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    5 big thoughts (kinda)

    Ken Hoffman on why we love Whataburger and the Houston restaurant with a 6-week wait list

    Ken Hoffman
    Jul 5, 2019 | 10:45 am
    Whataburger burger menu palette
    There's a simple reason we love Whataburger over, say, Hooters.
    Whataburger/Facebook

    Last month, Houstonians nearly had a collective conniption (awesome word) when they heard that Whataburger, a Texas treasure, had been bought out by BDT Capital Partners, an investment bank in — you can’t be serious — Chicago.

    What does Chicago know about taquitos and honey butter chicken biscuits?

    But, last week, there was hardly a peep when word broke that Hooters had been purchased by Chanticleer Holdings, a business development company based in North Carolina.

    The difference in reaction? We go to Whataburger for the food. We go to Hooter for the scenery, the food is incidental. But confession, I like the wings at Hooters. I get them naked. (I mean the wings have no breading. ... I am fully clothed.)

    Rodeo lassos in a favorite
    This is great news on the food front. The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo has signed a contract that keeps Ray Cammack Shows running the carnival for several more years.

    I love everything about the carnival – the games, the rides, and especially the food. One of my favorite nights of every year is when RCS’s “Midway Gourmet” Dominic Palmieri takes a bunch of my friends and me on a lap around every food booth. The way he describes how each new food item was created, it’s like listening to Mick and Keith describe how they wrote “Satisfaction.”

    “Well, it’s official, you need to put up with me for another decade!” Palmieri told me. “Being invited back to the Rodeo for several more years, adding to the 25 years we’ve been there already, makes us more appreciative that Houston loves the RCS brand. Know that we’re coming back encourages us to push the envelope to develop new foods and raise the bar for quality and consistency."

    Houston's radio royalty
    The Texas Radio Hall of Fame has announced its 2019 class of inductees. There are 20 names on the list. Here are the new HOF’ers with Houston ties:

    • Linda Austin Ware, KIKK, KTRH, and KILT.
    • Johnny Goyen: KFMK, KRBE, and KPRC.
    • John Mittin: KIKK.
    • Scott Sparks: KRBE, KLUE, and KGLK.

    The induction ceremony will be held November 2 at the Texas Broadcast Museum in Kilgore. Visit the site for tickets, discount hotel rates, and more information.

    Ken Hoffman: Matchmaker
    Headline: “California man posed as woman to lure men on dating apps, robbed them, prosecutors say.”
    What kind of sick, perverted world is this when you can’t trust how people describe themselves on dating sites?

    True story, I have a friend who was having trouble luring women on a certain popular dating site. I looked at his bio: Of course, he wasn’t attracting women. It was simple. He described himself honestly.

    I said, “What did you expect? You’re horrible. Let me write your bio.” Among his favorite activities, I included walking along the beach at night, long romantic dinners, working as a volunteer at a pet shelter, visiting museums, ecological travel, jazz concerts, spending Christmas with my parents, all that crap.

    Within one week, he was taking out a different woman every night. He was so popular, he was going broke. I told him, be cool about this, you have to fake being the person in your bio. You have to stall them from finding out who you really are. He said, don’t worry, I can be a great phony.

    I said, you wrote that you like jazz music. Okay, who’s your favorite current jazz artist? Between the stalling and changing the topic, I knew he didn’t have a favorite. I made it easier, can you name one jazz artist, living or dead, in the history of the world? He couldn’t do it.

    Not surprisingly, he was back to being dateless in a month.

    I know another guy, who used to work with me at the Chronicle, who joined a dating service. A couple of years later, he told me, “When I was on a date and told them where I worked, they always asked if I knew you.” This Chronicle guy was doing better with women because he knew me … than I ever did being me.

    It's a MAD restaurant world
    Read about a hot, new restaurant opening in Houston. There is a six-week wait for reservations. Just a personal thing, but forget that. I don’t even wait 20 minutes for a table.

