Short Cuts: Episode I 
Montrose Lives!
There's something for everyone in Houston's Montrose, the strangest neighborhood east of the Pecos.
(Page 5 of 5)
Pacifica Radio and the "underground" radio stations have always related heavily to the Montrose area and, in fact K-101 and its sister AM station, KTRH, are currently in the process of moving their studios into the neighborhood. They'll soon be neighbors on Lovett Blvd. With KILT's AM and FM station. Among the four, they'll reach well over a million listeners a week, says KILT's Cap'n Macho, still known to many as Dan Earhart.
Earhart, former general manager of KXYZ-FM (now KAUM-FM) has a long history in Houston radio. Now he can be seen most any time, riding around Montrose on his bicycle, his blue jeans rolled up to his knees, his face haloed by a massive bushy beard. And at night Cap'n Macho's rambling, iconoclastic newscasts—sometimes didactic, often tongue-in-cheek—pierce the hairwaves on both KILT stations. (KILT's top-40 AM station has led the city's ratings for years, but the newer FM outlet—which has a free-wheeling format and calls itself "Radio Montrose"—has a weak signal and can't be picked up outside the area. Its transmitter is on Westheimer at Whitney.)
Cap'n Macho leaned back in the old cane rocker, its battered cushion spitting out stuffings. It was a gorgeous, spring-like afternoon on the Willard Street front porch, just around the corner from the Pagan Church. "Montrose is the only small town I've ever lived in," said the Cap'n. "It has the small town attributes of everybody knowing everybody else. But it's a big city small town, so everybody doesn't get in your way.
"It's a lot closer to the earth. Why, it's still got squirrels," said Dan, pointing out a nose-twitching rodent that had taken the middle of the street and was calmly sizing up the scene. "I rarely go out of a 10 to 12 block radius. I find everything I need. I don't relate to living in Houston, Texas. I live in the Montrose."
Cap'n Macho traded smiles with the afternoon sun. Jamie and Peggy, who live up the street, walked by and waved baseball mitts; they were headed for a nearby field to play catch. Gail Wilson—she's working to legalize marijuana—ambled around the corner from Anderson Fair, retracing the squirrel's steps, and joined us on the porch. Former ecology activist and aspiring politico Mike Noblet pedaled by on his two-wheeler: "Hey, is this a party? How about a beer?"
Our interview with Cap'n Macho had indeed become a party and, perhaps as well, the proof of the pudding—Earhart's unspoken "I told you so." Where else in sprawling Houston would such an impromptu scene occur?
After we interviewed the Captain, we moved up to the General. "You're looking for an old-timer?" they asked at Anderson-Fair. "Just go upstairs. The General — he owns this place. But watch out; once you get him started he won't stop."
The old building on the corner of Grant and Welch houses Anderson-Fair on its ground floor; some of the restaurant's employees reside on the two upper levels. The owner, General Victor A. Barraco, is 79, and his stripes are legit, via the U.S. Marines. (The Houston Marine Corps Reserve Chapter is named after him.) We found the side door and climbed the two flights of stairs.
"Hey, there. Are you the General?" He was standing on a chair, applying first aid to some faulty wiring. "Talk 'bout the Montrose? Well, I'd wanted to get this finished this evening, but I guess..."
"...Yeah, I bought this place from Congressman Emmett Moss — he was speaker of the Texas House of Representatives back in 1925. There was a drugstore then and an A&P. I was in show biz then, owned five theaters and The Key vaudeville house on West Dallas where Bessie Smith used to play."
What about this building, General? What's its history?
"Well my wife and I sponsored an artist, Miss Carlson. And then my wife gave the Playhouse Theatre $1,000, too. You know, arty-farty and all. Anyway, Miss Carlson was a teacher over to the Feather and Feather School of Art on Montrose. When we moved out of here, she moved in and had her studio here. Every one of her students made more money than she ever dreamed of.
"Then Jim Love moved in. [Jim Love is a Houston sculptor who had hair down over his shoulders back when long hair was the exclusive property of women and the Three Musketeers. A retrospective of his work, featuring weird variations on teddy bears, was recently shown at the Houston Contemporary Art Museum.] He came to me one time and complained about the roaches. I came up here and there was empty beer bottles all over the place, and they all had dead roaches in 'em, all right...
