Tropical Storm Allison reigned over downtown like a nightmare turned horribly real. How did the folks over at TOC Bar deal with the aftermath of this pernicious force of nature? With complete and utter denial. "We never closed," declares co-owner Dan Hunt. "We always stayed open. We didn't give people the chance to find out if we were closed or not."

Spoken like a true businessman. After the storm nearly turned the three-year-old watering hole and several other area bars into actual holes of water (five and a half feet deep in some places), Hunt, the TOC staff and a bevy of volunteers immediately went into action to get the bar in tip-top shape for the following weekend rush. "By Monday or Tuesday, the water was gone," remembers Hunt. "And we just gutted the place, you know? We threw all the furniture out, came in and cleaned the heck out of everything with pressure washers and lots of soap and bleach and everything to get all the stink out."

According to Hunt, it took him and his crew four days to scrub all the reminders of Allison from their walls and floors. And did they throw a major bash to signal their return to form? Nope, it was just business as usual. "I don't think we did anything special," says Hunt, still apparently in denial. "We just tried to play it off like everything was back to normal."

TOC Bar may have been a mess, but the connecting TOC Lounge was completely shot to hell. With $200,000 worth of damage, the TOC Bar's one-year-old spin-off chill room became a casualty of the storm. Hunt and TOC decided not to rebuild the lounge -- not because it was impossible, but because they had disagreements with the land owner over fair rent prices in a post-9/11, construction-centric downtown.

Despite the cost of the cleanup and the loss of the lounge, TOC has recovered. The bar is as rowdy and rambunctious as ever, almost to the point that you forget the place was a lake, briefly, about a year ago. "The last time I thought about it was on my tax return," says Hunt. "I don't think anybody even thinks about it anymore." TOC may stand for Totally Out of Control, but it was nice to see the club's staff and owners keep their cool in a crisis.

Back in the early '90s, The Axiom was the coolest hellhole in Houston. In a best-of issue of its own, Details magazine listed the bar (in its Catal Hüyük incarnation) as the punk place to visit when in town. Skanky, dark and perpetually sticky, the punk rock bar hunkered on the eastern edge of downtown and filled the night air with grungy, growling alternative rock and wildly screeching punk. It was host to the young and pierced, who slithered up to the bar with their shaved heads and combat boots for poetry slams and pitchers of brown beer.

On the outside, Jason Nodler looked like any other Axiom barfly, with his hangdog T-shirt style and his perpetually ironic sneer. Of course, even bellied up to the bar, guzzling pitchers of Lone Star, the wiry young man who would soon become artistic director of Infernal Bridegroom Productions was casting his artful eye on the wide open spaces of The Axiom, sticky though they may have been. In fact, he had a vision. The Axiom, with all its angsty, dank, too-cool blackness, would become the space where Nodler would produce his first show, In the Under Thunderloo. The eccentric rock musical about cavemen and the Apocalypse caused a riot of energy among young Houston hipsters. The show sold out every night, and Nodler's star was on the rise. But as he and IBP began to make waves, The Axiom began to lose steam. When it closed, it seemed as though an era of wild-bar finery was over.

Throughout the '90s the building would take on many identities, even as a fabulous transvestite bar. But it seemed as though the space that had launched one of our city's most stirring and successful theater companies would never return to the glory of its early-'90s punk rock heyday. Re-enter Nodler, who clearly never forgot the power of those times. Last year, when IBP finally got the funding for a space of its own, it wasn't long before Nodler and his motley crew were back at McKinney, rolling up their sleeves and getting down to the nitty-gritty business of turning the dilapidated bar into a first-class avant-garde theater. These days it's scrubbed and painted and dressed up with couches and carpets -- but not too dressed up. After shows and during weeks when nothing's in production, the expansive lobby hosts punk bands, just like in the good old days. The mix of highbrow and lowbrow, of theater and music, is making The Axiom one of the most compelling things happening in Houston when the night sky rolls in.

To a lot of people, perhaps, the scene was desultory: a mid-June game between two teams far below .500, the seventh inning of a 7-1 blowout, Milwaukee's Miller Park two-thirds empty. Houston Astro Alan Zinter waited in the on-deck circle. To the fans barely paying attention in the stands, Zinter was just another no-name pinch hitter strolling to the plate. For him, the moment could not have been more tense or exciting. "My knees just shook; I could feel my heart beating in my chest; I could hear my pulse in my ears," he says. But that short walk from the on-deck circle to the batter's box marked the end of a long, long journey for the 34-year-old catcher.

It marked his big-league debut after 13 years in the minors. Thirteen years of bad pay and endless bus trips, 13 years of watching his teammates get younger and younger as former hopefuls gave up the dream or got promoted past him. Big things had been expected of him. He was a first-round draft pick of the New York Mets in 1989, but his big break never came. Somehow, Zinter never gave up.

