Texas luxury boot maker kicks open the doors at newest Houston outpost

BESPOKE BOOTS & HATS

Photo courtesy of Lucchese/Instagram

Iconic western wear brand Lucchesehasopened its 19th store at Baybrook Mall in southeast Houston. The Texas-based luxury brand is known for its extensive selection of cowboy boots, casual footwear, accessories, leather goods, and men's and women's apparel.

Lucchese opened its first store in 1883 at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. Since then, the brand has expanded to offer its customers a wide range of products symbolizing the authentic American West for over 140 years. The Baybrook Mall store comes on the heels of Lucchese Midland's grand opening last fall.

At 4,000 square feet, the Baybrook store is the brand's most expansive location. Shoppers will be greeted with a warm Western motif and find natural wood and leather elements throughout the boutique. As always, customers will discover high-quality boots and products at various price points and featured in multiple colors and leathers.

Those looking for a bespoke experience can create a pair of personalized boots in the store's exclusive customization area. The boots, hand-crafted in El Paso, will start with a customized fit and genuine sole-to-scallop design.

Lucchese's newest store will also feature the brand's first-ever custom hat bar. Guests can customize Lucchese hats with various hat bands and other accessories to choose from. Additionally, guests can also have their hats shaped by a professional hat shaper.

"Lucchese Baybrook marks our 19th Lucchese store, and it is slated to be our most bespoke experience yet," says Doug Kindy, Lucchese President. "From custom cowboy boots to custom hats, we aim to provide a product of the highest quality to our Houston-area customers that will last generations to come."

Lucchese Baybrook will host a Texas-sized grand opening party to celebrate the new store on April 1. There will be live music from Catie Offerman, a Parker McCollum guitar giveaway, complimentary drinks and bites, a hat shaping demonstration, a $1,000 Lucchese gift card raffle, and a Kendra Scott pop-up in the store. Additionally, the first 50 attendees will receive a gift.

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Lucchese Baybrook; 700 Baybrook Mall Dr., Friendswood. For information, call 346-384-8169 or visit Lucchese online.

Photo courtesy of Lucchese/Instagram

Lucchese's newest store is now open in Baybrook Mall.

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Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo makes history with election of first female chairman of the board

pat saddles up

In 2022, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo made history by making local rap icon Bun B the first Black headliner from Houston. Now, the venerable institution has made history again with the appointment of its first female chairman of the board.

Pat Mann Phillips, a rodeo life member since 2001, will begin her three-year tenure as chairman of the board starting with the 2024 Rodeo, according to an announcement. She takes over for departing chairman Brady Carruth.

“As the newly elected Chairman of the Board, I am humbled and honored to lead the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and our amazing team of dedicated volunteers,” Phillips tells CultureMap. "Together, we embark on a transformative endeavor to propel our organization to its fullest potential. By breaking new ground and pushing boundaries, we will elevate the rodeo experience to unprecedented heights, capturing the essence of our vibrant community and its unwavering spirit.”

Her first objective, according to the rodeo, will be to collaborate with the executive committee to lead the Rodeo, focusing on its core mission of promoting agriculture and supporting Texas youth and education.

Heralded by peers and staff for her high-energy, positive, genuine, compassionate, and humble nature, Phillips has served on myriad rodeo committees, various committees, including the Corral Club – Suites, Directions & Assistance, Jr. Rodeo, and Special Children's committees.

She was elected to the board of directors in 2012 and rodeo vice president from 2016 to 2018. During her tenure, she oversaw the Transportation, Magazine, Special Children's, Agricultural Education (formerly Ladies' Go Texan), Souvenir Program, and Communications & Special Services committees. She joined the rodeos executive committee in 2018.

Consummately Houston and rodeo, Phillips holds a BBA in Petroleum Land Management and a BBA in Finance from Texas Tech University and boasts more than 30 years of experience in the energy industry. She is currently the executive director of Energy Services for Revenade, a global management consulting firm.

