It's official: Houston is the best place to live in America. At least according to Kiplinger's Personal Finance, which placed Houston at the top of their list of Best Cities to Live, Work and Play for 2008. The respected personal finance magazine named a number of reasons that Houston topped their list this year: our strong economy (in spite of any national trends), continued job growth, low cost of living, diverse cultures and vibrant......

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

Unless you've been hiding under a rock out in the suburbs (no judgment!) you probably have already heard about this Saturday's 11th Annual Museum District Day. If you haven't, well look at us telling you something you don't know about! Yep, folks, that's what we're here for. Here's your chance to view gallery upon gallery of Houston's finest art, all for the low, low price of FREE. Saturday, August 18th, from 10am-5pm, 14 Houston museums......

Westheimer Road is a long, thriving, paved snake of potholed infrastructure. It guides you into town from the Grand Parkway through Beltway 8 and Loop 610 until it brings you all the way into a cozy, little enclave of town we lovingly refer to as The Montrose. Not really the heart of Houston, because that would probably be the Medical Center, but more like the liver or one of the kidneys of Houston as......

Kevin Russell Performs Solo Show with Fried Ice Cream at Under The Volcano A big thanks to one of our loyal readers, Chris Sarrat, for bringing this awesome event on our radar. If you have not heard the new Gourds record, you'll be surprised to hear horns on the first cut "How Will You Shine." Tonight, Houston-based 9-piece funk, R&B, and jazz group Fried Ice Cream's horn section will be playing with The Gourds' singer......

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a......

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......

Just when you thought it was safe to confine your red-light running to the suburbs: the Sugar Land City Council voted to put up red light cameras at intersections in their town as soon as September. Copycats. Sugar Land police chief Steve Griffith said that there would probably be cameras at 59 and Highway 6, one of the city's busiest intersections, as well as three or four other heavily traveled intersections. He said that as......

Good morning, Houston. If you're a fan of the Early Show, you probably caught Mayor White's national television appearance Monday morning. He appeared on the show seated between two foxy ladies, Caroline Kennedy and Doris Voitier, to discuss his receipt of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. Like we told you before, he and Mrs. Voitier are sharing the award for their outstanding public service during and after Hurricane Katrina. This award......

Good morning, Houston. If you're like Houstonist, you've watched those TV specials about the University of Tennessee's body farm with morbid interest — and you were morbidly interested when you heard that a similar facility was being planned for Texas State in San Marcos. But the plan keeps running into roadblocks, the latest of which is a concern that the buzzards the body farm would attract could affect airplanes on their way to the......

We don't know about where you are, but it seems like spring can't decide whether or not to happen. Some days are warm, some days are cold, and sometimes you aren't sure which. Baseball may have started up (and soccer/football winding down) but it still seems cold out there. Unless it's not. Anyways, onto the -ists. Austinist happily anticipated fall's Austin City Limits, even though they're not fully recovered from South By Southwest. In......

This is the second in a series of posts about upcoming City Council races. Check out this week's earlier post about District I, and keep reading Houstonist for more campaign coverage. District E, currently represented by Addie Wiseman, connects the heavily Republican suburbs of Kingwood and Clear Lake by a narrow strip of land, and this year's City Council race reflects this odd districting. Candidate Annette Dwyer hails from Clear Lake and has served on......

It's official: The Police are coming to Houston (the Toyota Center, to be specific) on June 29th. Tickets go on sale this Saturday morning at 10 a.m. They'll go fast. Some big acts coming into town this week, starting with The Shins performance tonight at Verizon Wireless. For you pop.rock fans, you'll have to choose between Sheryl Crow's make-up rodeo performance and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers show at Toyota Center. G. Love &......

And the sky is blue, the Pope Catholic. The Stupidity Tracker blog recently posted a quick comparison of real estate between Houston and the fair city of Compton, CA. The results should be heartwarming for us in our non-cube homes, another reminder that our unending strife against heat, cockroaches, and crazy grackles does not go unrewarded. Some have pointed out that the Houston listing cited in the blog isn't that great of an example,......

After about a year of date-pushing, today marks the groundbreaking ceremony for the Houston Pavilions project downtown, which was apparently only attended by about 75-100 people. Two more anchor tenants were announced - Books-A-Million and Forever21 - in addition to the already secured House of Blues and Lucky Strike Lanes. Restaurants supposedly set to be included are Lawry's, McCormick & Schmick's, Yao's, Antica Osteria, and Guadalajara del Centro (don't leave your American Express at home,......

