The National Trust for Historic Preservation is now promoting a crowdfunding campaign to host some kind of multi-day art-slash-music-slash-sports festival inside the Astrodome, perhaps as depicted in the trippy rendering above shown on the campaign’s online fundraising page. (The campaign is one of the so-called Cities Project projects being coordinated by the National Trust and beer multinational Heineken; other projects around the country getting similar treatment include fundraising for a documentary about the war memorial-slash-swimming-pool in Waikiki, and fundraising for the restoration of some glass sidewalks in Seattle.)
Materials for the campaign (which also has the backing of the Astrodome Conservancy) say the event would “preview the Astrodome’s future use” (assuming no laws that happen to prevent a certain aging Dome from getting remodeled pass in Austin this summer). Details on what such a festival would actually look like are scarce, though some good examples of what not to aim for have been floated recently.
Been looking for a good coffee shop somewhere around the Heights where folks can get together and discuss Houston’s role as a major hub for human trafficking? Where caffeine-hunters can experience moments of genuine outrage — then find themselves drawn toward information sessions, group discussions, planning meetings, and double espressos — knowing that all profits from their chatting and coffee-drinking habits will go toward charitable stuff like providing classes and counseling for survivors of human trafficking? If so, then you’ll be happy to learn about A 2nd Cup, which opened as a part-time “incubator” project a couple of years ago. Now the nonprofit, led by former junior-high science teacher Erica Raggett, has begun work on a buildout for a permanent, full-time home — in the Vineyard Church of Houston’s Storehouse storefront at 1111 E. 11th St., just east of Studewood St. (pictured above, right next door to longtime late-night cop favorite Andy’s Café). 
A former city librarian is channeling the don’t-stop-the-renovating spirit of 
