Veteran campaign consultant and lobbyist Bill Miller, of the Austin-based Hillco Partners, has represented a lot of tough clients, one of the more demanding being Les Alexander. The Houston Rockets owner is legendary for trying to exploit every angle of a deal, and he pushed the envelope this spring by trying to maintain control of the food and beverage concessions at the new downtown arena -- in violation of a campaign promise that minority enterprises would receive 30 percent of the arena's operating revenues. Miller did what he could to control the damage, and helped design a strategy of utilizing local minority politicians, including state Senator Rodney Ellis and state Representative Sylvester Turner, to push the Rockets' case. Under pressure from a lawsuit, Alexander finally saw the light and cut a deal with local civil rights groups to end the controversy. Miller also represented Four Families in its upset victory at Houston City Council in the hotly contested "Food Fight" for Hobby Airport concessions. In the process, he whipped last year's best lobbyist, Dave Walden, to earn the 2003 crown.

This is where the rich people go. The place looks like a plantation. As soon as you drive up under the towering oaks, you expect someone to rush out and hand you a mint julep or a big straw hat and a cane. This is a place where the locker rooms have fluffy towels, robes and fresh fruit. Sneak in and sit in front of the 30-foot hand-carved stone fireplace and pretend you're staying in this four-star hotel, living the life the other half lives. Dream a little dream of luxury.

After Mayor Lee Brown took office in 1998, he deposed veteran public works chief Jimmie Schindewolf and ushered in an era of anarchy in the city department that fixes streets and sewers and is most visible to voters. After several directors turned out to be duds, a desperate Brown called in Vanden Bosch, a former Army Corps of Engineers disciplinarian and veteran of the Kathy Whitmire administration. Vanden Bosch finally restored order out of the chaos, but not before the image of leaky water mains and mishandled downtown street construction had permanently tarnished the image of Brown's administration. Thanks to this bureaucrat, we'll never know how much worse it could have been.

During the marathon trial to settle the estate of late Houston millionaire J. Howard Marshall II, Marshall's widow, former topless dancer Anna Nicole Smith, testified, "it's expensive to be me." While that may well be true, the judge in the case eventually ruled against Smith, but we're confident she'll do just fine.

The best T-shirt we saw all summer was "Purple What?" Targeting the Willy Wonka-esque theme of rapper Big Moe's "Purple Stuff" video, it featured a purple Oompa Loompa pouring a cup of lean, or drank, or whatever the hell you wanna call it on the floor. On the back was a poem eloquently revealing the evils of the notorious cocktail. ("Welch's grape and bussin' Tussin / mixed to careless killer thickness / the last thang Black folks need / is subliminal chemical degradation.") Both the words and the shirt are the work of local poet-designer Deep Blu See, who also makes personalized tees out of his Liquid Soul Studios company. The "Purple What?" caught the eye of many. Hopefully they grasped the long-overdue message the shirt was trying to convey. Not since the "Die Yuppie Scum" T-shirt of the early 1990s has a piece of clothing become such a fashion and social statement.

It takes a reporter to think like a reporter, and this former KTRH police beater has put his four years of news experience to invaluable use. The 39-year-old Cannon draws top reviews from current police and crime watchdogs for unfailing courtesy and prompt processing of information requests. He understands the different deadline demands of print, radio and television. He offers suggestions on how to find information. He'll even put up with the weird and imponderable question. One of his favorites involved a police car caught in high water. The reporter wanted to know the exact amount it would cost taxpayers to repair the vehicle. "You get so many requests where the reporter just wants you to do the story for them," says Cannon, who with his experience is quite capable of doing just that. Cannon is a welcome change from years past, when some HPD information officers were regarded more as speed bumps on the information highway.

No, diversity isn't the name of a bar or restaurant or nightclub or coffeehouse or loft or even theater or sports stadium. But it applies to them all and more. And that's the ultimate attraction of a downtown that's alive. With the central city's growth (under those clouds of construction dust), no one or two clubs or eateries can lay claim as the ultimate magnet -- indeed, no one sector or group can do it, either. Our downtown is emblematic of a city that has really come together. Where else does an Astros fan belly up to a bar for a postgame beer and wind up befriending the martini couple closing out an evening after the opera? How about the businesswoman kicking back with the bohemian set? The homeless can even remind the high-rollers about the realities of the world -- something that doesn't happen in The Woodlands. There are plenty of good cafes and bars far away from Houston's heart -- but no outlying area can come close to the variety that underscores downtown's vitality. If the city has any sense, it will protect this diversity that makes a trip into town so delightful and dynamic.

Yes, we know. Wayne's not really a weathercaster. This investigative reporter would rather be chasing down unethical pothole fillers than tracking weather patterns. But when Tropical Storm Allison hit Houston hard, Wayne Dolcefino was there. Before it became virtually impossible not to be up to your waist in water, Wayne searched out the deep spots. Displaying no concern for his physical person, he waded in without even a raincoat. Wayne showed us just how deep the water was that first dark night of Allison. He chased after cars attempting to plow through the water; he pointed out the rooftops of those who had already met their flooded fates; he let a hospital know that an employee was going to be late for work. He investigated, dammit. Of course, Wayne might have been smarter to find out a little more about the water before he went in. A few hours later, reporters began discouraging kids from playing in the filth. And the next day, a decapitated body was discovered floating down Pasadena Highway 225, where Wayne had been reporting the night before.

River Oaks accountant Bob Martin may make his living balancing other folks' books and tax accounts, but he has the soul of a reporter, albeit a conservative one. He hangs around KSEV radio and maintains a wide circle of media pals. He also may be the only person in Houston who has developed a time schedule to record all local TV news broadcasts every evening. Martin makes regular appearances on KHOU as a talking head on accounting themes, and feeds reporters a weekly stream of suggestions for stories. In the current mayoral cycle Martin is backing Michael Berry, and is not shy about recommending media strategy to the first-term councilman.

It looks like a painting, a 12-foot square field of blue, oddly placed on the ceiling of the simple Quaker meeting room. But this painting is alive, deepening in color and drawing you in as the sun sets outside. It's the sky, you realize. Light artist James Turrell has cut an opening in the roof and tapered its boundaries into a knife-edge that subverts depth perception. It feels as if you could reach up and touch the sky, or that the sky has crept down through the opening to touch you. A bird or a cloud or a plane passing overhead simultaneously breaks the illusion and makes it all the more wonderful.