10/09/17 1:30pm

Somebody carefully disassembled the recently installed quilting sculpture in front of the Bermac Arts Building at 4101 San Jacinto St. just south of Cleburne St. late last week, leaving behind a patchwork of colorful powder-coated-steel pieces on the former bus-stop platform next to the sidewalk. The 8-ft.-tall blue, orange, magenta, yellow, and metallic silver sculpture, called Quilt Peace, was erected at the site on September 20th. It was meant to remain there for 3 months — through next month’s International Quilt Festival at the George R. Brown Convention Center — before being moved to a different Midtown site.

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Street Art Taken Apart
11/05/14 11:00am

THE RANSACKING OF IDYLWOOD’S LITTLE FREE LIBRARY 4918 little-library-idylwood-ransackedWhen Little Free Library 4918 owner Sally Harris returned home “from an incredibly productive morning and midday” Sunday afternoon, she found the door to her festive Mardi Gras-themed Idylwood book repository hanging wide open and more than half of the books “plundered.” (See photo at bottom.)  Her belief that the security precautions she had taken on Halloween night had seen it through pranking season proved sadly mistaken; and oddly, religious tracts and pictures of Jesus were found in the rifled-through library.  Vented Harris on Facebook Sunday afternoon: “When I set out to create a neighborhood library, I always said you can’t steal ‘free’ but this is vandalism and it has me shaking and angry.” Harris posted that she recently had been considering a remodel anyway, and some of her friends have already pledged to help her restock via book donations. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo of Little Free Library 4918, 6644 Lindy Ln.: Sally Harris    

10/31/14 12:15pm

Headed to that spooky Halloween “party” at 3015 Fuqua St. tonight all the kool kids are daring each other about today on Twitter? Here are a few things you should know about what might rank as one of Houston’s eeriest properties still standing, one complete with both its very own murder and a ghost video.

Our chilling tale begins in early February 2008, when the property was last on the market. Back then vandals held sway at the decrepit 11,640-sq.-ft. mansion in Minnetex Place. Was it Swamplot’s showcasing of the home’s skanky indoor pool, 5-acre lot, decorative graffiti, and grand, red-carpeted staircase that made it move? It had languished on the market for 7 months, but just 2 weeks later, the property sold — to an entity controlled by a pair of Houston investors. They snagged the 1950 mansion for just $265,000 — greatly reduced from its original $451,900 listing.

Since then, visiting vandals have been joined by a new, possibly otherworldly tenant.

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Fuqua’s Ghost?
03/04/13 3:00pm

THE BEST REPAINTING JOB IN THE CITY Iterative Obama muralist Reginald Adams relays his account of the 3 separate murals he designed for the West Alabama St. wall of a Travis St. building for Breakfast Klub owner Marcus Davis — and his responses to the 4 separate paint adjustments made to it by successive vandals: “It triggers some things I was raised around — if someone knocks you down you get back up. Now other people are invested so I feel obligated not to let someone’s ignorance deter my work. I’ve got a lot of paint and a lot of life ahead of me and I think I can outlast the vandal. As crazy as this has all been it hasn’t hurt my brand as an artist. I’ve gotten more PR out of this work than from 150 projects I’ve done. If the vandal wants to keep playing, I’m in it until the end. . . . the vandalism is creating new opportunities for me to think about the imagery, to engage the public in new ways, create new conversations, and to meet new amazing people. The GE corporation wants me for a new mural because they saw the Obama story. The vandal is not thinking it — but he’s enriching my art career.” [Glasstire; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Candace Garcia

12/27/10 4:50pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: COLD CASE, RICE VILLAGE “Seems to me a little backwards math could figure this one out. The trajectory (calculated from point of entry through roof vs point of breakage of the glassware) and size of object thrown (amount of melting can be estimated based on size of ice recovered vs time and temperature) should be able to figure out very close which balcony the blocks came from.” [tanith27, commenting on Iced Again: A White Christmas Comes Early to Hans’ Bier Haus]

12/27/10 11:08am

Santy Claus delivered 6 or 7 large and heavy before-Christmas gifts to Hans’ Bier Haus, the little bar that’s provided so much entertainment to the Rice Village over the last year. The little one-story structure at 2523 Quenby, doesn’t have a chimney; the gifts were just dropped onto the roof sometime early Friday morning. From there most of them crashed through. In addition to several holes in the ceiling, the ice blocks left a few damaged light fixtures, a few broken glasses, and a sprinkling of drywall crumbles inside, plus a breakaway tree limb on the back patio. Bier Haus co-owner Bill Cave tells abc13’s Sonia Azad the partially melted blocks were discovered Friday morning.

But gosh, who besides a mean old Santa could have done such a thing to Hans’ Bier Haus? And . . . who did it over Thanksgiving, too?

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02/04/08 11:49am

3015 Fuqua, Houston

Vandalism, 3015 Fuqua, HoustonForeclosure, vandalism . . . what more could possibly go wrong at this mansion-on-the-prairie near Brunswick Meadows, off 288 in South Houston?

How about a lack of serious buyers since the home was put on the market back in August — even after two major price cuts?

The place was built in 1950, but the listing agent’s mysterious comment that the “Home was at one time almost completed” probably refers to the recent doomed redo attempt. The asking price was cut to $345,900 in November, from an original $451,900. And it’s listed on another site for $325,900. Not bad for a 11,640-sq.-ft. home on 5 acres inside the Beltway.

Or . . . maybe not. After the jump: when vandals strike!

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