COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW DOES ALCOHOL COMPLICATE THE BARBERSHOP EXPERIENCE? 
“Do I want to drink a beer while getting my hair cut? Will it get hair in it? Is it comfortable to drink a beer while holding your head in hair-cutting position? Will I have time to finish it? I have a lot of questions about this concept.” [TacoTruck, commenting on Getting Ready for an Alcoholic Barbershop Experience Where the Parking Lot is Going Pink on E. 20th St.] Illustration: Lulu
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Tag: Bars
HOUSTON’S LAST TEXADELPHIA HAS SERVED ITS FINAL CHEESESTEAK 
Texas cheesesteak sports bar Texadelphia has closed, a couple of readers tell Swamplot. The spot at 6025 Westheimer Rd., west of Fountainview, was the first and last of the Houston locations for the Austin-born franchise. This spot had been open for about 20 years. Photo: Jack S.
STAG’S HEAD PUB CAN’T RENEW ITS LEASE, IS CALLING IT QUITS FOR NOW 
The Stag’s Head will be closing later this month, the owner of the Shepherd Plaza pub at 2128 Portsmouth St. reports. “The Landlord has decided not to renew our lease,” writes Michael Holliday on the 15-year-old establishment’s Facebook page. Attempts to negotiate something short term, he indicates, were not successful. “I have been looking to move The Stags to another location for some time but have been unable to find a suitable site.” Holliday says he isn’t giving up on the search, though. [The Stag’s Head on Facebook] Photo: Marc Brubaker
- 22032 Frio Dr. [HAR]
Reader Sean McManus was on the spot for yesterday’s demolition proceedings at the southwest corner of W. Alabama St. and S. Shepherd Dr., where Roeder’s Pub, Ruchi’s taqueria, Fly High Little Bunny jewelry store and the River Oaks Dry Cleaners are being swept away in favor of a CVS pharmacy.
“As I was taking [the pictures], one of the deconstruction workers asked if he could help me,” McManus writes. “I told him that I was just taking a couple of quick photos. His response: ‘Pfft… Memories.’”
More hot demo porn after the jump:
Fly High, Little Ruchi and Roeder
An excavator yesterday was hard at work scraping the 3300 block of the west side of Kirby clean.
Bounded by West Main St. and Colquitt St. and Lake St. to the rear, this block was long the site of a Settegast-Kopf funeral home, but like that seemingly straitlaced great-aunt with the closet full of empty gin bottles, the staid mortuary and adjacent buildings descended into drink, spending their final years as taverns Roak, Hendricks Pub, and the OTC Patio Bar.
Here’s what the Kirby frontage looked like in both its sober and lush incarnations:
Cremation By Excavator
Brad Moore and Ryan Rouse have joined forces with the newly-enhanced Treadsack restaurant group to take over the former Boom Boom Room space at 2518 Yale from building owner Jackie Harris. Johnny’s Gold Brick will be the name of the new bar.
Treadsack principal Chris Cusack, (pictured second from left) whose group includes Down House in the Heights and Brooke Smith ice house D&T Drive Inn, says that he hopes Johnny’s Gold Brick will be the sort of place where you can get “decently-made cocktails, but also a shot and a beer, and be totally accessible and easy to be in.”
Leslie Ross (pictured second from right), who earlier this year competed for title of America’s Most Imaginative Bartender in Las Vegas, left Triniti Restaurant’s Sanctuari Bar to join forces with Treadsack earlier this month and will be heading up bar operations.
Gold Bricking It
Update: 3:45 p.m. Eater Houston reports that the name of the sushi bar will be Akamaru.
According to the permit in the window at 315 Fairview, the next occupant of the mixed-use building’s downstairs will be a restaurant named Sushi Bar.Â
Most recently that area had been home to a lounge called The Fairview.
Prior to its incarnation as the Fairview, the building had housed the short-lived Montrose outpost of downtown institution Dean’s Credit Clothing.
Sushi Bar will be situated about halfway between Uchi and the Bluefish.
Montrose Eats
Staff at the Boom Boom Room, Jackie Harris’s funky wine bar and music venue at 2518 Yale St., will pour their last glasses of Pinot noir and dish out their final paninis Friday night. Harris, an artist and doyenne of Houston’s art car movement, tells Swamplot that a “great new restaurant-bar†— one run by “real good Heights–Montrose restaurant people you all know and love†— will be setting up shop at the location in the not-too-distant future, but adds that she is not at liberty to disclose any further details.