Rodeo is a family affair: She and her husband, Tim Phillips have contributed financially through auction buying groups, season tickets, and donations to the Rodeo's Educational Fund. Tim Phillips, a former chair of the Jr. Rodeo Committee, continues to serve on the Special Children's Committee, per the rodeo.

Pat and Tim Phillips also walk the walk: they own Trinity Spirit Ranch in Field Store, Texas and manage their family ranch in Johnson County, Texas. Pat is also a charter member of Texas Women Venture Fund and a member and former director of Ladies of Texas Tradition, per her bio. She is a mentor and board member in organizations including Amigas Para Niños and the American Association of Professional Landmen.

“Our rich traditions serve as the cornerstone of our mission, and it is my hope that through our collective efforts, we not only preserve these traditions but also ignite a flame of inspiration within others,” Par Phillips says. “I am thrilled to saddle up for this exhilarating journey ahead. Together, we will leave a lasting legacy, inspiring generations to come and making a profound difference in the lives of those we touch.”

Gigantic 50-foot shark dives into Houston museum for jaw-dropping new showcase of Earth's greatest predator

jaw-dropping jaws

By the numbers, the great white shark is one of the most fearsome predators to ever exist on planet Earth. Consider:

Sharks! The Meg, The Monsters & The Myths HMNS

Photo courtesy of Houston Museum of Natural Science

Yes, this is actually scale.

The largest great white ever recorded spanned 20 feet – half the size of a school bus — and weighed at least 5,000 pounds.
At any given moment, great whites possess 300 teeth — measuring up to 6.6 inches — and can regenerate and replace up to 20,000 in a lifetime.
Swimming up to 35 miles per hour, a great white can launch itself out of the water like a missile.

But those stats are child's play to the great white's prehistoric predecessor, the megalodon (which literally means "big tooth"), which grew to 65 feet long. Known by scientists and fans as the "Meg," the massive monster will star in Houston Museum of Natural Science's new exhibit Sharks! The Meg, The Monsters & The Myths.

The immersive shark fest opens Friday, May 26 to members and Saturday, May 27 to the general public. Tickets are available online.

Dive into the shark tank

Meant to educate and inspire awe and curiosity rather than hysteria, the new exhibition features six galleries that include live shark tank, 14 life-sized models, interactive and touchable items, dazzling digital displays, fun photo ops, and meg-sized chunks of information about the ocean's apex predators.

Visitors can meet these fin-tastic friends via a 360-square-foot virtual “shark tank,” where sharks of all shapes and sizes (there are eight different orders and more than 500 species) swim by, showing off their sleek shapes, bioluminescence, and grace.

Meet the monster Meg

A giant, life-sized, 50-foot model of a female megalodon — in full swim pose and jaws that easily down an entire refrigerator or a few humans — wide open in a toothy grin. The megalodon's sheer mass compared to humans, its color (gray to reflect the sea wall with a "great white" belly) will be on display for photos and wow moments.

Another gallery takes viewers back more than 400 million years to the earliest sharks and fossilized shark teeth. Each visitor can select a fossilized tooth dating back to the Miocene era to keep as part of the journey.

Some gentle bamboo and epaulette sharks will join stingrays (cousins of sharks), sea urchins, and a host of other sea dwellers in an easily viewable tank, which will offer an up-close-and-personal perspective as to why these creatures are so essential to the ecosystem.

No excursion would be complete without swag, and this one offers up toys, puzzles, t-shirts, magnets, and more at the Island Store, which also houses megalodon teeth, fossilized coral, and a 100,000-year-old giant fossil clamshell.

Fans of these finned friends

While they have survived every mass extinction event in the past 450 million years and have ruled their water kingdom for some 300,000 years, sharks are now in peril by the worst predator of all: humans. Spurred by bloodlust after the release of the 1975 epic film and novel Jaws and other sensational pop culture vehicles, an average of 100 million sharks are killed by humans each year.

