text:
House Concurrent Resolution No. 40

            WHEREAS, the United States and the world find themselves dependent on China for a group of minerals and metals known as “Rare Earth Elements” (REEs) that are critical to many commercial, environmental, and defense applications; and

            WHEREAS, REEs represent the only known bridge to the next level of improved performance in the material properties for many metallurgical alloys, electrical conductivity, radio-active shielding, and instrument sensitivity; and

            WHEREAS, thorium is a naturally occurring companion element to the REEs which can be extracted as a by-product of rare earth mining at no additional expense and without creating additional mining waste; and

            WHEREAS, thorium can be used as a highly effective, non-polluting fuel in a fission power plant (Molten Salt Reactor; MSR) because it is a slightly radioactive material, five hundred fifty times more abundant than uranium-235 needed for nuclear power; and

            WHEREAS, thorium is not harmful except through extreme long-term exposure or unless it is inhaled as a very fine dust; and

            WHEREAS, thorium emits alpha rays which have no penetrating strength and cannot pass through human skin or thin plastic film; and

            WHEREAS, thorium emits less harmful radiation than sunlight, radon from a gas stove top, potassium in a banana, X-rays, frequent air travel, and TSA full body scans; and

            WHEREAS, the United States has two permitted world-class rare earth mines – the Pea Ridge Mine in Washington County, Missouri, and the Mountain Pass Mine in California; and

            WHEREAS, Missouri’s Pea Ridge Iron Ore Mine has all sixteen of the recoverable REEs and would produce rare earths as a by-product of iron ore mining. Mountain Pass, currently the only operating U.S. rare earth mine, only has eight of the sixteen recoverable REEs, will be shipping all of its high value rare earths to China for refining; and

            WHEREAS, the United States has no refining facilities to process the rare earths from the Pea Ridge Mine or manage the thorium by-product; and

            WHEREAS, other U.S. mining operations, like Pea Ridge, have a history of dumping valuable rare earths into tailings lakes because no rare earth refining and thorium storage facilities currently exist; and

            WHEREAS, the amount of rare earth dumping in the U.S. mining industry alone, due to thorium disposal vs. thorium storage options, exceeds U.S. demand by as much as five hundred percent; and

            WHEREAS, by aggregating all available rare earths into a single facility the U.S. can end China’s monopoly control and safe storage of thorium; and

            WHEREAS, this facility could offer guaranteed rare earth supply contracts to technology companies currently forced to relocate to China for guaranteed supply contracts, this centrally located facility could attract technology companies and manufacturers of high value goods into the region; and

            WHEREAS, this centralized rare earth facility could pass all of the thorium liabilities to a thorium bank, a separate entity charged with safe storage and the authority to develop uses and markets for thorium, including energy; and

            WHEREAS, this thorium bank could commercially develop the thorium MSR; and

            WHEREAS, this reactor technology was developed and proven in U.S. National Laboratories during the 1950s to the late 1960s; and

            WHEREAS, President John F. Kennedy requested a report from Glenn Seaborg, acting as Head of the Atomic Energy Commission, about the future of U.S. nuclear energy policy in the context of a broader national energy policy based on sustainability. In his letter to the president and in the Atomic Energy Commission report entitled “CIVILIAN NUCLEAR POWER … a Report to the President – 1962” the commission called for the ultimate transition from the prevailing forms of nuclear power to the thorium MSR; and

            WHEREAS, a thorium reactor does not require carbon-based fuels, does not emit any greenhouse gasses, does not need water for cooling, requires minimal setbacks and minimal space to create hundreds of megawatts of energy that can be distributed near or within load-consuming areas, and eliminates the need to construct large-scale energy projects that interfere with the natural environment due to its abundance thorium would not require any direct mining and could supply the world’s energy needs from current mining waste for thousands of years, and thorium reactors would have less environmental impact than any alternative source of energy, including coal, natural gas, ethanol, wind or solar; and

            WHEREAS, a thorium MSR could utilize nearly one hundred percent of all available energy from its nuclear fuel, resulting in less than one percent of the fuel becoming spent fuel – also called nuclear waste; and

            WHEREAS, current civilian LWR technology utilizes less than three percent of the available energy from its nuclear fuel, resulting in the creation of hazardous trans-uranic fission products that contaminate all of the fuel, resulting in the accumulation of over seventy-seven thousand tons of spent fuel; and

            WHEREAS, the United States Congress, the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have failed to develop an agreeable storage site or any long-term plan for the remediation of spent fuel; and

            WHEREAS, while the waste of a uranium powered plant is toxic for more than one hundred thousand years, the spent fuel that is produced by a thorium powered plan is benign in less than three hundred years; and

            WHEREAS, a thorium MSR power plant can be used to burn current stockpiles of nuclear waste – utilizing the ninety-seven percent energy availability to create energy while transmuting the hazardous fission products into safe, stable, short lived isotopes and even useful isotopes, thus greatly reducing the amount of spent fuel requiring geologic storage; and

            WHEREAS, thorium MSR power plants cannot “melt down”, blow up, or produce widespread radioactive release; and

            WHEREAS, thorium cannot be used to make nuclear weapons, thorium does not require any enrichment for energy use, and there is enough thorium in the United States alone to power the country at its current energy level for more than ten thousand years; and

            WHEREAS, a thorium power plants can substitute or supplement aging power generating facilities and utilize existing turbine technologies without the need for laying a new grid; and

            WHEREAS, through the development of a centralized rare earth refinery cooperative facility, the region could lead the free world in rare earth refining, metallurgy, component manufacturing and advanced technologies providing the only alternative to sourcing rare earth products from China by forced relocation of related technology facilities inside China; and

            WHEREAS, through the development of a centralized thorium bank all thorium by-products resulting from rare earth production can be managed and controlled in an environmentally safe manner; and

            WHEREAS, China’s monopoly on production of REEs is poised to capture all emerging technologies and manufacturing facilities from around the world, in exchange for supply contracts; and

            WHEREAS, Molycorp’s integration into China’s monopoly shows that China’s National Industrial Policy cannot be challenged by private investment alone. The United States must develop a national domestic centralized rare earth refinery to survive; and

            WHEREAS, absent any new production, Asia will soon consume one hundred percent of the world’s production of REEs; and

            WHEREAS, unless the United States Congress creates a centralized rare earth refinery, China will continue to dominate the full value chain of rare earths, our rare earths will be sent to China for processing and they will not come back for use in the United States; and

            WHEREAS, unless the United States Congress ensures that the rare earth cooperative can pass all thorium and related actinide liabilities to a thorium bank, private investors will not fund the rare earth cooperative and these resources will continue to be dumped into the environment; and

            WHEREAS, unless the United States Congress empowers a thorium bank to develop uses and markets for thorium, including energy, China will lead the world in the commercial development of this U.S.-based technology and further undermine our economy and national security; and

            WHEREAS, with its Pea Ridge Mine, central location inside the U.S., Mississippi River access to the rest of the world, Missouri is an ideal location for the centralized rare earth refinery, making the midwest region the primary producer of rare earths outside of China, and the U.S. the new high tech center for companies from around the world:

            NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the members of the House of Representatives of the Ninety-seventh General Assembly, Second Regular Session, the Senate concurring therein, hereby:

            1) Strongly support the development of a centralized REE refinery, as this will assist the Pea Ridge Mine in Washington County, Missouri, and many other U.S. mines rationally utilize rare earth resources historically disposed of due to thorium, with the object of ending China’s rare earth monopoly, attracting technology and jobs to the region, and enhancing U.S. national security; and

            2) Strongly urge the United States Congress to support the creation of a thorium bank that is fully authorized to store the thorium by-products related to rare earth production and develop uses and a market for thorium, including energy so as to challenge China’s development of thorium energy; and

            3) Strongly support any legislation establishing a national rare earth refinery cooperative to combat the strong-arm tactics of the Chinese government and protect the United State’s national defense, intellectual property, and economic interests; and

            BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Chief Clerk of the Missouri House of Representatives be instructed to prepare a properly inscribed copy of this resolution for the Majority and Minority Leaders of the United States Congress and each member of the Missouri Congressional Delegation.


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You can view this plan at houseplans.com/p/66-475

Plan #66-475

Front view - 1800 square foot Craftsman home
  • 1779 sq ft
  • 3 beds
  • 2 baths
  • 57' 6" wide
  • 53' deep

Material List
Plan Set
5 Copy Set
Reproducible Set
Right-Reading Reverse
Additional Construction Sets
Each Additional Set

House Features

  • Walk In Closet
  • Split Bedrooms
  • Peninsula Eating Bar
  • Breakfast Nook
  • Unfinished Future Space
  • Great Room Living Room
  • Storage Area
  • Side Entry Garage
  • Covered Rear Porch
  • Covered Front Porch
  • Unfinished Future Space
  • Great Room Living Room
  • Storage Area

Styles Classifications

  • Farmhouse

Total Sq Ft 1779 sq ft
Bonus Sq Ft 587 sq ft
Porch Sq Ft 345 sq ft
Garage Sq Ft 522 sq ft
Main Floor Sq Ft 1779 sq ft
Height 0"
Depth 53'
Width 57' 6"
Main Ceiling Ft 9'
Bonus Ceiling Ft 8'
Floor Plan - Main Floor Plan
Floor Plan - Other Floor Plan

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text:
Are REOs ready for a comeback?

Are REOs ready for a comeback?

Clear Capital: Increases in distressed, seasonal changes suggest yes

Mortgage application defects keep rising

Michigan, Florida, Texas lead First American application defect index

Monday Morning Cup of Coffee: When will mortgage lending pick up?

