New tech platform allows Houstonians access to the city's top BBQ

where's the beef

You can search Houston's top BBQ spots by a wide range of criteria. Courtesy of Houston BBQ Guide

Anew website wants to help Houstonians eat better barbecue. Created by the founders of the Houston BBQ Festival, the Houston BBQ Guide offers readers the ability to search for restaurants based on a wide range of criteria, including location, parking, and whether a restaurant is likely to sell out of food.

The editors of the guide, led by Houston Chronicle barbecue columnist J.C. Reid, have selected the 28 initial entries with an eye on small, family-run businesses that aim "to provide a quality product and experience on a consistent basis." Entries include both historic barbecue joints like Lenox Bar-B-Q and Pizzitola's Bar-B-Que as well as spots that have earned recognition on Texas Monthly's list of the state's 50 best such as CorkScrew BBQ and The Pit Room.

Each entry includes details about a restaurant's ownership and pitmaster, noteworthy dishes, and a brief video tour. The website also includes essays about the history of Houston's barbecue restaurants and other relevant topics.

As an "about the guide" section notes, people who want to eat barbecue may not know where to find it. By breaking things does geographically, the guide offers diners the opportunity to discover new places or be prompted to visit old favorites that aren't necessarily included in media-generated lists of the "best" barbecue restaurants.

"I like to think of it as a guide for everyday barbecue fans," Reid said in a statement.

The guide also offers an alternative to crowd-sourced review websites as well as the responses one gets on social media when a request for a restaurant near Sugar Land might be met with a suggestion to drive to Tomball — well-intentioned, surely, but not very helpful.

The guide will add new entries in time. For example, Feges BBQ's original Greenway Plaza location is listed but its newly opened Spring Branch outpost isn't (yet). A separate guide to barbecue pop-ups is already in the works, and the editors also tout the possibility of expanding to other Texas cities.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

Kids can know their grandparents and great-grandparents a little better. Keeping Families Connected/Facebook

Sweet new Texas-based website lets you record a final goodbye for loved ones

FAMILY LEGACIES

Anew North Texas startup helps soothe the sting of losing loved ones by allowing them to leave behind an entirely different kind of heirloom. A Sweet Goodbye is a new online service that lets people record messages that can be accessed and enjoyed by family and friends after they're gone.

Fort Worth-based founder Rich Hollander, who worked for Radio Shack/Tandy Corporation in the area for more than 25 years, got the idea about a year ago during a reflective moment.

"I was sitting in synagogue, a quiet time when you contemplate things," he says. "During those times, I talk to my parents — who are both gone — and my late brother, and about 15 other people who have passed away. On this particular morning, I was talking to my mom. I knew what she was telling me, but I couldn't hear her voice. I thought, 'I wish I could just push a button and hear her voice,' but there's nothing I could do about that."

While it's too late for Hollander to hear his mother's voice, he says, he wanted to provide such a service for other people. He also says he wanted to make the process as simple and as painless as possible.

"You go to our website and click on a button that says, 'I want to make a recording.' Before that you prepare a little bit. You figure out what you want to say, and you figure out who you want to send the message to. You get their email address, and we ask you to give us two trusted advisers so they can tell us when you passed away, and then you just record your message, and that's it."

The message customers record is hosted on the cloud, and it's all audio based. Your loved one will hear it after you die, as many times as they would like. There is no video option, and messages can last a maximum of five minutes long. According to Hollander, this is by design rather than due to technical limitations.

"We thought about our target customers; Baby Boomers and their parents don't want to see themselves," he says. "They don't like the idea of recording a video. And people don't want to listen for more than five minutes. You can say a lot in that amount of time."

Some people choose to pass down secret family recipes or record tales from their youth, the company says.

Realizing that people can also use phones and other home devices to make recordings, Hollander made A Sweet Goodbye inexpensive, accessible, and convenient. He says there are other options for similar services on the market, but they are "much more complex" and "much more expensive," costing up to $8 per month, compared to his company's one-time fee.

"You can listen to it a thousand times from your computer or your phone," he says. "You can have your children listen to it. They can listen to their great grandma's voice. For $25, it's a bargain."

Hollander himself uses the service.

"I have two adult daughters in their 40s," he says. "One lives here, one lives in New Zealand. My message to them is something like, 'If you pushed this button, you are probably having a bad day, and just need my voice of reassurance. So, understand that I'm up here in heaven, and I'm looking after you guys, and tomorrow will be a better day than today.' They can push that button and hear that message whenever and wherever they want."

While A Sweet Goodbye is simple to use, there is an emotional hurdle in getting started.

