—————————————————— Best Person to Consult About Renting Movie Videos 2000 | George St. Clair, Cactus Music & Video | Best of Houston® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Houston | Houston Press
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Best Person to Consult About Renting Movie Videos

George St. Clair, Cactus Music & Video

So you want to watch a good movie on your VCR, but your mind is a blank as to what to pick? Just tell St. Clair what you're in the mood for, and he'll rattle off a half-dozen or so suggestions. If that's not enough, he'll come up with more. St. Clair never fails to help us find something unusual and entertaining, and often it's something we've never heard of before. Why does he do it? Says St. Clair, "You work eight hours, you might as well help someone." Cactus rents videos for a buck a day, so long as you're not looking for a new release. And if you happen to stroll in on a Monday, it's two for the price of one.

Best Place to Buy an Action Figure

Jams Collectibles

Stop rummaging through the local comic-book stores in town looking for that rare orange-carded TIE Fighter Pilot with the "Warning!" sticker on the box. When a store catering to obsessive SF fans (which means sci-fi, for the uninitiated [which stands for science fiction, for the very uninitiated]) is locked away in an antique market, chances are that even the most die-hard toy collectors haven't stumbled into this hidden geek heaven. Many of the major toy store chains have become so annoyed with Kenner's distribution tactics that they won't even carry the new figures anymore, so Jams Collectibles soon may be the only place around to find the newest stock, in addition to the obscure variations and priceless factory screwups. Culled mostly from John Giogaia's own private collection, even the rarest of Star Wars action figures can be found beside Spawn figurines, Hot Wheels and other collectibles, and for a reasonable price. This store is run for love alone, so you can wander in only on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. or Sunday from noon to 6 p.m., when the guys in charge are off work.

Best Car Wash

Carriage Car Care

Tucked behind a service station between Montrose and the Museum District, Carriage Car Care must be the car wash of choice for the SUV-driving crowd. On a recent Saturday, no fewer than a half-dozen urban war wagons were either lined up waiting for the Carriage crew's treatment or basking in the afterglow of a soft-glove hand wash, waiting to be picked up by their owners. The finished vehicles were positively gleaming. Carriage's basic hand wash is $23 and includes a thorough going-over on the inside. The wash and wax is $49. The truly decadent will find the deluxe detailing package, at $145, a satisfying indulgence that includes the repair and painting of minor dents and dings. Carriage also will tend to larger dents, creased bumpers and cracked windshields. The crew is quick, courteous and attentive; and though it may seem like a minor amenity, the waiting room is a surprisingly pleasant place to kill a half hour while your car is being pampered.

Mister Car Wash

Best Garish Ties

Tie Rack

Like dead fish, the ties hang unhappily, wrapped in cellophane, suffocated. They look for a way out; they yearn to be bought. Every now and again, a Jerry Garcia tie -- harmless as a watercolor painting -- leaves the store. Otherwise, the ties remain. Perhaps because they're just too darn boring. Looking for some crazy paisley dangling from your neck? For an overwhelming multitude of colors and shapes traversing the ever-so-narrow canvas that is a tie? For western-themed ones with depictions of ropes and bandannas scattered in unbecoming patterns? Everyone has taste. Tie Rack just has questionable taste.

Best Retro Goods

Flashback Fun-tiques

The giant Big Boy in the window beckons, "Hello, remember me?" So you open the door and cross the threshold from modern-day Montrose into a bewilderment of decades. Old gas pumps with bulbous signs stand across the room from heavy rotary-dial phones and coin-operated diner jukebox connectors. Art deco chairs, shaped roundly like the bottom half of plastic Easter eggs, pair up in front of reproductions of balloon-shaped 1950s Predicta TVs. Barber chairs, movie drive-in speakers, lamps that resemble Sputnik, and polished toasters from the '30s rotate through the showroom, all of them in working order. Flashback Fun-tiques is a store for people searching for something, anything, made with Bakelite. It's a place for people who find old appliances beautiful, and for people who admire the heft and solid feel of the good old days. But old stuff in good shape is hard to come by. Owner Bill Howard scours the country's antique shows for all things cool from the past. If something trips a memory, he wants it in his shop. Especially popular are restored soda machines. Once, a customer wanted a Pepsi machine, even though Pepsi wasn't around back then. No problem. Howard found a way to weld a Pepsi sign in place of the Coca-Cola logo. The swap appeared seamless.

Best Retro Furniture

Metro Modern

That's right. Point Five no longer has a monopoly on the '50s furniture market. Jerry Gibson's new shop has all the modern classics, too: chairs by Eames and Bertoia, an Eero Saarinen table, a Paul McCobb desk, a Herman Miller sofa, a Frank Lloyd Wright rug, each accompanied by a card explaining to the uninitiated exactly what they are looking at, and how much it will cost them to take it home. Of course, not all of the pieces are particularly well pedigreed, and that's a good thing. At Metro Modern, you might find interesting work by an obscure designer that you can actually afford.