Plus, more on the future of Fannie and Freddie

JPMorgan analysts: Steepening of GSE prepayment curve now complete

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Prepayment speeds on mortgages sold to or insured by government-sponsored enterprises are down 40% from their peak in December, according to JPMorgan Chase (JPM) analysts. Fannie Mae said its aggregate 30-year prepayments fell 21% in February from the prior month led by declines in lower coupons. Analysts in the banking giant's mortgage-backed securities strategy team said the aggregate prepayments for Fannie Mae 4.5s and 5s are down 70% and 45% since their high watermark at the end of 2010. "The steepening of the prepayment curve is now complete," the analysts said. JPMorgan said near-term prepays will be dictated by variations in turnover speeds and collection days because the refinancing index is "stuck" in the low 2000s and mortgage interest rates are settling around 5%. The analysts also expect prepayment speeds to rise slightly from the traditional 50% increase in housing turnover between February and June. "The weak state of the housing market, however, suggests that the upcoming seasonal increase should be more muted," according to the JPMorgan analysts. With distressed sales accounting for roughly one-third of all existing home sales, the seasonal increase in activity will be 30% to 40% "lower, translating to a more modest" increase in prepays over the coming months, the analysts said. They also expect the purchase share of mortgage applications to rise to nearly 50% from the roughly 35% currently and 20% in the third quarter of 2010. JPMorgan analysts expect organic net issuance of $100 billion to $150 billion this year with roughly $900 billion of gross agency fixed-rate issuance. Analysts at Barclays Capital said some market participants were concerned higher mortgage interest rates and a lack of volume prompted originators to aggressively refinance higher coupons in February, especially HARP-eligible pools. "We never bought into this theory, and instead have argued that the smaller decline reflected a longer lag in these cohorts owing to a smaller loan size and worse credit," the BarCap analysts said, citing the latest Fannie Mae report to support their view, as "the 2008 5.5-6s have posted a bigger (monthly) drop than last month relative to lower coupons." The analysts believe uncertainties surrounding prepayment speeds have come down dramatically as most of the slowdown caused by the sell off over the past few months "should have materialized." Write to Jason Philyaw.

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text:
Saborío leads RSL by Houston

Salt Lake breaks eight-game winless streak against Dynamo

Robbie Findley scored his first goal of the season just days after being named to the national team’s 30-man roster, and Alvaro Saborio added a brace to lift Real Salt Lake over the Houston Dynamo 3-1 Thursday night at Rio Tinto Stadium.

Real Salt Lake’s first opportunity came in the second minute, but they could not convert. Findley found the back of the net a minute later when he headed in a chipped ball from midfielder Kyle Beckerman to put Houston on its heels early on.

In the next eight minutes, the home side had three more solid chances. On one, Houston goalkeeper Pat Onstad knocked away a Findley header, and the ball went right to the feet of Andy Williams, who fired an enormous blast into the chest of Onstad. Just moments later, Williams put a nice cross into the box to Alvaro Saborio, who couldn’t get it around the goalkeeper.

However, Saborio would get his in the 24th minute. Morales and defender Robbie Russell brought the ball up the right side in tandem. When Morales tried to slip into the box, the Houston backline knocked the ball away, and Saborio pounced on the ball and delivered a laser past traffic and inside the near post.

The opportunity came moments after Houston’s best chance of the half. On the play, Lovel Palmer delivered a cross that found the head of Brad Davis, whose header was denied by Nick Rimando.

Down by two, Houston came out more aggressive in the second half, but it was Real Salt Lake that struck first. In the 60th minute, Morales delivered a free kick from 30 yards out on the left side. Saborio snuck inside the Dynamo defense to meet the ball and easily nodded it past Onstad, giving RSL a 3-0 lead.

Twelve minutes later, Houston got its lone goal of the evening, as Davis slid a ball into Brian Mullan to the left of goal. Mullan cut back to his right foot, causing Russell to slip, and Mullan easily beat Rimando at the far post.

The goal gave Houston some life, and the Dynamo had numerous late opportunities but were unable to convert.

Houston Dynamo (4-4-1) vs. Real Salt Lake (4-3-1)
May 13, 2010 -- Rio Tinto Stadium, Sandy, UT

Scoring Summary:
RSL -- Robbie Findley 1 (Kyle Beckerman 2) 3
RSL -- Alvaro Saborio 3 (Javier Morales 3) 24
RSL -- Alvaro Saborio 4 (Javier Morales 4) 60
HOU -- Brian Mullan 2 (Brad Davis 4) 72

Houston Dynamo -- Pat Onstad, Craig Waibel (Brian Ching 62), Bobby Boswell, Adrian Serioux, Mike Chabala, Brian Mullan, Richard Mulrooney, Lovel Palmer (Danny Cruz 45), Brad Davis, Corey Ashe (Andrew Hainault 68), Dominic Oduro.
Substitutes Not Used: Tally Hall, Sammy Appiah, Ryan Cochrane, Francisco Navas Cobo.

Real Salt Lake -- Nick Rimando, Robbie Russell, Jamison Olave, Nat Borchers, Chris Wingert, Andy Williams (Jean Alexandre 69), Kyle  Beckerman, Javier Morales, Will Johnson, Alvaro Saborío (Pablo Campos 79), Robbie Findley (Collen Warner 88).
Substitutes Not Used: Kyle Reynish, Tony Beltran, Ned Grabavoy, Rauwshan McKenzie.

Misconduct Summary:
RSL -- Nat Borchers (caution; Tactical Foul) 26
HOU -- Mike Chabala (caution; Tactical Foul) 33
HOU -- Bobby Boswell (caution; Tactical Foul) 77

Referee: Alex Prus
Referee's Assistants: Peter Balciunas; Jeff Hosking
4th official: Paul Ward
Attendance: 12,945
Weather: Cloudy and 58 degrees

All statistics contained in this boxscore are unofficial


text:
Capsule Stage Reviews: The Glass Menagerie, Hunter Gatherers

The Glass Menagerie is arguably Tennessee Williams's greatest achievement. As fine as the exquisite glass ornaments one of its characters collects, the heartbreaking memory play focuses on one of American literature's most beautifully dysfunctional families, the Wingfields. It's a lovely choice for the inaugural production of The Landing Theatre Company, run by David Rainey (an Alley Theatre company member) and John Johnston (who oversees the Classical Theatre Company). At the center of the Wingfields' tragic tale is an overbearing mother named Amanda (Terri Branda Carter) who survives despite being abandoned by her husband in the 1930s, when the country was trying to pull out of the Great Depression. The aging Southern belle pins all her dying dreams onto her unfortunate children, neither of whom is up to the task of making her proud. Her daughter Laura (Lauren Ashley Miller) is too shy even to survive a typing class as she vomits on the floor at her first mistake. Her son Tom (Jon Egging) is a wannabe poet who must choose between his own dreams for adventure and his mother's need for him to take care of his sister. Directed by Rainey, this production is a valiant effort, though the cast is a bit rough around the edges. Carter is an odd choice to play Amanda — she's tough as nails, which Amanda needs to be, but the character should have the faded charm of an old Southern belle, and there's nothing faded or even all that Southern in Carter's Amanda. Egging has the right idea with his Tom — lost, lonely and wise — but he was shaky on his lines the night I saw the play, and Williams's poetry really should be blazed into the heart of anyone wanting to take it on. Lauren Miller and Michael Schultz (who plays Jim O'Connor, Laura's gentleman caller) are sweet and young and very inexperienced. As for the set, for some inexplicable reason, Frank Vela made it amazingly bright and cheerful, all done in whitewash and scrubbed clean, while the world of Williams's play should be full of the cobwebs of memory, the dust of desires never realized. Through July 11. The O'Kane Theatre at the University of Houston Downtown, 1 Main, 713-487-5634. — LW

Hunter Gatherers Civilization is a ruse. Down in our guts, we're all just bloodthirsty animals. That's the truth devouring audiences of Catastrophic Theatre's remount of Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's hilariously gory Hunter Gatherers. The four-character play Catastrophic first produced last year to critical raves is running this year at DiverseWorks. The show is violent fun, featuring a slaughtered lamb, sodomy and a strangling, among other violations of the flesh. Sleek urbanites Richard (Greg Dean) and Pam (recast this year with Shelley Calene-Black) plan to party all night with a couple they've known since high school. And when Wendy (Amy Bruce) and Tom (Troy Schulze) arrive, it's the start of an evening that will change everyone's life in the end. Wearing a tight miniskirt and high-heeled boots, Wendy rages that her husband Tom is sterile, screaming, "Every single sperm in his nuts is a retard." Richard pins Tom yet again in their yearly match of who's the strongest man, a game the mild-mannered Tom would just as soon do away with, unless they add "a written portion." All this is just in the early part of the evening. The violence seems to have nowhere to go, but Nachtrieb is not afraid to take his story to its grotesque end. Director Jason Nodler has a marvelous grasp of every comedic possibility in this script. Dean is perfectly cast as Richard — testosterone personified. Bruce is a wonderfully awful man-stealer. And Calene-Black is a pool of calm reserve in this storm of hedonism. But the real standout in this show is Schulze, whose razor-sharp comic timing amps up the volume of this entire production as soon as he finally gets onstage. Part of what makes this show so wonderful is the shock of where it dares to go. Second-timers might not enjoy it as much as last year's production, just because they know what sort of whacked-out weirdness is coming next. But even without the surprises, the show is good and nasty fun. Through July 17. DiverseWorks, 1117 East Fwy., 713-522-2723. — LW

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text:
If you're looking for sushi, Houston is heavily populated with above-average sushi restaurants. If you're looking for a good time and fantastic Japanese bar food, Genji is the only show in town. Set to the soundtrack of some serious (and sometimes seriously painful) karaoke, Genji attracts businessmen and twentysomethings alike. Menu highlights include teba gyoza (stuffed chicken wings), onigiri (rice balls), beef kushiyaki and yakisoba (panfried noodles with a fried egg on top). The rum-heavy cocktail menu has such throwbacks as the Mai Tai and Midori sour, but Genji's "special drinks for men and ladies" will have you dancing on one of the graffiti-laden tables with a microphone in your hand before you know what hit you.