"If you had asked me 13 years ago at Shea Stadium, 'You're not going to make the big leagues until 2002 -- can you do it?' I probably would've said no," says the El Paso native. "It was frustrating, watching TV and seeing people I had played with or against. I was never jealous -- it just fueled my fire to do more." Zinter says he stuck with it all these years simply because he loves the game. "I've always had heart and dedication," he says. "But I would critique things a lot -- I wanted to be a perfectionist."

But baseball, as he notes, is a game where the best batters fail 70 percent of the time; he had to learn to accept that and not dwell on the times he couldn't get a hit. "I realized I had to change my attitude and think positive thoughts," he says. "You have to not let the bad days be so bad and the good days be so good, but to stay on an even keel."

Each spring would bring the moment when he'd get the bad news that he was being shipped down to the minors. But this year the new Astros manager, Jimy Williams, left him believing his chance would come soon.

Sure enough, his chance came, on that otherwise forgettable mid-June night. Zinter grounded out against Brewer pitcher Ben Sheets. From then on he was a big-leaguer, his career statistics forever listed in the Baseball Encyclopedia no matter what the rest of his future held. Now, instead of long bus trips, he's taking charter flights to four-star hotels in Chicago and Montreal, playing in stadiums he's only dreamed about and basking in the casual locker-room luxuries that veterans take for granted.

"I'm not a prospect anymore. I think I appreciate it all even more now than I would have if I was 23," he says. "I'm enjoying every minute of it."

That's right, folks, chocolate's making a comeback. Did it ever go away? you may ask. Well, for most of us, no. But health-conscious types now have a new reason to indulge: Chocolate is good for you. A recent Penn State review says cocoa beans are loaded with flavonoids, which have strong antioxidant effects and can lower cholesterol levels and improve cardiovascular health. (Remember the scene in Woody Allen's Sleeper when the physician recommends a hot fudge sundae as holistic medicine? Not so crazy, huh?)

Whatever their reasons for going back to the dark stuff, local chocolate cravers should be grateful that Gilbert Johnson didn't like Florida. If he had, he might still be there today, and Houston would never have known the fantasyland that is The Chocolate Bar.

Johnson's love affair with chocolate began two decades ago in Kansas City, Missouri. Driven by his passion, he moved to Florida with a business partner to open his own store. After a brief detour through Austin (which, lucky for us, Johnson also disliked), he settled in Houston in the fall of '98 to retire and be an artist. But he was unfulfilled. He longed to return to business -- and to making chocolate.

"For me to be totally happy, I have to have my chocolate world," says Johnson. And does he ever. Since The Chocolate Bar opened two years ago, it has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams: Houston demanded 2,000 pounds of milk chocolate last Christmas for the chocolate-covered popcorn alone.

Johnson agrees that chocolate is great for your heart, but he's not talking medicine. He sums up the success of his business with one word: comfort. "After 9/11, our business just went out the ceiling, because everybody was like, 'Oh, I just need a piece of chocolate.' "

"It's about fun and happiness," Johnson adds. "It brings back unbelievably happy thoughts." As customers poke around the shop, marveling at the chocolate ballet slippers (which one clever visitor said were "too too"), the chocolate golf sets, the solid chocolate baby bottles, the violins, the dental kits (!), the dipped potato chips and the outrageous homemade ice cream concoctions, "You can see 'em having these flashbacks," Johnson says. "And regression therapy. I call chocolate a very soothing regression therapy."

It's enough to make you feel like a kid in a candy store. But as Johnson puts it -- and when you visit, you'll know exactly what he means -- "This is not candy. This is chocolate."

"Back in the '80s, people used to tell me I had the best restaurant downtown," says Clive Berkman, owner of Charley's 517. "I would laugh and mutter under my breath, 'I have the only restaurant downtown.' "

Charley's 517, which opened in 1971, was originally an old-school dinner house, with waiters in tuxedos and a stuffy private-club atmosphere. But a succession of great chefs elevated the food there to something quite unique. French nouvelle cuisine blossomed there under chef Amy Ferguson in the mid-'80s. And in 1988, the New American cuisine debuted there under London-born chef Bruce Auden, who now owns the highly acclaimed Biga in San Antonio. Arturo Boada, now chef and owner at Solero, followed Auden, bringing a Spanish flair to the classical kitchen long before the Nuevo Latino era. More great European and classically trained chefs succeeded these culinary pioneers. But when a fire closed Charley's 517 in 1994, Berkman decided to try something different.

