From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits......

Good morning, Houston. Remember the plans for the Dynamo stadium on the east side of downtown? And remember Metro's plans for two new light rail lines heading out from the east side of downtown? Turns out there's a question about whether the stadium will be in the way of the rail lines — and it's not clear yet whether the proposed stadium will have an effect on the rail alignments. "We are evaluating a......

Good morning, Houston. If you, like Houstonist, are looking forward to the day when Buffalo Bayou will be redeveloped as parkway from the East End through downtown to Shepherd Drive, you might be interested in this: The county is planning to build a massive new jail smack dab in the middle of that park system. The proposed 2,500-bed jail, which would be located next to the county jail on Baker Street, would apparently take......

Good morning, Houston. Imagine that you're driving along one day when a traffic light falls from an overhead line and crashes through your car's windshield. You'd think the city would be responsible for the accident, right? Wrong! Just ask Lei Zheng, who was on a shopping trip with his wife and son last year when a traffic light fell on his Volkswagen. Zheng and his family weren't seriously hurt, but they did ask the......

Houston, it's time for the annual "Big Show" at the O'Quinn Gallery of Lawndale Art Center. Tonight and tomorrow night, beginning at 7:00 p.m. - and totally free to the public (the second best four-letter "F" bomb - FREE! We are partial to "Fart", too) the Big Slide Show is taking place. Now, what in the wide world of art-y and cultural-like stuff is this? Well, let us do some 'splaining to you, care of......

Here's one of those things we never would have expected people to be able to quantify: According to a TxDOT study, delays at Houston rail crossings will cost us $2.6 billion over the next 20 years. "Gridlock: That's where you're headed eventually," Harris County Judge Ed Emmett told KHOU. "No question about it." Eventually? We've already experienced gridlock trying to get across the East End some mornings, or the Union Pacific tracks on Richmond or......

Lawndale Art Center: The Big Show! Houstonist hearts Lawndale. And we have a really big heart for their really big show, appropriately-titled The Big Show. The Big Show is Lawndale Art Center’s annual open-call, juried exhibition. It has been an important venue through which emerging and under-represented Houston area artists gain exposure since the show’s conception in 1984. The Big Show was formerly the East End Show, sponsored by the East End Progress Association, at......

We talked last week about Jeff Blessing, the man who crashed while riding his motorcycle up the Gulf Freeway last month and was likely saved from being run over by a mystery trucker who used his vehicle to block traffic from the lane where Blessing lay, unconscious. Last week, Blessing was looking for that trucker, who left the scene before anyone got his name — and yesterday, the two men finally met. The good Samaritan's......

With the official beginning of the 2007 hurricane season a little more than a week away, Harris County officials have released a new evacuation plan based on ZIP codes. Residents of coastal and low-lying areas can determine whether they're in evacuation zones using a map of the area that groups ZIP codes into four zones based on threat, from the coast up through Brazoria and Galveston counties to Houston's East End, Channelview, Baytown and......

The Chronicle has a few more details today about the proposed Houston Dynamo stadium downtown — but not many. What we know: It would be an open-air stadium seating somewhere around 22,000 people, and it would likely be built on Minute Maid Park's parking lot C, the six-square-block lot on the other side of Highway 59 from the baseball stadium. Anschutz Entertainment Group, which owns the Dynamo, would pay most of the construction costs, and......

The Metro board approved a $77.3 million agreement yesterday that's a step toward construction of four new rapid transit lines — the first step in a construction project that's estimated to cost more than $1 billion. Under the contract, Washington Group Transit Management Co. will begin work on the early design and construction of four transit corridors: north, from UH-Downtown to Northline Mall; southeast, from downtown to Palm Center; East End, from downtown to......

Urban Corridor Planning is a City of Houston initiative that "will change how the City regulates development and designs its streets and other infrastructure in order to create a high quality urban environment in areas along METRO’s light rail and guided rapid transit corridors." The results of UCP's Phase I can be seen here. Now it's time to begin the next phase, and the city is all but begging for your input. The kick-off workshop......

This is the first in a series of posts about the simmering 2007 City Council races. Check Houstonist in the next week or two for information about Districts D and E and At-Large Positions 3 and 5. Current District I Representative Carol Alvarado is term-limited this year, and two contestants are hotly vying for her seat. James Rodriguez, Alvarado's former chief-of-staff and her pick for the position, announced his candidacy late last year - a......

Houston's neon Maxwell House cup has dripped its last good drop, according to the Chronicle. The sign, an East End icon, was recently removed at the command of Kraft Foods, which sold the coffee- and rice-processing facility to Maximus Coffee Group late last year, said Leo Vasquez, an executive vice president with the new owner. According to Vasquez, Kraft saw it as trademark infringement since they no longer owned the plant, but the new owners......

Spend the Night on Blue Bayou Join the Buffalo Bayou Partnership tonight as they kick-off a year long series of stargazing, boat rides, storytelling and more along the Sabine-to-Bagby Promenade. The newest addition (and possibly our favorite) to the Buffalo Bayou hike and bike and trails, gives Houstonians multiple access points to bayou canoeing. The awarding-winning, and might we add, spectacular-looking, unique blue lighting creates a much needed outdoor friendly environment for nearby downtown,......

