Hey, wasn’t there one of those first annual art fairs at the George R. Brown just last month? Art retailer and barkeep Bill Davenport teases out the differences between that one and the smaller Texas Contemporary Art Fair that took place over this past weekend:
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Tag: Attractions
Houston may have missed out on its opportunity to play host to one of the 4 retired orbiters doled out recently by NASA. But it will end up with a space-shuttle-related attraction that jibes well with the Johnson Space Center’s longtime role as a practice and simulation site for training astronauts. Space news website CollectSpace is reporting that Space Center Houston will soon receive the Space Shuttle Explorer, a full-size orbiter mockup currently on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.
One advantage of the Explorer over the 4 orbiters Houstonians wanted but couldn’t get (besides not having any layers of space dust to clean off): Visitors will be able to walk through it.
Next month, real estate brokers Randy Fertitta and John Nguyen plan to reopen the former Zula Restaurant spot at 705B Main St. Downtown as a 250-600-seat concert venue. The Capitol at St. Germain will include a bar, a restaurant, and jazz, R&B, and “old-school” country performers. Coming to the Main St. streetfront at Capitol St. (next door to the Flying Saucer): a sidewalk cafe and a new neon marquee, subsidized in part by a $20,000 grant from the Downtown Management District. The 8,400-sq.-ft. space will include an elevated reserved seating area called the Vintage Lounge and a “floating” VIP booth next to the 320-sq.-ft. stage.
- Downtown gaining upscale restaurant/music venue [Houston Business Journal]
- Capitol at St. Germain
Photo: Capitol at St. Germain
Glasstire correspondent Beth Secor tries to get a handle on the first-ever Houston Fine Art Fair, held over the weekend at the George R. Brown Convention Center: “One of the oddest places I visited on Friday was LewAllen Galleries of New Mexico, where strangely enough, its booth was manned by a chair, which seemed to be selling other kinds of chairs to what I assume was a clientele consisting solely of tables. I was too intimidated to clear up what may have been a complete misunderstanding of the situation, having once been severely berated by an Eames Chaise Lounge, after accidentally referring to its Ottoman as a Suleiman Turk.”
More than 10,000 visitors and sales in the millions (one gallery sold 2 pieces for a total of $1.7 million, according to one report) mean the event will return next year.
- The Houston Art Fair [Glasstire]
- Houston Fine Art Fair Live Blog [Glasstire]
- Houston Fine Art Fair meets 10K visitor goal [Houston Chronicle]
- Saturday Art Fair Peoples and Friday Afternoon at the Houston Fine Arts Fair [The Great God Pan Is Dead]
Photos: Bill Davenport and Kelly Klaasmeyer (soup)
BOLD NEW CONCEPT FOR ASTRODOME TO EMERGE FROM DALLAS CONSULTANTS CONDUCTING FOCUS GROUPS, INTERVIEWS WITH BIGSHOTS 
A Dallas-area consulting firm known for its consistent recommendation that cities expand their convention space is expected to come up with a plan for what Houston should do with the Astrodome — before the end of the year. Willie Loston, who as executive director of the Harris County Sports and Convention Corp. has spent the last decade mulling over one proposal after another for the vacant facility, tells West U Examiner reporter Mike Reed that whatever the folks from Plano-based Convention Sports and Leisure propose “will resolve one of the thorniest issues involving public expenditures in Harris County.” Best of all: Loston says the new recommendations will somehow emerge from “50 to 75 interviews with education, community and business leaders, before moving on to focus groups.” Why hadn’t someone thought of this sort of approach before? The consultants’ $500,000 fee is being picked up by the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Houston Texans, the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo, Aramark Corp., the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority, and Harris County. [Boston.com; West University Examiner; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Candace Garcia
COMMENT OF THE DAY: TOURISM, THE FINAL FRONTIER “Let’s face it, if you’ve ever been to Space Center Houston, it’s mostly geared towards elementary school field trips. It wasn’t til just a few years ago, one of the *real* crown jewels of America’s leftover space hardware, a complete friggin Saturn V, was even given a roof to protect it from the elements for posterity. I love NASA and remember being able to run around all over the campus with nary a locked door as a kid, but JSC simply hasn’t kept up with being a top toursist destination, domestically or internationally. Much like other ‘attractions’ in Houston, people see them incidentally when here visiting relatives or on business, they’re not destinations in themselves. I swear I think more people come down 45 and 59 from other states to see Galveston than Houston. Maybe we need to build that giant dome over the Loop after all to get some tourist cred.” [SL, commenting on Why No Shuttle for Houston? Because Space Center Houston Isn’t So Big with the Tourists]
If y’all had come to Space Center Houston, they’d have built a home for a retired space shuttle there. Well, maybe. Today’s report of the NASA inspector general points out a few details in the story of how Houston lost out in the retired-space-shuttle home sweepstakes. At a presentation given to NASA administrator Charles Bolden in November 2009, 4 out of 5 options being considered at the time by the agency’s recommendation team would have given Houston a shuttle. And Bolden says Houston was a sentimental favorite for him, too. He told investigators
that if it had been strictly a personal decision, his preference would have been to place an Orbiter in Houston. He noted that “[a]s a resident of Texas and a person who . . . spent the middle of my Marine Corps career in Houston, I would have loved to have placed an Orbiter in Houston.â€
So what happened?
