Houstonist loves sushi. Actually, that might be an understatement. If Houstonist could marry sushi (or make it our domestic partner), we would. And we'd have adorable little sushi babies and live wasabily ever after. So when a new sushi restaurant opened up just down the street from our office, we were ecstatic. There is a troubling dearth of good sushi restaurants on the west side of town, with the sole exception of Sushi Jin,......

Good morning, Houston. Remember the city's smoking ban, which went into effect in September? Well, so does KPRC. The station checked around and found something that will shock you to your very core: Houstonians are still smoking in bars and restaurants! No, really. One of the bars Channel 2 visited was Henry Hudson's Pub on the west side, where reporters found customers and the bartender smoking — and "we even bought a pack of......

Kipling St. cleaned up a bit by Peter Brown Kipling Street, just behind the Alabama Theater/Shopping Center, will be a little more flat this week. 2136 and 2140 Kipling (pictures) are set to be demolished, and the current owner of the two properties - built in 1925 and 1938 - is listed as at-large man #1, Peter Brown. While there are no apparent plans for the land, we assume that they will not be the......

Good morning, Houston. If you've lived here a while, you probably know that the city is prone to livestock running amok — so it shouldn't be too surprising that Third Ward residents found a pair of ewes loose in their neighborhood yesterday. Some neighbors and a KTRK crew tried to catch the animals and eventually chased them to the TSU campus, where a Harris County sheriff's deputy and KTRK photographer Ben Lutman made a......

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,......

Tossed is a New York based fast casual rabbit food salad eatery on the west side of town. Having only been open in Houston for a couple of weeks, and despite the awkward name, there was quite a big crowd at Tossed when we tried it out for lunch recently. Located in an odd shaped shopping center at Briar Forest and Eldridge Parkway, we couldn’t help but wonder if this location would have any resemblance,......

Good morning, Houston. Were you one of the folks who lined up Friday to pick up an iPhone? And have you gotten it activated yet? If so, you're lucky: A lot of people are having trouble getting their shiny new toys activated, and until they do, none of the so-called Jesus phone's features — not even its alarm clock — will work. Though most customers have been able to activate their phones in a......

We talked yesterday about the body parts that were found in northwest Harris County in the past few days — remember, homicide investigators initially thought the decomposed parts (two hands and a foot) belonged to a human, but later they discovered they were actually bear parts. So, case closed, right? Well, it still leaves the question of where the bear came from and what it was doing so close to Houston. And so far, no......

Disclaimer: this is an opinion piece and not at all representative of Houstonist as a whole. ------ Here's my humble opinion: Steve Radack sucks. No, it's not eloquent, not even mature, but it is called for given the recent announcement that the cost of driving on the Westpark Tollway will jump to $2.50 during peak times come September. Seriously, this Houstonist contributor would better serve Houston than the man who's in charge of stuff like......

Seattlest has a talk with the photographer from last week's "Segway Mom" and then experiences some dissension in the ranks over the question of wine vs. beer. It's not West Side Story, but about as close as they'll get. They're also still waiting on some inbox relief after a spammer is arrested. As Chicagoist counts down the days to its third anniversary party, they found all-organic pizza to be underwhelming amidst the hoopla, tried......

LAist is experimenting with blogging dates from J-Date, but finds the best men are found offline. Some date vicariously online and that is one reason why porn is big -- really freaking big -- so they ask if they should cover XXX since the heart of it lays in the city's San Fernando Valley. A writer grapples with her food porn photography obsession, another gets censored on Flickr, one gets scooped by the LA......

When we were little, Mama Houstonist always told us not to take shelter under a tree during a lightning storm. And though we followed her advice, we were always a little skeptical: People don't really get hit by lightning if they're standing under a tree, do they? Actually, yes, they do — just ask the four guys who were struck yesterday at Bear Creek Park. The men were playing soccer at the park when a......

The Clay Court Championships have ended their seven-year run at Westside Tennis Club, but the tournament won't be moving far - just down to River Oaks. USTA director of tournament operations Jim Curley was excited about the move: "Now that we're able to move it across town, if you will, it retains consistency in the marketplace. We love Houston as a tennis town." Other cities who were bidding for the event include Atlanta, Winston-Salem, NC,......

So, did you hear about Andre Agassi being in town over the weekend and raising about $300,000 for Simms Elementary school in La Marque? It was part of an Oprah Winfrey-sponsored reality show, The Big Give, in which participants compete to find the most creative ways to taken given amounts of money and multiply them so they can be given away to help others — in Houston, Agassi was competing against Tony Hawk, who held......