"The hard part is making the first message," Hollander says. "Because it's coming to grips with the fact that you are not going to be around forever, and neither is your mom. But it is cathartic. For me, the second message was extremely easy to make."

The site has just launched and is now available for anyone to access. On Veterans Day (November 11), A Sweet Goodbye will provide one free service for active duty members in the United States military. Later, they will do another giveaway for nurses and first responders. Follow their Facebook page for updates.

"It's our way of doing something nice for the world," Hollander says.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

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Oxy's $1.3B Texas carbon capture facility on track to launch this year

gearing up

Houston-based Occidental Petroleum is gearing up to start removing CO2 from the atmosphere at its $1.3 billion direct air capture (DAC) project in the Midland-Odessa area.

Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental, said during the company’s recent second-quarter earnings call that the Stratos project — being developed by carbon capture and sequestration subsidiary 1PointFive — is on track to begin capturing CO2 later this year.

“We are immensely proud of the achievements to date and the exceptional record of safety performance as we advance towards commercial startup,” Hollub said of Stratos.

Carbon dioxide captured by Stratos will be stored underground or be used for enhanced oil recovery.

Oxy says Stratos is the world’s largest DAC facility. It’s designed to pull 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air and either store it underground or use it for enhanced oil recovery. Enhanced oil recovery extracts oil from unproductive reservoirs.

Most of the carbon credits that’ll be generated by Stratos through 2030 have already been sold to organizations such as Airbus, AT&T, All Nippon Airways, Amazon, the Houston Astros, the Houston Texans, JPMorgan, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks and TD Bank.

The infrastructure business of investment manager BlackRock has pumped $550 million into Stratos through a joint venture with 1PointFive.

As it gears up to kick off operations at Stratos, Occidental is also in talks with XRG, the energy investment arm of the United Arab Emirates-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., to form a joint venture for the development of a DAC facility in South Texas. Occidental has been awarded up to $650 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to build the South Texas DAC hub.

The South Texas project, to be located on the storied King Ranch, will be close to industrial facilities and energy infrastructure along the Gulf Coast. Initially, the roughly 165-square-mile site is expected to capture 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, with the potential to store up to 3 billion metric tons of CO2 per year.

“We believe that carbon capture and DAC, in particular, will be instrumental in shaping the future energy landscape,” Hollub said.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

New app by Sports Illustrated grants access to 700 sports courts in Houston

Goal!

A new sports center booking app CatchCorner, powered by Sports Illustrated, enables sports enthusiasts in Houston to seamlessly secure a spot for a quick game without membership fees.

It soft-launched in Houston this spring and, according to co-founder and chief operating officer Maya Azouri, has been a huge success.

"The Houston expansion has been jaw-dropping," she said. "Up until now, CatchCorner’s launch in New York City had been our most successful market, but Houston has launched on par with it."

Within a 30-day period this summer, over 30,000 users join the app, Azouri noted, adding that the app would include 700 unique recreational spaces users can choose from in the city.

"There’s a real sports culture here, with athletes of all levels from casual weekend players to competitive amateurs and even pros. The diversity of the sports community, combined with the number of high-quality facilities across the city, makes it a perfect fit for CatchCorner," she said.

CatchCorner in Houston offers bookings for basketball, volleyball, soccer, pickleball, padel, baseball, badminton, and tennis, with plans to include golf simulators and ice rink sports soon. The Zone Sports, Toros HTX, PAC Gym, and Houston Pickleball Center are among the most popular venues.

Using the app is a snap. Once you pick your sport, venues with available slots are listed including distance from you with the booking schedules in the results so there are no surprises. The slots can go fast, so occasional error messages pop up when trying to book, but it's otherwise a three-click process. CatchCorner also helpfully includes a picture of the facilities while booking.

CatchCorner announced Google integration in June that lets users book through the app directly from searches when they look up specific venues. This is slightly less intuitive to use than the app, but it does ultimately work in both mobile and desktops versions. Either way, it greatly streamlines the booking process for people who just want to schedule a quick pickup game somewhere.

"It’s especially useful for casual players or people who want to organize something on short notice," said Azouri. "Whether it’s a weekend basketball run, a weekday futsal match, or a spontaneous pickleball game with friends, CatchCorner makes it easy to coordinate without the usual logistical headaches.

"Some feedback here has been that we’re like 'Expedia for sports.' It’s because booking a flight online is that easy, booking your next game or workout should be just as simple."

