Pam Robinson Fights Back

In recent years, as the Inner Loop in-fills, and neighborhoods that were once full of live-and-let-live working-class Hispanics (like Robinson's Rice Military area) or young hedonists (as in Montrose) are resettled by aging Yuppies, the noise complaint issue has become more and more problematic. The West Alabama Icehouse has been besieged with them. So has Rudyard's. Helios ceased playing all but the softest live music and changed names to AvantGarden. Under the Volcano's New Orleans brass band nights came to an end in early 2006 at least in part because of noise complaints.

It seems that all these people who claim to want to be where the action is in fact want to force their dreary suburban placidity on all of us. To them, a walkable lifestyle is one that enables them to hoof it to Starbucks, not neighborhood bars with bands.

There exists a ruse well-known to NIMBY busybodies and control freaks. Say a couple from Katy read a Chronicle article about "urban living," and, inspired, they decide to move into some frayed-but-gentrifying Heights or East End neighborhood. Let's say that to their dismay, they discover on their first Friday night in their new urban homestead that there's an old bar with a stage on the corner, and that bar gets crowded after dark.

Let's further say they don't like the cut of this establishment's jib. The regulars there don't look like their kind of people. They're a tad, well, common. They favor Bud Lite over Chardonnay, and they look to be fit only to cut your grass or repair your home theater system. Or maybe, as is the case with Walter's, they drink Lone Star and look like those "punk-rock" juvenile delinquents you stultified right out of Katy long ago.

And having those kind of people congregate on your corner is hurting your property values, your precious investment. What to do? How best to remedy this ­situation?

One such method well known to many of these ransacking suburban Huns is to phone in noise complaint after noise complaint. They log all of these and take them to the hearing when the bar's liquor license comes up for renewal, hoping that the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission will agree that the place has become a nuisance, a hindrance to the entire neighborhood's prosperity. If they win the T.A.B.C. over, onward marches progress. Another swatch of the urban quilt is ripped out and replaced with Cinco Ranch fabric. Or maybe a Beverly Hills-style wine bar. Lord knows Washington Avenue needs another one of those.

Robinson says the city is pressuring her to drop her suit against the Pevetos. "They really want the city to mediate it," she says. "But that would be like having the fox watch the henhouse, wouldn't it? So that ain't happening. I'm proceeding. If they get in my way, I'll sue them too."

Sue the city?

"Why not?" Robinson continues. "I don't need to now. They're not bothering me. But if they start harassing me...This is what my husband was afraid of. He said, 'Now it's just gonna get ugly.' And I said, 'It hasn't been ugly already?' It's been ugly since [the Two Gallants show in] October of 2006."

Robinson says she has a letter of endorsement from her next-door neighbors, people who have lived right next to Walter's and the prior incarnation of the club for well-nigh 20 years. "They wrote a letter stating that since we moved in, things have been wonderful because we soundproofed, we're very responsive to any complaints or concerns, and if we were gone, they would be sad, because there was no way they could replace us or find someone else better," she says.

Robinson wants the Pevetos to know they have a choice. They can learn to live with Walter's, or they can deal with her contingency plan for the property. "If Walter's closes, I'm turning this place into a 24-hour methadone clinic," she says. "And I will have it subsidized with your federal tax dollars. Don't think I won't. Addicts need help too."

john.lomax@houstonpress.com