The Home of Texas Hold ‘Em

Welcome to Robstown: Home of Texas Hold ‘Em.

It’s official – Robstown is to the home of Texas Hold ‘Em. Thanks to HCR 109 by Herrero, D-Nueces.

The game’s invention dates back to the early 1900s when it is traditionally held that the first hand of the popular card game was dealt in the city of Robstown, and from there it traveled northward in the hands of “rounders” and up the sleeves of cardsharps who quickly recognized the game’s potential for mass appeal.

This is confirmed by many of the sites I’ve visited about the history of Texas hold’em. From Wild Jack Casino:

According to some historians, the first game of Texas Hold ‘Em was played in a small town called Robstown, Texas at the turn of the century (late 1890s early 1900s). 

We also made the bola tie the official tie of Texas and the boot the official state shoe. What a day.

Houston Vice Run Amuk

If you have a favorite strip club in Houston, then you might want to make sure it will still be around tomorrow, because the city of Houston is on a mission to shut them down.

According to the Houston Chronic, the city of Houston has begun sending out letters to sexually oriented businesses (read: titty bars), notifying them they are in violation of the city ordinance which prohibits SOB’s within 1500 ft. from schools, parks, churches and other “sensitive” locations.

Capt. Steve Jett of Houston Vice said:

“They need to close up. We wanted to give them fair warning.”

What would have been fair to the businesses is to have grandfathered those existing businesses when the ordinance was established. Secondly, after the court decision, what would have been fair is to give those businesses time to make the necessary accomodations. It would also have been fair to the women who work in these establishments to be given time to find new jobs.

The city of Houston didn’t care about fairness here. Their only concern was ensuring that their puritanical constituents be sated.

The ordinance is in Chapter 28, Article 3, Sec 28-125:

The applicant’s enterprise is located within 1,500 feet of any school, church, public park, or licensed day-care center. Measurements shall be made in a straight line, without regard to intervening structures or objects, from the nearest point on the property line of the applicant’s enterprise to the nearest point on the property line of such school, church, public park, or licensed day-care center.

And:

Seventy-five percent or more of the tracts within a circular area, as described herein, are residential in character. The radius of such circular area shall be 1,500 feet, and the center of such circular area shall correspond to the midpoint of a line joining the two most distant points on the boundary of the tract on which the enterprise is located; multifamily tracts shall be counted as multiple residential tracts based upon the tax records acreage of the multifamily tract according to the following formula: each one-eighth acre of land or fraction thereof shall be equivalent to one residential tract. For purposes of this calculation a residential tract or multifamily tract shall be considered to be in the circular area in its entirety if any portion of it lies within the circular area.

The ordinance was passed in 1997 and has been the object of a lawsuit, but U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas recently ruled in favor of the city of Houston.

The blog – Off the Kuff – has more on this subject.