NEW BRAUNFELS CANS THE BEER CANS As expected, the city council of New Braunfels voted last night to prohibit the use of any type of disposable container within city limits — including the beer cans that regularly pile up underwater on stretches of the Guadalupe and Comal Rivers popular with tubers. The new ordinance is scheduled to go into effect next January: “The ban was approved – on a 5-1 vote – after one protester had been arrested, another had thrown a volleyball-sized wad of dollar bills at the council, a lawsuit had been promised, and citizens had paraded to the podium for an hour to express their support or opposition.” [Herald-Zeitung; previously on Swamplot] Video of Comal River bottom after Memorial Day: Texas Bottle Bill
TUBING IN NEW BRAUNFELS WITHOUT THE CANS 
The New Braunfels city council is scheduled to vote this evening on an ordinance that would change the face of Guadalupe and Comal River tubing as we know it, by banning all disposable containers on those popular waterways within city limits. The same body already voted 5-2 in favor of the beer-can ban earlier this month. The vote has been moved from city hall to the city convention center to accommodate expected crowds. “[Don’s & Ben’s liquor store assistant manager Brendon] Keith and other retailers are scratching their heads over what devices tubers might employ — the proposed ordinance doesn’t specify. A Thermos or canteen wouldn’t keep carbonated beverages fresh on an hours-long float, and you’d have to have a nondisposable cup . . . Another potential problem is that any beverage delivery device that’s not sealed would be, strictly speaking, a violation of the state open container law.” [Statesman] Photo: Lelombrik
By the time construction of its new museum, theater, restaurant, and hangar is complete 3 years from now, the Lone Star Flight Museum will likely be only one of 3 museums showcasing historic airplanes at Ellington International Airport. After Hurricane Ike caused $18 million in damage and destroyed or submerged several aircraft (see the immediate aftermath above), museum officials began seeking a higher elevation than its current location at Galveston’s Scholes International Airport was able to provide. Houston’s city council approved a 40-year lease for 14 acres at Ellington last week. Also possibly opening at Ellington: A building featuring the Collings Foundation‘s collection of Vietnam and Korean War-era military aircraft; the president of the Texas Flying Legends Museum at Ellington says he’d like to sell tickets that allow visitors to visit all 3 collections.
