Results tagged “hotels”

Ok, so it’s been like eight years since American Pie came out. Can you believe it? We know, we’re so old. It was a totally different decade then. A forgotten, distant time in our culture. An innocent age when we’d not yet seen Tara Reid’s, well, pretty much everything. A time when most of us had never heard the term MILF. A time when Eugene Levy had not yet sold his once funny soul to...

Downtown Houston Nightcrawl Still celebrating the blue skys since the Bllind Melon gods have bestowed upon us a week without precip? Why not celebrate outdoors? Join the Downtown Houston Nighcrawl tonight. "Discover downtown Houston’s hottest nightspots after dark but before the crowds arrive." Whether you’re just passing through the city or looking for a way to entertain friends or business colleagues or celebrate a special event, Discover Houston Tours guarantees you a laugh and a...

This afternoon and tomorrow, several Houston hotels are holding the ultimate garage sale at the GRB Convention Center, so now's your chance to make your living room a miniature replica of the Hilton Americas lobby. Finally! Participating hotels include the Four Seasons, the Hilton Americas, and the Hyatt, and they're selling absolutely everything. You'll find furniture, electronics, linens, dishes, etc. and good bargains have been promised (that remains to be seen though). That includes...

After a five-alarm fire that was started by a window air conditioner ravaged a Channelview apartment building last Friday, 100+ tenants are searching for shelter. Although about 20 of the 80 units were untouched by the fire, the entire complex is without running water and electricity, leaving many people wondering what to do and where to go. A temporary shelter was set up after the fire, but was closed on Sunday because it was no...

So here's something interesting for people who keep track of abandoned downtown buildings: The Houston Business Journal reports that Omni Hotels has plans to revamp the old Sheraton-Lincoln into a luxury suite hotel. The 28-story hotel at 717 Polk Ave. opened in 1962 and closed in 1986; according to the folks at the Houston Architecture Forum, the nearby Hyatt Regency bought the building in the late 1990s for a proposed expansion, but that deal fell...

If you're like Houstonist, you've driven past the former Warwick Hotel sometime in the past few months and wondered what the distinguished old building would be like when it reopened as the Hotel ZaZa. Well, you won't have to wait much longer to find out: The hotel is set to open Monday, and the Chronicle had a preview this weekend. The short version comes from the hotel's co-owner, Charlie Givens, who described the property as...

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. Overpaid Teachers Saga Remember last week when we mentioned that HISD overpaid some employees because of a computer glitch? Well, we also found out that HISD is now asking for that money back and the head of the local teachers union is saying no way. Are You Experienced? New Cingular Retail Outlet Amidst crosstown traffic, AT&T has unveiled a new face in the wireless storefront community....

What is the deal with the building off of the east side of 45 in downtown across from the post office (bounded by Franklin and Bagby)? It looks like it was constructed (or renovated) recently and yet it sits there half-finished with broken glass. — Chris Chris, the building you're wondering about is the old Tennison Hotel at the corner of Bagby and Franklin, and you're right: It was renovated in the last few years,...

Good morning, Houston. We've heard a lot recently about how Galveston's waterfront is suddenly sprouting high-dollar apartments, condos and hotels — but when will developers begin building high-rises overlooking the lovely Houston Ship Channel? Maybe sooner than you'd think: In Alabama and South Texas, the newest bunch of development is occurring along the Intracoastal Waterway, the 1,300-mile manmade shipping channel few had previously considered pretty. But could the development interfere with shipping, the Intracoastal...

As 2006 ends and 2007 begins, the -ists look back not at the past week, but at the past year. So here it is, your Best of 2006 Spectacular. And from all of us at the -ists, happy New Year! Austinist was all about controversy as new construction to increase urban density ran rampant in 2006, as did threats to the city's image from gigantic corporations looking to set up shop in town, leading...

Whoopee! Thanksgiving is nearly upon us. Unfortunately this also means that holiday travel, and all the stress that goes with it, is also nearly here. The Turkey Day season is the busiest travel period of the year.

More on Houston's newly expanded smoking ban: Everyone knows the ordinance prohibits smoking in all workplaces, including restaurants and bars, but what's still sort of unclear is where people will be able to smoke under the new law. That's because of potential vagueness in the exceptions to the ordinance, which include outdoor patios, private rooms in nursing homes, tobacco shops, cigar bars and designated rooms in meeting facilities during private functions.

Could the days of overpriced seafood and waitresses dancing on the tables to the “Macarena” be coming to an end? Hopefully, but don’t hold your breath. Houston’s Landry’s Restaurants has just reached a deal to sell the majority of their Joe’s Crab Shack’s to a private equity group.

If you work or travel through downtown, you may want to take note of this: Earlier this morning, a fire at a CenterPoint Energy substation knocked out the power to northeast downtown. Crews are working on having the problem fixed, but it doesn't look like the power will be restored until after rush hour this morning, maybe later.