Whether for sport, shark fin soup (where fins are cut off while the shark is cast back still alive and left to drown), scientists worry that this decimation could mean the end for many of these astounding creatures. '

“Sharks are remarkably diverse and efficient predators but are more threatened than threatening. In fact, over one-third of shark species are now facing the threat of extinction,” said Nicole Temple, the exhibit curator. “With this exhibition, we hope that our guests are able to explore the misconceptions, mysteries, and mystique of sharks to help pave the way for conservation efforts, as well as explore their unique adaptations and behaviors that continue to inspire scientific innovation around the world.”

“Sharks are critical to maintaining the health of our oceans, which are a huge carbon sink for the planet,” Temple adds. “Really, sharks help keep us alive.”

Consider this a chance to visit to a monstrous meg, snap a selfie, and say thanks.

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Sharks! The Meg, The Monsters & The Myths opens Friday, May 26 (members) and Saturday, May 27 (general public) at Houston Museum of Natural Science, 5555 Hermann Park Dr. For tickets and more information, visit HMNS online.

Disney's Little Mermaid remake goes swimmingly despite new so-so songs

Movie review

The biggest problem with the majority of the live-action updates to classic Disney animated films is that they haven’t been updates at all, choosing to merely regurgitate the moments audiences know and love from the original in a slightly repackaged form. That’s great for nostalgia, but if that’s all viewers wanted, they’d just go back and watch the original.

The Little Mermaid falls into much the same trap, although the filmmakers get at least a little credit for trying to offer something new. The story, of course, remains the same, as Ariel (Halle Bailey) has a fascination with everything above the surface of the ocean. Her rebellious nature, at odds with strict King Triton (Javier Bardem), leads her to spy on a ship with Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) and his crew, putting her in position to save Eric when the ship crashes into rocks.

Now totally enamored of Eric, Ariel is convinced by the sea witch Ursula (Melissa McCarthy) to give up her voice for a chance to live on land and make Eric fall in love with her. Trouble is, despite the help of Sebastian the crab (Daveed Diggs), Flounder the fish (Jacob Tremblay), and Scuttle the seabird (Awkwafina), Ursula has no plans to let Ariel succeed fair and square.

Directed by Rob Marshall and written by David Magee, the film clocks in at nearly one hour longer than the original, going from 83 minutes to 135. They accomplish this feat with the addition of several songs, including ones “sung” by Ariel while she is without voice, a relatively clever way to get into her thoughts during that long stretch. There are also additional scenes that give Prince Eric more of a backstory, making him more than just a pretty face on which to hang all of Ariel’s hopes and dreams.

The new songs are hit-and-miss; Ariel’s “For the First Time” is a fanciful number that fits in nicely, but “Wild Uncharted Waters,” a solo song for Prince Eric, feels unnecessary, and the less said about “The Scuttlebutt,” a rap performed by Scuttle and written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the better. What most people want to see are how the original songs are done, and they come off well for the most part. The actors’ voices are uniformly good and the staging is engaging.

Other changes seem half-hearted, at best. A vague environmental theme broached at the beginning is quickly dropped. The cast is very multicultural, but haphazardly so. The film is obviously set on and around a Caribbean island, making it natural for The Queen (Noma Dumezweni), Eric’s adopted mother, and other islanders to be Black. But giving Ariel “sisters from the seven seas,” allowing for mermaids of several different races and ethnicities, feels odd and forced, and a little creepy given that King Triton is supposed to be the father of all of them.

The fact that Bailey herself is Black, while great for representation, is neither here nor there in the context of the film. Bailey has a voice that is equal to everything she is asked to sing, and her silent acting is excellent in the middle portion of the film. McCarthy makes for a great Ursula, bringing both humor and pathos to the role. Hauer-King, who bears a similarity to Ryan Gosling, plays Eric in a more well-rounded manner.

The live-action version of The Little Mermaid, like almost all of the Disney remakes, never truly establishes itself as its own unique thing. Still, it’s a thoroughly pleasant watch with some nice performances, which clears the bar for success for this era of Disney history.

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The Little Mermaid opens in theaters on May 26.

Photo courtesy of Disney

Halle Bailey in The Little Mermaid.

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