Now Houstonist remembers why we didn't decide to live on the west side: Beginning next week, connector ramps between the Katy Freeway and the Beltway will be closed for months as part of the Katy Freeway reconstruction project. The first ramp, from southbound Beltway 8 to the east- and westbound Katy, will close next Friday, April 6. That means motorists on the Beltway will have to exit at Westview and use the feeder road......

So gas is really expensive, in case you hadn't noticed. But there is a bright spot, even if it is a little one: The price of a gallon did increase this week, but the increase wasn't as steep as last week's. Hey, when we're paying $2.40 a gallon, we take the good news where we can get it. According to AAA Texas, the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded in Texas this week......

So hey, did you hear about the rain yesterday? If the rain and thunder overnight didn't wake you up and you had electricity while you were getting ready for work, surely you got caught in the morning rush hour from hell. It was all the fault of a warm front that moved ashore from the Gulf, resulting in more than 10 inches of rain in some parts of town — and that left us with......

After about five years of work, the $344 million reconstruction of the West Loop is finally finished — and though it's quite a bit better than it used to be, it's still a freeway. That means traffic still backs up, there's still noise, hundreds of cars still spew pollution and nearby neighborhoods still have a dozen lanes of concrete at their back doors. Hey, that's not good, right? Well, maybe not, some people say. The......

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......

The shot from flickr user and houstonist photo contributor j-a-x. So this is one of the coolest things we've seen in a while. At first glance, it seems to be just another (nice) photo of the skyscrapers along Louisiana Street downtown — but then you notice the titular building at extreme right. Don't see it? Look more carefully. The "transparent building" is 1000 Louisiana, which was the first skyscraper in Houston to be faced......

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......

Did we say it was going to rain a lot yesterday? Well, depending on where you live, it did: It was just wet and icky inside the Loop, but things got pretty crazy on the west side, we hear. And it may not be over yet: Harris County and southeast Texas remain under a flood watch this morning, and if storms move slowly through the area, isolated areas could get another 6 to 8 inches.......

What would a weekend in Houston be without some transit closures? This time around, we have a double shot: A road closure on the Katy Freeway and a MetroRail closure and bus detour in the Medical Center. First, the Katy: All eastbound lanes of the freeway between Silber and Washington will be closed from 9 p.m. today through 5 a.m. Monday. You can use east-west surface streets as a detour, or just stay home and......

All the people on the north, west and southwest sides of town who thought they'd dodged a bullet earlier this week when heavy rain missed them had another thing coming yesterday afternoon as lines of slow-moving, strong storms moved through north Houston and the Richmond area, causing temporary street flooding, delayed flights at Bush Intercontinental and the requisite traffic snarls. Rainfall of nearly 4 inches an hour occurred in the storm up north, flooding......

In a move Houstonist is sure will delight MetroRail's detractors, improvements to the Hermann Park train will make it a sort of intrapark commuter system giving access to various parts of the park — and, yes, a connection to the light rail line. The route change, part of a park renovation plan approved by City Council, will add two stops to the Hermann Park train and give it a little more to do than travel......

An Amtrak train bound for Houston and a truck loaded with gravel crashed near Columbus this morning, injuring the truck driver, a train engineer and several passengers The price of crude oil closed the week at $70.19 after $2 decreases Wednesday and Thursday; the final number reflected a 25 cent increase over Thursday's price A pedestrian was injured this morning in Midtown when he got off a MetroRail train and jaywalked in front of a......

Via Off the Kuff, Intermodallity looks at proposed alignments for the East End not-rail line, noting that Metro has proposed four options and is avoiding the catfights taking place along the proposed University line on the west side. The proposals for the Bus Rapid Transit line: • Harrisburg Boulevard, a major route through the residential areas of the East End and, west of 65th Street, through a commercial center. The alignment would run through......

A Houston lawyer has filed suit against the city and HPD for $1 million, claiming a police officer threw her cell phone, shoved her against a wall, handcuffed and arrested her while she was trying to assert her client's rights last year. Tina Marie Andrews claims she was talking with a client at a west side apartment Feb. 18, 2005, when Officer Justin H. Kennedy knocked at the door. Andrews said she told Kennedy......

Katy Freeway chaos is getting to be a weekly ritual: This weekend, you can expect yet more delays on the west side. It hurts so good. Alternate lanes of the westbound freeway will be closed between Washington Avenue and the West Loop, as will the ramps from I-10 westbound to the West Loop, from 9 p.m. today until 9 p.m. Saturday. To go north on the West Loop, exit Washington, turn right and take......

Houston's big traffic circle is about to get confusing: Beginning today, various parts of the circle around the Mecom Fountain will be closed while workers install a huge storm sewer running from Main and Montrose to Brays Bayou. Today, the southeast side of the circle — the side closest to Hermann Park — will close, meaning all traffic will be diverted to the west side. The southbound lanes of Main heading toward the circle......