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HOME ABOUT SEND US A TIP SPONSORSHIPS Menu HOME ABOUT SEND US A TIP SPONSORSHIPS Sign Up for Swamplot Emails: It’s Time for Swamplot To Say Goodbye 253 Timbergrove H-E-B’s All-Aisle Goodbye 2 East River’s Western North Shore Launch: Multiplex, Waterfront Museum, Plaza, Lots of Ground Floor Retail You Can Drive To 19 Notices 03/14/19 4:30pm What Are the Best Swamplot Comments You’ve Ever Read (or Made)? by Swamplot 20 Comments WHAT ARE THE BEST SWAMPLOT COMMENTS YOU’VE EVER READ (OR MADE)? Here’s another request for longtime readers: Help us identify the greatest reader comments ever posted on Swamplot! Why is your help needed? A whopping 133,000 or so reader comments appeared on this site over the course of 12 years, making it tough to find all the gems. Fortunately, Swamplot’s regular Comment of the Day feature highlighted some of the best (all 1,500 or so of them , over the course of 12 years). But a lot of great comments missed their day in the spotlight for various reasons — often because too many other great choices came in on the same day. For many, absorbing the comments and back-and-forth from our diverse readership was the whole point of reading Swamplot. Can you help us surface the best, to help show why? Add your links to the comments section below, or send us your picks privately , in an email. We hope to create a more definitive list from what you gather. Illustration: Lulu Tweet Notices Notices 03/11/19 3:00pm Tell Us Your Favorite Swamplot Posts by Swamplot 46 Comments Hey, recovering longtime Swamplot readers! A special request: We’re putting together a list of this site’s best stories, and we need your help. If you were asked to give a quick snapshot of Swamplot by providing examples of this site at the top of its form, what individual posts would you point to? We’re asking: Which were your favorites? Which ones were especially funny? or made you angry? or changed the way you looked at Houston? or voiced something previously unspoken about a part or aspect of the city that you were already familiar with? or sparked really interesting discussions? Or maybe have a special resonance now — beyond the immediate goings-on pictured and outlined in our original writeup. We want to know what stood out to you. How to find stories . . . if your memories are hazy? There’s a search box near the top of this page (near the bottom on mobile) where you can type in keywords that might tickle your memory. Or use the Google. Or click on the tags that show up to the right of each story (at the bottom on mobile) to surf by topic. Or if you’ve got a ridiculous amount of time on your hands, go right ahead and scroll to the bottom of this page and click on the “Next Page” button — and keep repeating until you get back 12 years. Let us know your picks in the comments section below, or — if you’re a little more shy about it — in an email to our tips line . We’d like to publish a list of what you come up with. Photo of Hardy Yards: Marc Longoria Project Swamplot Tweet Notices Featured Posts 03/07/19 6:00pm It’s Time for Swamplot To Say Goodbye by Swamplot 253 Comments As of today this site’s daily publishing schedule is coming to a halt. Swamplot has been covering Houston’s real estate landscape for 12 years. That’s longer than the runs of most successful teevee sitcoms, all but one U.S. presidency, and a lot of great Houston restaurants. It’s been long enough to cover 3 hurricanes, several boom-and-bust cycles, a half-dozen or so 100-year floods, and the rise and fall of Tuscanization . More than a few high-school freshmen when Swamplot started in 2007 are now armed with PhDs and ready to launch their careers. It’s time for us to move on as well. We’re proud of what Swamplot has accomplished: the reporting it’s assembled; the commenters, readers, contributors, and tipsters it’s attracted; the conversations and reconsiderations it’s fostered; the groups of people from different walks of life it’s brought together in some way; the coinages you’ve come up with; and the community that’s been built here around the notion that our local built and natural environments are worth our attention and our jokes. Houston has always been a funky town. It’s rarely been served well by those who ignore that, or who promote it with a chip on their shoulder, or who build in it without recognizing the profound handicaps and weirdnesses that continue to shape it. In Swamplot’s dozen years of documenting the odd details of its growth and destruction, we’ve noticed a gradual but steady change of attitude — one that we hope we’ve helped to effect: People here, we get a sense, now pay more obvious attention to the things that make Houston unique, bizarre, wacky, frustrating, and lovable. If Swamplot has, in any way, played a role in altering your sense of this place — by reporting on things normally paid little attention to, by presenting things in ways you wouldn’t otherwise expect to see them, by dangling in front of you the comments and perspectives of people who see this city very differently from the way you do, or by striving each day to highlight the absurdities that underly and shape so much of the Houston experience — well, then hanging out with y’all for some or all of this time has been well worth it. Beginning next week, we’ll have a few announcements and questions to post here about Swamplot’s past, present, and future — so please do come back and visit to see what’s up. For now, though, we want to thank you — our readers, commenters, tipsters, photographers, advertisers, sponsors, and contributors — for making Swamplot what it’s been, and maybe making Houston a little bit better place for us all. Photos: Russell Hancock (aerial); Bill Barfield (sign) via Swamplot Flickr Pool So Long Tweet Notices Comments 03/07/19 10:30am Comment of the Day: The Great Montrose Public Transportation Route Thinning by Swamplot 2 Comments COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE GREAT MONTROSE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION ROUTE THINNING “The Fairview bus route replaced the streetcar line and operated for decades. Thirty years ago a significant number of people in Montrose relied on public transportation. As demographics changed, METRO decided that ridership didn’t justify some routes through Montrose. In addition to Fairview, they also eliminated the University (Hawthorne) and Alabama (actually W. Alabama) routes. It’s surprising how much of a difference there is between walking one or two blocks vs. five or more to the closest bus stop. I agree that a revived Fairview line would be convenient, and a trolley would be great. The question is, will residents of $500k townhomes willingly commit to giving up their cars? I wish they would, and think they won’t.” [ Big Tex , commenting on Houston’s Vanished and Current Middle-of-the-Road Rail Networks, Close Up and Personal ] Illustration: Lulu Tweet 77006 , Bus Routes , Comments , Houston History , Montrose , Public Transportation Headlines 03/07/19 8:30am FlixBus Rolls into Houston; Solange’s Third Ward; Parking Ticket Hotspots by Kathryn Way No Comments 21-Hour Concrete Mat Pour for Hines’s 47-Story Office Tower on Former Houston Chronicle Site To Begin Saturday Afternoon [HBJ ($); previously on Swamplot ] FlixBus Begins Long-Distance Bus Service to San Antonio, New Orleans, and Mississippi from Gray and Smith Downtown March 14 [HBJ] Production Builders Constructed One-Half to Two-Thirds of 110 New Homes Built in Meyerland After Harvey Flooding [HBJ ($)] Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar, a California Chain with Separate Menu for Dogs, Aiming for Summer Opening at 290 and Wortham in Cypress Creek [Eater Houston] Solange’s Simultaneous Screenings of Her New When I Get Home Film at Favorite Third Ward Hotspots [Vogue] A Map of the Top 100 Parking Ticket Locations in Houston from 2016 to 2018 [KHOU] 1,500 Hosts Booked 15,000 Nights in Houston Airbnbs Over the 3 Week Span of the Rodeo [Houston Chronicle] Boulder City Council Passes Emergency Moratorium on Some Opportunity Zo...