The plastic hasn’t even been peeled away from the awning, but Blacksmith is open as of yesterday morning. Headed up by Greenway Coffee & Tea’s David Buehrer, the coffee shop is operating out of the popular leather bar Mary’s old building at 1022 Westheimer. A block west of Montrose Blvd., Blacksmith is Lower Westheimer’s second coffee shop to open in the last few months — Southside Espresso went in next to Uchi at the end of October.
YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY 
Has Midtown become too hip even for the federal government? The Social Security Administration is leaving, having lost its lease at the low-slung building at 3100 Smith (shown at right), reports CultureMap’s Whitney Radley: “Once a sort of wasteland, the surrounding neighborhood teems now with development, restaurants, bars, mixed-use complexes and multifamily units . . . . speculation that the building might be prime space for a restaurant or even torn down to make room for a mid-rise, is rampant.” [CultureMap] Photo: Panoramio user Wolfgang Houston
In Dallas, you have to keep at least 20 ft. between your chicken coop and your neighbor’s stuff. Here? It’s 100 ft. That’s why this map of the Greater Heights looks the way it does. Hens for Houston founder Claire Krebs, using GIS technology she learned as an engineering student at Rice, created a series of these maps (what she’s calling “policy-making tools”) out of HCAD data to show just how few Houstonians are allowed to keep hens — if they wanted, that is — because of a city ordinance requiring the 100-ft. setback.
THE ART GUYS GO TO THE LIBRARY 
A Swamplot reader says that the eponymous live oak (shown at right) in “The Art Guys Marry a Plant,” acquired by the Menil Collection in 2011, has been uprooted from Menil Park. Art Guy Jack Massing “didn’t want to say where the tree has gone,” reports the Houston Chronicle: “‘We’ve got it all taken care of,’ he said.” Instead, he wanted to talk about the Art Guys’ 30 years of working together; they’re planning “12 Events:” a year of once-a-month “behaviors” beginning on January 23 with a marathon autograph session at the Julia Ideson Library on McKinney: “They see signatures as something both basic and profound that’s evolved from the simplest mark making — drawing a line — into a legally-binding expression of identity. ‘People say they can’t draw, yet they have a signature. It’s a way of drawing your identity with a linguistic connection so you can be relevant in the world,’ Massing said. ‘It’s simple and basic, and yet incredibly profound.'” [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Robert Boyd
We shall see whether art can have a trickle-down effect: Glasstire reports that Patrick Renner will be taking a few loads of reclaimed wood and building this 185-foot “Funnel Tunnel” among the trees on the esplanade near Inversion and the Art League Houston at 1953 Montrose; the Houston-based sculptor will be piecing it together starting February 1.
Drawing: Glasstire
They’re both Pearls. But one of these Morgan Group renderings is destined for a lot in Midtown; the other for Greenway Plaza. Can you tell which is going where?
BREAKING UP WITH THE ART GUYS Will the newest installation at the Menil Collection be a hole in the ground? The Art Guys were told last week that the museum intends to remove the live oak they “married” in 2009 in “The Art Guys Marry a Plant,” a public ceremony at the Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden at the MFA,H. The museum acquired the tree in 2011 and held another public ceremony when it was planted in Menil Park on Branard St.; the little site (shown at right) backs up to the bamboo grove walling off the park from the Rothko Chapel and Barnett Newman’s “Broken Obelisk.” [Houston Press] Photo: Robert Boyd
Collectors and artsy-crafty types will have to head to East Downtown for their muse-feeding materials when Texas Art Asylum, a 18-month-old venture in the First Ward’s art district (top), packs it all up and moves its various shop-classroom-warehouse operations from several sites to one consolidated locale at 1719 Live Oak St. (above and left). The new space, about 6,000 sq. ft., is the former home of pedicab vendor Space City Bike Cabs.
The asking price of a property in the Avondale (West) Historic District has been dropping $500 per day since its latest relisting on Thanksgiving Day. A pre-holiday hiatus had capped a 2-year sales effort at several price points by various agents and agencies. The 1910 home and grounds are described as part of the estate of Ross Sterling, a former governor of Texas (1931-32) and founder of Humble Oil, which later became the far humbler ExxonMobil.
Those of you waiting with bated breath for the renovation, redevelopment, or removal of the 1950s-era office building at 3400 Montrose Blvd. (across Hawthorne St. from the Montrose Kroger): keep on bating. The company that bought the vacant 10-story building last September has told its 500 Israeli investors that its operations in Israel and Houston are both “in dire financial straits,” according to a report in Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
No bids yet on the sleepy sombero man in front of the hacked cactus removed from the sign in front of the former Felix Mexican Restaurant at the corner of Westheimer and Grant last year. And no bids on the other formerly east- and west-facing portions of the popular sign, which the space’s new owner, Uchi, put up for auction separately on eBay early this morning. The starting bid for each disassembled segment is a hefty $1,500, but Uchi doesn’t appear to be in this game for fish money. Proceeds are promised to the LULAC National Scholarship Fund; the former restaurant’s namesake, Tex-Mex pioneer Felix Tijerina, served as LULAC’s national president for 4 terms. The “Orders To Go” flyer from the original sign hasn’t shown up in any online auction yet.
Also making an appearance in this morning’s Demolition Report: the crumbs of East Montrose’s short-lived but storied MuffinMan restaurant. Back in the wacky late summer of ’10, the four-square-turned-duplex at 2310 Converse St. played host to what proprietor Jason Perry modestly claimed to be “the greatest penis shaped muffin restaurant Houston had†(Note: Perry’s description referenced the shape of the muffins, not of the building or its rooms; a 6-ft. sign he posted on the front lawn announced to his neighbors his earnest contention that a “four inch muffin is better than an eight inch cock.”)
LITTLE HOUSE OF COFFEE AND DRINKS OPENS BEHIND UCHI 
Friday was a grand grand opening day in the Inner Loop. The big bear-hug welcomes may have been for the long-awaited Washington Heights Walmart and the Studemont Kroger — but also making its debut on that day was tiny Southside Espresso, the little up-Grant-St.-behind-Uchi coffee place Fusion Beans proprietor Sean Marshall has been working on since signing a lease for the 714-sq.-ft. space labeled 904-C Westheimer 15 months ago. The tiny coffee house will be open until midnight every night — in part to flex its newly acquired beer-and-wine license. [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: David Buehrer
Photographer Karen Dressel was on hand at lunchtime today to document the final few bites of the excavator demolishing the last of the 3 former Ruggles Grill buildings at 903 Westheimer, just east of Montrose. Two adjacent buildings, at 817 and 907 Westheimer, were torn down earlier this month; Cherry Demolition’s excavator worked up an appetite waiting on-site for the last demo permit to come through. That happened yesterday, and the meal began shortly after breakfast this morning:
