Billy Blues and Trail Dust (Houston, Texas)

This is spinning off from Carbon-izer.com and focuses on Richmond Avenue, the section west of Loop 610 which in the 1980s and 1990s was one of the city's hotspots with trendy bars and restaurants. Some of the sites I've previously covered on other sites, including the former Chick-fil-A/Marie Callender's (formerly an apartment complex), 6213 Richmond (formerly home to Ruth's Chris Steak House), and the Rusty Scupper (6367 Richmond). Today we're looking at two restaurants built in the 1990s (the ads are from the Houston Chronicle).

Opening in 1993! The first one we'll cover is 6025 Richmond Avenue, which goes back to 1993 with the opening of "Billy Blue's Barbecue, Bar & Grill", with an unusual feature, the SmokeSax, a 70-foot tall saxophone made of old car parts. Billy Blue's closed in January 2001 and became Cabo's Mix-Mex Grill until 2004. Cabo's still had the distinct sculpture outside, and in 2009, The Horn Bar & Grill opened, taking advantage of the horn, which restored and repainted the saxophone blue (it was originally red). In the last few months of 2012 it became "Club 40", and in early 2013, it was replaced with Diablo Loco. Diablo Loco, a sports bar, had the saxophone moved to the Orange Show at 2401 Munger Street. Diablo Loco closed around 2022, with the current tenant, RockHouse Southern Kitchen, opening in March 2023.

He's holding a tie. Next up is 6101 Richmond Avenue. The sign for the last tenant here, Wild West, is still up but the parking lot is fenced off with the main building demolished. This opened as Trail Dust Steakhouse in late 1994 (a few other Trail Dust restaurants opened around this time under the same ownership, one in the Dallas area at 2300 East Lamar Blvd. opened around the same time). Him cutting off the tie was one of the restaurant's gimmicks, according to Purpledevil of the HAIF (who has sadly been MIA since 2017), "they'd cut off your tie and nail it to the wall if you wore one inside"...but hopefully with permission!

It closed just over three years later and in the fall of 1998 became Wild West, a country-western club, which moved to that location. It shuttered permanently in July 2020 and was demolished soon after. You can see Street View of the area here.