Good morning, Houston. Remember Mayor Bill's agreement with Clear Channel that would result in the removal of nearly 900 billboards across the city? Well, it's not necessarily a done deal after all: On Wednesday, six City Council members voted to delay the plan, saying they still had questions about its ramifications. The problem, they said, was that the deal would allow Clear Channel to move remaining billboards: "We're allowing new billboard locations to pop......

Could Houston be one step closer to zoning? A few days ago the Houston Chronicle reported that the administration of Mayor Bill White has fast tracked an ordinance that could “whittle the proposed 23-story building — and others like it — down to size.” The ordinance would require developers of certain buildings, in certain areas to submit a traffic study to the city for approval. According to the ordinance's language, "certain types of high-density......

Good morning, Houston. Looks like our freewheeling land-use policies have gotten some national attention: The Wall Street Journal has a story focusing on the proposed residential tower at Bissonnet and Ashby. "The condo-tower dustup is just the latest in a string of odd situations allowed by Houston's lenient land-use rules," the article explains. "Rowdy cantinas, rock-crushing operations and commercial dumps sometimes pop up in residential neighborhoods. Condo towers sprout next to schools. A pay-by-the-hour......

So, Ashby Highrise. Here in one of Houstonist's favorite neighborhoods, we're seeing lots of signs that say "Tower of Traffic" and "Stop Ashby Highrise", and we got caught in that protest the other day on our way to and from Rice campus. But one detail we'd missed until now came to our attention in a Rice Thresher article. The Thresher, Rice's award-winning weekly newspaper, has its ups and downs, but it's extremely under-appreciated by Owls......

Good morning, Houston. If you've walked — or driven — downtown or in Midtown lately, chances are you've noticed the fancy new "countdown signals," which flash the number of seconds pedestrians have to cross an intersection before traffic lights change. They'll soon be installed at more than 300 intersections in neighborhoods with high amounts of pedestrian traffic, including the Medical Center; though they cost $1.3 million to put up, officials say the efficient LED......

Good morning, Houston. It's always nice to see our fair city get some love from outside — so we were happy to hear that Lester Holt and a crew from the Today show were in town filming yesterday for the show's "Cities They Love" segment. The point of "Cities They Love" is to showcase off-the-beaten-path attractions, so Today visited the Beer Can House, took a ride along Buffalo Bayou and checked in at the......

Good morning, Houston. We enjoy a good, quick breakfast as much as anyone, but seriously, there are limits — just ask the four people who were hurt Monday when a driver who was eating oatmeal at the wheel crashed into a Metro bus near downtown. Witnesses told KPRC that the driver ran a red light at Pierce and St. Charles and hit the front of the bus, which caused the driver's vehicle to spin......

Good morning, Houston. We just don't understand the entertainment juggernaut (or is it "juggernette?") that is Hannah Montana: Tickets to her Nov. 11 Toyota Center show sold out in five minutes Saturday, and now they're going for as much as $1,275 on eBay — granted, that's for a set of four tickets, but still, wow. The markup through eBay and ticket brokers has left some parents shelling out big bucks to give their kids......

Good morning, Houston. As you might have noticed, we passed the night sans Humberto — but our friends in the Beaumont area weren't so lucky. The sudden hurricane made landfall early this morning and battered Beaumont with winds up to 62 mph and Orange with gusts of up to 85 mph, the Chron's Eric Berger reports. From across Southeast Texas came reports of knee-deep water, downed power lines and damaged buildings, including an apartment......

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......

Next time you are in the mood for an extraordinary lunch that does not involve valet parking you should hop on over to Yo Mama's Soul Food Restaurant on Antoine between 43rd and Tidwell. Yo Mama's (tee hee) has been slanging the groceries for 13 years now will not be closing any time soon judging by the lunch crowd. Folks from neighborhoods near (Oak Forest) and far (Sugarland) were waiting patiently in line to pick......

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom......

Really, it's a typical story: guy and girl go to bar with their various friends, looking to mingle. Guy and girl meet. Guy and girl have drinks. Girl invites guy home to her place to check out her bootleg Top Chef DV--wait, is that part just us? Anyway. When the guy and girl wake up the next morning, it lately seems as if they should get checked for syphilis. The Chronicle reports that Houston's trying......

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. The BarCamp Houston Files Here's a roundup of links, blog posts and photos from BarCamp Houston 2. Dwight Silverman experimented by covering BarCamp ad nauseum through Twitter. If you couldn't be there Dwight's Twitter Litter could keep you up to date virtually minute by minute. Jim Thompson, Katherine Druckman, Robert Nagle, A Wandering Eyre and sean.blog were there too and posted their experiences. There are also......

GHPA Walking Tour: Old Sixth Ward In perfect timing with last week's City Council designation of Old SIxth Ward as Houston's first and only Protected Historic District, the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance will hold it's monthly walking tour this afternoon in the historic neighborhood. On the second Sunday of every month, GHPA presents a docent-guided walking tour of an architecturally and/or historically significant area of Houston. $10 per person ($7 for GHPA members). Reservations are......

Did you protest the taxes on your home this past year? If so, we hope you did your research on your neighbors’ appraisals already. If you didn’t, you’re out of luck. Thanks to a new law passed by the state, the Harris County Appraisal District (HCAD) was forced to pull their property appraisal database from their website this week. Don't get out your walking shoes yet – the information can't be obtained from the county......