Location Details

11124 Westheimer Road
Houston TX 77042

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The Clash: Live at Shea Stadium

Live at Shea Stadium: Great career opportunity, so-so album.

Ever since the Beatles took over the Shea Stadium pitcher's mound in 1965, rockers like Grand Funk Railroad, the Police and, most recently, Billy Joel have made playing the Mets' home a career apex. At the height of its commercial success, the Clash made it to the center diamond for two nights in 1982, though in the opening slot for The Who's first "farewell" tour; Live at Shea Stadium is the full set from the October 13 show. Unfortunately, most of the tracks find the band sounding a bit disconnected in Shea's vast expanse. It doesn't help that many of the numbers are played at a breakneck, rushed-tempo speed, stripping the stridency from "London Calling," while the words for "Magnificent Seven" come pouring out of Joe Strummer like, well, Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire." Even "The Guns of Brixton," sung by bassist Paul Simonon, comes off more as a jaunty dance number than foreboding set-up to sudden-death violence. By closer "I Fought the Law," it feels like Pete Townsend is standing stageside, waiting to pull the plug. Ironically, it's the material sung by Mick Jones ("Police on My Back," "Train in Vain") that stands out, and both "Career Opportunities" and "Clampdown" are solid. Live at Shea Stadium makes an interesting curio for fans of the Only Band That Mattered, but not the best representation of their incendiary live shows. Though its performances were culled from multiple shows over several years, that remains 1999's From Here to Eternity: Live.

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The Road from College

You never know when that phone call's going to come that'll change your life. Even if the call isn't to you.

That's what Jack O'Neill and Cary Pierce -- the "Jack" and the "Pierce" of Dallas band Jackopierce -- discovered about a year and a half ago when they were, like they've been for much of the '90s, on the road. Little Sister, another Dallas band that distributed its independent recordings through the same company as Jackopierce, was in the middle of a major label deal, and their lawyer would call up the distributor regularly to check on sales figures. When he'd wrapped up his Little Sister business, he thought to ask what other Dallas bands seemed hot.

"And the distributor said, Jackopierce, they're by far our best seller. His call was on a Monday, and just by coincidence we were playing that Wednesday in Nashville, where he was located. So he came to see us and he couldn't even get in the front door. There were like 300 people in line, and he immediately knew that we were someone he wanted to work with," says Cary Pierce. "And he opened up the industry to us. He started sending our tapes around, and before we knew it, we had all sorts of people knocking on our door."

Pierce is on the line from Dallas, where he's sitting in the offices of A&M Records, the door knock that Jackopierce chose to answer. Though he wants to talk about his upcoming date in Houston, and the grueling year he and partner Jack O'Neill have just completed pushing their first big label release, Bringing On the Weather, he can't quite tear himself away from going over what a difference it makes to have a large corporation behind you and pushing. "We hadn't been trying to solicit anybody, we just didn't want to bother anybody bigger than us, because we just figured, hey. We play, people come, we go back, more people come, they get on a mailing list, they buy our records," Pierce says. But with A&M "we were given the opportunity to do things we'd never done. We'd meet up with distributors and all that major label stuff. A&M would have a breakfast, and we'd come out and play for program directors of major radio stations, something we'd never even thought about before."

What Pierce and O'Neill had also never thought about before was ending up on a national TV show -- Late Night With Conan O'Brien -- or recording under the direction of T Bone Burnett, who'd worked with everyone from Bob Dylan to Bono and produced acclaimed albums for Los Lobos and Elvis Costello, among others. In late '93, A&M sent their newly signed Dallas pair to Los Angeles, where for eight weeks they labored with Burnett, getting a crash course in what being in the big leagues is all about. Burnett fleshed out their sound and pushed the two into working more closely together, something Pierce says resulted in considerably stronger songs. There was a certain Texas tie -- Burnett is originally from Fort Worth -- and that may have helped smooth relations between the established pro and the newcomers.

Of course, "newcomers" is a relative term, and by the time Jackopierce ended up in an L.A. studio, they'd already recorded three CDs of their own, as well as a kickoff cassette that's no longer available, and settled into a relatively successful college circuit that stretched from Southern Methodist University, where the pair had met, across the country and up the East Coast to Boston. In the early '90s, Jackopierce was one of the most popular bands in Dallas. After breaking from the cover band scene in the late '80s, they'd gained a strong following of Texas yuppie college kids. Clean-cut SMU students themselves at the time, O'Neill and Pierce regularly sold out shows at venues such as Trees in the Deep Ellum area. Their blend of acoustic rock/folk -- kind of like a male version of the Indigo Girls with a sensitive frat boy angle -- gained a similar following on the road.

Recollecting the early days of Jackopierce, Pierce frankly states that "we sucked ... we were bad. We'd try anything to not be bad." Pierce formed the band with O'Neill in September 1988, doing "the standard two guys playing acoustic guitars" thing in small Dallas clubs several nights a week, while both attended their college classes. At first playing cover song sets -- accented by what Pierce describes as "weird stuff like New Order and Big Country" -- O'Neill and Pierce moved into writing and performing their own songs and eventually "got serious," releasing a cassette, Someday You'll Understand, in 1990.

That cassette, Pierce says, became "kind of a cult classic, a collector's item. I don't even have one. That's horrible." The debut was followed up in 1991 with the release of a self-titled CD, then in 1992 came Woman as Salvation. What Pierce calls "the band's official bootleg," Live from the Americas, followed in 1993. The CDs all appeared on Jackopierce's independent label, Rhythmic Records, and sold a combined total of close to 45,000 copies -- a substantial amount on the indie scene. The band's success was mainly due to its strong college fan base and word-of-mouth; at every concert, people would be urged to get on the Jackopierce mailing list, and by 1993 that steady customer base had grown to 8,000 souls.

But as pleased as Pierce and O'Neill were with their level of success, it was quite different from what they've faced in the last year. Not only have the crowds gotten bigger -- at one venue in Chicago, says Pierce, they headlined before 4,000 people -- but the road time has increased. Since wrapping up the recording of Bringing On the Weather last January, Jackopierce has done "42 states, ten countries, 300 dates," recalls Pierce. "At one point we played like 32 dates in a row, every single night. It was insane ... it was foolish, I didn't even know my name at the end of the tour. Then we probably had like one day off and then we went out and did like 15 dates again."

Bringing On the Weather stands apart from Jackopierce's indie albums in the sense of unification between O'Neill and Pierce. Rather than the songs being either an O'Neill "epic poem" or Pierce's take on relationships and emotions, the 12 songs on Weather represent perhaps the first real collaborations between the duo. "We've been just working on this a lot more, rehearsing a lot more ... we never rehearsed before," says Pierce. "We'd just go over new tunes at sound check, y'know, maybe rehearse when we were going to do a demo tape or, y'know, new record, but not even really then. And now, we're just taking it a lot more seriously. I'm taking my songwriting a lot more seriously .... I read a lot, and I see a lot of films all the time, I take it all in."

Indeed, the scope of the songwriting on Weather is much wider than their previous efforts. Gone are the Texas college-feely songs such as "How It Is," one of O'Neill's songs, which must have been written from an SMU experience ("Little girl in your debutante dress / You don't impress me / Who the hell do you think you impress / In your little white dress ... Hope I don't piss you off / I hope I just piss in your face"). Weather's songs are -- not surprisingly for a major label debut -- much more "user-friendly," and, in a sense, more mature.

Once finished with their current tour -- part of which will be spent opening for Capricorn Record's artists Widespread Panic up north -- Jackopierce will be returning to the studio to record their next album, most likely due to be released in the fall. (The third single from Weather, "Get to Know Me Better," will be released next week.)

And after years of playing strictly as a guitar duo, O'Neill and Pierce have furthered Jackopierce's "evolution" by the recent addition of a regular bassist and drummer. "It's just hard to reach the back seats, y'know, with just the two of us," says Pierce. "Plus, from a musical standpoint we wanted to take things to different places." The bassist is Clay Pendergrass, whom Pierce refers to as "a dream" and who used to play for Austin's Dah-veed. The drummer is Scott Churilla. Or make that the drummer was Scott Churilla. "He got a great offer, and he's going to be playing drums for the Reverend Horton Heat now," sighs Pierce. "We have someone else lined up. This band thing is new to us; I haven't been in a band since high school, and now I've got to manage all these new personalities -- it's tough."

Still, nobody ever said reaching for success was easy, and Pierce admits he has no nostalgia for the days when he and O'Neill would be cranking out tunes for small crowds of happy SMU colleagues. Much better is arriving in San Francisco for the first show ever to discover a local radio station has fallen in love with your CDs and been playing them constantly, so that you have a sold-out audience waiting for you. "That may sound totally lame and boring to a band that's already gone platinum," says Pierce. "But hey, to us that was like the most exciting thing ever."

Jackopierce plays an all-ages show at Rockefeller's on Saturday, March 11. Billy White opens. Doors open at 9 p.m. Tickets are $13. Call 869-8427 for info.

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Two Galleria-Area Hotel Bars Groom a Serious White-Collar Clientele

Patrons of the W XYZ Bar at Aloft tend to prefer a stock ticker to sports scores.
Angelica Leicht

'We'll take two Nipple Up's, a Fraggle Rock and a Pipe Stripping, please. And light on the ice, if you will."

You can tell quite a bit about a bar from the drink names on the cocktail list, and this one runs to four pages. Names like "The Jed Clampet" [sic] or "Black Gold" seem fitting given the clientele. We're at least three drinks in, and have yet to see someone order a good old-fashioned beer.

The menu at Hotel Derek's Vin Bar was recently revamped, adding flights of craft beer to the ever-expanding list. It makes sense. Craft beer is trendy right now, and Hotel Derek is a place that follows trends to a T, even if this crowd seems rather uninterested.

