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COMMENT OF THE DAY: A DEMOLITION THAT REALLY HITS YOU IN THE GUT 
“Boy, seeing smashed Bibas truly hurts. It has been my ‘Hungry Heifer’ for the past 2 decades. The food was always kinda ‘meh’, often left me feeling horrible and greasy afterwards, but I had a wonderful love/ hate with that place. Oh, how I wish for one last mediocre gyro or [Aphrodite] pizza. My colon will never forget you.” [wilf, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: Bibas Lost Pizza] Photo of Bibas Greek Pizza: Sonya Cuellar
8 OUT OF 16 HOUSTON HISTORIC DISTRICTS ARE NOW UP FOR “RECONSIDERATION” Planning department spokesperson Suzy Hartgrove tells Swamplot the city has received petitions from 8 of the city’s designated historic districts: Avondale West, Boulevard Oaks, First Montrose Commons, Houston Heights East, Houston Heights South, Houston Heights West, Norhill, and Westmoreland. The department is currently verifying them. Do they all meet the 10-percent threshold that’ll trigger balloting and possible dissolution? “Our initial glance tells us that they probably do but we must conduct a thorough check,” writes Hartgrove. Okay, who’s left? Audubon Place, Avondale East, Broadacres, Courtlandt Place, Freeland, Shadow Lawn, and West Eleventh Place, carry on: You may continue to live in the past. [previously on Swamplot]
A spokesperson tells Swamplot the map above gives a “pretty good” indication of where you’ll soon be able to find electric-vehicle charging stations in the new eVgo network announced today by NRG Energy. NRG says it will put “convenience” stations in parking lots in front of Best Buy, Spec’s, H-E-B, and 18 Walgreens stores, as well as faster-charging “freedom” stations in various locations along freeways, in shopping and business districts, and in other parking lots around Harris County. The company expects to have 50 Houston stations in place by the middle of next year — 150 by the time the network is complete — but no specific locations have been announced yet. NRG, which owns Reliant Energy, is calling Houston’s eVgo “the nation’s first privately funded, comprehensive electric vehicle (EV) ecosystem” but the second and third ecosystems shouldn’t be too far behind: The company plans to begin the rollout of similar setups “across Texas” next year. The first Houston stations should be ready to spout electrons in February.
Chargers will come in two flavors:
TIME’S UP! Yesterday at 5 pm was the deadline for opponents of 14 of the city’s 16 designated historic districts (there’s no going back for the Old Sixth Ward or Main St./Market Square) to submit petitions calling for their oldish neighborhoods to return to the good ol’ days of unrestricted demolition and less-restrictive development. The threshold to trigger actual balloting in any of the districts is pretty low: All they need are the signatures of owners representing 10 percent or more of a district’s total tracts. So who’s in — er, heading for an out? [previously on Swamplot] Update: We’ve got the answer!
They took the idols and smashed them. And who’ve we got now? Some nobodies!
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHERE THE MONEY IS ON KIRBY “Yes, it was getting tedious having to drive 75 more feet to find a bank.” [SH snooty, commenting on Children’s Kirby Assessment: Bike Barn Site Bank and Drive-Thru]
The Rodriguez Brothers have produced more than 200 food trucks out of their warehouse on the corner of Garrow and Roberts just east of Settegast Park, reports food critic and soon-to-be-restaurateur Robb Walsh. Inside on a recent visit, Walsh finds 14 vehicles in various stages of customization — including catering trucks, taco trucks with “California-style” cantilevered skylights, and vehicles outfitted with elote cookers, shaved-ice machines, or other specialty equipment. “The kitchen is designed for the kind of food being served,” co-owner Daniel Rodriguez tells him.
“Sometimes I look back and wonder WHAT WAS I THINKING,” writes Jason Perry in a press release he sent to local media outlets announcing the closure of his late-night and after-hours establishment near Montrose and Fairview — and its coming reincarnation as a perhaps quainter little bistro. “Did I really open a penis shaped muffin restaurant, did I really spend more than half of a million dollars on a restaurant that promised to toss peoples salad[?]â€
Housed in a 1940 foursquare at 2310 Converse St., the MuffinMan, which opened only a few months ago, actually promised customers a bit more than that. Perry’s possibly NSFW farewell-to-muffins press release explains it best:
Wait a sec — is something missing?
COMMENT OF THE DAY: CRIME BLOCK “Does having a wall at a dead end street make it more secure? In some ways, criminals may be safer where no one can see them during the day, or night. The wall may act as a buffer for thieves instead of hindering their action. There are many stories in the neighborhood where high walls and fences encouraged thieves. Typically, pedestrian areas seem to be more safe since there is always someone watching. So I’m not sure about the safety for those residents on the dead end street with just a wall.” [Montrose Slums, commenting on Open and Shut: The Montrose H-E-B’s Pedestrian Gates]
A 2-story Frost Bank with a drive thru will take over the Kirby side of the former Village Plaza shopping center between Dunstan and Bolsover — once the demo company finishes smashing the Bike Barn, Mattress Giant, and the shells of a few other stores its been chewing on, reports the Village News. Frost bought the 35,000-sq.-ft. leftover portion of the center at 5925 Kirby earlier this month from the Children’s Assessment Center. The CAC plans to expand its Rice Village “campus” (named after attorney John M. O’Quinn) and build a parking garage on the back half of the property.
H-E-B agreed several months ago to wall off the ends of Sul Ross and Branard streets, which dead-end into the site of its future Montrose market at West Alabama and Dunlavy, and which served as entrances for the Wilshire Village Apartments that were torn down there last year. But what about devotees of that obscure local Montrose pastime known as walking to the supermarket? If they’re coming from the neighborhoods to the west, should they be able to get through that way?
Over the weekend, the Lancaster Place Civic Association worked out a “compromise” between homeowners on the dead-end portions of Sul Ross and Branard — mostly opposed to having pedestrian gates at the ends of their streets — and homeowners and renters in that neighborhood to the south and southwest of the site, most of whom wanted them included. H-E-B Houston prez Scott McClelland says he’ll have H-E-B’s in-house architects design what the association came up with: A pedestrian gate on Branard, with a timer that will lock it after dark. Sul Ross, which is closer to the store entrance, won’t have a gate, but will have a panel in the wall that would make it easier to put one in later.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE HUNG BROWSER DEFENSE “I don’t believe that I did [run the red light]. And the alleged video that claimed to show my car going through the light never worked for me, as I never could get the video to load.” [Random Poster, commenting on Red Light Cameras No Longer Recording]