06/19/14 8:30am

fifth ward house

Photo of house on West St. near Harrington, Fifth Ward: David Elizondo via Swamplot Flickr Pool

Headlines
06/18/14 4:15pm

HOUSTON IS HOT AND STICKY Fried Egg on Sidewalk, HoustonHe’s getting ready to skip town, but writer Aboubacar Ndiaye did take the time to sit down at a coffee shop, swat away a few mosquitoes, and compose a maybe-not-quite-goodbye note to this city of accessible treasures: “The stickiness of Houston, living in the city for longer than planned, is borne out of this ease. Unlike New York or D.C. or San Francisco, Houston is not a layover city, a place to play out one’s youth and eventually settle into more comfortable circumstances. People who are here came for college or for jobs or to escape their small towns. They came to Houston to stay. Some of the young who grew up here grumble about moving to Austin, our popular sibling with its great music and coolness oozing out of its hippie streets, or to some other supposedly better city. Some of them left, to try their lucks in New York and Los Angeles and Chicago, but a lot came back, finding that while Houston does not have the cultural friction of those glittering cities, it has friends and money and time and hope. Those who come back, especially those with artistic inclinations, are embraced with open hearts and fatted tacos, because those of us who live here are aware of this inescapable truth: we’ve got it pretty good here, not great, but good. Instead of throwing ourselves face first into the whetstones of New York and L.A., a lot of us stay in Houston and make enough working at desk jobs or part-time to have time for artistic endeavors. Half the baristas and bartenders in Houston are artists or designers or musicians or writers, all of them living lives of mediocre content, rising at the most to local celebrity and local adoration. I sometimes, half-seriously, call Houston the Land of the Lotus Eaters, full of people who are continually high from a cocktail of affluence, affability, and comfort.” [The Billfold] Photo: Lori Greig [license]

06/18/14 1:30pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: WE ARE ALL JUST TEMPORARIES HERE Waves of Change“The church can hold out, but the wave is upon it — no way out. Best of luck and economy to you! I grew up in central NY State. When I visit with a car, I see towns and roads nearly unchanged in 35 years! It’s incredible! considering the rate of change here in Greater Houston which has been home for nearly as long. It is SO comforting to pass by the farm, soft-serve ice cream shop, mechanic’s garage etc I remember from childhood in situ! Maybe ‘environment-insecurity’ is a thing. Maybe Houstonians should coin it.” [movocelot, commenting on If You Really Want To Live in the Actual Galleria, This Is Where Your Home Might Go] Illustration: Lulu

06/18/14 12:00pm

At Home, Former Garden Ridge Superstore, Douglasville, Georgia

Garden Ridge Rebranding SignThose 7 Garden Ridge stores around the Houston area that sell lots of mirrors and rugs and pots and silky fake flowers but no garden equipment or hills aren’t closing, but they will soon sport new names. The entire 21-state chain is rebranding itself, store by store, to a name that’s both more descriptive and more generic: At Home. And CEO Lee Bird, who earlier this year yanked the home-goods company’s headquarters away from Houston and moved it to Dallas, appears to have been inspired by his colleagues in the fashion industry: “We want to be known as the Forever 21 of home decor,” he tells the Dallas Morning News, “fast and affordable.” No announcement has been made explaining when the Willowbrook, Woodlands, Humble, Westheimer, Katy, Sugar Land, or Webster Garden Ridge locations will get their new blue-and-gray signage and the new “Home Decor Superstore” tagline, but the entire $20 million project is scheduled to be complete before the end of the year.

Photos: Jonathan Dockery/Carrollton Menu (At Home in Douglasville, Georgia); robincharmagne (sign)

Make Yourself at Home
06/18/14 10:00am

REFORMED OIL WORKER TYPES GIVING UP PUMP JACK, OPENING NEW BREWERY NEAR THE WILLOWBROOK MALL Future Home of 11 Below Brewery, 6820 Bourgeois Rd., HoustonWhy are the owners of the microbrewery set to open later this year in this industrial building in the Four Season Business Park at 6820 Bourgeois Rd., a mile southeast-ish of the Willowbrook Mall, calling themselves the 11 Below Brewing Co.? Should their beers be served that cold? “Start with the oilfield, and move to the brewing industry, just like our founders,” the company explains on its Facebook page. “There’s 42 gallons in a barrel of crude oil, but only 31 gallons in a barrel of beer. See what we did there?” You should also see that the original name, Pump Jack Brewing Co., encountered some “trademark drama,” according to the founders, prompting the change. [11 Below Brewing] Photo with superimposed logo: 11 Below

06/18/14 8:30am

Andrew & Josephine Kuhn House, 2214 Kane.

Photo of Andrew and Josephine Kuhn House at 2214 Kane St.: elnina via Swamplot Flickr Pool

Headlines
06/17/14 4:00pm

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Is it really worth it to empty out and polish your bomb shelter before you put your home on the market? Here’s some compelling evidence that it is. The property on Jackwood St. in Meyerland with the bomb-shelter-turned-subterranean man cave featured last August on Swamplot sold late the following month for $330,000. But the buyers wasted no time in working a profitable flip. Clearing out the La-Z-Boy, beer bottles, Wendy’s soda cups, bunny figurines, and other memorabilia from the underground domed space resulted in a cleaner listing and a much higher sale price last month: $503,700, marked down from a $515K asking price and locked up only a week or so after the April listing. That’s an explosive increase of $173,700, or more than 50 percent, over the purchase price, in less than your typical real estate half-life.

Of course, a few things affecting home prices may have been going in the outside world while the buyers were busily scrubbing the walls of their underground lair. Though they did make a few other changes to the house as well:

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Lessons in Subterranean Staging
06/17/14 1:45pm

Black Eyed Pea, 4211 Bellaire Blvd., Houston

Variance Sign at Kilmarnock Dr. and Gramercy  St., Ayrshire, Braeswood Place, HoustonHere’s the variance sign (at right) that went up over the weekend at the intersection of Gramercy St. and Kilmarnock Dr., backing up to the power-line easement and ditch that separates the city of Bellaire (beyond the sign) from Houston. Supra Color Enterprises, the Florida-based landlord of the Black-eyed Pea restaurant at 4211 Bellaire Blvd. (above), is requesting a variance from the city as part of an effort to redefine its 1.8-acre property at that address as an “unrestricted reserve.” The variance application doesn’t reveal Supra Color’s plans for the land, but it does refer to a “proposed multifamily development” on the site.

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Development Rumors and Mashed Peas
06/17/14 12:00pm

Hot Tub in Game Room, 9751 Guest St.,

9751 Guest St., Glenwood Forest, HoustonAnd now, 6 words from a listing likely to soften the hearts of potential homebuyers everywhere: “Working hot tub in game room.” To which, for this 3-bedroom 1970 home in Glenwood Forest, we should append an additional 3-word phrase to help everyone understand the larger picture here: “Dinner is served.”

Behold:

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Wet, Hot Meals Inside
06/17/14 8:30am

SWN Energy Headquarters

Photo of Southwestern Energy Headquarters in Springwoods Village: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool

Headlines
06/16/14 2:30pm

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Fans of parquet flooring will note a similar squarish pattern covers the ceilings (top) of this 1958 mod in Seabrook’s El Lago Estates. The property’s listing, which debuted in March, suggests building a second home on the big, park-like lot near Taylor Lake. A water view, though, means traipsing down the meandering roadway to peek through neighbors’ fences. Woodsy vistas, however, are available from almost every room in the home . . .

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Open Plan, Inside and Out