City Council is expected to consider today a proposal to establish a flat fee for taxi rides within downtown, a move intended to encourage out-of-town visitors and downtown workers to use cabs to get around. The proposal is to charge $6 for any trip within the loop bounded by I-45, I-10 and Highway 59 — kind of like Washington, D.C.'s zone plan, but much, much smaller. The good thing about the idea, of course, is that no one would have to wonder how much a taxi ride would cost:

Houstonist loves its pets – well, some of us don’t have one, but we love our friends’ pets! Finally, our city is getting recognition for our pet fondness. According to AAA, Houston is now the most pet-friendly city for travelers. The survey is mainly based on the number of hotels and motels that accept pets. Houston leads the pack with 108 lodging choices for pets and their owners. We also have two off-leash dog parks...

The Ben Milam Hotel (Joseph Finger: 1925), located across from Minute Maid Park (and some may know that old place - Union Station), has been vacant for more than two decades and may soon be history. What's with all this speculation, you ask? Well, we recently witnessed the sneaky razing of its neighbor, the William Penn Hotel (which was, indeed, in much better condition), and now its windows are being removed and the interior is...

Tom DeLay said today he will withdraw from the congressional race to allow Republicans to run a write-in candidate in November Federal officials are looking into the bus fire that claimed the lives of 23 nursing home residents during last year's Rita evacuation determine whether buses are safe for people with special needs Four penguins and a load of exotic fish died today when the truck carrying them to Moody Gardens overturned on an East...

The Astrodome has been home to many things. It bore witness to the highs and lows of the Oilers and Astros. It has been credited with helping to change the face of men's college basketball and March Madness. People roped dogies, jumped over cars on motorcycles, cheered on Ronald Reagan and promised to kick things in on the floor of the Eighth Wonder of the World. More recently, it has sheltered evacuees during Hurricane Katrina...

Houstonist admits that we have an odd fascination with seedy hotels. The Londale downtown is a good example: We look at its open windows, its sagging balcony, the general idea that the building stopped trying to impress anyone decades ago, and we wonder what's going on inside (not that we'd really want to know, of course — we probably wouldn't understand most of it anyway). So we were really interested to see the article yesterday about the rebirth of the Montagu Hotel.

So we noted earlier this week that people who attended this year's Essence Music Festival whined about how Houston isn't New Orleans. And now festival organizers have joined in, saying Houston apparently didn't realize just how important the three-day music, shopping and education festival was.

Here's some advice: Unless you're attending the Essence Music Festival this weekend, you might want to avoid the Essence Music Festival. That's because more than 200,000 people may come to the three-day festival, being held in Houston for the first time this year. We just don't think Reliant Park-area traffic will be any fun. The EMF started in New Orleans in 1994 to mark the 25th anniversary of Essence magazine. Since then, it's grown into...

So the All-Star Weekend is officially over and we all made it though — didn't we? Houstonist ventured downtown this weekend and we were a little surprised at how many people were there. As we watched traffic inch down Congress Avenue and nearly got run down by another Escalade Limo, we started thinking maybe we'd tripped and landed in LA — except that it was about 10 degrees below zero. No kidding.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution takes a look today at civic damage control during the Enron trial — and Houston's boosters are trying really hard to make sure out-of-towners don't think the city is all about greed and scandal.

Yesterday, Knight-Ridder Newspapers carried a wire story highlighting the tensions between Katrina evacuees and Texans — specifically Houstonians — as the Gulf Coast diaspora continues.

According to FEMA, only 40 percent of the 6,000 hurricane evacuees staying in Texas hotels have applied to stay past Feb. 7 — meaning there could be a jump in the number of homeless. With 3,490 hotel rooms still occupied in Greater Houston, a large number of families and individuals could be evicted in a couple of weeks. "Instantly, we could be looking at a 30 to 40 percent increase in homeless people on the...

So we've all seen the TV news spots where someone takes a black light and finds all sorts of nasty stuff in hotel rooms, right? But you've said to yourself, "That doesn't happen in nice hotels." Well, think again: ABC News investigated 20 fancy hotels in NYC, LA, Houston and Miami, and they found some pretty foul things — including a lot of urine.

Based on how the government's done with Katrina relief so far, Houstonist wasn't too surprised to read that FEMA will keep paying for Katrina evacuees' hotel bills past the Jan. 7 deadline while it works out bureaucratic and legal problems.

Even though it was a fairly bad place to actually see a sporting event, and an even worse place to see a concert, the Astrodome has a place in Houstonist's heart (and in our logo). We remember fondly the loud upholstery, the scoreboard, the inexplicably addictive Dome Dogs, the Great Moments in Sports. So it's been sad to see the Dome sitting there empty in the shadow of the new Reliant Stadium — and it's been interesting to see how people plan to save the cavernous stadium.

It's no secret that Houston and the New York media have had a love/hate relationship over the years — well, OK, mostly hate. So we were interested to see what the NY Times said in yesterday's 36 Hour travel feature on Houston — and it seems writer Dan Halpern actually got it: Houston doesn't have a clear-cut positive reputation, like Austin (the laid-back slacker capital), or even a good nickname, like Dallas (Big D)....