- 6236 Overbrook Ln. [HAR]
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Tag: 77057
- 6219 Piping Rock Ln. [HAR]
HILLCROFT HOUSTON CELL PHONE SNATCHING THROUGH THE ROOF 
Here’s a view from earlier today of the ceiling inside Rizwan Siddiqi’s Cell Phone Wholesale shop at 3633 Hillcroft. Shortly before 4 this morning, a thief dropped into the store and grabbed as many as 80 smartphones before climbing back out the way he came, through the roof. Surveillance video shows the phoneburglar missing on his first attempt to jump back into the plenum space, hitting the display case before crashing back onto the floor. A tall stool placed on top of the case eventually allowed a gentler exit. The shop is carved out of one side of the Valero In-N-Out store at the corner of Windswept. [abc13] Photo: Phillip Mena/Click2Houston
All rooms within this Briargrove custom home by Rudolph Colby “open to atrium and fountain areas.” Earlier this week, the corner lot property lowered its asking price once more, to $1,329,000, for its re-listing by the same agent. Back in February, the home debuted at $1,595,000, with reductions to $1,469,000 in April and $1,380,000 in June for the summer months.
Built in 1994, the 4,929-sq.-ft. home is not the largest of the newer homes infiltrating the tight-knit neighborhood. On its stretch of street, however, the house stands taller, bigger, and distinct. Landscaping between its two gabled wings helps conceal a brick wall that appears to match the height of neighboring fifties ranch homes. An entryway streetside leads into a brick-paved courtyard-with-fountain surrounded by window walls and glass-paneled doors:
GALLERIA RICHARD’S BECOMES SPEC’S, AND OTHER RICHMOND AVE. SWITCHES 
“The Richard’s Liquors off Richmond Avenue and Chimney Rock turned into a Spec’s almost overnight,” begins a reader report on recent happenings in the area. More turnovers in the commercial landscape, from our tipster: “It seems like Richmond Avenue is going through redevelopment since the Taco Cabana and Jack in the Box closed, and they too were by the Chimney Rock intersection. Also the new apartments going up called Avenue R off Barrington have started to build the wooden frames and a large parking garage. The Jack in the Box actually turned into a ‘TitleMax’ title loans shop and it’s painted blue. The old Taco Cabana building is just sitting there and empty but a gas station would be nice there.” The Galleria-area Richard’s rebranding took place last week; other locations of the Spec’s-owned local liquor chain appear to be holding onto the Richard’s name — for now. [Swamplot inbox] Photo: Spec’s
A Briargrove listing has dropped its price a third time in as many months. The updated fifties ranch-style home currently seeks $639,000, down from $650,000 in April, $669,000 at the end of March, and $679,000 when it hit the market earlier that month. On the street, near Briargrove Elementary, there’s a mix of original single-story homes and newer ones built with larger proportions. This home is one lot in from the corner of Briargrove Dr. on a nearly quarter-acre lot. (Beyond a drainage ditch across Briargrove is the St. Luke’s Hospital Emergency Center.)
The ranch dressing on the home’s exterior is “traditional.” The interior?
STRIP CENTER PUNISHMENT 
Houston’s “preeminent BDSM dungeon,” writes the Houston Press‘s Jef with One F, “started out as a simple one-room space in the Galleria area in 2010, but now hosts a multi-room facility that serves as one of the few full-time dungeons in the city.” A FourSquare listing reveals that Maison Noir is lodged inside “erotic fantasy superstore” Bizarre Times, in the crotch of a strip center on Winrock just north of Westheimer, across the street from the Penthouse Club and the Super Clean Carwash. “The facility is outfitted with many pieces of bondage furniture such as a vertical steel cage, a St. Andrews Cross, a CBT chair . . . multiple spanking benches, a vertical rack, and a bondage table.” [Art Attack] Update, 4/20: A couple of dominatrixes have sternly corrected us; Maison Noir moved from its Winrock location earlier this year. Photo: LoopNet
GIANT NEON COCKROACH THAT HAUNTED SOUTHWEST FREEWAY, ERADICATED AT LAST 
Bubba, the cockroach enshrined in an enormous neon sign for Holder’s Pest Control, which stood guard for years along Westpark next to the Southwest Freeway, will not return to the Houston skyline, the company reports. The 8-ft.-by-16-ft. sign was taken down in 2004, after Holder’s relocated. But after almost 8 years of residence in a company warehouse, the sign was “cut up and hauled off for recycling” earlier this year, reports Travis Alford. That menacing, old-fashioned cockroach is no longer a part of the brand identity of the company now known as Holder’s Pest Solutions, and it won’t be coming back. Holder’s just-unveiled new logo instead features a gentle curve at its top that references instead a much more modern feature of Houston: the Astrodome. [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Holder’s Pest Control
Trader Joe’s has at last confirmed the second and third of the 3 stores that’ll constitute the idiosyncratic grocer’s Houston invasion. If you’ve been following Swamplot, you already know about these locations: In addition to the already announced shopping-center add-on in The Woodlands (recent construction photo at top), there’s another to be constructed in suburban-style big-corniced splendor (midde photo, above) on Voss just north of San Felipe. And yes — the company is now ready to admit — one in the just-decimated hollows of the once-grand Alabama Theater, last known as the Alabama Bookstop bookstore (bottom photo above).