Going Boom
LAST CALL FOR THE BONEYARD DRINKERY 
It wasn’t the first Houston ingesting establishment to be permitted by the city to allow canine companions and their owners to co-lounge on its patio (that honor belongs to the now-shuttered Ziggy’s on Fairview) but with its attached 7,000-sq.-ft. dog park, the Boneyard Drinkery lived up to its reputation as the quintessential outdoorish hangout where panters, drinkers, and occasional barkers all could coexist in relative harmony. And now, after 4 years, it’s closing. A note posted to the Boneyard Facebook page indicates the property at 8150 Washington Ave. is being sold, and the bar and park will both close on November 30th. “Due to the size of property needed for this concept,” reads the note, “and the outrageous increase of property value in Houston over the last few years, we will not be relocating.” [Facebook; Photo: Boneyard Drinkery via Facebook]
The former Cattleguard Restaurant, an old-western-style wooden facade planted in front of a bundle of metal buildings in the parking lot between the Drury Inn & Suites and the Wyndham Hotel at 1010 Hwy. 6 North, just north of I-10, is being made over as a fourth location for Christian’s Tailgate. Christian’s Mazen Baltagi tells Swamplot the Energy Corridor spot is being outfitted with more than 35 beer taps and more than 50 teevees, and should be ready to open within 5 or 6 weeks. The Cattleguard Restaurant had lasted more than 20 years at the site, but shut down early this year.
- What does a cattleguard look like? [H-Town-West Photo Blog]
- Previously on Swamplot: Christian’s Tailgate Opening on White Oak
Photos: Mazen Baltagi
Energy Corridor Burgers
The restaurant spot at 4319 Montrose Blvd. just south of Richmond Ave (at left in the photo above) that until mid-February was home to Thai Sticks — and was earlier the longtime home of Monica Pope’s Boulevard Bistro — will soon be home to an unidentified new restaurant run in part by Dan and Mark Zimmerman. Four years ago, the Zimmermans turned the restaurant at their parents’ La Colombe d’Or into Restaurant Cinq; they later opened and closed Zimm’s Little Deck in the 610 Richmond spot also owned by their parents (that spot is now home to the Brooklyn Athletic Club).
Replacing Thai Sticks
The undisclosed location of the planned Fluff Bake Bar retail location and bar is somewhere in Midtown, owner Rebecca Masson tells Swamplot. But there’s a bit of fundraising to do before the former Top Chef Just Desserts contestant can sign the lease she’s been getting ready for the space. The self-described “Sugar Hooker” currently operates her wholesale dessert business out of space she shares with 5 other businesses in the Kraftsmen Cafe kitchen at 611 W. 22nd St. in the Heights, selling fluffernutters, cake-in-cup cupcakes, and macaroons to retailers such as Revival Market, Double Trouble, Southside Espresso, and Inversion Coffee House. But if her just-launched Kickstarter campaign bears fruit . . . er, compote, she’ll move all operations to the new space. In addition to desserts, Masson is hoping to serve beer and wine at her “proper dessert bar.” She’s hoping to bring in $50,000 in crowdfunded donations within a month.
- Fluff Bake Bar: A Toast to Just Desserts [Kickstarter]
- Sweet! You Found Us! [Fluff Bake Bar]
- Rebecca Masson [Top Chef Just Desserts]
Photo of Kraftsmen Cafe: Soo Kim
A Dessert Bar Bar
BARS WITHIN A BAR AT LOWBROW IN MONTROSE 
Eater Houston reports that Lowbrow, the restaurant and bar from Free Press Houston founder Omar Afra, will open tomorrow night here at the corner of W. Main and Mandell in Montrose. This photo shows the mural that’s replacing the former Sophia sign. Inside, there will be even more art: The place will have wallpaper that sports drawings of the Astrodome, Houston Oilers logo, and Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk sculpture at the nearby Menil Collection. And it appears that there will also be a channel of rather meta reality programming for you to watch: “[A] projection screen . . . will play scenes from other local bars.” [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Eater Houston
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE FIRST 3 STEPS OF RETAIL REVIVAL 
“It seems like bars are the first businesses to move into an area as it becomes established/gentrified. Other food and drink places seem like a logical next step, but what comes after that? In my mind a neighborhood has officially arrived when it has a grocer with decent produce, but there must be several intermediate phases.” [Alec, commenting on Affecting the Bar-to-Restaurant Ratio in Midtown]