    There is no food that great that I’d wait six weeks for a reservation, even if I were having dinner with Paul McCartney, Roger Federer, Tom Hanks, Willie Mays, and Bill Gates … and one of them was paying for my dinner, and valet parking was complimentary. And I don’t mean complimentary where you still have to tip the guy. I mean free parking, like in Monopoly.

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    game, set, zina.

    Best of Ken Hoffman: Interviewing Houston's greatest tennis icon

    Ken Hoffman
    Aug 29, 2024 | 12:30 pm
    Zina Garrison, tennis player
    ITATennis
    Garrison, a tennis legend, is now the tennis director of Houston Parks and Recreation.

    Editor's note: After the sudden death of beloved columnist Ken Hoffman on July 14, CultureMap is republishing some of our favorite "Hoffman's Houston" columns. In honor of the U.S. Open, here's Ken's interview with Houston tennis legend Zina Garrison; it was originally published on June 27, 2022.

    As a child, Zina Garrison learned how to hit a tennis ball on the public courts at MacGregor Park during the 1970s and became, simply, the most accomplished player ever from Houston.

    She developed into a Grand Slam champion, a Top 5 ranking in the world, Wimbledon finalist in 1990 with 20 tournament titles, Federation Cup captain, and Olympic gold medal winner and later Olympic coach.

    Now Garrison is back where she started, only this time she’s devoted to making Houston a great place to learn and play tennis … again. Like she did.

    “I am now the tennis director of Houston Parks and Recreation,” Garrison tells me. “I’m over all the public tennis programs and facilities. The job came open recently and I applied for it.”

    Wait... she’s the greatest champion this city has ever produced — and she had to apply for that job?

    “To be honest, I was more interested in the benefits than the money. As you get older, you start thinking differently,” she shares.

    Unlike the major sports leagues in America, tennis doesn’t provide any healthcare insurance or assistance once a player, even a legend, retires.

    “They’re working on it,” Garrison, 58, notes. “But as of now, nothing.”

    Garrison said her first priority as Houston’s tennis director is to repair the public courts.

    “I want to bring the public tennis facilities up to where I’d be proud, where everybody would be proud, to bring people to use our courts. There are cracks in the courts. Nothing’s really been done in the last 20 or maybe 30 years,” she says.

    “I’ve traveled to Florida and some other places and they have really nice public courts. Tennis in Houston was really thriving for a while and we had nice courts and people could play in the parks. We had junior programs. We flourished. That’s my main goal.”

    While I had Garrison on the phone, I served up some questions:

    CultureMap: Wimbledon is on. You’re familiar with that tournament, right? Who are your picks to win the men’s side and women’s side?

    Zina Garrison: Yes, I’m familiar with Wimbledon. I have my alarm set for the early morning so I can watch. I have a weird pick, a more personal pick, for the men.

    I would love to see Rafael Nadal keep going on, but it’s going to be tough for him. The guy from Italy, Matteo Berrettini, I watched him play a couple of weeks ago and I think he’s going to surprise a lot of people. And I am absolutely in love with that little guy, Carlos Alcaraz, from Spain. He’s made me watch tennis again.

    On the women’s side, I don’t think it will be Iga Swiatek. I think it’s just too hard to keep a streak like hers (35 matches in a row including the French Open title) going in today’s game. It’s really wide open. I don’t really have a pick, it’s just who comes in and plays well at the right time.

    CM: What do you think about Natela Dzalamidze, the doubles player from Russian who switched her nationality to Georgia so she could play Wimbledon, which has banned players from Russian and Belarus this year?

    ZG: I don’t like that she was able to do that. I was just on the phone with (former pro turned broadcaster) Chanda Rubin talking about what’s going on in tennis these days.

    First of all, there is the human rights stuff that’s going on in Russia and Ukraine. We have to start forcing accountability for actions. A lot of people didn’t agree with what Wimbledon did, but I think they had to take a stand.

    CM: The women’s GOAT is easy — it’s Serena. But who do you think is the men’s GOAT?

