Texas scraped the rainbow off Montrose's streets at two in the morning. On Thursday, it goes back up, this time where the state can't reach it. Pride Houston 365 announced this week that Progress Pride banners will hang from utility poles along Westheimer Road, through the heart of Houston's historic gay neighborhood. They go up on September 24. The crosswalk they replace was never just decoration. It was laid in 2017 for Alex Hill, a 21-year-old struck and killed by a driver at Westheimer and Taft the year before. Crews arrived just after 2am last October with a cold-planing machine, after Texas governor Greg Abbott ordered cities to strip "political or ideological" markings from their roads. Protesters sat down on the stripes and sang Radiohead and R.E.M. until police moved in and started making arrests. "It takes a lot of hate to dig up a rainbow," Jeffery Gielow, who owns a bike shop a block from the intersection, told Houston Public Media. "They dug it up. They threw it away. How do you think his family feels?" Houston is not the only city answering back. Austin put up a historical marker where its crosswalk had been, and Dallas painted the steps of a library in its own gayborhood.