- Lone Star Flight museum moving inland to Ellington [Houston Chronicle]
- Flight museum to fly north to Ellington [Galveston County Daily News]
- Texas Flying Legends Museum
- The Collings Foundation Collection [Collings Foundation]
- Previously on Swamplot: Space Expansions: Big Upgrades to Ellington Field
Photo: Lone Star Flight Museum
LIGHTS IN THE HEIGHTS TO STAY ON, JUST TURNED DOWN A BIT 
The esplanade and corner food trucks will be gone, the parade will be “de-emphasized,” and the police will be active at the next Lights in the Heights, according to a Woodland Heights Civic Association email received by Martin Hajovsky. According to some estimates, 50,000 people attended last year’s annual Christmas-y event. To assuage neighborhood concerns about possible vandalism, public drunkenness, and commercialization, the event will be held earlier in the evening and shortened by an hour as well. [Home in the Heights, via Hair Balls] Photo: Jason Tinder [license]
JACK JOHNSON, STILL DRAWING THE CROWDS IN GALVESTON 
On the agenda for the next meeting of GRACE, the homeownership organization in charge of The Oaks housing development at 4300 Broadway in Galveston: A discussion of Earl Jones’s sculpture of former world heavyweight boxing champion and Galveston native Jack Johnson, carved out of the trunk of a subdivision oak tree killed by Hurricane Ike. Homeowners association President Frank Rivera has been campaigning to have the stature moved. His complaint: That the Johnson statue was bringing a stream of tourists and other visitors to the neighborhood, creating traffic and disrupting the peace. But a canvas of residents over the weekend by 2 housing authority board members turned up only 2 who said they didn’t want the sculpture. [Galveston County Daily News; background; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Click2Houston
BATTLE OF THE HOUSTON ART FAIRS Kelly Klaasmeyer scores the 2 rival events planned for this fall, all the while hoping that “a crop of completely unsanctioned peripheral shows and events will erupt and liven things up.”: “What Houston is getting are two temporary art malls. That’s what art fairs are, malls for art. They can be malls with good art or bad art but they are still malls. But, hey, I like shopping. And I’m not so idealistic that I’m going to pretend that art isn’t a commodity. And if they are good malls, then maybe more people will come to us for their art shopping needs. And maybe they will discover Houston artists to collect. Hopefully all the events for VIP collectors, ‘cocktail parties at collectors’ homes, special museum tours, viewings of corporate collections and on-site receptions’ will help the cause as well. But I’m not so gullible that I’m going to believe these are somehow civic events. (And they are by no means free to the public.) Oil is high now and Houston has money. Here come the carpetbagger-fair organizers.” [Glasstire]
The easily queased may want to stay away from this video of the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s new Duncan Family Wing — maybe wait until this time next year when all the giant carnivores are installed and snarling at each other and things are a little more settled down. For the rest of you, this time-lapse project shows Linbeck’s construction work since last April on the just-under 200,000-sq.-ft. dinosaur-sized expansion. Enjoy this kind of action? The museum promises the $34 million building, designed by Gensler, will include the most mounted Tyrannosaurus Rex ever assembled in one place, as well 3 more carefully animated scenes showing the ancient sea floor, where “fossils will come to life” — though likely at a less frenetic, more dinosaur-friendly pace.
- NEW Time Lapse: HMNS Construction [Vimeo]
- Update: Expansion Exoskeleton and Infrastructure [Beyond Bones]
- Previously on Swamplot: Warwick Towers Survives Dinosaur Attack
Video: HMNS
WHERE HOUSTONIANS HIDE FROM TOURISTS Writing in the travel section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, devoted Cardinal fan and reporter Diane Toroian Keaggy blows the lid off the great Houston population hoax: “Who am I to argue with the U.S. Census, Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau and Post-Dispatch pal and Houston native Aisha Sultan? But no way is Houston the nation’s fourth largest city. Where are the people? Certainly not downtown, which cleared out immediately after the Astros win. The Museum District, easily reachable from downtown by rail and home to the Houston Zoo, Children’s Museum and Museum of Natural Science, also seemed strangely quiet. We wanted to visit the Contemporary Art Museum, the Byzantine Fresco Chapel, the Menil Collection, the Houston Center of Photography and the wacky folk-art mecca called the Orange Show. Each was closed on Tuesday. We could have visited the Space Center Houston, which includes the tram tour of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, but it’s 25 miles south of downtown and costs $21. That’s too much money and time for a short two-day trip. Instead we visited the Museum of Fine Arts, which features an impressive collection of Impressionism and the Weather Museum, which feels more like a seventh-grade science project than an actual attraction. Don’t bother. . . . We continued our search for life at the Galleria, one of the nation’s top malls. A-ha! So that’s where everyone was hiding. Home to Fendi, Dior, Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Versace, Tory Burch and other impossibly expensive boutiques not found in St. Louis, the Galleria boasts 375 shops spread across two large buildings. Bring comfy, but fashionable, shoes. The mall claims to attract 24 million shoppers each year, and only a few seemed to be buying Gucci glasses, Kate Spade earrings and Jimmy Choo pumps. The rest could be found skating on the indoor ice rink or slumming it in Banana Republic, Apple and Claire’s.” [STLToday]