A host of men in power suits and their female counterparts — big hair, skintight dresses — are splayed about the modern chairs in the room. Their dark attire contrasts well with Vin Bar's sleek, hip design, staining the bright orange bar chairs a much more serious color. The women surrounding us slink and flirt, and their clouds of perfume and jingling expensive jewelry add as much to the atmosphere as the quietly thumping house music.

From the ladies' attire, no doubt straight off the racks of Dior's latest ready-to-wear line, to the wisecracking cocktail list, every carefully chosen component of Vin Bar pulls unabashedly from the latest trends. The entire place is pretty: the patrons, the well-shaken drinks, and the bar itself. The atmosphere begs us to follow suit, so we order a Diesel Downhole, a stiff drink comprised of whiskey, bitters and ginger ale. It sounds like a naughty oil pun.

Since its 2002 inception, Hotel Derek has always pushed to remain on the cutting edge, often changing its bar decor or even its entire restaurant to ensure a steady stream of elite clientele, local or otherwise. Over the years it has also become quite infamous for its rowdy Thursday-night crowd, which has been rumored to take full advantage of the unisex bathrooms after a few stout V Door cocktails. A recent remodel has proven just as successful as the other Hotel Derek rebirths. Relatively early on a Saturday night, the bar is packed with patrons eagerly handing over their AmEx cards to cover the rounds of $14 cocktails without batting an eye.

But keeping up with the Joneses at the Derek can get a little pricey. Perhaps it's the cost of admission to the trendy crowd at any hotel bar. We opted to dismiss ourselves from Vin Bar's purgatory to check out the scene at Hotel Derek's Westheimer neighbor, W XYZ Bar at Aloft.

W XYZ is a steel, wood and glass type of contemporary rather than the mid-century modern design of the bar at Hotel Derek, but no less trendy. Situated directly behind the solitary square island that serves as the hotel check-in, the bar recalls the crowd and decor at W Hotel bars in Dallas and San Diego. The crowd is chic, the music is heavy on the bass and light on the vocals, and the drinks keep coming.

Teetering toward the bar amid the sea of folks, we zeroed in on W XYZ's drink menu, which is considerably shorter than the imbiber's bible at the Derek. It's hardly centered around Houston's oil culture, but jumps right onto another bar trend by focusing on the hard-partying business class. Quite a few of them were lining the bar stools, elbow to elbow, drink in hand, and all in business suits. All of them were male.

It's no coincidence that W XYZ feels so similar to the W bars, at least in terms of the decor. All belong to the Starwood Hotel group, whose bars happen to be known for their lobbyish vibe. This one strays a bit from that rowdy socialite crowd, though. The folks lining the steel bar stools seemed much less concerned with fashion trends than with the market trends streaming across the lighted sign behind our seats.

The business clientele that flocks to W XYZ gives the entire bar a grownup vibe; the antics at the Derek would be misplaced. Sure, there are plenty of drinks, and heavy chatter bouncing off the contemporary walls, but the crowd is focused. They're drinking, but at the same time discussing business projects rather than the beautiful girls lining the walls. As they drink, they stare obsessively at the scrolling stock ticker.

NASDAQ-themed cocktails would be apropos in this bar. But with our novice Wall Street knowledge, we opted for The Hangover and a deep-seated couch instead.

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Working Every Angle

Upper Kirby property owners claim that the bustling district is "unable to compete in the marketplace."

In the spring of 1996, city planning director Bob Litke had a problem: Under what circumstances should the city give public money to private developers?

The problem arose after homebuilder Steve Peacock asked for $2 million to build the streets, water and sewer lines, and storm-water drainage to support a new subdivision on 41 acres of raw land in far west Houston.

Litke was, at first, inclined to reject Peacock's proposal. At the time, Litke believed the city should subsidize only private development inside the Loop, where historically developers have been wary of higher land costs and an uncertain market.

There was also the issue of fairness. As Litke pointed out in a May 1996 memo to Public Works and Finance and Administration officials, other developers had built successful projects in the same area without the benefit of tax dollars.

"Granting a subsidy to the Peacock development may set a precedent that is not in the City's best interests to follow," the planning director wrote. "Using general fund monies to finance new infrastructure in middle income residential development -- where the market is likely to deliver a saleable product in the future -- may not be an equitable expenditure of public monies."

Despite his misgivings, Litke was under a mandate from then-mayor Bob Lanier to offer greater incentives to encourage more development throughout the city. To that end, the planning director focused on Peacock's request that the city create a tax-increment reinvestment zone, or TIRZ, which allows cities, counties and school districts to reimburse the developer's cost of laying in public infrastructure using future property tax revenues generated by the development.

Until Peacock came along, the city had used tax-increment reinvestment sparingly, for good reason: Each zone requires the local taxing entities to commit millions of dollars of revenue to a specific project for a long period of time, usually 30 years. Moreover, because taxpayers outside the zone get little in return, the state law that authorizes the creation of TIRZs restricts their use.

City Council created the city's first TIRZ in December 1990 and at the same time adopted its own policy regarding the use of tax-increment reinvestment. The city's basic criteria for creating a TIRZ were nearly identical to those in the state law -- or at least they were until Litke adjusted the guidelines to accommodate Steve Peacock.

In short, Litke's new policy not only changed significantly the city's use of TIRZs, it circumvented the state law at nearly every turn. In the three years since it was amended, the city's TIRZ policy has rendered the Tax Increment Financing Act of 1981 unrecognizable.

Just how much the statute has been manipulated became clear this summer, when the administration of Mayor Lee Brown fast-tracked seven new TIRZs past City Council, which agreed to forgo nearly $2 billion in property tax revenue over the next 30 years to fund specific projects. Some 7 percent of the city's taxable land is now within a TIRZ and controlled by appointed boards that are authorized to administer the zones' project and financing plans, with minimal oversight by elected officials.

To be sure, under Brown the city has created new zones in areas that are in fact starved for public improvements. The Fourth and Fifth wards, for example, have been neglected for so long that they clearly meet the TIRZ statute's requirements that there be "a substantial number" of substandard and deteriorated buildings; that there be "unsanitary or unsafe conditions"; and that an area be "a menace to the public health, safety, morals or welfare in its present condition."

Equally certain is that none of that is true of the Galleria, Upper Kirby and Memorial City areas, which were also designated tax-increment zones by Council in July. Even state legislators such as representatives Garnet Coleman and Scott Hochberg, both of whom have been active in shaping the Tax Increment Financing Act through the years, say the city has butchered the original intent of the law.

"I have some concerns," says Coleman. "The intent of the law is to develop communities that would not develop on their own, to create growth and life where it wasn't before. I don't know why there's a TIRZ in Upper Kirby. The market is driving that area fine."

Indeed, Upper Kirby is perhaps the most egregious example of the city's rapacious TIRZ policy -- and how it has already turned out to be a bad deal for taxpayers. Earlier this summer a group of property owners and developers asked the city to create a tax-increment zone, moaning that the bustling commercial corridor that straddles the Southwest Freeway between Buffalo Speedway and Shepherd is unable to "compete in the marketplace."

What wasn't mentioned in the developers' plan is that the Upper Kirby area is more competitive than ever. Long before the proposal was presented to City Council, some $110 million of new development, including at least three large apartment complexes, two shopping centers, a hotel and a supermarket, was under way or already completed -- a fact that discredits the plan's contention that "development in the zone will not occur solely through private investment in the reasonably foreseeable future."

By including development that occurred before the zone was even created, the Upper Kirby TIRZ essentially fabricates the impact of the zone. It will also cost taxpayers about $35 million in revenue -- the taxes that would normally be collected from the new development over the 15-year life of the TIRZ.

The city's claim that the Galleria area will see nearly $200 million in new development within two years of creating a TIRZ there is equally specious. At least $180 million in projects were already on the table when Uptown Houston District, a group that looks after the interests of Galleria-area property owners, proposed creation of the zone. Not only will taxpayers lose the revenues from that development, but the TIRZ will end up subsidizing all future development in the Galleria area to the tune of millions in lost revenues.

Assistant director of planning Bill Calderon acknowledges that almost all of the development that the Upper Kirby TIRZ was ostensibly created to encourage is on the ground or under way. But, he says, the property tax revenues that will be generated by that development, as well as income derived from completed or nearly completed projects in the Galleria area, won't be available for more than a year, and therefore should go to the TIRZs.

While that reasoning does nothing to support the contention that the Upper Kirby and Galleria areas need TIRZs to entice private development, Calderon says it "doesn't necessarily mean" there isn't a need for the zones.

"The state law doesn't state that you can't include ongoing development projects within the boundary lines of a zone," says Calderon. "In fact there is some advantage to doing that."

The property taxes collected on current development taking place in the new TIRZ will "jump-start the revenue stream" needed to carry out public improvements that will support future projects in the zone, Calderon says. "Nowhere does it say we're going to give money back to the guys who are doing construction there today," he insists.

Maybe not, says Councilmember Annise Parker, but that doesn't mean it's the proper use of tax-increment reinvestment. Parker says the Upper Kirby zone reflects "a real disconnect" between the Brown administration and the state TIRZ law. "The subject of all the development occurring there came up," Parker says. "But no one dwelled on it or discussed it much. I don't think we need to be tying up our money that way."

Indeed, the Upper Kirby and Galleria zones appear to turn the state TIRZ law on its head. One criterion for a new zone is the "but for" standard -- that is, "but for" the TIRZ, the area would not attract new development. By designating as TIRZs areas that are developing on their own, the city has created a new "but for" standard: "but for" the TIRZ, new revenues from market-driven development would go to the general fund coffers of the city, Harris County and the Houston Independent School District.

Tax-increment reinvestment has been controversial since the moment it was first proposed, back in 1977. That's when the Legislature passed a bill that would allow cities to redevelop certain "blighted" urban areas using future property tax revenues. The 1977 law was, however, contingent on passage of a constitutional amendment, a ballot measure that failed in November 1978.

