COMMENT OF THE DAY: GETTING OTHER FOLKS TO BIKE ” . . . In all honesty, I only ride my bike for fun with the family on the weekends. However, after a couple of very frustrating attempts to park around White Oak to go out to dinner, I recently rode my bike down there with the family for dinner at BBs. While there is a dearth of bike racks, it was so easy to just hop on the bike path, lock up the bikes and go to dinner than weaving in and out of parking lots and side streets trying to find a space for parking. And that is why cycling will eventually become an essential for Houston. We are piling people inside the loop at an unprecedented rate. There is not enough parking in a number of hot spots (Montrose, White Oak, Washington Ave, etc.). People now live close enough to ride their bikes to go out to eat in these areas but don’t because bike amenities are woefully lacking. Or, to put it another way, if you love your car, you should support cycling so there are more parking spaces available for you.” [Old School, commenting on Comment of the Day: Scrambling Through Traffic]
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TELEPHONE ROAD SMOKEHOUSE REPLACES TELEPHONE ROAD SMOKEHOUSE 
The low-slung building that used to be Pete’s BBQ has re-opened as a barbecue, reports Eater Houston’s Eric Sandler. Run by husband and wife Brian Lewis and Lisa Kuhfeldt, Oak Leaf Smokehouse had a “soft opening” at 1000 Telephone late last week — and was “slammed,” selling out of meat by 1 p.m., says a February 21 post on Facebook. “Once the restaurant gets things dialed in,” reports Sandler,” they’ll expand the menu beyond the five meats and four sides currently on offer.” For now, the smokehouse is open during lunch hours from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. [Eater Houston] Photo: Allyn West
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SCRAMBLING THROUGH TRAFFIC “There is a chicken and the egg problem with bike transit in Houston. People do not think that it is worth it to support anything to make the city more bike friendly because it seems like there is too much traffic in the city for any sane person to try to ride their bike inside the loop. Yet, the best way to make riding inside the loop safer is to get more bike traffic out there. More bike traffic contributes to greater driver awareness and pushes the municipality to make big changes to improve bike mobility like providing real bike lanes, adding bike racks, etc.” [Old School, commenting on Headlines: Push for Bike Parking; Buc-ee’s Bathrooms]
DRIVING IN HOUSTON? SO DéCLASSé 
Artists Carrie Schneider and Alex Tu — that’s Tu in the homemade Hazmat at right — recently walked the first leg of their revamp of Art Guy Michael Galbreth’s “The Human Tour,” a 40-mile hike through Houston in the shape of a body that he devised as a UH student in 1987; OffCite’s Edward S. Garza meets Schneider and Tu in a Midtown restaurant and looks to a higher source to understand what the artists “hope to accomplish,” he writes: “The televisions in Natachee’s are tuned to an episode of The Brady Bunch. Peter Brady is twirling a baton and doing a little jig in the living room. I think of how the Brady family would fit in well in Houston. They would certainly live outside the 610 Loop or, more likely, outside Beltway 8. Mr. and Mrs. Brady would seek somewhere ‘nice’ — that is, suburban, homogenous, and car-centric — to raise their children, and they would relish the array of choices: Pearland, Sugar Land, The Woodlands, Friendswood, Kingwood, Tomball, Spring, Clear Lake, Cypress, Katy. Anyone who has lived in this city for a considerable time will say it: in Houston, to be middle class is to spend a lot of time in a vehicle.” [OffCite; previously on Swamplot] Photo: OffCite
IF YOU CAN’T BEAT ’EM . . . 
Two single-family houses in Midtown, 1505 Rosalie and 1917 Ruth (pictured here), have been home since 2010 to an assortment of yoga instructors, police sergeants, and college students, all of whom share the cooking and cleaning in a cooperative housing project, reports the Houston Chronicle’s Nancy Sarnoff. Part of Houston Access to Urban Sustainability, the houses require all tenants to sign a “sustainability pledge” before they move in, but that doesn’t mean it’s all rainbows and rain barrels: “Each person is responsible for contributing five hours of labor to the house per week. Those who shirk their domestic duties are fined $10 for every hour missed.” Sarnoff adds: “There are regular parties and events, though the housemates are quick to stamp out comparisons to hippie communes or college frat houses. Such misconceptions frustrate Rabea Benhalim, a corporate finance attorney who says some think the residents can’t be professional and they all do drugs and sleep together.” [Houston Chronicle ($)] Photo of 1917 Ruth St.: HAUS
COMMENT OF THE DAY: LONG INTO THE NIGHT MAY IT WAVE “ . . . Leaving the flag out in the rain and up at night unlit is also considered desecration. Are you going to arrest all the car dealers in Houston?” [sjh, commenting on Houston’s President Obama Muralist Strikes Again]
MINI COOPER PARKED ON KIRBY STORE WALL NOW PERMITTED 
Call it the artifice on the edifice: It took a few months, but the City of Houston seems to have embraced — or, at least, bureaucratically allowed — the fake Mini Cooper parked on the wall that was slapped with a red tag in early January at Internum, the interiors and design store at 3303 Kirby: “After some back and forth about permitting,” explains The Highwayman’s Dug Begley, “the city granted a permit in late January. Turns out you need to let the city know when you hang something over the sidewalk, even if it is a temporary ad and not a permanent sign. Otherwise, you get a lot of attention . . . .” [The Highwayman; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Lisa Garvin
PRESERVATION TEXAS DECLARES GERMANTOWN “SAVED” 
Remember that City Council approved the historic designation of the former Grota Homestead Neighborhood on December 5, naming the area northwest of Downtown just between Houston Ave. and I-45 the Germantown Historic District? First placed in 2006 on Preservation Texas’s list of Most Endangered Historic Places, says a press release, Germantown was declared by the organization in a ceremony yesterday — or Preservation Day, as it was called in Austin — to be “a saved site.” [Preservation Texas] Photo of Germantown bungalows: David Bush
OFFICE MONOPOLY 
Note: Story has been updated.
