy prairie has found no buyer willing to purchase intact its collection of 6,000 one-third-scale terracotta soldiers from the 2,200-year-old Xi’an tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang Di, its one-twentieth scale model of Beijing’s Forbidden City, or its many other handcrafted and made-in-China models of historic Chinese treasures. So everything in the museum will be sold off piece by piece, in one giant 2-day artificial-grave-side blowout liquidation sale.

“CASH ONLY!! ALL SALES ARE FINAL!!” screams a notice posted to the ordinarily staid museum’s website:

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02/18/11 1:52pm

HOUSTON’S BORDERS WILL REMAIN OPEN As expected, the Borders Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today and announced the closing of 200 of its 644 bookstores nationwide. Nine of the announced store closings are in Texas, but Houston survived this round of cuts. All 7 Houston-area stores — on Kirby at West Alabama, in the Galleria, Meyerland Plaza, the Baybrook Mall, at IAH, in Stafford, and the Woodlands — will remain open. [Wall Street Journal; list of store closings; previously on Swamplot]

02/16/11 1:50pm

The Houston Arts Alliance had a tough time tolerating the intersection of Montrose and Allen Parkway, but at last they’ve gotten the job done. The organization’s commission more than 2 years ago for a pedestrian bridge across Buffalo Bayou connected to that corner, dubbed the Tolerance Bridge, was abandoned after a sea of complaints about both the name and design. The new bridge that opens today at that same spot is much simpler than the earlier proposal — and it’s simply called the Rosemont Bridge. But standing — or really, kneeling — guard by the bridge’s southern entrance today are 7 new sculptures by Barcelona artist Jaume Plensa that were given to the city by a small group of donors who aren’t going out of their way to advertise their identity. The name for the artwork: Tolerance.

The see-through figures face mostly toward the south, away from the bridge and across Allen Parkway, to a vacant site where the oft-flooded Robinson Warehouse once stood. Five years ago, the Aga Khan Foundation bought the land there and announced plans to build a new Ismaili Center on it, including lecture, conference, and recital facilities, a prayer hall and a social hall, offices, and gardens:

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02/15/11 5:31pm

CLOSING MORE BORDERS Liquidators are already bidding to run going-out-of-business sales for as many as 200 Borders and Waldenbooks bookstores nationwide, ahead of an expected bankruptcy filing from the book retailer that could come as early as Monday, reports the WSJ’s Mike Spector. Closings of an additional 50 of the chain’s total 674 stores could come later, according to sources who spoke to Spector and reporter Jeffrey Trachtenberg. There are 7 remaining Borders locations in the Houston area — in the Galleria, Meyerland Plaza, on Kirby at West Alabama, in Bush Intercontinental Airport, in the Baybrook Mall, at Fountains on the Lake in Stafford, and in the Market Place Shopping Center in The Woodlands. The company closed its locations in the Willowbrook Mall, in Houston Center, in the Northwest Mall, and at Westheimer near Gessner early last year. [Wall Street Journal; previously on Swamplot]

02/11/11 6:09pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: UNLESS, OF COURSE, THEY SHOW URBAN COWBOY EVERY NIGHT AT MIDNIGHT “In regard to Sundance Cinemas, that’s potentially great news, but honestly, I wonder if it won’t succumb to the same fate as its predecessor. Even if it manages to reel in the handful of film buffs gasping for air in this sprawling sea of easily titillated Transformers, it still has to deal with being in a somewhat awkward spot. I just don’t see the independent film crowd planning a night of avant-garde cinema and theme bar hopping. Yee-haw, Thaddeus! Ride that bull.” [kilray, commenting on Report: Sundance Cinemas Replacing Angelika Film Center at Bayou Place; Bar Smorgasbord Moving in Upstairs]

02/10/11 10:29pm

The city of Houston and the Cordish Company are “deep into negotiations” with Sundance Cinemas to take over the former Angelika Theater spot at Bayou Place, Steven Thomson reports. Robert Redford’s Sundance Group has operated 2 Sundance Cinemas since 2007 — an 8-screen complex in San Francisco and a 6-screen multiplex in Madison, Wisconsin. If Sundance does end up taking over the vacant Angelika space at 510 Texas St. and maintains all existing screens, it would tie with the Sundance Kabuki Cinema near Pacific Heights as the largest complex in the small chain. The company appears to have scaled back the aggressive expansion plans it announced 4 years ago, which included new theaters in Chicago and Denver. The Angelika Film Center closed suddenly last summer.