    ZG: Wow, that’s a hard one. If you had asked me earlier this year, I would have said Roger Federer because of everything he’s accomplished. But right now I’m going to have to go with Nadal. Nadal has taken tennis to a whole ‘nother level, of getting people to watch, coming out of the pandemic, where he has matches and you think he can’t come back and he’s still grinding no matter what.

    For me, he is the epitome of what we need in this world right now: Never give up but not be selfish about helping others. I know it sounds clichéd, but that’s what I’m going through right now.

    CM: When I first met you, you were painfully shy. It was hard to get an answer out of you. Now you’re a TV commentator and a regular chatterbox. What happened?

    ZG: I was an introvert but I had always been intrigued by people of wisdom. A lot of it came as I developed confidence in myself. I had always been told at a very young age, if you really knew me, I spoke a lot. If you didn’t know me, I would be quiet. I would only speak about things that I was extremely passionate about.

    As I’ve gotten older, because of my experiences. I feel like I can help people so I’m not afraid to say what I want to say.

    CM: Starting the week after Wimbledon, coaches will be allowed to communicate with men players during matches. Up to now, that’s only been allowed in the women’s game. Every other sport allows coaching. Do you think tennis should allow coaching, too?

    ZG: I don’t think coaching should be allowed. That’s one of the great things about tennis. That’s a part of the sport, that you grow and figure things out. You learn to think for yourself.

    There’s always been little signals from coaches, but now you have these full blown conversations. Another bad thing about allowing coaching is it gives the players the opportunity to blame a loss their coach. That’s not good for the sport.

    CM: You were known for wiggling your butt when receiving serve. Did you know you were doing it? Did you do that on purpose?

    ZG: It started off as kind of a joke with my coaches. They said, we need you to move your feet. I said, you mean like this?

    So, it started as a joke but I realized that it helped get my feet moving: Okay, I’m going to keep doing this.

    I’ll never forget that year after I got to the Wimbledon finals, 1990, I went over to Japan and there were 1,200 people there … and all of them started wiggling!

    CM: What was the first extravagant thing you bought for yourself when the tennis prize money started rolling in?

    ZG: It was 1982, and I bought a candy apple red Volkswagen convertible with a white top.

    CM: You were on the Biggest Loser, the show where contestants compete against each other to lose weight. Let’s just say you didn’t win. Are you happy you went on that show, or do you regret it?

    ZG: I was one of the first who had to leave the competition. (No, you were THE first.) It was an experience, but I probably shouldn’t have done it. I think I regret going on there. It wasn’t what I thought it was.

    It was reality TV and at the time I didn’t know what reality TV was .I was more ready to get out of there than anything else.

    CM: Now here’s the big question, Zina. For years, I’ve had a running disagreement with ESPN 97.5 FM morning host John Granato about which is a more demanding, tougher sport – golf or tennis?

    Granato says it’s golf, because the tournament winner has to beat every other player that week, while in tennis the winner just has to beat seven players at most. And, each week, golfers have to contend with a different course.

    But, I say it’s tennis because players have to be in top physical condition, while nearly anyone in any shape can win a golf major.

    Plus, in golf, players have a caddy helping them make decisions. In tennis, players are on their own.

    In golf, you can have a bad day on Thursday and still win the tournament. In tennis, if you have a bad day in the opening round, you’re on a plane out of there.

    In golf, it’s the player against the course. There’s no defense in golf. In tennis, there’s a human opponent trying to beat you.

    In golf, the ball is lying still. In tennis the ball is coming at you at 140 mph.

    So which is the tougher sport, golf or tennis? I’m right ... right?

    ZG: Are you serious? Who is this guy who says golf is harder? The answer is tennis and it’s not even close.

    You’re playing against someone. You’re only controlling the ball when it’s on your side of the net. You can’t control what the other player is doing. It’s almost like a boxer coming at you.

    You have to have both the physical and mental capacity to win. In golf, if you have a bad day, it’s because you’re having that bad day. There’s no opponent competing with you. So, I’m saying it’s tennis.

    CM (note to John Granato): I win. Granted, it might have been the way I asked the question. Also, Garrison is a former tennis pro.

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