Got a question about something going on in your neighborhood you’d like Swamplot to answer? Sorry, we can’t help you. But if you ask real nice and include a photo or 2 with your request, maybe the Swamplot Street Sleuths can! Who are they? Other readers, just like you, ready to demonstrate their mad skillz in hunting down stuff like this:
Answers — of a sort — to your questions:
- Montrose: Alas, none of our readers were able to identify concrete plans for the uh, seminal Montrose nightclub at the corner of Westheimer and Yoakum, which closed last year. But some of you were happy to pass on rumors about Mary’s: “Last I heard it was being purchased/leased again and will become a new Montrose hangout paying homage to the original, but that was about two months after it closed,” reports kjb434. LandGuy points out that the next-door parking lot between Mary’s and Burger King is owned by someone else; however HCAD records indicate the owners of Mary’s still also own the lot directly behind the former club, facing California St.
- Riverside Terrace and beyond: Can anyone snap photos of your home? “If you are in a public space, you can photograph anything you like. There may be restrictions around military installations or FBI buildings, though,” declares roving pic-snapper RWB. But watch out for overzealous security guards and cops, he warns. RWB has some experience in that department; but not so much as Downtown electric shuttle entrepreneur Erik Ibarra — who, sadly, did not weigh in to this discussion. (Ibarra founded REV Eco-Shuttle in 2008, shortly after he and his brother received a $1.7 million lawsuit settlement from the city. Six years earlier, sheriff’s deputies had entered their home near Park Place, seized their film, and arrested them after Ibarra’s brother took photos — from his own and public property — of a drug search being conducted at their next-door neighbor’s home.)
Lauren
offered a link to this handy guide to photographers’ rights. But a couple readers were certain the would-be design stalker was casing, not admiring: Says montrose: “They were just seeing if anyone was home before they robbed the joint. Nobody wants to take a picture of your house.”
We’ll post the next set of reader questions next Tuesday. Send us what you’ve got before then!
Photo of 1022 Westheimer Rd.: Swamplot inbox
It is understood that there is a garden in the back which holds the ashes of men who passed in the early AIDS epedemic. I am shocked no one in the Houston Community has brought this to anyone’s attention. This would be a great place for someone to create a new LGBT community center.
This would be a great place for someone to create a new LGBT community center.
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Only if it would be “chi-chi” and “fit in” with the “new” Westheimer.
The ashes have been brought up by quite a few. It doesn’t seem to be a priority for the AIDS organizations. Or anyone else, really, except for the ones who brought it up. A reminder, perhaps, that people really don’t care about the past in this city. Buildings, neighborhoods, people who died of AIDS and had no families who cared about them even after they died and so they were cremated and put in the garden at Mary’s. By a few who did care.
there is a facebook group dedicated to collecting information about the people whose ashes are behind mary’s and creating a lasting memorial.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Marys-Naturally-Closed/172134376922
Matt Mystery since you seem to be a bottomless pit of ideas and banality, why don’t you buy Mary’s and re-live your salad days or get permission to excavate up all of the dirt and place it in the little triangle across Waugh and pay for a commememorative plaque or statue and create a memorial garden?
Melanie. Not to be nasty but you seem to be just a bottomless pit. And slightly homophobic. Take it somewhere else.
My “salad days” were spent at Rich’s here, Studio One in Los Angeles and Studio 54 in New York. If you were around, no doubt yhou were one of the ones eternally on the sidewalk. Hoping someone would finally let you in.
there is a facebook group dedicated to collecting information about the people whose ashes are behind mary’s and creating a lasting memorial.
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According to the Facebook group the garden was not an AIDS memorial garden. Another urban legend bites the dust.
I think Mary’s at one time early on was a “gay biker” bar and so maybe it’s a memorial garden for some of the early gay bikers.
The park across the street would be a nice AIDS memorial garden just the same.
From reading the Facebook page, a lot of people’s ashes were scattered in the back part of Mary’s. To me, this makes the land sacred and I do not think it is right to build on top of a sacred site. For my part, I’ll do all I can to defend a place where people have scattered the ashes of their friends and lovers. I think it is important to protect that land. However that could be possible.
Well Matt M or should I say Liza, I was not pretentious enough or chi chi enough to stand in line trying to get a glimpse of you in a spangled top trying to be Halstons boy toy. Homophobic hardly. After all, I am giving you the time of day.
I hate to disappoint you, Melanie, but I was more into Sylvia Miles at the time.
Liza and Company including Halston were, well, too chi-chi for my taste. I wasn’t into chi-chi back then either. But it was amusing to watch. Then and now.
You have a nice day. You obviously need one.