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

10 Houston billionaires make Forbes' list of richest Americans in 2025

The Rich List

America's wealthiest billionaires are $1.2 trillion richer in 2025, bringing their collective worth to a staggering $6.6 trillion. And Houston's own Richard Kinder has become the richest billionaire in the city, according to the new Forbes 400.

The Kinder Morgan chairman is the 11th richest Texas resident and ranks as the 108th richest American. Kinder also dethroned Tilman Fertitta to claim the title as the wealthiest Houstonian.

The annual Forbes 400 list is a definitive ranking of the wealthiest Americans, using interviews, financial data, and documentation provided by billionaires and their companies.

Kinder's wealth

The publication estimates Kinder's net worth at $10.6 billion, up from $8.1 billion last year. He also appears among Forbes' separate list of the richest billionaires in the world.

"It’s been a year unlike any we’ve seen in the four decades we’ve tracked America’s billionaire class,” said Forbes senior editor Chase Peterson-Withorn in a press release. "The super-rich at the very top are richer than ever — and between the White House and the booming stock market, they’re as powerful as they’ve ever been."

Kinder, 80, co-founded oil and gas pipeline firm Kinder Morgan in 1997, which is now known as one of the largest American energy infrastructure companies. He stepped down as CEO in 2015, though he still chairs the board of directors.

Kinder and his wife, Nancy, also founded Houston-based nonprofit the Kinder Foundation in 1997. The organization provides "major gifts to public causes with the intention of helping people realize healthy and rewarding lives," according to its website.

In May 2025, the Kinders pledged $150 million to Texas Children's Hospital and MD Anderson to create the Kinder Children's Cancer Center.

"Our philanthropic efforts center on supporting transformational projects in Houston, and this initiative exemplifies that mission in every way," said Kinder in a press release. "We were deeply impressed by the extraordinary leadership and unwavering commitment of both UT MD Anderson and Texas Children’s to pursue a bold, collaborative model of care. It is a rare and powerful moment when two leading organizations come together to create something entirely new – something capable of reshaping the future of pediatric cancer care."

The richest Houstonians

In all, 43 Texas billionaires made it on the 2025 Forbes 400 list, and 10 are based in the Houston metro.

Hospitality honcho Fertitta, 68, is the second-richest billionaire in Houston, and his net worth has jumped from $10.1 billion last year to $11 billion in 2025. He owns the Golden Nugget Casinos, the Houston Rockets, Texas-based restaurant and entertainment company Landry's, and also serves as the U.S. Ambassador to Italy.

"Serving as President Trump's ambassador to Italy 'is a real job,' says Fertitta, who personally oversaw the renovation of Villa Taverna, the ambassador's residence in Rome," Forbes wrote in his profile.

Fertitta most recently put his ritzy 250-foot-long superyacht on the market for about $192 million, with Forbes saying he "has a bigger one on order."

Here's how the rest of Houston's billionaires fared on this year's list:

Oil tycoon Jeffery Hildebrand ties for No. 123 nationally with an estimated net worth of $10 billion. Last year: $7.6 billion.
Toyota mega-dealer Dan Friedkin ranks 128th nationally with an estimated net worth of $9.7 billion. Last year: $7.6 billion.
Houston pipeline heir Randa Duncan Williams ranks 130th with an estimated net worth of $9.5 billion. Fellow pipeline heirs Dannine Avara and Milane Frantz tie for 135th nationally. Each has an estimated net worth of $9.4 billion. Scott Duncan ranks No. 141 with a $9.2 billion estimated net worth.
Houston Texans owner Janice McNair ranks 201st nationally with an estimated net worth of $7.3 billion. Last year: $6.2 billion.
Energy exploration chief exec George Bishop of The Woodlands ranks No. 325 with an estimated net worth of $4.7 billion. Last year: $5 billion.

Richest billionaires elsewhere in Texas

The richest person in America in 2025 is none other than Austin-based Elon Musk. Musk, 54, saw his net worth skyrocket to $428 billion this year, or $184 billion more than his 2024 net worth. He claimed the No. 1 spot for the fourth time.

Walmart heiress Alice Walton of Fort Worth was dubbed the wealthiest woman in America for 2025. Walton, 75, simultaneously holds the title as the richest woman in the world. Forbes estimates Walton's net worth at $106 billion (up from $89.2 billion last year) and proclaims her as the first female centibillionaire (a person with a 12-digit fortune) in America. Now that's wealth.

"Tariffs. Inflation. Slowing employment. None of it has hit the fortunes of America’s billionaires," Forbes said. "A decade ago, when it took $1.7 billion to make The Forbes 400, a net worth of $3.8 billion was comfortably within the top half of the ranking — now that lofty sum is the minimum required."

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