During the 1979 legislative session, lawmakers again passed a TIRZ bill, this time without requiring a constitutional amendment. That bill became law for about a minute. In May 1981, then-attorney general Mark White ruled that the TIRZ law violated the state constitutional requirement that taxation be "equal and uniform." In White's view, using property taxes to fund improvements in a specific area meant that the property was not contributing its fair share to the general fund.

The issue was thrown back to the voters, who approved a constitutional amendment in November 1981 that authorized cities to "issue bonds or notes to finance the development or redevelopment of an unproductive, underdeveloped or blighted areaŠ." The law allowed the "bonds or notes" to be repaid from increases in ad valorem tax revenues produced by the new development.

The Tax Increment Financing Act of 1981 was again challenged on constitutional grounds in 1987, in a case that made it to the Texas Supreme Court. While the court upheld the law, it also underscored the legislative restrictions on its application: "Tax increment financing," stated the court's ruling, "is designed to aid cities and towns in financing public improvements in blighted or undeveloped areas."

Until May 1996, when Steve Peacock proposed a TIRZ to subsidize his Village Enclaves subdivision in far west Houston, the city seemed content to adhere to the Supreme Court's interpretation of the law. To that point, the city had created zones in only three places -- Lamar Terrace, south of the Galleria; Midtown, between downtown and the Texas Medical Center; and Market Square, in the heart of the central business district. All three areas had suffered significant declines in their property tax bases as residents and businesses fled to the suburbs, discouraging private investment in the inner city.

"TIRZs work," says Garnet Coleman, whose predominantly urban district includes four TIRZs. "Look at the assessed valuation in Midtown compared to before. That would have never happened, if not for the TIRZ."

Indeed, upon first reviewing Peacock's TIRZ proposal in early 1996, city planning director Bob Litke was not convinced the developer had met the all-important "but for" standard. In a memo to other city officials regarding the Village Enclaves project, Litke noted that Peacock's contention that his land would not be developed unless the city paid for the infrastructure was based on "nothing but a judgment."

That said, Litke then set about rewriting the city's policy in such a way that "nothing but a judgment" was plenty good enough to justify the Village Enclaves TIRZ. Litke's new policy set out three criteria the city should consider before approving a TIRZ.

First, he said, there must be a real need for the subsidy. In other words, it must be "reasonably clear" that the project would not be financially viable without a subsidy. Second, the amount of the subsidy must not exceed the benefit gained, meaning the developer should be reimbursed for only those costs that result in a public good, such as a new street or water main. And finally Litke decided that such "incentives" should comply with the "letter and spirit" of the state TIRZ law.

By the end of July 1996 Litke had satisfied himself that Peacock's project could qualify for a TIRZ. He sent Lanier a memo recommending the city proceed with the Village Enclaves TIRZ, "[s]ubject to a final review of this project under state TIRZ law."

However, on September 10, 1996, one day before the City Council hearing on the Village Enclaves TIRZ, a Finance and Administration official produced an internal analysis of the proposal that challenged Litke's interpretation of both the state law and the city's policy.

"The justification for the project's eligibility based on the city's guidelines is weak," wrote the F&A official, who happened to be the same Bill Calderon who is now a deputy assistant in the city planning department and a staunch defender of the city's TIRZ policy. "This area is not blighted."

Calderon concluded that the Village Enclaves TIRZ could be approved only if Council granted an exception to its own policies. Calderon did, however, agree with Litke on one point: Peacock's proposal would set an undesirable precedent. "If the city does consider using [tax-increment financing] in a manner that is beneficial to developers," Calderon wrote, "we can expect to see many more such requests for this kind of assistance."

It's unclear if Calderon's views, which he provided to a higher-ranking F&A official, were ever shared with City Council, which approved the Village Enclaves TIRZ a week later. One thing's for sure, though: The policy Litke initiated with Village Enclaves became the standard by which councilmembers judged all subsequent TIRZ proposals.

Indeed, the city ordinances that designate the Upper Kirby, Galleria and Memorial City areas as tax-increment zones include a clause that states, "the city hereby excepts the proposed zone from compliance with any city reinvestment zone guidelines Š that the zone does not meet."

Eight months after it created the Village Enclaves zone, Council voted to expand it from 41 acres to more than 1,000 acres. In a deal struck with the Houston Independent School District, which had balked at committing future taxes to the zone, the city approved a plan that would dedicate TIRZ revenues for the construction of a new school near the proposed subdivision.

Actually, it was the second time the city and HISD had agreed to commit future tax revenues to fund school construction. A few months before, in January 1997, the city had created the Old Galveston/Howard Road TIRZ, on the east side, solely to pay for a new high school.

To some councilmembers, including those who had been supporters of the city's TIRZ policy, the use of tax-increment reinvestment to build schools not only clashed with state law, but was a slap in the face to voters, who had rejected a $390 million bond issue proposed by HISD the previous year.

"I said it at the time, and I still believe it," says Councilman Orlando Sanchez, who has opposed the city's recent use of tax-increment financing. "Those zones circumvented the will of the majority of voters who opposed the bond issue."

Sanchez was also among a minority of councilmembers who voted against a brazen policy initiative introduced by Brown early last month that was designed to squeeze every possible TIRZ dollar out of HISD. Brown proposed that HISD increase its participation in ten zones created before this year by nearly $500 million over 30 years. In a carefully worded memo to councilmembers, Brown explained that the additional funds wouldn't actually be used in the zone, but would be returned to HISD "for educational purposes."

The question Brown skillfully evaded was this: If the money was only going to be returned to the school district, why not just let HISD keep it?

The answer is that until September 1, school districts were allowed to take the taxable value of land in TIRZs "off the books," thereby artificially lowering their tax bases. The lower HISD's tax base, the more funds it receives through the Texas Education Agency's school-financing mechanism. Every dollar the district sends to a TIRZ, even if it's immediately returned, is replaced by the state.

If this isn't exactly like money laundering, it's certainly close. While completely legal, it is at the least unseemly, especially considering the timing: The city had just forwarded seven newly created zones to the HISD board of trustees for consideration. The district's participation was crucial to those projects, and the windfall created when Council approved Brown's proposal no doubt put trustees in an accommodating mood.

While there is apparently nothing in the state TIRZ law that prohibits it, Brown's scheme to milk the maximum amount of TIRZ revenues out of HISD is yet another manipulation of the state law. Indeed, the flurry of TIRZ activity this summer was an attempt to cash in before September 1, when an amendment to the statute eliminated the right of school districts to exclude TIRZ land as part of their taxable value. That means any school district that now chooses to participate in a TIRZ will actually lose state funding.

Representative Scott Hochberg was one of the sponsors of that 1997 amendment. Hochberg generally supports TIRZs -- his district includes the South Post Oak zone, which, he says, is needed to spur development in a decaying area of town. But, he says, the city and HISD may have gone too far by what he calls "double-dipping" into the school-financing pool. According to Hochberg, legislators never anticipated that a city would amend TIRZ agreements to suck more money from the school districts before the September 1 deadline.

"Somebody read the law, and they read it very carefully, put a good mind to it and came up with a loophole," Hochberg says. "That was not something that we considered and decided was okay. What we were trying to do was shut this stuff down in the long haul, and I don't believe anybody discussed the possibility of this happening, in committee or otherwise."

Hochberg believes Brown's ploy opens the door for a school-finance watchdog group, such as the Equity Center of Austin, which has brought suit to guarantee equal funding for schools, to challenge the maneuver in court.

"I would think," he says, "that if there was a significant finding that the transaction amounts to a sham -- that is, is it a transaction that is specifically created just for the purpose of avoiding the school-finance law -- then it would not be unreasonable for someone to go to court and say, 'That action was illegal.' "

For weeks the board of trustees for the Spring Branch Independent School District was consumed by the Memorial City tax-increment zone. Rarely had the trustees been confronted by an issue so divisive. The TIRZ literally divided the community. Residents north of I-10, which splits the zone, saw the TIRZ as a way to funnel more resources to their declining neighborhoods, as well as to correct the perception that SBISD provided superior educational facilities south of the freeway.

Meanwhile, the more-white-collar residents south of I-10 were outraged to learn that the major beneficiary of the Memorial City TIRZ, Metro National Corporation -- which owns nearly half of the developable land in the zone -- had plans for $1 billion worth of new real estate projects on that side of the highway.

In Metro National's view -- or more precisely, in the opinion of former city planning director Patricia Knudson, a consultant who prepared Metro National's TIRZ proposal -- without the zone, those projects were in trouble: "[A] growing shift in the tax base and sales tax revenue to surrounding suburban communities Š threatens the continued viability of this area," stated the proposal. "[U]nless the mobility and utility infrastructure issues are addressed, the forecast for the Memorial City area economy is, at best, stagnation."

Despite vehement opposition from a group of residents representing neighborhoods adjacent to the proposed zone, City Council approved creation of the Memorial City TIRZ on July 28. However, the city's contribution to the 30-year zone would pay for only a portion of the proposed $98 million in public improvements. The most significant contribution would come from SBISD, which took up the Memorial City TIRZ at two meetings early last month.

On August 9 opponents of the TIRZ put on a 30-minute presentation for SBISD trustees that argued, among other points, that the zone did not meet the requirements of the state Tax Increment Financing Act. The residents reminded trustees that the state law had been challenged on constitutional grounds before and, in fact, Harris County Attorney Michael Fleming had recently asked the state attorney general's office to rule on the legality of TIRZs in areas that were clearly not "unproductive, underdeveloped or blighted."

The opponents also pointed out that if Metro National believed the market would support $1 billion in new development projects, why did the company need a public subsidy?

It was a compelling presentation that resonated with SBISD trustees. A week later, on August 16, the board members reconvened to vote on the Memorial City TIRZ. They had arranged to move the meeting from district headquarters on Campbell Road to the auditorium at Memorial Middle School. More than 800 people, most of whom opposed the TIRZ, crammed the room. Less than an hour later they were on their feet, cheering the trustees, who voted 5-2 to decline SBISD's participation.