For many Houstonians, the search for a superlative slice of authentic New York-style pizza can be a frustrating and dangerous lifelong quest, fraught with deceiving dead ends and hordes of zombies. While Houstonist can definately commiserate, we suggest plead demand that you go try the Chicago-style Buffalo Chicken Pizza at BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse (from $9 for a mini to $22 for a large that feeds four guys). It is one of the most......

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......

I have a huge problem. I’m a big Bears fan (and a huge White Sox fan, but I’ll let that slide for the time being as to not open old wounds), but as this weekend approaches, I realized that I have nobody to watch The Game with. For years, I would be watching The Game with a few dozen other sweatpants-wearing, brat-eating, true Chicagoans — and for the first time in my first month as......

This weekend, there was news about more corruption at Enron — but this time, it involves post-meltdown Enron, not the Skilling/Lay version. On Friday, Christian Deeb Rahaim of Mandeville, La., pleaded guilty of defrauding the company out of $3 million in false consultation charges in 2005. Rahaim said he presented the company with a fraudulent $1.2 million bill for consulting services in June 2005, then tried to get an additional $1.8 million in November 2005.......

The shot from flickr user and Houstonist photo contributor Jeremey. This shot of the sun coming up over the Sugar Land Town Square is perhaps the best shot we've ever seen of Sugar Land with the purple clouds and colorful illumination and what not. We're not sure we'd be willing to stand in the middle of the road at 6:30 am to enjoy it, so thanks to Jeremy for doing it for us. If......

As Texans, we can't get enough Mexican food, which is why we were thrilled to learn On the Border Mexican Grill & Cantina will be bringing more of their Tex-Mex fare to the Houston area. Like most large restaurant chains, On the Border is focusing on the suburbs, so if you ever find yourself in Spring, Humble, Rosenberg or Pearland, check them out. The casual Mexican restaurant offers traditional food: quesadillas, fajitas, and our......

On Sundays, Houstonist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in Houston. The opinions expressed below are entirely those of the author. In a city that favors tearing down and rebuilding rather than refurbishing and reusing, the Houston Heights has always stood as a community with a lot of old school flavor. Though less than five miles from downtown, the Heights feels like its own little town (actually, the Heights was its own municipality until 1919).......

You never know what's going to happen when you live in the suburbs. If it's proof you want, ask the people in Greenwood Forest, a subdivision off Champions Forest and 1960 where a deer was stuck in a swimming pool Monday afternoon. No kidding. It apparently began in a back yard in the neighborhood when two bucks got into a fight (it's mating season, so we can imagine what they were tangling over) and ended......

Last week, we told you about the home in Conroe with the image of Jesus in its foyer (or Jerry Garcia, depending on how you look at it). But now we have something even better than that: Jesus himself — or at least a guy claiming to be him — has moved into the Houston suburbs. Take that, Dallas! Jesus, in this case, is Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, a former heroin addict who says......

Tonight's the night - the last night of the Gallant Knight, unfortunately. Houstonist has scrounged for parking, queued up for cocktails and, most importantly, shaken our money-maker at the coolest little dive bar in town. Alas and alack, 'twill come to a screeching halt at the close of business this evening — or so we hear from the Chronicle. It is truly a sad day as developers continue wreaking havoc on landmarks and some......

The “lifestyle center” concept of retail shopping centers has been growing in popularity over the past few years. In the suburbs, it has given the residents a taste of the old days, with a downtown square missed with retail, restaurants and living quarters. The best example of this in our area is Market Street in the Woodlands, which reminds us of the 1950’s town in Back to the Future. Pearland is the latest to......

A $40,000 bond has been set for Ashley Paige Benton, the 16-year-old girl accused of murdering a teen during a Montrose gang fight in June In northeast Houston this afternoon, police found a 1-year-old baby in a car believed to have been used in an armed robbery; the suspect's family was reportedly babysitting the child, who was not harmed At local park and ride lots, commuters have returned to their cars lately to find someone's......

Remember how Houston was ranked the nation's fifth-fattest city by Men's Fitness magazine this year? If that's been getting you down all year, you'll love this: According to a new list, Houston is the third-slimmest city in the country. The news shocked us so much that we nearly dropped the box of Ho Hos we were snacking on. The new report ranks cities by their average residents' body mass indexes. The title of slimmest city......

Police found a man who had been shot to death in a car at a southwest Houston apartment complex yesterday afternoon, but they don't know who he is or who killed him A psychiatrist testified Friday that he warned Andrea Yates not to have more children when she attempted suicide after the birth of her fourth child in 1999 There's been a crime spike in the Fort Bend County suburbs in recent months, the KTRK......