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02/10/11 7:25pm

That little shopping district on 19th St. in the Heights will get its second vegetarian restaurant as soon as Radical Eats opens its kitchen just down the street from Shade. (They serve meat at Shade; it’s Cricket’s Creamery and Cafe across the street that’s vegetarian.) Staci Davis, who’s been selling tamales, tacos, and other Radical Eats fare at Antidote Coffee, Smart Meals, and various area farmers markets, will be moving her food-preparation operation from a drug and alcohol abuse counseling center in a former Holiday Inn by the Eastex Freeway near Little York to a significantly smaller space inside Katy Whelan’s planned Heights Ashbury Coffeehouse in the space at 242 W. 19th St. Whelan originally had plans to name her space the Love Street Coffee Shop; it’s going where Balinskas Architectural Imports used to be. Also sharing space with Davis and Whelan: Architect Deborah Morris’s new juice bar, Juicy in the Sky with Vitamins.

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02/10/11 2:25pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: NOT ENTIRELY WEANED FROM THE BREASTFEEDING STORE “I also find the news sad. The store was so beautiful inside — I felt special walking in to rent a scale, get a consult, buy some clothes, or just use the couches to take a break and feed my babes (with Sandie’s help, I breastfed twins!). I didn’t really understand the name of the store (silly me, I didn’t even realize that it was a store geared toward breastfeeding!) until I had children myself — birthing and breastfeeding a child is definitely work, the work that only a woman can do! My twins are six now. They love walking past the window displays. We’ll have to go again tomorrow, and sit on the couches one last time. The upside of the move is that it sounds like A Woman’s Work is now going to be in the same building as a large pediatric practice; for those families getting breastfeeding help should be easier than ever.” [Joyce, commenting on A Woman’s Work Is Abandoning the Village]

02/08/11 11:42pm

Breastfeeding and baby care HQ A Woman’s Work will be shutting down its Rice Village storefront at the end of March. Owner Sandie Lemke plans to move the store by then to a second-floor office at 4101 Greenbriar just south of 59, where she’ll continue her breastfeeding consulting and sales operation on a smaller scale — and by appointment only. “I . . . made the decision to downsize a bit so I can focus on my passion and what I have always considered my product – Breastfeeding,” she writes in an email sent to customers and forwarded to Swamplot. Breastfeeding classes and consulting, breast pumps for sale or rent, and baby slings will still be available at the new location, as well as bra fitting and maternity support services.

Meanwhile, there’s the most-stuff-at-25-percent-off moving sale at the A Woman’s Work storefront at 2401 Rice Blvd., on the corner of Morningside. Lemke founded the store 20 years ago; it’s been at the same location for more than a decade. A couple of years ago, Lemke closed down A Woman’s Workshop, a gathering and classroom space for parenting support groups that occupied a separate storefront across Morningside.

Photo: A Woman’s Work

02/07/11 11:09am

What’s it come to that a quirky little roadside attraction in Katy can’t quietly sell off its extensive collections of handcrafted-in-China replica Chinese figurines and miniatures online without getting overwhelmed? In advance of the curious shutdown of Forbidden Gardens, the institution’s stewards had decided to liquidate its entire collection of scale-model attractions, including the more than 6,000 terracotta warriors assembled for a broadly interpreted one-third-scale replica of the partially excavated tomb of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang Di. And yes, the venue chosen for a good portion of the sales: Craigslist.

(Last month, the venue’s staff announced that Forbidden Gardens, located on Franz Rd. in Katy just off the stub-end of the long-planned Grand Parkway, would be shutting down — to make way for the expansion of the proposed ring road’s Segment E. But plans provided to Swamplot show that the proposed path for the Grand Parkway would only skirt the theme park property, and would perhaps even burnish its credentials as a roadside attraction.)

