Pam, in Urban Cowboy, said of Houston “It's my favorite city in the whole world. Its just got so much energy." Then she poured Bud a bourbon and showed him the silver plated saddle in her bedroom. Class move. Been there dozens of times.
I always preferred Pam to Sissy in that movie, and thought Travolta picked the wrong girl at the end of the movie. True, Pam was a conniving, spoiled rich kid, husband-stealing tramp, but she was just trying to keep her cowboy after all, and where I come from that’s what we call “good people.”
Where I come from is southwest Houston in 1972. Where the men watched football games at holidays while the women cooked and cleaned. The kids played out in the yard all day with the neighbor kids, and came in to eat or watch TV shows like Cadet Don and Kitirik (if you never watched Kitirik, you really missed out). The boys played “kill the man with the ball” (the older boys called it something less-PC), and who knows what the girls played (dolls or tea party or something stupid, no doubt). No one worried about child abduction by aliens or roving bands of pedophiles, mostly because someone’s parents were always watching out for the kids on the street. Mom would generally cook, but for a treat, we ate at places like the Log Cabin, San Jacinto Inn, Prince’s Hamburgers, Christie’s, Monterey House, ice cream at the Borden factory, or Valian’s Pizza (still absolutely the best pizza of all time). The grown-ups would go places on special occasions like Sonny Look’s, the Red Lion, or Jimmie Walker’s. For fun, or birthday parties, we’d go to Peppermint Park, Kiddie Wonderland, Sea Arama Marine World, Astroworld, Astros or Cougars games at the Astrodome, watch takeoffs at Hobby Airport, the Battleship Texas/San Jacinto Monument, or watch movies at the Post Oak Drive-in, or Alabama/River Oaks/Bellaire Theatres (one of the greatest times of my life was the night Dad threw caution and money to the wind and we went to a double feature of From Russia With Love and Goldfinger at the Bellaire Theatre. The first time I ever saw a James Bond movie. We first went to K-Mart to buy lemon drops to sneak in Mom’s purse). Houston was quite the town back then: KNUZ and Paul Berlin, Westbury Square, the 1968 Final Four, the Bluebonnet Bowl, the Houston Cougar veer offense, the Shamrock Hotel (Mom won a beauty contest at the Shamrock Hotel once), Globe, Louie Welch, Sharpstown (scandal and shopping center), the original Houston Aeros, Elvis playing eight sold out shows at the Rodeo, Dan Pastorini, Kenny Houston, Elvin Bethea, Don Wilson, Cesar Cedeno, Bob Watson, the Rice Hotel.
In short, I'm from somewhere that’s no longer there.
So naturally I was shocked recently to hear myself advising a young friend that if she really wanted to improve her career and prospects for marriage with a suitable partner, she should consider moving to Houston. After all, there’s only about four things in Houston: freeways, strip centers, package liquor stores and topless bars. Which you get to in your minivan, pickup truck, or your stolen, oil burning 1979 Datsun. I didn’t stick around-most of the times I haven’t lived in Austin I was trying to figure out some way to get back to Austin.
Maybe its all the time I’ve been spending there lately, but Houston has a lot more going for it than meets the eye, or as compared to the People’s Republic of Austin. No the rest of this post was not sponsored by the Houston Chamber of Commerce. To begin with, I really admire the way Houston got started. The Allen Brothers basically took a bayou landing in a swamp, rife with malaria and yellow fever, and managed to convince a bunch of Yankees and Germans that the place would be fantastic for a new city to handle spillover shipping traffic from Galveston. Never mind that the bayou wasn’t actually navigable, or that there were constant floods, yellow fever plagues, mosquitos, and hurricanes. They named it after General Sam hoping to lure the Capitol from Austin. But if the Allens had anything at all going for them it was timing. Once Galveston became flattened in 1900, the refugees needed somewhere inland to wind up, and Houston is where they went. Ever since, it seems like Houston has been a place for people to get their break, make a new start in life, take a chance. From the Allens to Jesse Jones to Bob Smith to Walter Fondren to Glenn McCarthy to Jim McIngvale, Houston has always been a place where you could pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again, no matter what happened in your past.
