Houston loses another restaurant, Michael Jordan comes to town and the Red-Headed Stranger pays us a visit. That's just a few of the stories and photos from Houston in 1987.

* I remember it as the 59 Diner, but before that it was Phil's Restaurant - Phil in this case being Phil Bongio. And the Southwest Houston fixture had been feeding hungry Houstonians for years until Bongio decided it was time to hang up his apron. This came about a month after the San Jacinto Inn, a Houston dining landmark, also closed down.

From Rad Sallee's March 14 article:

You know Phil's. The time capsule at 3801 Farnham, where Shepherd becomes a two-way street, just north of the Southwest Freeway. Where big appetites met their match. Where the waitresses were serving giant glasses of iced tea as far back as 1947.

Say it ain't so, Phil Bongio.

But the rotund proprietor who has dished out what he calls "just home-style food" to hungry customers for 41 years insisted he was serving his last meal.

His last, that is, unless he can find a good location to buy.

Bongio says the restaurant's troubles stem from a lease dispute, and he doesn't want another landlord.

Inside each dog-eared menu was a letter from Bongio to his Dear Friends, thanking them for their loyal patronage. "It has been our pleasure to serve this community in our unique style," it said.

"Houston's been good to me," Bongio said, "and I think I've put some of it back."

The first Phil's was at Richmond Avenue and Mandell, a few blocks from the present one. The Farnham location, where Bongio set up shop 16 years ago, is a good place for a restaurant - a pleasant neighborhood with lots of businesses and a major freeway nearby. The parking lot was usually full.

After Friday, where are all those hungry bodies going to find a lunch special with homemade rolls and corn muffins, plus three vegetables - including black-eyed peas and greens - in helpings that crowd each other off the plate?

Where else is there a kitchen ready to plunk down passable versions of spaghetti, Mexican food, a 16-ounce T-bone, a full range of burgers, french fries and onion rings, a Reuben sandwich, a seafood dinner, a shrimp-and-oyster combo, frog legs, fried chicken, and what one local magazine rated as the best chicken-fried steak in town? Not to mention the breakfast stuff.

* Who hasn't been on the Sam Houston? Since 1958, the 100-foot ship has provided boat tours of the Port of Houston -- and free Cokes -- to show off the historic waterway and all it provides for the region. Not every visitor is a student, though.

From Louis B. Parks' article:

The tour attracts visitors worldwide. Princess Anne, Princess Margaret and Prince Charles of Great Britain, of and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands have all been recent passengers on the Sam Houston.

Visitors may find themselves sailing with a diplomatic delegation from the People's Republic of China, a group of business people from Japan or military officers from Europe.

But most riders are tourists, about 40,000 annually. The last page of the guest book on a recent day included guests from Washington, D.C., Miami, Albuquerque, N.M.; Chicago; Sweden and Toronto.

So popular is the Sam Houston's 90-minute voyage that reservations are required to join its friendly crew on the 15-mile excursions. The fair weather of spring always proves popular, so three or four weeks advance reservation are suggested to have a good chance of getting your selected day.

What you see on the tour depends on chance; nothing stays still long in a working port. In the first half-hour of a tour last week, a group of Houston Independent School District children spotted ships from Panama, Monrovia (Liberia), Japan, the United Kingdom, Peru, New Orleans and Israel.

You can book a tour here.

* You'll recall that Willie Nelson played RodeoHouston recently. Well, 30 years ago, he was at the Arena Theater. Music critic Marty Racine was there. (Just how many venues as Willie played in Houston through the years?)

No getting around it: Willie Nelson playing Houston, Texas, is a special occasion. After 11 straight New Year's Eve shows at The Summit, Willie was ready, one can only surmise, for the Arena's more intimate surroundings.

But honky-tonk music was born in honky-tonks, and this was an alien environment, polite, not rowdy.

The sound here is odd, although I kept trying to equate it Thursday night to the traditional country band mix, which often buries every instrument but the vocals. The sound, per se, is clean, and the acoustics soft and accepting. But the mix was so diffused and in disarray I didn't know whether to chalk it up to the Arena, the country mix or to Willie, who might just have gotten lazy.

Or, as a companion said, they called him an outlaw, and now they call him a lounge singer.

The Red Headed Stranger, all the more in the news because of his new movie, and looking quite trim in black duds and flowing mane and wise beard, started out on "Whiskey River" and then followed with: "Stay A Little Longer," "Funny How Time Slips Away," "Crazy" and "Night Life", where Willie finally showed some emotion when kicking in the line, "Listen to the blues."

[...]

But by "All My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys" and "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys", the intimate surroundings threatened to close in on musical execution. Throughout, fans (mostly young ladies) saw license to walk up the ramps as the rotating stage crossed their way to hand Willie notes or flowers. By the cowboy sequence, however, this charming practice had threatened to get out of hand, drawing Mr. Nice Guy from his microphone during the verse.

Willie's handlers finally got the Arena ushers to man the aisles, and the show went easily from there.

[...]

In the end, this was a low-energy, highly visible concert. I don't know, Elvis went to Vegas, B.B. King went to Vegas. This sounded very touristy, the music out of phase. there were times when I just wanted that dang stage to stop so I could hear whether this crew was playing or really going through the motions.