While we love a good night of boot-scooting at Neon Boots Dancehall & Saloon, the fact that it’s located out in Lazy Brook means our Uber bill to get out there is often as high as our tab. We’d love for Neon Boots to open a Montrose location of the dancehall in the Tower Theatre building, or for a competitor to do something similar. Since the Tower Theatre is right across the street from the former home of Mary’s—one of the city’s most historic gay bars before it was unceremoniously stripped of its identity and turned into a coffee shop (we’re totally not still bitter about it)—it would be a very Texan way to pay tribute to the neighborhood’s rich queer history. Throw a rainbow cowboy boot up on the marquee, stock the bar with some Lone Star and quality whiskey, and put some Dolly Parton and George Strait in regular rotation, and we’ll be there so often we’ll start storing our cowboy boots in the trunk of our car for easy access.

There isn’t a bowling alley in Montrose, which is wild, especially considering the lanes of the Westheimer strip are so narrow you’re basically doing gutter bowling whenever you’re driving down them. Since the old Tower Theatre building is already built out to house a restaurant, we’d love to see a concept there similar to West University’s Palace Social, which has expansive and elevated food and drink menus. While the downstairs could be devoted to bowling and eating, the small upstairs area could be turned into a mini arcade. Since the building is famous for its large marquee sign, how great would it be if there were two gigantic bowling pins affixed to the vertical portion of it?

Speaking of arcades, while Y2K culture is unfortunately having a moment right now thanks to Gen Z, our nostalgia sweet spot goes a bit further back, to the 1980s—the golden age of arcade games. We’d love for the Tower Theatre’s next tenant to tap into that by opening an ’80s-homaging arcade bar and pizza joint. Think of it as a Mr. Gatti’s Pizza, but for adults only (sorry kids!). Instead of a buffet, the bar could serve more post-pandemic-appropriate personal pizzas, and in lieu of soda machines there could be machines of the daquiri variety. Add in a few vintage-style photobooths, some old cartoons projected onto a screen, and some live DJs spinning retro synth-pop, and we’d be all in every weekend—especially if the new owners put an upgraded version of Mr. Gatti’s signature Dutch apple pizza on the menu, a pie that should be an abomination, but one we thought was the pinnacle of haute cuisine when we were seven.

Boring, we know—but stick with us. Now that the former home of Half Price Books is a parking lot, Montrose is severely lacking in quality bookstores. While the Freed-Montrose Neighborhood Library is great for most reading needs, we’re known to splurge on chunky coffee table books when our second check of the month rolls in, and we (perhaps thankfully) can’t do that at the library. We’d love to see something reminiscent of the now-defunct Domy Books (the art-focused bookstore and gift shop that closed in 2013) take over the Tower building. We’re in need of a new neighborhood spot where we can peruse (and sometimes purchase) rare art books, hard-to-find magazines, and well-curated art objects. Since we recently rewatched You’ve Got Mail, we think it would be great if the new shop named itself “The Shop Around the Corner” as an homage to Kathleen Kelly’s bookstore in the film. And by “around the corner,” we obviously mean around the corner from Boondocks, which just so happens to be one of the worst reading spots in the city.

How large can a boutique get before it loses that title and has to start calling itself a department store? We mill over that question every time we visit Kuhl-Linscomb, Houston’s sprawling, 100,000-square-foot boutique on steroids. We love its diverse collection of (very expensive) products, but our funds are limited, so we usually just stop by for people-watching. While the shop has a decent mix of high- and low-priced items, we can’t tell you how many times we’ve spiraled into a depression after picking up the candle of our dreams only to realize that it retails for over $300. Kuhl-Linscomb could save us a lot of emotional trauma if they opened a Montrose satellite of the boutique in the old Tower Theatre building and kept it stocked with items that are all $50 or less. We could restock on Voluspa candles there without having to first walk by shelves teaming with L’Objet and Diptyque votives the size of mop buckets. All we’re asking for is the same meticulous curation but for a fraction of the price. They could even come up with a clever name for the satellite, like “Kuhl-Lesscomb” or “Kuhl-Linscommoner.”