WHAT IS PAPPAS GOING TO DO TO MAMA’S? 
Pappas Restaurants is the new owner of Mama’s Cafe at 6019 Westheimer, west of Fountainview. The restaurant shut down over the weekend “after 30 years of serving Huevos Hofbrau and CFS,” reports the b4-u-eat newsletter. A Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen is next door; a new restaurant in the former Mama’s location is expected to open in about a month, possibly with the same name. [b4-u-eat] Photo: City-Data
Is this the right address? As Swamplot noted last week, Trader Joe’s received a sales-tax permit for a Memorial-area location at 1440 S. Voss at the end of last year. But the company hasn’t officially announced the locations for its Houston stores yet. Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia poked around the scene on Voss between San Felipe and Woodway over the weekend, to scope out any preparations going on there for a TJ’s landing. There didn’t appear to be any.
GOODBYE TO HEALTH FOUNTAIN 
A reader is looking for some acknowledgment of the demise of the Health Fountain Restaurant, a fixture inside the Post Oak Y at 1331 Augusta (now officially called the Trotter Family YMCA) for more than 30 years. “Nothing horrible happened, I think the gentleman that owned it was just ready to retire. They quietly closed their doors around Christmastime and the restaurant is now Island Smoothie. I will miss the old place, as will many many others! They always had good healthy food and friendly service . . . Island smoothie will be good too, just would be nice to see some publication say so long and that they will be missed!” Update, 1/24: The restaurant’s new name is Island Grill. [Swamplot inbox] Photo: YMCA Houston
A few memorial photos, from a reader who’s been marking the death and burial of the former J.B. Earthman funeral home at 5740 San Felipe at Bering, across from T.H. Rogers Elementary:
BABY DOLLS STRIP CLUB OWNED BY ACTUAL BABY According to documents presented in a lawsuit filed last week, the now-shuttered strip club Baby Dolls at 6340 Westheimer Rd. past Fountainview was owned between 2005 and 2006 by the estate of its former owner, Aris Mylonas — whose heir was an infant born shortly after the father’s death. From there, the story gets even stranger: The baby’s mother claims in the lawsuit that she sold the baby’s interest in Baby Dolls to a business entity partly controlled by James Cabella, a/k/a Vincent Cabella, whom she later learned was also a/k/a Vincent Palermo and a/k/a Vinny Ocean. He’s the former New Jersey mob boss whose testimony helped take down the DeCavalcante crime family, and who was later resettled in Houston under the federal witness protection program. (He’s also rumored to have been one of the models for TV character Tony Soprano; plus he’s the still-proud owner of this Memorial Drive mansion.) Lisa Hansegard is suing Cabella, his wife, and son to get back the close to $1.3 million she says they still owe her and her child for the sale. [Houston Chronicle; more details]
Only a few days after it sold, the 1961 Tanglewood home and bomb shelter on Brown Saddle St. featured on Swamplot back in January has been put back on the market. Only this time, the listing doesn’t mention the shelter or the abandoned pipeline slicing through a portion of the property — or really anything about the building itself. No more interior pics, either. The low-slung modern structure is now tagged as “not liveable” and won’t be shown — though the agent does fess up to having a key. The asking price? Only $550K more than what the property sold for earlier in the week, when the home and its interior were touted as sales features. At 38,263 sq. ft. (that’s actually been marked down a few thousand sq. ft. from the earlier sale), the lot is advertised as the biggest in Tanglewood.