Houston has professional sports, multiple universities and colleges, world class medical care, the world’s leading energy companies, famous museums, fantastic performance spaces and artists (separate ballet, opera, symphony and theatre companies), great restaurants, a variety of fun bars, coffee shops (don't forget House of Guys, errr, Pies), tons of child-oriented activities, lots of jobs, a pro-business government and civic leadership, and a distinct lack of displaced, horn-honking Californians driving up housing prices. There’s numerous parks with all manner of facilities and activities (Hermann, Memorial, Armand Bayou, San Jacinto, Bear Creek, etc.). The beach (such that it is) and the lake (windsurfing, boating, jetskiing) are not far away.
As compared to Austin, the people are more solid, more down-to-earth. One can find women covered with tattoos, piercings, and multi-color hair, but not every single place you go. I can’t remember the last faux-hawk I saw in Houston. When out on the town in Austin, you have to watch nearly every step to avoid tripping over some out of work web site developer thinking about working on getting gigs for his band (but not actually doing anything about it). In Houston, you meet people who have jobs. Hmm…I wonder at what point in life I became Mr. Hand.
For all of Austin’s supposed “diversity,” Houston has it beat on that score too. Most southwest Houston road signs are in two languages. Houston has all manner of robust ethnic and religious communities virtually unknown to Austin. But like Austin, everyone goes to and enjoys the many city-wide events, like the rodeo, International Festival, Dickens on the Strand or Mardi Gras, and Clear Lake Christmas Boat Parade. Everyone lives and dies (mostly dies, signed Bills 41-Oilers 38) with the Astros, Rockets and now the Texans. In Austin the cops arrest football players, in Houston they also taser them. Now that’s a town with ambition. Houston gets big events that Austin never would: Super Bowls, PGA tournaments, national political conventions, Final Fours. On top of all of it, the living cost is a lot lower.
So let’s confront head-on Houston’s problems, of which there are many.
Humidity. Yes, its extremely humid. Which, however, is good for the skin, and for growing plants. Its not like its not humid lots of other places. Austin’s humidity on average is only about 10-20 percent lower, especially in summer. Would you rather have dry-cracked skin and constant thirst instead?
Heat. Its also very hot. Not as hot as most other places in Texas, but with less breeze and more humidity. Houston doesn’t exactly have melting sidewalks you know. Generally it rains a lot in summer which keeps the afternoon heat down a bit. Its not like Houston is the only town where it gets hot either. Plus, in the winter, when people are dying of exposure, arteriosclerosis and alcoholism in the upper decks of Lambeau Field or Soldier Field, Houstonians are often wearing shorts.
Mosquitoes. Yes there are mosquitoes. They bite, and are irritating. One or two kids die of St. Louis Encephalitis every year. On the other hand, Houston doesn't have any scorpions, spitting cobras, tarantulas, Tasmanian devils, piranha, or baby-stealing dingoes. Everywhere in the world you go, there’s something flying, slithering, charging, or swooping down from the sky. Mosquitoes are pretty innocuous on that scale.
Traffic. Lots of traffic. And road construction. According to some statistics, it’s the worst traffic in the nation. The untold story though is Houston is now pretty decentralized, so conceivably you could stay on your side of town and not go across town for quite awhile.
Killer mass transit trains. I think they’ve pretty much solved that problem. It took awhile for Houstonians to realize that trains and human beings cannot occupy the same space at the same time, and after about the first year the trains quit killing people.
Its ugly. Again, compared to where? Phoenix? Wichita Falls? Ever watched Rushmore? It was filmed mostly in the areas around Rice University, which is one of the most attractive neighborhoods in the country. Kingwood and the Woodlands and lots of other neighborhoods are in attractive wooded areas.
Pollution. Agreed, its one of the most polluted places in the country. In fairness, its going down. Also, most of the pollution is smog or ozone, which isn't as bad as particulates. The Mayor has made great efforts at rallying business to implement voluntary changes. One of the upsides to Houston’s relentless corporate hucksterism is that when it comes to bear at full force, it usually pays off.