"Then another artist moved in. He put more paint on the floor than on anything else. Then this antique guy moved in over there [pointing]. King of the homos, they called him. And a sculptor had that place — he was going to kill himself one time. A girl tried to kill herself downstairs. First she killed her parrot and then tried to kill herself. Anyway, there was a barber shop and a boutique and a cycle shop. And two architects. Then Gray Fair came along, and he started the restaurant...."
Area resident Noelle Kanady says there are three main problems in the Montrose: "the pack of dogs that attack you, the police who harass you, and if you're female, the dirty old men who are all over the place."
For some, the police might not pose that much of a problem. But artist Shell views it this way: "People are uptight about overprotection. The police really do harass people. On this corner here (Welch at Stanford) I can remember four different times they've stopped someone and in two minutes there'd be six patrol cars."
We talked with patrolman B.J. Ferguson, a boyish-faced cop who had been on the Montrose beat "about eight months." Ferguson told us that the shooting at Art Wren's was considered an isolated incident and that the Montrose is not a particularly high crime area. "It's probably safer to live than most any place in town."
Ferguson went on: "I've never made a mugging, and I don't guess I've ever heard of more than one or two purse snatchings...I've never known about a rape or that kind of violence on anybody who lived there. There used to be a problem with girls who were hitch-hiking being raped, but that doesn't happen much any more.
Though crimes of violence may be scarce, burglary and vandalism apparently are not. Officer Ferguson said, "You get burglary calls all the time, can't hardly find the time to go from one to the next. It's mostly stereos and TV sets, that kind of thing. It's not the upper-income people that are hit, it's those kids living in the apartments. And a lot of those older homes that have been made into duplexes." Why so many burglaries in this area? "Well, a lot of people say it's because of people trying to keep up on a dope habit, but you can't tell that for sure until you catch them."
B.J. Ferguson says he likes the Montrose beat and that he faces little hassle. "I enjoy working out there — it's always different. I think both sides have changed some in the last couple of years. They (freaks) have begun to realize that we're trying to do a job out there, and we've changed our techniques a little. The kids don't bother me and we don't bother them."
So the Montrose community has seen its ups and downs in the last few years. But even those who've voiced a pessimistic view see light at the tunnel's end. Like Don Snell: "It's fallow ground and there could be a turning. Something could happen; there may just be one element you need to pull it all together...For all its faults, I'd rather be here than any other place I can think of."
WE'VE TRIED TO DESCRIBE THE MONTROSE—to give you a taste of its history, its ambience, its future. But it might be that the only way to comprehend "The Montrose," to come to any kind of terms with the diversity, the stark contrasts between tradition and iconoclasm, is to navigate the area—via foot, bike or motor car.
You'll travel the busy arteries like Montrose, Westheimer, Alabama, Richmond, Shepherd, with their grocery stores, sidewalk cafes, boutiques, strip joints, art galleries, all in bizarre juxtaposition.
There are other spots you may—or may not—notice, that reveal best the nature of the Montrose:
The ramshackle frame house at the corner of Welch and Hopkins, the one that looks like a heavy gust might level it. Ernie and Noelle pay $55 a month (including utilities) for the downstairs. An equally dog-eared shack adjoins the house; Bald Charlie lives there. An old lady across the street called the cops, complaining about junk in the yard and the shabby condition of Charlie's pad. Charlie responded by cleaning up and painting the front—all that is visible from her window—a lively green with fancy trim; he left the sides and rear untouched, like a movie set. Charlie and the old lady who called the cops on him are now the best of friends.
The Rothko Chapel, at 1409 Sul Ross, adjacent to the University of St. Thomas, built by John and Dominique de Menil to house 14 massive dark canvasses by Mark Rothko, who killed himself soon after completing these paintings. Widely acclaimed for its beauty and atmosphere, the octagonal chapel is a sanctuary for any and all who wish to partake of it. Barnett Newman's sculpture, "The Broken Obelisk," dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King, stands in a reflection pool outside.
Old man Tannenbaum, who owns a half million dollars worth of property in the 100 block of Westheimer, yet works as night manager in the Baby Giant drive-in grocery across the street.
The strange tower of a building on Mt. Vernon at West Main, on the St. Thomas campus, that houses the Institute for Storm Research, the only one of its kind in the world. Photos of the entire sky are shot from inside a plastic bubble on top.
Of course, it may be easier to predict the weather than to figure out what this place called the Montrose is all about. One thing is certain: if you go to Prufrock's, don't play chess with a guy named Steve...
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