Dog days of summer? No such thing in July 1986.

* In what could have been the swankiest garage sale in Houston history, fixtures and furnishings from the Shamrock Hilton went on sale to the public. The hotel, which closed the previous month, was sold to the Texas Medical Center.

Back then, there were no announced plans for the building, but, this being Houston and all, demolition was pretty much a foregone conclusion.

From reporter Kim Cobb's story on July 17:

The liquidators will allow the buyers to walk through the hotel's suites and rooms, but buyers are expected to remove and carry the items down to the lobby cashier themselves. The company will, however, supply dollies for people to use in moving the furniture and heavy items down from the upper floors.

The hotel's first-floor lobby has been set up as a kind of display area - it resembles a catalog showroom. The Emerald Room, with its huge chandelier (the most expensive item for sale, tagged at $22,500), is filled with rollaway beds, cribs, office equipment and commercial food preparation equipment.

Another ballroom off the lobby is stacked from wall to wall with bedspreads, blankets, sheets and pillows. Still another room holds a selection of televisions - consoles and portables.

[...]

Since the hotel was renovated in recent years, there is not much for sale dating back to the hotel's early years. And very little of what is left is marked with any kind of Shamrock logo.

But the items for sale run the gamut of price and taste - from framed prints and bathroom fixtures selling for around $20 apiece to a baby grand piano tagged at $6,700.

The size and price of the furniture varies with room size. The larger suites feature wardrobes and book cases with glass doors that are marked at anywhere from $275 to $1,900. And upholstered arm chairs are priced starting about $75.

* In what must have been a stirring occasion, the tall ship Elissa sailed into New York harbor and up the Hudson River that July 4 for celebrations marking the re-dedication of the Statue of Liberty.

The Chronicle's Ann Holmes was there during that historic trip.

ABOARD THE ELISSA, NEW YORK - Shouts rang out, cheers rose, cannons fired for Texas' glamorous 202-foot square-rigger, the bark Elissa, as she sailed majestically down the Hudson River at Lady Liberty's all-day house party of the century.

It was a champagne-tinged occasion in which two grand old ladies each had their toasts, their prize moments: Liberty and Elissa.

Liberty who has won her share of the spotlight all week was, after all, only 100 while Elissa at 109 was the joyous oldster of the day, youthfully rejuvenated like the statue and also apparently ready for another century.

* Finding a convenient (and cheap) place to park around the courthouse complex can be tough. Doesn't matter if it's 2016 or 1986. But when you're the chief of police on official business, you can pretty much park where you please, as reporter Tom Moran found out.

A big black car illegally parked in a fire zone in front of the Cotton Exchange Building at Prairie and Caroline in downtown Houston.

And in the windshield was a sign with the Houston Police Department seal.

The sign read: "Police Vehicle Office of the Chief of Police. This Vehicle Is On Official Business."

Police Chief Lee P. Brown was inside for a trial in one of the three Harris County civil district courts in the building.

Officer Daniel Turner, a spokesman for Brown, first said police officers who are testifying must park their city cars legally. "Those vehicles get ticketed, just like your personal car," he said.

Emergencies are a different matter, Turner said.

But after learning that the illegally parked car was the chief's, Turner said it was exempt from the parking laws because Brown was a trial witness on official business.

He said Brown's driver, also an officer, had parked the car in the fire zone.

* In other hotel news, residents at downtown's Texas State Hotel were ordered to leave when the building's owner, the University of Texas, shut it down because of the poor downtown hotel market. Also, as reporter Rad Sallee noted, the management company that had been leasing the building left the university with the tab for $100,000 in back taxes and other utilities.

The 1929 hotel had become home to a few elderly residents managing to get by. From Sallee's June 8 article:

Spanish-born John Gomez, 87, a retired oil company employee who has lived in the Texas State for 14 years, said he hoped to join [others at the Montague Hotel across the street].

Gomez bragged he cooks on a hot plate, diagnoses and treats his own infirmities and passes the time listening to radio talk programs.

"I can't cook at the Montague, but I would be in my own home," he said. Downtown Houston, he explained, is the only neighborhood he knows. "If I go two blocks in any direction, I am lost," he laughed.

[Social worker Mary Ann] Wolinsky noted that like many other Texas State residents - and unlike the stereotype of such tenants as alcoholic or deranged - Gomez dresses neatly and carries himself with dignity. "He has found a way to survive and considers this his home," she said.

Another such resident, reputed by fellow tenants to have been a judge, sat smiling near the lobby doors, waiting for relatives. Nearing his 100th birthday and stone deaf, he seemed undisturbed by the surrounding bustle. A cardboard box held his clothes, and on top of the box was a small space heater.

[...]

Famed defense attorney Percy Foreman said a client leased a room in the hotel, and Foreman often put up out-of-town clients there because it was near his office.

"I lived at the Texas State, but not in that room," he said.

"I had 25 rooms there at one time, back in the '30s," when he said he was doing bond work for 26 counties and needed rooms for commissioners and judges.

In the 1930s, when he began using the hotel, Foreman said, the Texas State was one of Houston's three best hotels (along with the Rice and Lamar).

It took about 20 years, but things would eventually turn around for the Texas State. These days, the building has been renovated and is now a Club Quarters hotel.

* On July 15, the Astrodome hosted the 1986 All-Star game, the second in the stadium's history. The Eighth Wonder of the World maintained its reputation as a pitcher's park: 19 strikeouts were recorded, including five in a row by Dodgers ace Fernando Valenzuela.

But in the end, the American League overpowered the National League 3-2, giving the AL its third win in 24 years.