"Our customers had changed," he recalls. "The old, stuffy, high-end restaurant market was going away and being replaced by this new baby-boomer high end, which was quite different. So we downscaled the restaurant. No more tuxedos on the waiters. And we went to sort of a steak-house menu." The name of the restaurant was changed to Clive's, and Berkman became the head chef. The formula worked for a couple of years, but then in 1998 the city began tearing up the streets. "We started experiencing what Main Street is experiencing right now," says Berkman. The construction was finally finished in 2001, just as Tropical Storm Allison arrived, devastating the arts district. Soon after 9/11 came the Enron scandal. Funding was cut in the arts, and business dried up at Clive's. "Enron, Arthur Andersen, Dynegy and Reliant made up 60 percent of our corporate business," says Berkman. "All of a sudden it was just gone."

About three years ago, Clive Berkman found Jesus. And since July of last year, he has been a minister at Second Baptist Church. For a guy who was raised Jewish, and who had long fought the Baptists over liquor licenses, his transformation was a bit of a surprise. "Now my life has taken on a whole new meaning," Berkman says. The Lord also moved Berkman to remove his toque. "I never was that good at it; I was just all I could afford," he admits. Last year a classically trained Irish chef named Mark Johnston took over in the kitchen. The steak-house menu was dropped, and so was the name Clive's. According to Berkman, Johnston's new menu is a nostalgic homage to Charley's 517 "through the ages," with borrowings from all the former great chefs who have worked there.

"The old classic dining rooms of Houston have faded away," says Berkman. "Maxim's is gone, and Tony's will soon be replaced by Anthony's, if you believe the rumors." Berkman hopes that Charley's 517 can fill the old-fashioned dinner-house void with an elegant place that isn't stuffy or pretentious. It will be a few years before the Charley's 517 comeback pays any dividends. "Downtown is a mess now," Berkman says. "But in two years, when the construction is done, this area is going to take off like a rocket. Then we will really be back."

Take entrance no. 2 off Main, mosey through Rice campus and see what they've done to the place. Rice has one of the few college campuses that you can actually drive through without being accosted by the police or hitting a dead end every 20 feet. If you don't lose your nerve when you see the stadium parking lot (it's awfully big for such a little school), you can cut all the way over to University Boulevard or Greenbriar and sail into West U by the back door, avoiding both the construction and the maddening Bissonnet traffic jams.

Andy Fastow was the creator of those infamous outside partnerships with the Star Wars names that diverted millions from the company to his family foundation and the bank accounts of fellow employees. After winning a conviction of accounting giant Arthur Andersen for illegally shredding Enron documents, government prosecutors have given every indication that they may go after Fastow's scalp next. Runner-up: Hamilton Middle School Principal Kenneth Goeddeke, a fave with parents and students who resigned after district computer police caught him using his office computer to access adult porn sites.

After years of successfully defending local celebrity clients like QB Warren Moon (spousal abuse) and Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich (DWI), former Harris County prosecutor Rusty Hardin finally jumped to the major leagues with national coverage of his roles in the Anna Nicole Smith probate jamboree and the Arthur Andersen shredding trial. Hardin got so under Smith's skin during cross-examination that she immortalized him for the nation's court TV junkies by snapping, "Screw you, Rusty." The lawyer charmed reporters from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal during the Andersen trial with his country mannerisms and hokey off-color suits. He repeatedly ridiculed the government's case with the slogan "Where's Waldo?" Unfortunately for Rusty, Waldo turned out to be Judge Melinda Harmon, whose instructions forced the jury out of a weeklong deadlock and into a conviction of his client.

God bless that American tradition of elections -- those august times when the populace flows into frayed schoolhouse hallways or churches or even humble homes or garages to exercise their voting rights. But the downtown crowd, at least the Republicans, got a better deal on this democratic notion in the party primaries. While the lesser Democrats of the same precincts were packing into the Knights of Columbus Hall, the GOP (as in Grand Ol' Park) was granted access to the airy delights of Union Station, a.k.a. Minute Maid Park. Makes sense. Ballots take on the look of lineup cards. There's a turnstile of sorts to take the straight-ticket voters. The players in this game have already tapped into their base of fan support with fat PAC backing. A dangling chad dispute? Call in the ump. And electoral turnout would soar if they could only expand the process to let fans vote on fresh candidates for some of the Astros' positions -- or even on a new owner.

East End native Carol Alvarado has been crusading for other people's municipal campaigns ever since she could walk, and last fall she finally won her own place on Houston City Council. The former aide to Mayor Lee Brown weathered an acrimonious contest against two opponents to win the District I seat without a runoff. This success came to her despite the fact that she was opposed by both her term-limited predecessor, John Castillo, and the other Hispanic member of council, Gabe Vasquez. The 35-year-old Alvarado won her race by utilizing a wealth of contacts built through more than a decade of community involvement. Somewhere down the road she might just face off with last year's Best Politician, Councilman Vasquez, for the right to become Houston's first Hispanic mayor.