After a brief hiatus to undergo a lengthy bout of detox due to excessive margarita consumption, we’re back and better than ever! The next stop on the road to unearth Houston’s best margarita was Canyon Café, positioned in a strip mall near the corner of Post Oak Lane and Westheimer. Restaurant Ambiance Judging solely by its exterior, Canyon Café possesses an inordinate amount of flair and gusto. From the lengthy outdoor staircase that patrons......

When we’re out and about, rocking and rolling and what not, we meet a lot of people who say, “Gee, I’d really like to be into art, but, I just don’t know about any artists and I get really intimidated when I go to galleries because the attendants can totally tell I don’t know anything about art and I end up leaving in shame, lamenting that my old Monet poster and that STOP sign I......

Let us eat cake, well, cupcakes - lots of them, at Dessert Gallery Bakery & Cafe. Yep, head on over to any Dessert Gallery location, either at 3200 Kirby Drive, 1616 Post Oak Drive or, at the newest location 2260 Lone Star Drive at Sugar Land Town Square (read: fake downtown). A donation of ten percent of the purchase price of every pink ribbon cupcake sold will go to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Specifically, to......

Houston Dynamo Hosts Bike Challenge Tomorrow Ever want to sit behind a sweaty, hot, soccer player while he pumps away at a stationary bike? Ok, well maybe that's just our dream. (At least the female persuasion of Houstonist.) Ok, so if that doesn't do it for you, how about some free Dynamo Playoff tickets? A little more your taste? Well tomorrow's our chance for both, and yours if you act quickly. Sign-ups for the 1st......

Standing in front of Kenny & Ziggy's rotating dessert display case reminded us of a scene from Sex in the City. Carrie Bradshaw, a shoe zealot, presses right up to the glass of a window displaying designer shoes and says in her breathy voice, "Helloooo lov-ah." This Jewish delicatessen has plenty of good eats, ranging from matzo balls to open-faced Reubens and the decor - yaddy yadda yadda...just go straight for the Coconut Cream Pie.......

Happy Hump Day, Houston! A reader's twitter reminded us that today is the two year anniversary of when that bitch Katrina rolled into the swamps of NOLA, giving us lots of new neighbors. If you are reading this as an Katrina evacuee, we are curious as to how you are finding our little town. Hopefully, Houstonist is helping to navagate you through all there is to do. Like this great event tonight. How about......

National Bike Month is over, but the partying isn't. The Mayor's office and Bayou City Outdoors will give Bike Month one last hurrah this evening, and everyone is invited. The Bike Month 2007 Celebration will take place tonight at Berryhill on Post Oak at San Felipe. Over 400 cyclists have registered on the city's website to ride their bikes during the month of May. These registered riders are automatically entered into a drawing to win......

Good morning, Houston. It's Thursday — the last day of May — which means there's just a few more hours to enter the Houstonist photo exhibition. We're accepting entries until 11:59 p.m. tomorrow, so be sure to send your photos before then. As always, the details and entry form are at 600sqmi.com. Good luck! >> Aw, hail: We knew there was a chance of rain yesterday, but we didn't expect a long bout of......

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......

The Chronicle's Matt Stiles brings us the locations of the city's 10 newest red-light cameras, a couple of which we had already noticed — while lawfully stopping at red lights, we might add. And here they are: Northbound Wayside at Gulf Freeway Northbound Woodridge at Gulf Freeway Northbound West Bellfort at Southwest Freeway Northbound Fairbanks N. Houston at Northwest Freeway Northbound West Sam Houston Parkway South at Westpark Eastbound FM 2351 at Gulf Freeway Eastbound......

Good morning, Houston. Ever been to Podunk, Texas? You have if you've ever visited the east Houston neighborhood of Denver Harbor, which was affectionately called Podunk during the Great Depression because it was then far enough east to seem semi-rural. And as of yesterday, thanks to a state House resolution, Podunk is the Official Mythical Town of Texas. Grady got the resolution passed by gathering 700 signatures on a petition and persuading the area's......

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......

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......

Police say a man living at an upscale Galleria-area apartment complex e-mailed friends and family announcing his own death before shooting two people, beating one and then turning the gun on himself Monday afternoon. The gunman, 48-year-old David Howard Thurm, was apparently angry over his pending eviction from The Post Oak at Woodway, 99 N. Post Oak Lane. HPD spokesman Capt. Dwayne Ready said Thurm was called to the apartment complex's office just before 1......

This week, the Jewish Press ran an article wondering whether Houston will become the "Nation's Next Voucher Battleground" after last month's rally on the issue in Austin. As it turns out, a good contingent of Houston-area synagogues sent representatives over to Austin to show their support of private school vouchers. The whole voucher debate never ever seems to end continues throughout Texas and the U.S. in a lively manner, and thus the folks of......

Good morning, Houston. Did you enjoy a big oyster dinner over the weekend? Might want to stay close to the toilet: The FDA is advising people to steer clear of oysters from San Antonio Bay, about 60 miles northeast of Corpus Christi, after more than two dozen people became ill from eating them last month. The people developed nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and other nasty symptoms; the oyster bed has been shut down pending an......

