THE MULLET MANAGES TO PAY RENT 
The graffiti training ground known as The Mullet spent much of this week pleading on Facebook for donations to help cover $2,000 in rent and avoid a lock out of the repainted warehouse at 10902 Kingspoint Rd. between Fuqua and Almeda Genoa Rd., reports the Houston Chronicle‘s Francisca Ortega, but it appears that the spraypainting will be able to go on a little while longer: “After making the plea they received about $800 from about 10 different donors. A benefactor then agreed to cover the rest. . . . With the next 30 days of rent covered, [co-curator Justin] Hinojosa said they are looking forward to next month and raising money to help cover the final facility structural improvements.” [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Candace Garcia
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Tag: 77075
SHOCKED TO FIND THAT GAMBLING IS GOING ON IN HERE 
Four people believed to be the owners of the Capri Game Room at 10418 Telephone Rd. (just north of Fuqua) were arrested recently on misdemeanor gambling-related charges, Craig Malisow reports. Across the street from the Capri is an HPD substation, and inside the structure, surrounded by a sea of blue-painted walls, are 122 video slot machines. The arrests have had a ripple effect on several other nearby game rooms, but Malisow is confident the changes will be temporary: “In a strip center just up the road, two others have closed. But the Just Gold game room a few hundred yards from the Capri is still open. The owner, Lourdes Rodriguez, is just one of many game room owners with landlords who won’t ask any questions as long as the rent is paid every month. While Just Gold, and this stretch of Telephone Road, is quiet for right now, the heat will blow over as it always does, and things will get back to normal. The promise of big money might just be an illusion for the suckers who play, but for the owners and vendors, the money is very real indeed.” [Houston Press] Photo: LoopNet
No one guessed the actual neighborhood for this week’s guessing game. But . . . we do have a winner for that Hotel Sorella stay!
There were 2 guesses each for Riverside Terrace, Garden Oaks, Oak Forest, Sharpstown, and Woodside. The rest: “Off Broadway and Bellfort near Hobby Airport,” the Med Center, Sagemont near Beltway 8 and I-45 South, Brookesmith, “around 249 and I-45,” Spring, Glenbrook Valley, Timbergrove Manor, Westbury, Lindale Park, “the neighborhood south of Shaver in Pasadena from Rayburn High School,” Montrose, Webster, Katy, Greenspoint, Eastwood, Garden Villas, Santa Rosa, 77035, 77096, Willowbend, “Winkler/Almeda/South Houston,” Deer Park, Gulfgate, “Lawndale/Wayside,” Westwood, “the area north of 610 between Ella and Shepherd but south of Garden Oaks,” “in the vicinity of Hardy Toll Road and Aldine Mail Route,” Shady Acres, “east of Stella Link, south of the bayou, west of Main,” and Candlelight Oaks.
Alas, none of you mentioned Skyscraper Shadows, directly to the south of Hobby Airport. But Swamplot’s panel of judges — skilled in the art of extracting unintentional meanings from the words of others — was able to twist one of the entries into . . . a prize winner! Of the players who mentioned nearby communities, only one of them included the phrase “near Hobby Airport” in the guess . . . and that was deemed good enough.
Congratulations, Brad! You’ve won an overnight stay for two at the new Hotel Sorella in CityCentre (the new mixed-use development on the site of the former Town & Country Mall at I-10 and the Beltway). And you’ll have a couple of cocktails waiting for you at the hotel’s bar, monnalisa. Thanks to the hotel for sponsoring the prize!
Honorable mentions go to all the runners-up who hung out nearby: Chris, KimmerTX, Lauren, and Miz Brooke Smith.
Wanna take a closer look?
Houston’s lone professional tourists, John Nova Lomax and David Beebe, stop off at the Brady’s Island in the Ship Channel midway into their latest day-long stroll . . . through this city’s southeastern stretches:
The air is foul here, and the eastern view is little more than a forest of tall crackers and satanic fume-belching smokestacks, sending clouds of roasted-cabbage-smelling incense skyward to Mammon, all bisected by the amazingly tall East Loop Ship Channel Bridge, its pillars standing in the toxic bilge where Brays Bayou dumps its effluent into the great pot of greenish-brown petro-gumbo.
While Brady’s Landing today seems to survive as a function room – a sort of Rainbow Lodge for the Ship Channel, with manicured grounds that reminded Beebe of Astroworld — decades ago, people came here to eat and to take in the view. This was progress to them, this horrifically awesome vista showed how we beat the Nazis and Japanese and how we were gonna stave off them godless Commies. As for me, it made me think of Beebe’s maxim: “Chicken and gasoline don’t mix.â€
More from the duo’s march through “Deep Harrisburg”: Flag-waving Gulf Freeway auto dealerships, an early-morning ice house near the Almeda Mall, a razorwire-fenced artist compound in Garden Villas, Harold Farb’s last stand, colorful Broadway muffler joints, the hidden gardens of Thai Xuan, and — yes, gas-station chicken.
“There is nothing else like the Southeast side,” Lomax adds in a comment:
I see it as the true heart of Houston. Without the port and the refineries we are nothing. The prosperous West Side could be Anywhere, USA, but the Southeast Side could only be here.
- Sole of Houston: Deep Harrisburg: Lomax and Beebe Take on the East Side Again [Houstoned]
- Brady’s Landing
- Previously in Swamplot: Long Point, Long Walk, Long Story, Telephone Road Walking Tour: Not How They Sang It Was, Shade, Subs, Plexes and Suds: A Bissonnet Story, Lonely East Side Walking Tour, Walking on Bellaire
Photo of El Torito Lounge on Harrisburg: John Nova Lomax and David Beebe
Another day, another round of Houston demolitions. Find out where the action is in our list of structures approved for destruction—after the jump.
More homes around the city turn to dust. Plus a baker’s dozen demolitions in Greenview Manor—all after the jump.
Demolition watching is an unofficial but popular sport in Houston. Unfortunately, media outlets here have not served fans well. Sure, you’ll hear about the occasional announcement of big weekend implosions, but what about the many smaller demolitions that happen every day? Unless you’re in the business, you learn about them only after they’ve happened.
Today, courtesy of the Houston Planning & Development Department’s Code Enforcement group, Swamplot introduces a regular feature: daily reports of sold demolition permits. Houston Demo Derby fans now have an easy way to find out what’s coming down: just check with Swamplot.
Keep in mind that these reports are a day late. Permits for the demolitions we report today were sold yesterday. This means demolition groupies will have a pretty good chance of catching the action in their neighborhoods. But it also means that enterprising demolition professionals in a hurry to tear down a building may already have begun—or completed—their (no-doubt fulfilling) jobs.
What demolitions were approved yesterday? Read on, and we’ll reveal the victims: