Houston's East End got an occult-themed rock bar and the underground moved in. Black Magic Social Club at 7036 Harrisburg Boulevard, in the Second Ward along the East End's old commercial spine, is a 21-and-up bar with a stage that has made itself the city's home for everything rock, punk and metal - a roughly hundred-capacity room where touring crust punk, thrash, dungeon synth and darkwave acts play inches from the crowd and the bar keeps pouring until two. The occult theme is set dressing do.....

Halloween night 1950 was opening night for the University of Houston's grand hall, the east wing of an Art Deco administration building designed to give the young university a front door worthy of a city. Cullen Performance Hall at 4800 Calhoun Road occupies the eastern half of the Ezekiel W. Cullen Building, designed by native Houston architect Alfred C. Finn - the man behind the San Jacinto Monument - with long classical wings and regularly spaced pilasters. The building was announced in March.....

Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler played their college ball in this building when it was Hofheinz Pavilion, home of the Phi Slama Jama teams that changed basketball. The arena at 3875 Holman Street on the University of Houston campus opened in 1969 and served the Cougars for half a century before a 60-million-dollar transformation - anchored by a 20-million-dollar gift from Houston restaurateur and Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta - rebuilt it from the concourses in. Reopened in December 2018 as t.....

The ceiling is a curved fibre-optic star field, the stage is clad in marble, and the confetti cannons are permanent fixtures. NOTO Houston - the name stands for Not of the Ordinary - occupies a converted warehouse at 3215 McKinney Street in EaDo, east of downtown Houston. The venue is the second act of a proven formula: co-owner James De Berardine opened the original NOTO in Philadelphia in 2017, and brought the concept to Houston in June 2023 with an opening weekend headlined by Afrojack, Loud.....

The University of Houston tore down its own history to build on the exact same spot. TDECU Stadium at 3874 Holman Street opened on August 29, 2014, with a win over UTSA, rising from the footprint of Robertson Stadium, which was demolished in December 2012 after the athletics department concluded renovation could not deliver what football in the Big 12 era demands. The $128 million build - part state bonds, part student-approved fees, part private money - was fast: groundbreaking on February 8, .....

Houston's East End got its CBGB when the pandemic cleared the field, and the kids built the scene themselves. The End at 7124 Lawndale Street sprang to life as older venues shuttered during the lockdown years, establishing itself as the city's essential DIY room - an all-ages, all-genres space a mile south of Mason Park. The layout is pure DIY economics: two stages, one indoor and one outdoor, with the indoor stage sitting six or seven feet from the front doors so the audience walks straight in.....