Welcome to the Houstonist Tech Buzz, a run down on local tech news, blogs and events in a quick concise format. Think of it as a little, itty-bitty, micro SD card with current local tech news. Over at the Chron, head geek and technology editor, Dwight Silverman, when not picking the top 15 geek movies, is busy finishing up his book on Windows Vista. He's even taking a respite from his gig at the......

The Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo is just days away, but the trail riders are pulling into town tomorrow. The HLSR Trail Ride began in 1952 as a publicity stunt with four cowboys. HLSR 2007 features 13 groups consisting of thousands of riders with some traveling hundreds of miles in the saddle. Those of you who like the cowboy way (no, not the crappy movie) should be able to catch an eyeful of traditional......

Today’s Photo of the Day comes from flickr user and Houstonist photo contributor erinen31, who writes: While waiting at a red light at Hidalgo & Post Oak, I thought I'd snap a picture. I have a love/hate relationship with the street signs in the Galleria area. During the day, the white lettering & the reflections in the metal make it so you can hardly read them, but at night, they look super cool for......

Remember last weekend's story about Norman Fulton, the man who fell 12 stories down an elevator shaft while trying to escape from a stuck elevator at his Galleria-area condo in December? The death might have been prevented if elevators in the building where Fulton lived had been equipped with door restrictors, which prevent trapped passengers from being able to pry open the doors of a stuck elevator car before trained rescue personnel arrive to......

Looks like more changes are in store for Allen Parkway: According to the Chronicle, the Allen House apartments will soon be demolished to make way for Regent Square, a mixed-use "urban village" development. Construction on the first phase of the project, at Allen Parkway and Dunlavy, is expected to begin in September, with completion scheduled for 2010. The initial phase of Regent Square will include 740 apartment units, 230,000 square feet of retail space, 60,000......

Houstonist has good news and bad news. Unfortunately, there's no "choose your own adventure" option when you're blogging, so we'll just give you the bad news first. All westbound lanes of I-10 will be closed this weekend from Washington Ave. to Campbell Rd. The northbound and southbound interchanges from 610 to I-10 W will also be closed. Fortunately, the closure only lasts from 9 pm tonight until 12 pm tomorrow, but motorists are strongly encouraged......

An HISD bus driver is being hailed as a hero after she kept a gunman from boarding a bus carrying the Madison High School girls' basketball teams on Wednesday — by chunking her radio microphone at him. Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, right? It all started when the girls were on their way back to Madison from a game at Lamar High. The bus stopped at a traffic light at Willowbend and......

It’s an annual tradition on Thanksgiving night to drive over to Uptown Park for the holiday lighting ceremonies. It’s a great way to kick-off the Christmas holiday season with all of those Christmas traditions: Santa, lights, large crowds, vendors, funnel cakes, and fireworks (those are all traditions in your family, right?). If you’ve never experienced the Uptown Holiday Lighting celebration, you need to at least once. You’ll see the simultaneous lighting of over half a......

I was wondering if you could do a round up of restaurants that will be open on Thanksgiving for we few freaks who will not be spending time with friends and/or family. You would know this better than a recent transplant like my(sorry)self. Hey, just because you're not able to spend time with friends and family on Thanksgiving doesn't make you a freak — it's what you do while you're away from your loved......

A reader tipped us (thanks) to a Houston Business Journal report that Eatzi's is closing its Houston location at 6 PM today. The Post Oak business was a favorite Galleria area lunch destination as well as offering a full fare of take-out options for dinner, which we pawned off as our own on many occasions. The Dallas-based company has not commented on the closing, nor does their web site offer insight on the matter. However,......

Remember the striking Houston janitors who protested in other cities and blocked the Westheimer/Post Oak intersection? They've been busy this week, too: Yesterday they rolled buckets and trash bins through downtown during rush hour and returned to Uptown — and today they stormed the Houston Club, disrupted a speech and gathered outside HPD headquarters. Wednesday morning, some of the janitors held a rally outside the Houston Club, where the Greater Houston Partnership and business leaders......

Those striking janitors sure have been busy lately: Earlier this week some of them hit the road to take their crusade for higher wages to other cities, and today some others hit the road — literally — blocking a busy Uptown intersection for a couple of hours. It happened at Westheimer and Post Oak at about 1:30 p.m., when protesters dragged a bunch of garbage cans and trash bags into the intersection, formed a......

Sure, the $225 million West Loop reconstruction will formally be capped off today with a ceremony at the Woodway exit, but don't make the mistake of thinking that means it'll be smooth sailing through Uptown this weekend. No sirma'am, a variety of projects on 290 and the Katy Freeway will give you plenty to plan around if you're headed out to the west side. So, here we go: 290 eastbound will be closed from 9......

As if you didn't have enough good reasons to avoid Uptown on a weekend, here's another one for you: major traffic closures on the West Loop. What, that wasn't enough to get your attention? All right, then, the details: The ramp from the West Loop northbound to the Katy Freeway in both directions will be closed from 9 p.m. today to 5 a.m. Saturday. One lane of the ramps from the Katy Freeway (both directions)......