An ad on the online classifieds site taken out by Forbidden Gardens’ curators over the weekend offered a “variety of terracotta warriors for just $100 each.” Plus: “We are willing to make a deal if you buy in bulk.” Pieces from other exhibits were offered for sale, including 1/20th-scale buildings — and porcelain figurines, for as little as $1 each! Clearly, this was an “everything must go” sort of event: More pieces from Katy’s strange little “museum and cultural center” showed up in other Craigslist postings that featured vases, store furnishings, even those red benches arrayed around the grounds.

By late Wednesday afternoon however, the ads had been taken down. “At this time interest has been so great that it is overwhelming us,” reads a new note on a new Craigslist ad posted by a museum staff member. “There are only 5 of us and we are all part time.” All those goods are still available — it’s just that the staff couldn’t handle the online rush:

If you are interested in seeing the museum one last time we welcome you. If while there you see something that you are interested in and the staff is not overwhelmed, please feel free to make an offer. . . . If you are interested in purchasing an entire exhibit we greatly welcome you to call the main office. For those of you wishing to purchase individual objects we will be having a mass sell off after the museum closes Feb 13. Please check our website where we will post info on this as it becomes available.

Mass sell-off! In other words, the already strange spectacle of Forbidden Gardens has morphed in its final days into something curiouser still: A museum of replicas where visitors can bid on the exhibits and take them home with them.

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02/03/11 2:34pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHEN THE HORMONE STIMULUS WEARS OFF “A bad economy causes low testosterone levels so it’s not surprising low-grade breastauranteurs are suffering. The only thing up is the stock market and that’s only because the Fed is gobbling Viagra, which will wear off any quarter now.” [DanaX, commenting on What Killed Houston’s Tilted Kilt?]

01/28/11 1:35pm

The sole Houston location of The Tilted Kilt Pub & Eatery, on Hwy. 6 between Westheimer and Briar Forest Dr., has closed. A reader, who writes that the popular breastaurant “always had a full parking lot whenever I drove by,” wants to know why. Sadly, the folks at the company’s Las Vegas HQ haven’t answered any of our questions directly. Instead, Swamplot readers, here’s your vague but perhaps carefully worded statement, purporting to give the lowdown on just how tough it is to run a little Vegas-style beer, wings, and skimpy costumes show out there in West Oaks:

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01/27/11 3:18pm

After 3 years, 2 locations, and hundreds of Knitting Bootcamp, Make Your Own Jeans, and Needle Felted Monster Balls classes, Heights DIY needle shop Sew Crafty has announced it will be closing its doors at the end of February. In a post on the store’s Facebook page, store owner Sarah Gabbart talks about the difficulty of running a small business in the current economy, the joys of seeing customers put together their own stuff; and she encourages everyone to keep on crafting. Then she gets down to business: Sale! Starting this Friday: sewing supplies, remnants, furniture and fixtures — everything must go! (Except all those rented sewing machines, of course.) Plus, the 2-story space at 321B 19th St. is now available for lease. Just call Marcela — she’ll hook you up.

Photos: Sew Crafty

01/24/11 10:32pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: CULTURAL EXCHANGE “If it’s any consolation, if there’s a scale model of the Astrodome outside of Beijing, it’ll probably get paved over eventually, too.” [tinyvoices, commenting on Out of the Way, Tiny Soldiers, Here Comes the Grand Parkway: Katy’s Forbidden Gardens Is Closing Down]

01/20/11 4:46pm

Segment E of Houston’s new Grand Parkway — more commonly known as the new ring-road highway planned to cut through the Katy Prairie to link the Katy Mills Mall to the Houston Premium Outlets mall in Cypress (and to facilitate cultural exchange programs between those two institutions) — has its first casualty, and it’s not an Attwater prairie chicken. One of Katy’s quirkiest and most beloved attractions, Forbidden Gardens, has announced it will close. The Chinese history and cultural museum’s peculiar but convenient location on a former rice field along Franz Rd. just off the Grand Parkway’s stub end likely wasn’t “just off” enough. Forbidden Gardens’ last day open will be January 30; a note on its website says the closing will “make way for the Grand Parkway expansion.” Forbidden Gardens opened in 1996.

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01/19/11 1:29pm