The Heights Gets Wet

The Heights gets wet as voters overwhelmingly decide to overturn alcohol restrictions

Revival Market Houston Heights meat market

Revival Market will be able to sell beer and wine thanks to Tuesday's vote.

Photo by © Julie Soefer/Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau

Voters in the Heights have spoken. By an overwhelming margin of 64 to 36 percent, the area’s residents have decided to approve a measure that allows for the off-premise sale of alcohol in an area that has been dry since 1912.

The vote pitted the Houston Heights Beverage Coalition, an H-E-B backed group that was supported by a number of small business owners, against Keep The Heights Dry, an organization of homeowners who expressed concern that selling alcohol would upset the neighborhood’s residential nature. Passing the vote opens the way for stores to sell alcohol for off-premise consumption in an area that's roughly bounded by White Oak Bayou to the south, 610 to the north, Oxford to the east, and Durham to the west.

H-E-B has committed to building a grocery store on the former site of a Fiesta at Shepherd Drive and 24th Street if the measure passed. The San Antonio-based grocer has tentatively submitted plans and a variance request to the City of Houston for a two-story store with a parking garage on the lower level and the store on top.

Count Treadsack CEO Chris Cusack as a fan of Tuesday night’s outcome. Although the vote doesn’t affect the company’s three restaurants that serve alcohol in the dry zone via a private club license, Cusack thinks adding H-E-B will be good for the neighborhood.

“Our friends at Revival Market will get to sell some really well-curated selections of craft beer and boutique wine at their long-standing establishment,” Cusack tells CultureMap. “I think we’ll get to have another excellent grocery store option in the Heights this is not pro-gun, and that’s a good thing for all of us.”

In the long term, Cusack says he would like to see the dry zone totally overturned. Doing so would allow Treadsack’s restaurants to shed some of the record-keeping and purchasing requirements associated with operating a private club.

“We think the dry area continues to be not supportive of small businesses,” Cusack says. “It’s a challenge to operate a small business with these laws in place, and we hope this will be the first step to change it.”

the-heights drinks politics

H-Town's Moo Deng

Houston Zoo welcomes Akobi, an adorable pygmy hippopotamus

Akobi is Houston Zoo's newest pygmy hippoptamus

Photo by Jackelin Reyna/Houston Zoo

Houston Zoo welcomes itOH MY THAT IS ADORABLE

The Houston Zoo welcomes Akobi, its newest pygmy hippopotamus right as the species is having a massive resurgence in popularity.

Thanks to Moo Deng, a baby pygmy hippo born Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Si Racha, Chonburi, Thailand this summer, pygmy hippopotami are more popular than ever. Moo Deng became a viral sensation thanks to cute videos of him playing and drinking from a spraying hose. He was even parodied on Saturday Night Live, where he was played by Bowen Yang.

Akobi is a four-and-a-half-year-old, 477-pound male pygmy hippopotamus who recently moved from San Francisco to Houston as part of an Association of Zoos and Aquarium (AZA) Species Survival Plan (SSP) Program. His name means “first born” in Yoruba. This is definitely one California transplant all Texans can agree on.

As their name suggests, pygmy hippos are quite a bit smaller than their more famous counterparts. Common hippos can weigh up to 4,000 pounds and are among the most dangerous megafauna in the world because of their fierce territoriality. By contrast, pygmy hippos rarely get above 500 pounds and are comparatively docile.

Unlike their larger cousins, pygmy hippos spend most of their time on dry land and live solitary lives rather than in large herds. Akobi is the first pygmy hippo in the Houston Zoo since the death of Silas, their previous pygmy hippo. Acquired in 2020, Silas quickly became a favorite of zoo visitors. He died in 2022 after a short illness.

Akobi comes at a time of massive expansion and progress for the Houston Zoo. The 55-acre zoological garden just opened its massive Birds of the World exhibit, featuring bird species across three continents. It also swept a series of industry awards for its innovative Galapagos Island area, which introduced penguins to the zoo among a host of other species. These were all part of the Houston Zoo’s centennial celebration.

Hopefully, Akobi will have an easier time than Moo Deng. Visitors to the viral star’s enclosure would sometimes spray water or throw items at the hippo, leading to the zoo having to build more security to protect Moo Deng. Houston Zoo visitors should remember that pygmy hippos (and all zoo animals) should not be disturbed or molested for their health and the visitor’s safety.

akobi houston zoo pygmy hippopotamus