Houston Business Journal reports that Office Max and Office Depot are combining into one global office force to be reckoned with. The $1.17-billion, all-stock deal between the two big-box paper pushers is expected to create a single company — with less overhead and less overlap, too, you’d think — that’s worth $18 billion. Also, the Houston Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff reports that developer Ed Wulfe says that “9 or 10 of the 40 Office Depots and 19 Office Maxes in greater Houston are close enough to each other that one will have to close.” One of those, pictured here, is located in the strip center at Richmond and Kirby. [Houston Business Journal; Prime Property] Photo: Panoramio user Wolfgang Houston
THE LUXURY POST OAK IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE NEXT TO MCDONALD’S 
Randall Davis has completed the purchase of (most of) the 1405 Post Oak property where that long-standing McDonald’s was getting in the way of his Astoria development (the rendering of which is shown here), reports the Houston Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff: The McDonald’s that appeared in last Monday’s Daily Demolition Report is expected to be replaced with a smaller one near the edge of the 30,466-sq.-ft. 1.23-acre property, making room for the 70 28-story luxury tower — with 3-bedroom units going for $1.3 million — that’s being marketed as a path of upward mobility: “Davis has been luring investors through the federal government’s EB-5 visa program where wealthy would-be immigrants can put $500,000 or $1 million into a job-creating commercial enterprise and become lawful permanent residents of the United States.” [Houston Chronicle ($); previously on Swamplot] Rendering: Randall Davis Company
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: THAT WORD HAS ALWAYS BUGGED ME, THOUGH “Fur-down comes from furring which is a construction term adopted from clothing. I think. But I’m not an entomologist.” [Jeromy Murphy, commenting on Comment of the Day: How They Covered Up the Garage Door Mechanism in the Exercise and Taxidermy Room]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: TENANT BUILDOUTS 101 “Southwest will essentially ‘own’ that space so long as they are in business (or at least until the space is so old it would need to be re-done anyway), so it doesn’t much matter who holds the title. Businesses routinely make modifications to leased spaces when they move in, often quite major. In most office buildings, it’s assumed that when you move in you’ll gut the whole space and modify to suit. Retail too. (That’s one reason for the 3-year minimum lease!) Many chain restaurants get a long-term land lease and build their building on it; it’s mostly a financing thing, and the land owner probably won’t kick ‘em out in 20 years; and if that happens, they don’t care, since that building’s not worth much at that point, and is probably in need of a re-do anyway. You don’t see it much in residential because there’s so many and various units people don’t need to modify to suit, they just find another place. Also, people are cheap, and residence is a money sink instead of source. But at the higher end, where a few bucks doesn’t matter as much, I think you’ll find plenty of modifications done by the occupant, or by the landlord as a condition of lease.” [melee, commenting on Southwest Spending $150 Million To Expand Hobby Airport for International Flights]
HAKEEM OLAJUWON’S MOON SHOT, A LONG WAY FROM THE GALLERIA 
The two-time NBA champ opened DR34M in December to showcase his line of luxury men’s sportswear, leather goods, and body lotions — but the 3300 East Nasa Pkwy. location struck some as unlikely: The Jim West Mansion? In Clear Lake? Where NASA used to study the moon? Houston Chronicle‘s Joy Sewing drops by to see what the baller has done to the old place: “[Olajuwon] took great care to maintain the integrity of the mansion . . . . The great room is likely one of the most impressive entry ways of any luxury store from Louis Vuitton to Hermès. . . . He commissioned an artist to add gold-leaf accents throughout the mansion. . . . In the west wing, the DR34M sportswear collection is prominently displayed in a room that features flooring from the Rockets’ 1995 NBA championship game.” And it’s only about 40 minutes south on I-45, far from Uptown: “It would not make the same impact (at the Galleria),” Olajuwon tells Sewing. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Candace Garcia
LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN 
It seems as though it was just yesterday, but Presidents’ Day has come around again this Monday. Time to give these heads of state their due. Swamplot will be back as usual with more posts on Tuesday, February 19. Photo of David Adickes’s sculptures at SculpturWorx Studio in the Heights: Holly Middlebrook Pessoa
COMMENT OF THE DAY: IMAGINING A HOUSTON TEARDOWN FINANCING FUND “Cool place. And could be bought with payments less than rent in the area. I wish lending were easier. I think this place would have a better chance of being saved. This will likely have to be bought unfinanced due to its condition, which means wrecking ball. I’d love if there was a fund of sorts, funded by people that want these places saved. Then home buyers could borrow from this fund when bank financing was otherwise not available. That would give the people that want to save these places a way to put their money where their mouth was while not having to directly buy and rehab themselves. A bonus would be an actual return on their cash vs the .1% they get in a bank. Dreaming, I know . . .” [cody, commenting on Peeling Away a Richmond Place Spanish Colonial Bungalow]