Bar Remembrance: Jimmie's Icehouse
Many of the taverns in my dive bar book have closed. Here is the last, for now.
Jimmie’s Place
2803 White Oak
As the West Alabama Icehouse is to Montrose, so Jimmie’s, another icehouse, is to The Heights, Montrose’s rival in the hippest neighborhood in Houston stakes. Both are decades-old and dog-friendly. Neither serves anything stronger than beer and wine. Just as the Icehouse draws in a wide spectrum of area locals from plumbers to Rice undergrads, so Jimmie’s draws in a swath of people ranging from electricians to artists. Both came through in the wake of Hurricane Ike, offering up ice and cold beer long before other establishments in the area, despite the power being out for miles around.
In recent years, the Heights has become slightly more of the hippie/Austin Lite ghetto, a title Montrose relinquished in the ‘70s before becoming first punk central and then undergoing Yuppie revitalization. Accordingly, at the Icehouse you feel like you are nowhere but Houston, and there are occasional punk invasions. At Jimmie’s, you hear even more country music and feel like you could be in Austin; indeed, its low rolling-hill surroundings on White Oak Boulevard are the closest thing Houston has to a Hill Country.
Cash only, though there is an ATM on site.
Today: Bobcat Teddy’s Icehouse. It’s a neo-Icehouse, retooled for Millennial hipsters. Give it 20 years.