As it happened, the intense lobbying of trustees by Metro National and its consultants may have had diminishing returns for the corporation. Several trustees complained that in the days leading up to the board vote both Metro National and the city were clearly desperate for SBISD's approval. The TIRZ plan seemed to change daily, they said, with ever-greater compromises, not to mention more promises of vast new wealth for SBISD, being offered. Moreover, trustees were apparently told by Metro National that the TIRZ would likely proceed without SBISD participation, so the district may as well join in.

Maybe it dawned on the trustees that if that was the case, they could vote down the TIRZ and still reap the increased property tax revenues. Whatever, in the end, they obviously didn't know what to believe about the Memorial City TIRZ and weren't about to take Metro National's word for it.

"This issue boiled down to one issue: trust," board president Brandon C. Coleman told the Press later. "The community does not have confidence in the organization that sponsored the proposal. If we would have voted for [the TIRZ], we would have lost the community's trust for years to come, and we could not afford to take that risk."

Apparently other school districts have decided that school district taxes should be spent on schools and not private real estate development. Two weeks ago the Fort Bend Independent School District rejected four TIRZs proposed by the cities of Sugar Land and Missouri City. One FBISD trustee simply said, "It's not right." Another noted that the school district couldn't afford to wait 30 years to receive the property tax benefits of the new development.

On the other hand, supporters of the Fort Bend zones were outraged. Sugar Land Mayor Dean Hrbacek self-righteously proclaimed his wish that voters "remember the financial stupidity" of the dissidents on the FBISD board, who, the mayor added, "dealt a blow to the children."

On that same day, August 26, trustees for the Houston Independent School District met to consider their own full plate of TIRZ issues. On the HISD agenda were seven new zones recently approved by City Council. The board would also decide whether or not to amend ten other TIRZ plans according to the scheme proposed by Brown in early August.

The HISD board has yet to reject any TIRZs created by the city, so it was hardly unexpected when trustees swiftly approved the new zones. More surprising, though, was the lack of discussion on the ethics of Brown's proposal. To be fair, trustees should always be on the lookout for ways to increase funding to the district. Still, the absence of thoughtful debate on why HISD would give up additional TIRZ revenues only to have them "kicked back" to the district suggested that trustees either didn't understand the matter or weren't sufficiently bothered by this massaging of the school-financing system.

Indeed, the board's absolute trust in the inherent goodness of tax-increment reinvestment was summed up by trustee Lawrence Marshall. "We have nothing to lose by investing in these projects," he said moments before the vote.

That may very well be true for elected officials, who, in the case of city councilmembers and HISD trustees, have come to believe that tax-increment reinvestment is a panacea. For taxpayers, though, who can say? They have become unwilling participants in a massive public spending spree that will tie up untold millions of dollars over the course of a generation.

Perhaps if the city's TIRZ program had been put to a vote, the basic premise -- that the zones are needed to encourage development that would not otherwise take place -- would have been more thoroughly evaluated. Maybe then, elected officials would have been forced to take into account the considerable amount of unsubsidized, market-driven development that has occurred in Houston the last few years.

One body that has stepped back to take another look at tax-increment reinvestment is Harris County. Commissioners are clearly in no hurry to commit millions of future tax dollars to the seven TIRZs recently created by Council. And they probably won't until the constitutional issues raised in June by county attorney Fleming are ruled on by the state's lawyers.

In the meantime, the city's TIRZ policy is likely to have at least one significant consequence: There is no longer any incentive to redevelop a neighborhood or area of town that really needs it.

"Why would anybody develop in a blighted area if they can get the same deal for going to a good area where it will almost certainly be more profitable," says state Representative Scott Hochberg. "What does the incentive become then?"

E-mail Brian Wallstin at .

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Katharine Shilcutt's 10 Favorite Dishes in Houston

In a recent Food & Wine article, restaurant editor Kate Krader called Houston "America's newest capital of great food" and listed 10 of her favorite dishes/drinks in our city to underscore her point. They included the Vietnamese Wagyu meatballs at Underbelly, the blackstrap rum daiquiri at Charity Saloon and the fatty brisket at Gatlin's BBQ.

The list was the source of much discussion in Houston food circles, and even inspired at least one local blogger -- Albert Nurick -- to write a 10 best dishes list of his own. "My approach focuses on the classics," wrote Nurick. "I'm going for the timeless dishes that describe the dining scene in Houston." To that end, Nurick's list featured selections such as the fajitas at the original Ninfa's on Navigation, chicken and waffles from the Breakfast Klub and the chocolate souffle from Tony's.

While trying to decide what my final blog posts for Eating...Our Words would be before my departure tomorrow, I considered the fact that I won't be around this year for the 100 Favorite Dishes countdown nor for the annual Best of Houston® issue in September. Both are excellent means of recognizing restaurants that may not be the hottest, youngest, newest things in town but are still vital components of our city's dining scene.

So I decided to take my inspiration from Krader, Nurick and all of the other people who chimed in on Twitter while discussing the Food & Wine article last week and write a 10 Best Dishes list of my own. Sort of.

The dishes below are my 10 favorites in Houston -- the ones I'd drag friends and family to eat because they have to try just one bite, the ones I'd take out-of-towners to eat because I like what they say about my city, the ones that I seek out myself when I'm in need of comfort or just a damn good meal.

Honorable mention: foie gras breakfast at Triniti; smoked salmon with "everything" chips at Provisions; menudo at La Mexicana; xiao long bao at Fu Fu Cafe; egusi at Finger Licking Bukateria; lobster roll at Maine-ly Sandwiches; fried chicken at Haven; boudin kolaches at Shipley's and chorizo kolaches at Peña's Donut Heaven; poisson cru at Cove; creme brulee bread pudding at Killen's; tuna tostadas at La Fisheria; and the yogi thali at Pondicheri.

Katharine Shilcutt's 10 Favorite Dishes in Houston
Photo by Katharine Shilcutt

10. The Shire at Hobbit Cafe

The Hobbit Cafe goes hand-in-hand with some of my best memories: long lunches with my mother in its old Shepherd location with the sprawling oak trees, the one-two punch of a sandwich at Hobbit followed by hours of reading inside the nearby (and now closed) Alabama Bookstop, a first date with a handsome surfer before a trip to the Contemporary Arts Museum.

The Hobbit Cafe has survived where most other Houston restaurants would not. It was a stretch to begin with, opening a vegetarian-friendly cafe with a Tolkien theme in 1972 -- first called "The Hobbit Hole," a name I can't quit calling it even today -- then moving from its long-established location on Shepherd after its red brick building was sold to new owners. That this quirky, vegetable-focused cafe filled with life-size Gollum figurines and witchy-looking carved chairs should survive all this time is a testament to the Hobbit itself and to the loyal Houstonians who kept it alive. Chances are that if you're a fan of the Hobbit Cafe, I can count you as a kindred spirit.

The Shire has alternated with two other sandwiches over the years as my "favorite" -- the Strider and the Thorin Oakenshield being the alternates -- due to the tangy, homemade tabouli on a bed of musky alfalfa sprouts with thick slices of fresh tomatoes on top. In keeping with Hobbit's tradition of serving comically oversized sandwiches, you don't just get a few slices of avocado on top, either -- you get a whole avocado. The Hobbit Cafe is where I go when I want a relatively healthy meal, cheerful service, a lush patio, a full belly and a cold beer (the craft-heavy list is one of the best in town).

Katharine Shilcutt's 10 Favorite Dishes in Houston
Photo by Mai Pham

9. Roasted cauliflower at Roost

If I had unlimited time and resources, I would probably eat at Roost once or twice a week. I can't seem to get tired of chef/owner Kevin Naderi's constantly shifting seasonal menu, and I love enjoying Roost's food inside the casual, cute, low-slung bistro with its clapboard-and-old-shutter-lined walls. Roost is every bit the low-key neighborhood cafe although its food is anything but.

The melting pot menu pulls influences from all over Houston and the world, mixing Texas-produced ingredients and locally-made foodstuffs with Vietnamese, Persian, French, Cajun, Japanese and other flavors. The short menu is also surprisingly vegetable-focused, with the roasted cauliflower as a personal favorite. The dish is also a favorite with nearly everyone who eats here, and as such is one of the few constants on the menu.

Roost's cauliflower gets a dual treatment of being roasted and fried, then piled into a satiny miso broth that coats each buttery chunk of cauliflower with a rich, salty, earthy sheen. Delicate flakes of bonito that dance across the top and provide a briny bite while crunchy pine nuts and bright slivers of green onion that provide a final, buoyant boost to the whole dish.

Katharine Shilcutt's 10 Favorite Dishes in Houston
Photo by Troy Fields

8. Ten spice chicken wings at Bismillah Cafe

Bismillah Cafe is not your average chaat spot -- a casual cafe where one traditionally finds savory South Asian snacks like dahi puri and samosas. You'll find those here, but you'll also find a far broader and deeper menu than nearly any other offered in Houston's Mahatma Gandhi District.

It's a menu filled with chargrilled burgers, spicy chicken wings and homemade pizzas. Not your standard chaat dishes, by any stretch of the imagination, but ones that appeal to a wider range of customers as a result. For this reason, Bismillah is also that rare restaurant that caters to the two opposite ends of a spectrum: neophytes who need a familiar jumping-off point into South Asian cuisine and thrill seekers who are constantly in search of the next new thing.

For an extra shock to the system, I like to add a side of fries coated with Moghul's signature ten-spice blend to my bun kebab for an extra $2. Moghul -- who goes by "Inam" and breaks into a maddening Cheshire cat grin when you ask him about his special recipes -- won't reveal any of the ten spices that go into his "ten chicken" or "ten fries" or "ten chicken wings," but trying to coax out the individual flavors from the pleasant overall burn is half the fun of eating here.

