Kudos to Carolyn Feibel and Matt Stiles at the Houston Chronicle, who not only dug up the records of how our city council members spent their remaining 2008 budget, but also wrangled some dubious excuses out of the more heinous offenders. Among the more comical expenditures was over $1,600 for chairs upholstered in pink fabric for the office of new councilwoman Jolanda Jones, widely known for her love of the pastel shade. Earlier this year,......

Good morning, Houston. Sure, the national economy may be going to hell in a handbasket, but look on the bright side: Houston's housing market is remaining pretty strong, so at least you homeowners have something of value! According to a new report, the median home value in Houston fell just $500 between the end of the third quarter 2007 and the end of the year, to $119,300 from $119,800 — still a gain of......

Photo by Andy Sternberg/LAist A posthumous tribute wall dedicated to singer/songwriter Elliot Smith sat defaced by graffiti for months on end -- LAist said enough, so did the fans and city council.SFist was surprised to learn that chronic presidential candidate Ralph Nader picked former San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez as his running mate.Phillyist explored the possibilities of green cleaning.In the latest edition of Reel Toronto, a bi-weekly feature looking at films shot in Toronto......

Happy bissextile day, Houston. If you're reading this from jail — we're actually not even sure if you can use the Internet in jail — well, don't feel alone: According to a new report from the Pew Center on the States, 1 of every 100 American adults are behind bars today. Good lord. The good news: Texas is one of the states that has tried to slow the growth of its inmate population through......

Good morning, Houston. When it comes to politics, we suppose there's a lot to be said for the shock factor — which is why Brian Klock, a candidate for Congressional District 22, is getting some attention. Klock, one of 10 people vying for the Republican nomination for CD 22, has put up a billboard showing downtown Houston being destroyed by a huge explosion. "The Threat Is Real," the billboard reads. "Ask Brian Klock." And......

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......

Good morning, Houston. Hey, guess who's having a birthday today? Well, OK, it's technically not Houstonist — our second birthday was back on Nov. 20, but we figured that if the queen can have two birthdays, so can we. And so we're throwing ourselves a little birthday party tonight, and you're all invited. It starts at 6 p.m. at Monsoon Wok, Lamar at San Jacinto (yes, street parking is free downtown after 6). Six......

Good morning, Houston. 'Tis the season for strange missing persons reports: In Tyler, the latest individual to go missing is a 42-foot-tall snowman. The inflatable snowman was last seen at a Tyler tree farm Friday night; the tree lot's owner, Royce Wisenbaker, told the AP that he believes it was hoisted over a fence and carted away. The snowman is worth about $10,000, and a $1,000 reward has been posted for information leading to......

Good morning, Houston. Have you ever wondered why our freeways have multiple names — for example, I-45 south of downtown is also called the Gulf Freeway, the section through downtown is the Pierce Elevated and the part north of downtown is the North Freeway? Yeah, we have, too — and it seems we're not alone: The Chronicle's Tex-Arcana column tackled that question this weekend. The answer? In Houston, at least, the names tell where......

Good morning, Houston. We suppose Tex-Mex is finally official: The New York Times wrote about it yesterday in an article that looked at famed Mexican joints in Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. "Neon signs flicker above pastel storefronts promising excellent Mexican food in virtually every block of the city," the Times' Joe Drape writes of Houston. "The trick is to figure out which places will deliver on that promise." Indeed. Drape visited El Jardin......

Good morning, Houston. There's a new weapon in the battle to make Houston the most beautiful city in America: Beginning next week, commercial property owners will have to hide their Dumpsters behind a building, wall, fence, berm or shrub. Officials said they hope the rule — which City Council approved six months ago — will help increase property values and make properties safer (and, of course, prettier). Anyone who violates the ordinance can be......

Good morning, Houston. We've run into some, uh, active parents of student athletes in our day, but we can't remember remember hearing about one who was actually banned from his kid's sporting events — until now, that is. Meet Joe Dalton, who has been barred from his son's Stafford High home football games because school district officials allege he assaulted a student. It happened at the last home game Dalton attended, where he said......

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. Want to hear something weird? Investigators say a North Texas man had a stolen bone implanted in his neck. The man, Jim Livingston, had a herniated disk in his neck; in 2005, a surgeon replaced it with a small bone from a donor. Everything was fine until last year, when Livingston got a call informing him that the bone was believed to have been stolen from a body at a funeral......

Good morning, Houston. In case you didn't hear yesterday, we'll soon see the end of an era in air travel: Beginning Oct. 2, Southwest Airlines will assign passengers a place in line based on the order in which they check in. That means no more of the airline's (in)famous "cattle call" boarding process, which means there's no longer any point in arriving at the airport 16 hours early to get in the A group......

