MOODY MONTROSE

CRISSCROSS IN COSTUME HOUSTON’S (STILL) COOLEST NEIGHBORHOOD — IT’S A HALLOWEEN TRADITION

A wise man named Omar Afra once shouted on a Facebook rooftop that “Montrose is yesterday, today, tomorrow.”

That was his response to the tired designation that this Houston neighborhood was “dead,” it’s cool factor killed and buried under a new Mattress Firm and a Raising Cane’s chicken outfit.

He wasn’t wrong. As Montrose changes, with the cars getting nicer and the restaurants becoming less budget friendly, some familiarities have disappeared while others have remained. One of those that refuses to die is the area’s penchant for partying. I know this well.

This coming weekend I am the Grand Crawler of the Montrose Crawl, an annual celebration of all things drunk and spooky in the neighborhood.

It’s a party for a good cause as a portion of all drink sales during the crawl will be donated to the Houston Area Women’s Center.

Montrose Crawl organizer Jason Ginsburg says that the crawl was born out of not seeing many Halloween options in Montrose.

“When my wife and I moved to Montrose we were surprised that our own bohemian neighborhood didn’t have its own Halloween party. It was actually kind of dead on that night, no pun intended,” he says.

Soon he and his friend Mark Martin hatched a plan to change that.

“We combined the idea of the Greenwich Village parade with a traditional pub crawl, creating an event that is basically trick-ortreating for adults,” Ginsburg says. “And just like actual trick-or-treating and the village parade, it had to be organic, it had to be free. We just wanted to create something cool for the neighborhood.”

That first crawl in 2007 included only four bars: Poison Girl, Slider’s, Boondocks and Catbirds. Three of those are still left standing and part of this year’s crawl, which starts at 6 p.m. Saturday.

Ginsburg and his crew had convinced themselves that no one else would show up that first year and that the six of them would be the only ones in costumes.

“We were shocked to find each bar jam-packed with people in Halloween costumes,” he says. “We were also a little freaked out that hundreds of people were running across the Westheimer curve between Boondocks and Slider’s (now Anvil) where there’s no protected crosswalk.”

Attendance kept growing, and revelers weren’t coming from just the neighborhood. People were driving in from Katy and Pearland to drink and check out the costumes. I seem to remember seeing a set of Tetris blocks chasing one another down Westheimer one year near Poison Girl.

This year, 11 bars are participating in the crawl, including those surviving original three plus Brasil, Pistolero’s, Stone’s Throw, Doc’s Motorworks, Slick Willie’s, Etro Lounge and El Real Tex-Mex. Some of those extend the party out into their parking lots.

And, unlike most other big-time Halloween events in Houston, the crawl is still free.

“It will always be a community event, by our neighbors and for our neighborhood,” Ginsburg says.

What does Ginsburg think about the luster of “old cool” Montrose finally wearing off in lieu of brunch spots and strollers.

“There’s still a lot of magic left in Montrose,” he says. “Or just at Magick Cauldron at the very least.”

Look out for me somewhere along the crawl. I will either be the guy in the ill-fitting Superman costume or an Astros uniform I liberated from the team locker room.

Sorry, Evan.