The motto at Bismillah Cafe is simple: "If you can take the heat, we can dish it out." Onwner Inam Moghul will adjust the heat levels if you ask, but he won't reveal the 10 spices that go into his signature "ten spice" blend, which coats everything from his chicken sandwiches and tater tots to my favorite, the chicken wings. All you need to know is that the result is a blazingly, daringly hot blend that mashes up an American favorite with a Pakistani flare.

Katharine Shilcutt's 10 Favorite Dishes in Houston
Photo by Troy Fields

7. Crawfish pho at LA Crawfish

To eat at LA Crawfish is to experience a microcosm of Houston's great bounty of ethnic cuisines and its friendly, energetic, welcoming charm. Cozy up to the table next to you and start a conversation; let a stranger who knows a trick show you the best way to crack into a king crab leg; spot a few friends across the food court and form a super-table to enjoy your bounty together. This is the kind of dining that LA Crawfish encourages.

It also offers a far wider variety of food than just crawfish. Here, American and Cajun and Vietnamese and Chinese and even Thai all flow together in one jumble of LA Crawfish-brand cuisine. It's as natural a development as Malaysian cuisine, in which the southeast Asian country functions as a crossroads among Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese and more and has adopted all the best foods from each culture over the years.

Houston functions in much the same way these days, and second-generation immigrants like the young faces who run LA Crawfish think nothing of co-opting a Chinese five-spice blend or Thai tamarind sauce for their Hong Kong-style crispy chicken wings, or of putting Cajun andouille sausage and crawfish tails into pho.

If regular pho can be compared to a dark roux, thick with the complex, jostling flavors of a handful of various spices -- musky cloves and bitter anise and briny fish sauce -- the crawfish pho broth is its blond sister. It's subtle and graceful, a delicate broth to match the delicate seafood inside. The sweet tail meat of the crawfish is enhanced instead of overshadowed, as it absolutely would be in a heavier, beefier broth. Coins of andouille sausage bobbing in the broth serve to underscore this flavor, the pork adding its own zip of vivid spice while still keeping things light.

I am convinced that this crawfish pho is one of an increasing number of reasons I can never leave Houston. Would I ever be able to find this again anywhere else? Even re-create it at home? Unlikely. I could definitely replicate the boiled crawfish, but never the pho.

Katharine Shilcutt's 10 Favorite Dishes in Houston
Photo by Katharine Shilcutt

6. Snapper al cilantro at Teotihuacan

It's easy to dismiss the bright pink Teotihuacan as just another Heights area Tex-Mex place from the outside. But inside is one of the city's greatest treasures: Teo's wonderful snapper al cilantro. Huachinango al cilantro -- in fact, just huachinango (red snapper) itself -- is a very popular dish in the coastal areas of Mexico, the snapper itself is commonly seen in preparations like huachinango a la veracruzana. And while this vaguely Provençal dish is good, it's the version in a creamy, tangy cilantro sauce that captured my heart many years ago.

It's the only thing I even order at Teotihuacan, even though the rest of its food is good too (grilled shrimp and El Pastor, a plate of amazing short ribs for only $10). This is an extreme rarity for me, especially in this profession. And that's how great the snapper is.

The egg-battered fish is always cooked to a nice medium well, never overdone, and covered in a butter-based sauce that's slightly tart from a generous amount of lemon juice and white wine. Those who hate the "soapy" taste of cilantro won't find it here, where the sauce takes that edge off the herb and instead enhances its sweet, vegetal flavor. A few pieces of fish and sauce tucked inside one of Teo's freshly-made flour tortillas, and you might never order anything else here again either.

Katharine Shilcutt's 10 Favorite Dishes in Houston
Photo by Katharine Shilcutt

5. Enchiladas a la Taylor at Spanish Village

Spanish Village has a long and complex history, as tends to happen when a restaurant is more than 50 years old. Houston used to have two Spanish Village restaurants, born of a feud that lasted for years -- one at 4811 Lillian and one at 4720 Almeda. The Christmas-light-covered Almeda location eventually outlasted the Lillian location and is the only remaining Spanish Village today, serving what Robb Walsh once called "vintage Tex-Mex at its finest."

The enchiladas a la Taylor are the best example of that vintage Tex-Mex, topped with plenty of chile con carne, chili gravy and raw white onions, while the margaritas and their signature dagger-like ice shards remain the stuff of Houston legend.

The rambling, papel picado-strung Spanish Village evokes everything people love about Tex-Mex, everything we find comfort in about the cuisine: a sprawling but cozy set of dining rooms that reminds you of your aunt's house at Christmas with all the cousins and the noise and family photos and the tacky colored lights running from room to room; gooey cheese that wraps your stomach and your heart in warmth (and perhaps cholesterol, but who cares?); simply constructed guacamole salad without any fuss or pomp, served with idiosyncratic bits of carrot and celery stuck on top; a hot plate of enchiladas with nothing else but ground beef, plenty of cheese and white onions telling you that even if everything else in the world is in a state of disarray and chaos, this one thing will always be here and always be the same and you'll be okay.

Katharine Shilcutt's 10 Favorite Dishes in Houston
Photo by Troy Fields

4. Venison carpaccio at Thanh Phuong

Since I first visited Thanh Phuong in July 2011, the little family-run Vietnamese restaurant in Pearland that specializes in Texas game meat has enjoyed a wave of success. Chris Shepherd staged there before opening Underbelly, learning Vietnamese tips and techniques that he's employing deftly at his "Mutt City" restaurant that explores Houston's many different ethnic cuisines in blended dishes such as his Vietnamese-style meatballs with fish sauce. You can see the influence of such dishes as Thanh Phuong's addictive caramelized fish sauce wings in the Vietnamese chicken wings at The Hay Merchant, the craft beer bar that adjoins Underbelly.

But for as much as I love Thanh Phuong's own caramelized fish sauce chicken wings, it's the herb-laced pile of ribbon-thin deer carpaccio that is the most intriguing and delicious Texan-Vietnamese hybrid on the menu. Thanh Phuong's venison carpaccio makes excellent use of the soft, ruddy deer meat. The thin, opaque ribbons of deer are marinated in citrus juices and pungent fish sauce, served with strings of red onion and shallot woven throughout and liberally doused with crushed peanuts for a sweet, nutty crunch that plays off the sweet venison.

There's nothing new about using game meat in Vietnamese cuisine, but it's hard to find even in Vietnamese-heavy Houston. And because venison is one of the game meats that so many Texans grow up eating, it's fun to see it in a different capacity than simply backstrap or deer sausage.

Katharine Shilcutt's 10 Favorite Dishes in Houston
Photo by Katharine Shilcutt

3. Smoked beef leg with aspic at Oxheart

You don't come to Oxheart for a steak dinner and a nice bottle of Cab. You come for an experience - and only you can determine whether or not that experience is ultimately worth it. This is what New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells meant when he recently wrote that Oxheart is "one of the growing number of places around the country that are rearranging our notions of what fine dining means."

Oxheart is not simply one of the best restaurants in the city, but also one of the most distinctly Houstonian. It challenges people -- both within and without -- to reconsider the way they view our rapidly-growing city, or simply the way they view sunflower seeds or tomatoes. It takes all comers with an egalitarian attitude, and offers civility and culture in an unexpected setting. It's stubbornly idiosyncratic and committed to a vision all its own. There's sprawl here, too, but in the extended rhythm of a seven-course meal instead of the physical space itself, which is all whitewashed walls and tall, airy ceilings.

My favorite dish to come out of my visits at Oxheart is one that challenged me the most: cubed beef under a large, jiggly coin of aspic. I've always viewed aspic warily, noting with disdain that there's a reason the consomme-based gelatin hasn't been a prominent dish since before I was born. But you could very well be witnessing the rebirth of aspic at Oxheart right now, thanks to a dish of smoked beef leg and kombu aspic that's currently showing on the $79 tasting menu.

The tiny cubes of cold-smoked beef are served tartare-style, except that there's no mustard or raw eggs to be found here. Instead, the sweet-hot spike of mustard is replaced with a scattering of brightly flavored Vietnamese herbs and vegetables: basil, rau ram, cucumber. Acid comes courtesy of lime juice, and all of it is bound up in a crystal-clear aspic with a final sea-sweet, briny note of kelp from that kombu. It's a truly masterful display of how to combine so many disparate influences into one dish, elevating each one in turn and leaving the diner gobsmacked by it all.

Katharine Shilcutt's 10 Favorite Dishes in Houston
Photo by Katharine Shilcutt

2. Barbacoa at Gerardo's

No list of Houston dishes would be complete without tacos or barbecue, right? Personally, my favorite barbecue comes from my dad's smoker and nothing -- I mean nothing -- in Houston can touch it. He's getting a new custom smoker delivered this weekend and I am already itching for him to get it good and seasoned.

As good as my dad is, though, he draws the line at smoking entire cow heads. It's just too messy and too much work (and my mother probably wouldn't allow it). That's where Gerardo's comes in -- because that's where true barbacoa comes from. Almost every taco truck and restaurant that serves barbacoa is buying pre-cut beef cheeks and stewing them down. Not so at this Northside landmark, where the cow heads are still smoked the old-fashioned way every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

I love the fact that you can only get these tacos three days a week, just as much as I love walking the patterned linoleum floor along the same, time-worn track that thousands of others have walked before me: straight up to the meat market's counter to order a couple of barbacoa tacos de harina, para aqui. The wonderfully slippery shreds of beef are rich with the thick musk of smoke and sheen of fat. Squeeze a little lime on top and you've got one of the best tacos anywhere in the United States -- not just Houston.

Katharine Shilcutt's 10 Favorite Dishes in Houston
Photo by Mai Pham

1. Wild game burger at Rainbow Lodge

Like Hobbit Cafe, I have nothing but fond memories of Rainbow Lodge, both at its former home on Buffalo Bayou and its "new" location on Ella. My parents were married there; that's how much my family -- and I -- love this Houston treasure set on the lush banks of White Oak Bayou.