This morning, Houston City Council designated Old Sixth Ward as the first and only Protected Historic District in the city. This new status will enable the Houston Archaeological and Historical Commission to prohibit the demolition of historic structures within Old Sixth Ward's 33.8 acres. There was only one dissenting vote for this measure, which came from council member/real estate broker Michael Berry. As far as actual limitations on properties within the district, the Greater Houston......

Good morning, Houston. Have you wondered lately what Music World Entertainment founder Matthew Knowles is up to? You might never have guessed: He's releasing a new line of toys aimed at urban toddlers. The line is called Baby Jamz, and they're meant to be a twist on traditional kids' toys: "Think about it," Knowles told KTRK. "'Old McDonald' has been the same since we were kids. So what if we change 'Old McDonald' and......

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too - two of them in -Ist cities. Sampaist was shocked when a passenger jet crashed into the center of Sao Paulo, killing at least 200 people. The airplane, an Airbus A320, skidded off the runway at the......

More information in the story of Sonoma, the giant mixed-use development being planned for a two-block site in the Rice Village: The Chronicle reports that the city has released the appraisals for the 2400 block of Bolsover Street, and there's a little bit of variation between the two — about a half-million dollars' worth, to be specific. The appraisals — for $913,171 and $1,460,340 — pertain to Lamesa Properties' plans to buy that stretch of......

Banner week for SFist as the site's new editor introduced himself -- hooray for Brock! While the NY Times weighed in on SF's mayoral race, only SFist had the (insert tongue firmly into cheek) hard-hitting latest on candidate/activist Josh Wolf. Coverage of a protest vs. gentrification spawned a fantastic debate amongst SFist's readers. Finally, from the sublime to the ridiculous: video of a man that confused a Board of Supes meeting with "open mic......

The Chronicle's Mike Snyder reports on the City Hall blog that the City Planning Commission yesterday approved the creation of a protected historic district for the Old Sixth Ward — a move unprecedented in Houston that would exclude historic homes in the near-downtown neighborhood from the city's 90-day demolition waiting period. (That measure means that, if they city denies the owner of a historic building a permit for demolition or inappropriate alteration, the owner may......

Over at the Chronicle's City Hall blog, Mike Snyder notes that veteran television newswoman Linda Ellerbee has taken a stand in the controversy over proposed special protections for the Old Sixth Ward. Ellerbee grew up in Houston and is planning to move back here from New York City; she's scouting out houses in the Sixth Ward and said she's been keeping up with discussions about protecting the neighborhood. Among the proposals from Mayor Bill White......

The story behind this drink is two-fold, so get ready for a history lesson. We first got turned on to the Aqua Velva when we saw Zodiac last spring. In the movie, a dandy, very late-1970's Robert Downey, Jr. and an earnest Jake Gyllenhaal discuss a serial killer over drinks. Gyllenhaal's character orders an Aqua Velva, a fancy bright blue drink with a paper umbrella, which Downey's character finds questionable. Cut to a scene......

Good morning, Houston. Remember Radar, the adorable Channel 2 weather dog? If you're a Ken Hoffman reader, we can't imagine how you'd forget. It turns out someone in Tyler was a big fan of the idea: a TV station there has their own weather dog, Stormy. Stormy serves a function similar to Radar's and also wears an American flag bandana and takes ridiculous pictures. Just another reason to be glad you don't live in......

In all these months of shelterporn, we've somehow managed to overlook one of our favorite neighborhoods in Houston: Eastwood, an area that's chockablock with bungalows and Arts & Crafts-style houses, many of which have been beautifully restored. Take, for example, this 1914 home on Walker Avenue, on a corner lot just a couple miles east of downtown. The house has high ceilings and original woodwork throughout, with marble fireplace surrounds and hardwood floors inlaid......

Well, here's something to be proud of: Houston's homicide rate is now the second-highest among large American cities, according to FBI figures released Monday. Keep in mind that this is the homicide rate we're talking about — Houston's was 18.2 per 100,000 residents last year, putting us second only to Philadelphia and ahead of Dallas (fifth place), which has had a higher homicide rate than Houston for each of the last 11 years. The numbers......

Good morning, Houston. It's June 5 — does that date mean anything to you? It should: Six years ago today, Tropical Storm Allison made landfall on the upper Texas coast, bringing with it more than 40 inches of rain in some areas (and all the flooding that went with it). When all was said and done, the damages totaled $5.5 billion, making Allison the most costly tropical storm in U.S. history. Have any memories......

If you're tired of hearing about 600 sq mi: Photos from Houston, Houstonist's first-ever photo show, we're sorry — go back to what you were doing. But if you're a photographer, amateur or professional, and you haven't entered the show yet, now's your chance. 600 sq mi is a juried exhibition of photos from Houston. We're leaving it up to you guys to figure out what that means: skyscrapers, trees, people, neighborhoods, art, freeways,......

The consensus of people at an urban planning workshop on the Main Street corridor Monday? In short: It needs to be more urban. The Planning Partnership, a Toronto firm hired to create a development plan for Main Street, held the workshop, which was meant to get the public's input on how to guide future construction along the corridor. Because the MetroRail line is already in place and major buildings already stand along Main, planning will......