Good morning, Houston. Did you watch last night's Emmy Awards show with bated breath? Yeah, neither did we. If you want to check out the winners, the Chron has a nice cheat sheet that will bring you up to speed for today's water cooler conversation. We did get to wondering where the name "Emmy" came from though, and turned to Wikipedia to ease our minds. Turns out it's a feminization of the word "immy,"......

Good morning, Houston. These days, when everyone and their dog has a computer, it's getting harder to remember the days when all "official" writing was done on typewriters. The practical modern typewriter was invented in 1868 by an engineer named Christopher Latham Sholes, but it wasn't until 121 years ago today — Sept. 14, 1886 — that George K. Anderson of Memphis got a patent for the typewriter ribbon. They were originally made of......

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......

We wouldn't go quite so far as to say that every day is an anniversary of 9/11, but there are several events happening around the city today to remember 9/11 and its victims. So hit them up, whether you're a firefighter, a civilian, or a troofer. >> Houston Fire Museum dedicates new statue: The Houston Fire Museum will dedicate a new statue titled "In the Line of Fire" to honor firefighters everywhere. The sculpture will......

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......

Houstonist vs. Houstonist is a new feature in which two Houstonist contributors will face off to debate an issue that's relevant to life in the Bayou City. Want to join the debate? Hit the comments section at the end of the post. As we're sure you've heard, Houston's stricter smoking ban — which affects all but a handful of workplaces, including bars — goes into effect tomorrow. The push for the expanded smoking ban gained......

Good morning, Houston. So, how about this: According to Popular Science, Houston is the 10th most high-tech city in the nation — ahead of both Dallas (No. 27) and Austin (No. 53). The rankings were based on 36 indicators, including technology in science, the number of Wi-Fi hotspots in cities, and research budgets at local universities. The final ranking, then, had to do with more than the Internet: It took into account things like......

Good morning, Houston. Looks like we'll have a tougher time cracking out those fake Benjamins next year: The $100 bill will soon be getting a high-tech makeover to thwart counterfeiters. The key feature: 650,000 tiny lenses embedded in each bill, which will magnify the printing so that the portrait of Benjamin Franklin appears to move up and down or side to side, depending on which way you move the bill. "It makes for a......

Chicagoist is gearing up for this weekend's annual Air & Water Show along the lakefront. In what's becoming an annual tradition around there, staff member Todd McClamroch even got to fly with one of the participants. Chicagoist's decidedly opinionated readership was also appalled that one of their staffers found a popular local brewpub to be a great place to bring a kid. They also think that an unlikely activist for immigration rights should just take......

City Council voted yesterday to sell the 2400 block of Bolsover (between Kelvin and Morningside - we can't Street View it yet, but here's the Google Map) in Rice Village to Lamesa Village Ltd., a mixed use developer, for $1.5 million. Many residents expressed practical concerns about traffic and parking, but some were also bothered by the city selling public land for private profit. Lamesa Village Ltd. plans to build a development called Sonoma, which......

Good morning, Houston. Nothing to lol at here: the Houston SPCA is rolling out a new policy for pet owners who drop off their pets. From now on, there will be a fifteen minute "counseling session," during which the owners will know if the pet is going to be a candidate for adoption or if it's going to the big litterbox in the sky. The policy is meant to make it harder for owners......

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......

So, short of some kind of miracle — we're not sure exactly what kind, but we're thinking maybe a midnight ghostly visit to Weingarten Realty CEO Drew Alexander, a la A Christmas Carol — the north section of the River Oaks Shopping Center will be coming down in the next few days, to be replaced with a new retail strip anchored by a Barnes & Noble megastore. And in case you've forgotten, B&N's moving into......

...for demolitionToday, Houston City Council voted to designate the River Oaks Shopping Center, River Oaks Theater, Alabama Shopping Center, and Alabama Theater as historic landmarks, though it will not afford the structures any protection from Weingarten Realty's current and future decisions to demolish them. According to Historic Houston, there were three dissenting votes from council members Michael Berry (big surprise), Addie Wiseman (who tagged this measure last week), and Pam Holm. Save Our Landmarks invites......

Tuesday, August 7 at 2pm is the last chance for the public to speak about the pending historic landmark status of the River Oaks Shopping Center, River Oaks Theater, Alabama Shopping Center, and Alabama Theater in front of City Council. Members of the public must sign up to speak by 12pm Tuesday by calling the City Secretary Anna Russell (713-247-1840), and people who have already spoken to City Council on this issue may not do......