Best Thrift Store

Salvation Army

Most thrift stores are dusty-musty pits that you brave in hopes of making the Big Score; that is, finding that perfect, soulful piece of clothing at an insanely low price. By comparison, the Salvation Army on Washington makes a strenuous effort to be shopper-friendly. The big front windows let in natural light, and the place is neat as a pin. Someone has devoted surprising thought to displays: Up front, a family of mannequins models some of the latest acquisitions, and the western-wear section is bedecked with saddles and neon lights. The store even accepts credit cards. But can you still make the Big Score? Yes -- and in fact, you're probably more likely to unearth good stuff here than you would at a dusty-musty place. Mid-range designers' names often grace the racks, as do jeans and blouses you might have bought last year at the mall. But better still, the Washington Salvation Army offers more than its share of oddball vintage clothing: '60s polyester dresses in eye-popping colors; '70s urban cowboy shirts with glittery threads; even the occasional '80s ruffled prom shirt. You know these clothes led interesting former lives, and when you wear them, you feel more interesting yourself. Bonus: Manager Don Cairrel presides over the place as if he were hosting a party, joking with the clerks and offering new shoppers guidance through his wonderland. To the regulars, he quotes Shakespeare and Plato.

Best Salad

Carrabas

When Johnny Carraba wanted to pay tribute to a couple of family members, he bestowed upon them a true culinary honor in our book, the Johnny Rocco salad ($10). The name is a combination of Carrabas dad, Johnny, and good old Uncle Rocco. The salad is a combination of mixed field greens, ricotta salata (salted ricotta), grilled shrimp and scallops, topped with a vinaigrette of red wine and extra-virgin olive oil. The seafood is warm off the grill, and cooked just long enough to get the delectables done, but not so much that they lose any juice. Its not one of those dainty, airy salads for skinny ladies who lunch; this entre salad leaves little room for dessert. Its been a fixture at the restaurant since the day it opened in 1986, and remains one of the more popular items.

Best Professional Wench

Lucenden "Loosey" Crotch

Her real name is Catherine Douglas, and she's a Florida-born actress and comedienne, making a living doing what she loves best. But when she slips on her corseted milkmaid dress, pushes her freckled cleavage up to her chin and puts on a choppy Scottish accent, this redheaded spitfire becomes Lucenden "Loosey" Crotch, Wench For Hire. Just what the hell is a "Wench For Hire"? Well, as Miss Douglas tells it, she is hired to perform her wenchlike duties at many functions, like beer taverns (The Ale House hires her whenever its birthday rolls around) or Renaissance festivals or comedy clubs, throughout the greater Houston area. An eight-year veteran at being a "lascivious lass," her job is to "come out and take care of people in an old British fashion." Some of those caring requirements include getting people to join in silly sing-alongs, regaling the crowd with randy jokes and challenging patrons to ribald parlor tricks, such as offering men to fish a small bell out of her bountiful bosom without using their hands. If you're ever organizing a party (even if you don't need someone to perform the duties of an 18th-century Scottish wench), having Loosey around wouldn't be a bad idea.

Best Banjo Teacher

Anton Ullrich

Full disclosure: We haven't exactly traipsed around town sampling the services of the city's presumably multitudinous banjo instructors (check the Yellow Pages -- that "multitudinous" bit was a joke), but we have shopped widely for one of the semi-archaic five-stringers to practice on. The level of music-store expertise on display was less than encouraging. We are, however, happy with the picker we found, and his instrumental pedigree is top-notch, so if you find yourself in such a niche market, hie thee to Mr. Anton Ullrich, Houston's self-advertised "Mr. Bluegrass." A Houston native and Kingston Trio-era convert to the instrument, Ullrich has been teaching bluegrass "banjer" since 1972 and has played with everyone from Mance Lipscombe to Merle Travis to Michael Martin Murphy. He spent years spinning a bluegrass show on KPFT, and has the reassuring habit of reminding students that hell, if banjo was so hard, he'd still be a banker. Oh, yeah, and he designed the limited-edition $7,000 "Texas" banjo marketed by the Deering Banjo Company's custom shop. Never mind that he long ago abandoned standard tablature for an idiosyncratic system that looks more like folk art than musical notation. The results so far have been promising. And at $29 for a weekly 45-minute lesson, including a monthly tape dub of bluegrass rarities from his vast collection of out-of-print vinyl, it's a bargain at twice the price.

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