Wondering why the upcoming season of Bravo’s Top Chef: Texas won’t feature scenes of Houston in any of its 14 episodes — even though state officials gave the production company $400,000 to film the season in Texas? Well, here’s a possible answer: Houston officials refused to fork over an additional $120,000 to the production company, Magical Elves, in return for a single episode to be filmed in Houston. “They were not going to give us any editorial influence for what was shot,†Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau marketing director Lindsey Brown tells the San Antonio Express News. “We just felt it wasn’t worth what they were asking. They could go out to Beaumont and film oil [derricks] for all we know.”
Instead of Houston restaurants and grub, the series will feature 8 full episodes shot in San Antonio, including a faked farmers market at the La Villita village downtown and the highly anticipated return of Pee-Wee Herman to the Alamo basement. Why the San Antonio focus?
Beginning next spring, a new free shuttle service called Greenlink will connect the George R. Brown Convention Center to City Hall — and about 20 stops along the way. The fleet of seven 30-ft.-long buses running on compressed natural gas is being paid for by the Downtown Management District, Houston First (the new corporation that now operates the convention center), and British gas company (and 
Charles Kuffner spots demographic shifts in the Fifth Ward: “To interview the candidates in District B, I made several visits into the Fifth Ward, which is a neighborhood I can’t honestly say I’d been to before. One of these interviews took me past 
