And after some fits and starts, it finally does appear to be happening. Of course, the area has never been totally dead. Hyperia's 72-hour-party-people dance party kept the area bopping into '03, and Industry Cafe's eclectic bills had the place jumping for a time. The punks and the avant-garde had the all-too-briefly revitalized Axiom, and joints like Club Go and Thermal had even shorter runs, but it wasn't until the opening of the Meridian in an old Chinese seafood warehouse that more mainstream crowds started coming.

Meanwhile, lofts popped up all over the place, and it appears that some of the Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants that have been recently priced out of Midtown are opening up east of U.S. 59. As are nightclubs. The dance palace Club Next recently opened up in a former bank at the corner of McKinney and St. Emanuel. And on November 6, Warehouse Live, yet another entrant in the "suddenly they're everywhere" midsize venue stakes, will open up on Rusk in the block that used to house Industry Cafe.

I recently had lunch at Jenni's Noodle House with three of Warehouse Live's principals: The Messina Group's Jeff Messina, who will book the joint, fellow TMG employee Kevin Brelsford, who will market it, and owner-operator Brent Silberstein. "The place is gonna be a two-in-one club," Messina promises as he saws at a hunk of meat in a Vietnamese steak salad. "We're gonna be able to do small and big shows."

Messina says he felt compelled to open Warehouse Live after years of hearing gripes from both fans and artists about the lack of such a place. For the fans, it'll be a little smaller and more intimate than the Verizon and there will be no stairs to climb, as there are at the Verizon and the Meridian. And at Warehouse Live, there will be a raised area off to the side near a bar, where you can stand above the teeming masses, sipping a drink and enjoying great sight lines, and a patio outside where you can leave all the hurly-burly behind. For artists, Warehouse Live will offer backstage showers/restrooms, easy load-ins, high ceilings and a huge stage.

Chart-topping local rapper Paul Wall, Bavu Blakes and Rapid Ric will help christen the club's main room -- known as "The Ballroom" -- on November 12, while critical darlings Mos Def, Jean Grae, Pharoahe Monch and Talib Kweli will grace the stage two days later. Thrice, Underoath, Veda and the Bled (in a show moved from Numbers) follow on November 15, with Simple Plan the day after that and Ben Folds on November 18. Also, in another show moved from Numbers, Senses Fail and Saved the Day have confirmed at Warehouse Live for December 7. And in late November, H-town's foremost hip-hop blogger and underground radio DJ (and sometime Press employee) Matt Sonzala will host the first local installment of the HoustonSoReal parties he's been throwing in places like Montreal, Denmark, Finland and New York City.

Shows confirmed on the side stage -- known as "The Studio" -- include Meshuggah and Mnemic on November 4, Clutch on November 5, Dan Dyer on November 19, History of Our Presence on December 3, and Nile and Prong in the first couple of months of 2006.

Warehouse Live promises the next phase in the seismic shift that has been ongoing in the past six or eight years of Houston nightlife. Back in the '90s, most of the punk and rock shows were scattered out at Montrose spots such as Emo's, the Oven, Laveau's, the Mausoleum, Numbers, Rudyard's, the Blue Iguana and Instant Karma, or at Fitzgerald's in the Heights or Mary Jane's or the Abyss on Washington Avenue, which was then still the cradle of Houston's bluesy roots-rock scene at places like the Fabulous Satellite Lounge, Cosmos Cafe and Silky's. And back then, much of Houston's dance-club and high-dollar, high-concept bar scene was clustered on the Richmond Strip.

Look at what a difference a decade or so makes. Today, almost all of the big dance palaces and fancy bars are in NoDo or Midtown. Instant Karma, the Oven, Laveau's and the Blue Iguana are all gone from Montrose; only the Iguana and Mausoleum were reborn as music venues (now the Proletariat and Helios, respectively); and live shows at Numbers have dwindled precipitously -- as of last week, the only shows they had booked for the foreseeable future were those of the DJs Keoki and Miss Kittin and a Hawthorne Heights gig in November. Virtually everything else that club would have booked has been ending up at the Engine Room, the Meridian and now Warehouse Live.