Better watch the decimal point when listing a property — though the resulting 90 percent drop in asking price did certainly catch a few eyeballs for this snappy Houston Heights home. When first listed on Tuesday, the initial asking price had an extra zero at the end of it, but was quickly revised later that day to $759,900. Back in 2011, the current owners paid $403,000 for it and appear to have re-renovated, further toning the trimmed abode.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THEY ONLY CALL HOUSTON SPRAWLING BECAUSE THERE’S NOT A WHOLE LOT ELSE TO NOTICE — YET 
“Sorry, but Houston is no more sprawled than any other large metros. Look at aerial imagery of any of the big ones. Just because Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix, LA, Chicago, etc. all have organized sprawl (zoning), doesn’t mean it’s any better than our non-zoned city sprawl. My point: sprawl is sprawl. I think cities like Houston get called out more when it comes to sprawl because of our lack of density in our core. As the inner loop core keeps densifying and gains a more wide spread identity, I think the sprawl argument against Houston will level out. . . .” [Ed, commenting on New ‘City with No Limits’ Slogan Will Be a Catchy, Fun Way To Promote Houston’s Legendary Sprawl] Illustration: Lulu
The State Bar and Lounge, which shut down this past weekend after more than 15 years in a storied space that was formerly home to the Capitol Club in the Rice Hotel, is about to undergo a “massive remodel,” a source tells Swamplot.
The members-only Capitol Club was once the haunt of a number of powerful and well-known attorneys, politicians and other powerful men in the city; according to KHOU’s Doug Miller, it was also the site of President Kennedy’s last drink (unless, of course, he polished off a few more daiquiris in his hotel room after his late-November 1963 visit). In its quasi-reconstruction and rebirth as a public establishment after the renovation of the Rice Hotel into the Rice Lofts in 1998, the spot maintained popularity among lawyers — especially the newly minted ones: Many would head to the State Bar to celebrate passing the state bar.
To judge it by its name, however, the new second-story venue now being planned there may have a slightly different set of guiding principles. A bar named Lawless Kitchen and Spirits will open in the space after renovations are complete, the source tells Swamplot.
Rice U. math Ph.D. student, Boulevard Oaks resident, and poet Kenan Ince has been making the rounds of local open-mic nights with his brief ode to the as-yet-invisible but still-ominous spectre looming over 1717 Bissonnet St. known as the Ashby Highrise. The poem, entitled Rise, Ashby, begins with an epigraph clipped from a Swamplot story about the lawsuit that was filed by a few of the 21-story apartment tower’s Southampton and Boulevard Oaks neighbors last year. A video of Ince’s recent performance at Montrose’s Cafe Brasil (seen at left) has been posted on Youtube; you can read the poem — with its original, towering typography intact — below:
Photo of AlvaGraphics at Shepherd Dr. and Center St.: elnina via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Like a pair of bookends, opposing wedges of a mushroom-hued 1977 contemporary in Hilshire Green seem to press against the home’s recessed double-door entry. The freshly painted property sprouted on the market with the weekend rains. It has a $715,000 asking price.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: A STRUCTURAL ENGINEER EXPLAINS PARKING GARAGE COLLAPSES 
“. . . Structural design is generally done by computing an anticipated load (how much will the stuff in the building weigh?), multiplying that by a safety factor, and then designing a structure with enough strength to support that “factored†load. Modern building codes also estimate the anticipated strength as less than it actually is too (for errors in materials/construction). Structures generally end up with at least 3 times as much strength as they need. That said, parking structures typically have the lowest factor of safety built into their design. They fail much more often than other building types because a) they’re so cheaply constructed, b) the loading is so much lighter than other types of structures that factoring doesn’t increase the loading by as many tons, and c) failure rarely results in loss of life.
@TL: You mentioned that there was a loud creek and then it failed? Any guess how long that creak lasted? 5 seconds, 3 minutes, an hour? I ask because concrete structures like this (ESPECIALLY pre-stressed concrete structures) are designed so that IF they fail, the rebar in them is the last thing to go, which will stretch and stretch and stretch gradually so that people have a chance to GTFO. The alternative is what’s called a brittle failure, where there’s just one loud pop and then bam; no warning at all.
. . . Engineers always talk about this stuff in terms of ‘strain’ and ‘yield.’ Strain is how much a material can deform (stretch or compress). When the strain gets too much, the structure ‘yields’ or permanently deforms. For a concrete structure, deform === collapse. The last thing to go before a concrete structure collapses is the reinforcing steel, which has a maximum strain of about 0.02 (2%) before yielding. That means if the clear span (beam-to-beam distance) is 30 feet, you can have a sag of 30 ft / 2 * 0.02 = 3.6 inches before it actually damages the structure. Parking garage widths are typically 64 feet, which can have ~7.5 inches of sag in the middle.” [Ornlu, commenting on A Top-Down View of Last Night’s Parking Garage Collapse at One Riverway] Illustration: Lulu
USPS, ON THE OTHER HAND, STILL LIKES ‘CLUTCH CITY’ 
The marketing-giddy corners of the internets may be buzzing today about the new “City with No Limits” branding campaign for Houston, but the U.S. Postal Service, it seems, is still stuck on an earlier nickname for the city. Reader Christopher Andrews tweets this screenshot showing the results that appear if you ask the USPS website to list all cities in the 77002 Zip Code. Strangely, “Clutch City” does not appear in the results for 77027 — the Zip Code of the former Houston Summit (now Lakewood Church), where the Houston Rockets played when they won the NBA championship in 1994 and 1995. The team didn’t move into the Toyota Center (in 77002) until 2003. [Twitter; try your own Zip Code search here] Screenshot: Christopher Andrews
The campaign may include some ingredients that remind us of its predecessors — the new video reintroducing Houston to potential visitors, for example, features a rockin’ sound track from a New York band and lots of images of happy people enjoying mostly Inner Loop attractions — but make no mistake: This new branding effort from the Greater Houston Partnership is fundamentally different from the mostly goofy and un-self-aware “Houston’s Hot,” “My Houston,” “Space City,” “Expect the Unexpected,” and “Houston Proud” campaigns from other organizations that preceded it. “Houston: The City with No Limits,” a concept and campaign unveiled yesterday, centers on a catchy slogan that rings true, because it highlights an essential part of the city’s ever-expanding built landscape and our unquenchable urge to spread ourselves out.
A bit more creaking at Westcreek, a trio of classic Keystone falls on Leverkuhn, and more destructive delights:
Photo of seawall: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Permeable pavers and fluffy plantings convert the front of a 1956 Meyerland mod into a patio (and parking area) off a glass enclosed foyer. The property went up for sale last week with a $475,000 asking price. Renovations in 2012 made the most of the home’s bones while updating the finishes, such as the color-blocked hardwood flooring found in the common areas (top). No, that’s not an area rug.