We rang in 2007 with a mixed message about Houston's crime rate: Though the homicide rate reached a 12-year high in 2006, instances of other crimes decreased last year. Today, thanks to KTRK's mystical Crime Tracker, we know a little more about exactly how those stats break down — and in short, things are better in the notorious Fondren/southwest district, but not so good on the east side. The Crime Tracker found that the Fondren......

Earlier this month, we talked about the proposal to build a youth sports complex on the site of the Wortham Park Golf Course, one of three public courses inside the Loop and an East End institution for a hundred years. The complex proposal is part of Houston's push to keep the Dynamo in town — the team is looking for a new stadium and has stipulated that a youth soccer/sports complex be part of the......

Since the Houston Dynamo moved to town last year, it's been a foregone conclusion that someone somewhere would have to build the team a stadium. But where — and who — is still up in the air, and as the Chronicle reports today, Houston is trying to put together a plan that would keep the Dynamo from rocking the suburbs. The focus of the Chron's report is a proposal to put a Dynamo stadium downtown......

Metro may be a step closer to building its proposed North and Southeast light rail bus rapid transit guided rapid transit lines thanks to the Bush administration's 2008 budget proposal, the Chronicle reports today. The Federal Transit Administration announced that, under the proposed budget, the two Metro lines are among six projects nationwide that could qualify for 50 percent federal funding; last week and earlier this week, the FTA also issued records of decision in......

There's some news today on Metro's plan to expand its rapid-transit system: Two members of Congress from Houston have said they'll push for federal funding for more light rail, not the bus rapid transit lines Metro proposed for the northside, East End, southeast side and Uptown. The announcement from U.S. Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green, both Democrats, came at a Metro board meeting yesterday where the agency OK'd negotiating with a team headed......

So really, folks, what is it with people who steal holiday decorations out of other people's yards? First we had the case of the missing baby Jesus, and now we have someone who made off with an enormous decorative carousel. To which we say: carousel? The 8-foot-tall, $150 carousel was taken from the yard of a house on Estelle Street in the East End. "We took almost three days to put all this stuff up,......

So here's one of those things we never really thought about, probably because we aren't too familiar with the world of sex offenders: Officials have been out for the last few days checking up on the addresses of registered sex offenders and making sure they don't have any Halloween decorations up. It's all part of an effort to make sure that the sex offenders have no interaction with trick-or-treaters — kids, candy, gotcha — and......

City Council voted today to expand the city's "civility ordinance" to more neighborhoods, including Montrose and the Sixth Ward Clara Harris, the woman accused of running over her husband in a hotel parking lot, has filed an appeal and hired a new lawyer Ralph Sampson, a former Houston Rocket, has agreed to plead guilty to mail fraud related to a vehicle purchase; he will spend two months in jail in Atlanta In a campaign stop......

The shot from flickr user and houstonist photo contributor groovehouse. This shot of a rainbow at dusk is especially nice on a gloomy day like today. We don't know for sure, but we're guessing this was taken from Minute Maid Park yesterday evening — we weren't at the game, sadly, but we were driving past downtown and enjoyed the amazing sunset: pink and purple skies to the east, deep blue and gold to the......

METRO announced yesterday that Harrisburg is the official choice for the east-end line - the only selection to have been made since the red line. Construction is supposed to begin one year from now, with completion in December 2010, and it will initially consist of "train-like buses" that would be turned into rail if the ridership was strong enough (now that's some magic wand!). Some business owners in the area have voiced conerns, such as......

As controversy over Metro's proposed University light rail line continues, a much quieter discussion is taking place across town on where to put the future East End rail line. The line — initially a dedicated busway that could eventually be fitted with trains — would go from downtown to the Magnolia Transit Center at Harrisburg and 70th, but how it'll get there is the question. According to the Chronicle, two options have pretty much......

Today's Chronicle has some details of Metro's proposed intermodal terminal, including basics of the complex's design. According to design sketches presented at a public meeting last week, the centerpiece of the terminal — which will connect bus, light rail and commuter rail lines just north of downtown — will be a 400-foot-wide circular plaza called "the Great Space," featuring "greenery, an open-air market and other amenities." Sort of an outdoor lobby, we suppose. Jim Gast,......

Interested in Metro's proposed intermodal transit station downtown? Then you might want to block off a little time this evening for a public meeting on the project, where Metro officials will discuss designs and location of the terminal. The station is proposed for nine acres of the old Hardy Rail Yard along North Main Street about a half-mile north of UH-Downtown. The Chronicle hints at a couple of possible designs, one of which shows......

Via Off the Kuff, Intermodallity looks at proposed alignments for the East End not-rail line, noting that Metro has proposed four options and is avoiding the catfights taking place along the proposed University line on the west side. The proposals for the Bus Rapid Transit line: • Harrisburg Boulevard, a major route through the residential areas of the East End and, west of 65th Street, through a commercial center. The alignment would run through......

Several thousand people rallied in favor of equal rights for immigrants yesterday, marching from Guadalupe Plaza in the East End to Allen's Landing downtown. The crowd ranged from 10,000 to 50,000, depending on whom you asked and when — it wasn't as large as the estimated 500,000 who marched in Dallas over the weekend, but it was the largest such demonstration Houston has seen in decades. "At this moment, the immigrant community is writing one......