Rainbow Lodge is best known for its beautiful view onto the verdant, rolling banks of the bayou, its bountiful gardens and its menu of wild game and Gulf Coast favorites, dishes such as buffalo tartare with quail eggs or Southern-fried quail with cheese grits and a bourbon-bacon gravy. The timber-framed lodge is refined and business-friendly by day, while the fireplace and ski resort feel impart a deliciously romantic allure by night. This is my special occasion spot sine qua non.

It also happens to be where you'll find the best burger in Houston. And just as no list of Houston dishes is complete without Tex-Mex or barbecue, it's certainly not complete without a burger.

A lot of love goes into these studiously constructed burgers, which are only served on Fridays at lunch. Instead of being wasted, tasty scraps from all the wild game the lodge goes through for a few days' prior are saved and thrown into the meat grinder. The result is a patty that can be a blend of antelope, boar, buffalo, venison and anything else the restaurant uses that would taste good on the griddle. Onto each hand-formed patty go even more house-made ingredients: roasted garlic mayonnaise, whole-grain mustard and thick-cut pickles (all made on site) along with a blend of three Cheddar cheeses. Each burger is served on Slow Dough buns made specially for Rainbow Lodge.

The burger recently won the 3rd annual Houston Press Burger Bracket in a contest that could be politely described as a bloodbath. Those who'd had Rainbow Lodge pegged as just a fancy-schmancy date place were blown away by the arm-soakingly juicy burger and its lovingly made ingredients. What started as a way to use perfectly good wild game has grown from a few burgers at lunch every week to a stampede to get the 60 patties the restaurant turns out on Fridays.

As with Gerardo's, however, this limited availability ensures the highest quality and makes you appreciate the burger all the more. Familiarity breeds contempt. Trust me on this one, and on this: Get to Rainbow Lodge early on Friday afternoon before all those lovely burgers are gone.

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Use Current Location

Related Locations

Hobbit Cafe

2243 Richmond Ave.
Houston, TX 77098

1972 Fairview St.
Houston, TX 77019

Bismillah Restaurant

5702 Hillcroft Ave
Houston, TX 77036

LA Crawfish
Teotihuacan Mexican Cafe
Spanish Village
Thanh Phuong

1302 Nance St.
Houston, TX 77002

Gerardo's Drive-In Grocery

609 Patton St.
Houston, TX 77009

Rainbow Lodge

2011 Ella Blvd.
Houston, TX 77008

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Over-the-Top Chophouse at Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steakhouse

The most flavorful steak in the city: the "tomahawk" cut Kobe rib eye.
Troy Fields

There was a seven-inch bone sticking out of the Fred Flintstone rib eye on the plate in front of me. I carved the monster chop with the heavy stainless steel chef's blade that they call a steak knife at Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steakhouse in the Galleria. My dining companion and I were sharing the dry-aged Australian Kobe rib eye, at $90 the most expensive steak on Del Frisco's menu.

My usual gambit at an expensive steakhouse is to order a double-cut porterhouse and share it. But the porterhouse on Del Frisco's menu wasn't all that big. And when I asked the waiter which steak he recommended for two people to split, he told us about the Kobe, which wasn't on the menu. The dry-aged, oversized "tomahawk" cut Kobe rib eye he described sounded like it just might be the best steak in the city. My bargain-hunting intentions were quickly forgotten.

The first bite of the steak exploded in my mouth. Beneath the crunch of the crust spread thick with sea salt and coarse pepper, the warm, buttery fat and beef juice seemed to burst out of the rare red steak each time I bit down. I looked across the table in time to see my dinner mate take her first taste. She suddenly looked very serious. "Omigod, that's good," she said with her mouth full. The expensive Kobe steak wasn't nearly as tender as I expected it to be. There were some chunks that were downright tough. But it was without a doubt the most flavorful steak I've ever had in a Houston steakhouse.

We had started out our meal with martinis and an order of oysters on the half shell, one of my favorite combinations. My Tanqueray martini was excellent.

I was hoping for some Apalachicola oysters, but Del Frisco had run out of those and was now serving oysters from New England. Of the six that came in an order, three were large, plump specimens from Thatcher Island, Massachusetts, and three were pathetic, skinny oysters from Maine.

Oysters from northern waters are great in the fall, but when the water gets too cold, they will stop eating and shrivel up. I am guessing that's what happened to the Maine oysters. I summoned the waiter to the table, and while he watched, I scraped one of the deflated bivalves out of the shell and put it in a soup spoon that was sitting on the table — the meat of this oyster barely filled half the spoon.

"You call that an oyster?" I asked. I expected an argument, but instead, the waiter took my spoon to the kitchen and came back with three more of the Thatcher Island oysters. We also got an order of Del Frisco's onion rings — each one the size of half an onion. We saved a few to eat with our steak. Del Frisco's version of creamed spinach was our other side, and it turned out to be more cream than spinach.

I sat back and enjoyed myself. With my fat oysters and my insanely marbled steak, I felt like Diamond Jim Brady, who frequently ordered a similar meal at Delmonico's in New York. I ordered a Guinness when the martini was finished. Guinness and oysters is a classic Irish combo, and I love the way the thick stout tastes with a steak.

Across the table, my companion looked at me in dismay. "What's the matter?" I asked her. The steak was extremely rich, the spinach was oozing cream and the onions were deep-fried, she noted.

"I think we should have ordered a salad," she said.

Our waiter wasn't handy, but there was another waiter standing nearby, so I got his attention and explained the problem. "Ah, you need a little balance," he said, nodding.

He recommended the house salad, which had tomatoes and carrot shavings as well as mixed greens, and he managed to dash into the kitchen and come back with the salad in amazingly short order. When he set it down in front of her, my companion laughed in resignation. The salad was topped by two thick slices of bacon, which she removed and placed on my plate before she ate the vegetables.

"It's just such a guy restaurant," she said.

From the day construction began, Del Frisco's set out to be the top steakhouse in Houston. The 13,000-square-foot Galleria location is a copy of the 17,000-square-foot Del Frisco's in Manhattan. As in New York, the main dining room is on the second story, where diners can look out through the huge windows to the street below. The walls are mahogany, the floors are Brazilian slate and the grand light fixtures are made from Spanish alabaster and cost $75,000 a piece. The total bill for the Houston restaurant was reported to be more than $11 million.

An early press release claimed that all the meat was Prime, but a call to Del Frisco's meat supplier, Allen Brothers in Chicago, confirmed that while many of the steaks sold to Del Frisco's were wet-aged USDA Prime, the filets were USDA Choice. That puts the meat on par with a bevy of luxury steakhouses located within minutes of Del Frisco's location, including Palm, Morton's of Chicago and Pappas Bros. Steakhouse.

It's not the quality of the steaks that puts Del Frisco's above its competitors. The service is outstanding. It's said that there are three tables per waiter — an astonishing ratio. And the "customer first" attitude is a stark contrast to the run-up-the-bill scams encountered elsewhere.

The appetizers are excellent. Del Frisco is one of the few steakhouses that serve oysters on the half shell. And while some high-end steakhouses refuse to make steak tartare for liability fears, Del Frisco's prides themselves on the raw chopped steak appetizer. And then there's the grandeur of the architecture and the dignified atmosphere.

The classy image is sort of amusing when you consider the humble origins of the chain's founder. The first Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steakhouse in Dallas was opened in the mid-1980s by a former Louisiana Winn-Dixie meat cutter named Dale Wamstad (who went by the name Del Frisco) and a woman named Dee Lincoln. Dee did the restaurant's radio commercials, and she was famous throughout Dallas for her recitation of the final digits of the phone number, "0-0-0-0!"

Wamstad's sordid life story was the subject of a Dallas Observer feature ["Family Man," by Mark Stuertz, March 16, 2000]. I liked the part where his former wife Lena got sick of his abuse and "pumped three .25-caliber slugs into Dale Wamstad's imposing 6-foot-2-inch, 240-pound bulk in the dining room of Del Frisco's restaurant in Gretna, Louisiana."

Wamstad survived and went on to sell the original Dallas Del Frisco's and a Fort Worth branch that was under construction to the Lone Star Steakhouse chain in Kansas in 1995 for $22.7 million. Del Frisco's became the upper-end steakhouse in a three-tier chain that also included the mid-range Sullivan's and the low-end Lone Star Steakhouses, a Texas-themed chain with locations across the country.

If you ask me, the scandalous Dale "Del Frisco" Wamstad legend easily trumps all those mobster tales that made the original Palm in New York and Morton's in Chicago famous.

On my first visit to Del Frisco's, I got the $30 businessman's lunch. You get your choice of soup or salad, and I went with a creamy asparagus bisque. For an entrée, I got a six-ounce filet mignon. The other choice was salmon topped with crabmeat. My dessert was chocolate mousse.

My tablemate got a boring salad and the crab cakes, two barely battered mounds of extra large jumbo lump crabmeat with a Creole sauce. Like the over-the-top Kobe and creamed spinach dinner, it was an extremely satisfying and unrelentingly rich meal — but no particular bargain.

Del Frisco's is currently the top steakhouse in Houston. Don't go expecting to find any bargains. Go when you're in the mood to celebrate and the money doesn't matter.

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Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steakhouse

5061 Westheimer
Houston, TX 77056

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Howard County’s Housing is made up of two separate entities, the Department of Housing and Community Development, a principal department of Howard County Government, and the Howard County Housing Commission, a public housing authority and instrumentality of the State of Maryland. Although the two entities share the same director and staff, they have distinct powers and responsibilities. Nonetheless, they operate in tandem and share the same mission – to provide safe, quality, affordable and sustainable housing opportunities for low- and moderate-income families who live or work in Howard County and to assist them in moving toward economic independence. In all of our programs, the principles of housing integration, superior design, sustainability, universal design, long-term viability and economic self-sufficiency must always guide and inform our efforts.

Department of Housing and Community Development