Hurricanes. At least you get advance notice one is coming. My California and Alaska friends wake up every day wondering if this is the day for the “big one.” Houston doesn’t get any blizzards, sand storms, plagues of locusts, presidential election campaigns, or other natural disasters.
So if Houston is that great, why don’t I go back? My house is paid off, I have to go to the PUC too often, I have my restaurants and other haunts, and I’m afraid my 2 ½ non-imaginary friends there might be disappointed for a week if I left. I know my 3 non-imaginary friends in Houston would be disappointed if I were there all the time. Plus, in Austin, I’m the wise and mature person. In Houston I’m just another dime-a-dozen yuppie with wrinkled shirts and a bad attitude. So Austin is where I'll stay, until I give it all up to travel the world. Or raise yaks for a living.
I always preferred Pam to Sissy in that movie, and thought Travolta picked the wrong girl at the end of the movie. True, Pam was a conniving, spoiled rich kid, husband-stealing tramp, but she was just trying to keep her cowboy after all, and where I come from that’s what we call “good people.”
Where I come from is southwest Houston in 1972. Where the men watched football games at holidays while the women cooked and cleaned. The kids played out in the yard all day with the neighbor kids, and came in to eat or watch TV shows like Cadet Don and Kitirik (if you never watched Kitirik, you really missed out). The boys played “kill the man with the ball” (the older boys called it something less-PC), and who knows what the girls played (dolls or tea party or something stupid, no doubt). No one worried about child abduction by aliens or roving bands of pedophiles, mostly because someone’s parents were always watching out for the kids on the street. Mom would generally cook, but for a treat, we ate at places like the Log Cabin, San Jacinto Inn, Prince’s Hamburgers, Christie’s, Monterey House, ice cream at the Borden factory, or Valian’s Pizza (still absolutely the best pizza of all time). The grown-ups would go places on special occasions like Sonny Look’s, the Red Lion, or Jimmie Walker’s. For fun, or birthday parties, we’d go to Peppermint Park, Kiddie Wonderland, Sea Arama Marine World, Astroworld, Astros or Cougars games at the Astrodome, watch takeoffs at Hobby Airport, the Battleship Texas/San Jacinto Monument, or watch movies at the Post Oak Drive-in, or Alabama/River Oaks/Bellaire Theatres (one of the greatest times of my life was the night Dad threw caution and money to the wind and we went to a double feature of From Russia With Love and Goldfinger at the Bellaire Theatre. The first time I ever saw a James Bond movie. We first went to K-Mart to buy lemon drops to sneak in Mom’s purse). Houston was quite the town back then: KNUZ and Paul Berlin, Westbury Square, the 1968 Final Four, the Bluebonnet Bowl, the Houston Cougar veer offense, the Shamrock Hotel (Mom won a beauty contest at the Shamrock Hotel once), Globe, Louie Welch, Sharpstown (scandal and shopping center), the original Houston Aeros, Elvis playing eight sold out shows at the Rodeo, Dan Pastorini, Kenny Houston, Elvin Bethea, Don Wilson, Cesar Cedeno, Bob Watson, the Rice Hotel.
In short, I'm from somewhere that’s no longer there.
So naturally I was shocked recently to hear myself advising a young friend that if she really wanted to improve her career and prospects for marriage with a suitable partner, she should consider moving to Houston. After all, there’s only about four things in Houston: freeways, strip centers, package liquor stores and topless bars. Which you get to in your minivan, pickup truck, or your stolen, oil burning 1979 Datsun. I didn’t stick around-most of the times I haven’t lived in Austin I was trying to figure out some way to get back to Austin.
Maybe its all the time I’ve been spending there lately, but Houston has a lot more going for it than meets the eye, or as compared to the People’s Republic of Austin. No the rest of this post was not sponsored by the Houston Chamber of Commerce. To begin with, I really admire the way Houston got started. The Allen Brothers basically took a bayou landing in a swamp, rife with malaria and yellow fever, and managed to convince a bunch of Yankees and Germans that the place would be fantastic for a new city to handle spillover shipping traffic from Galveston. Never mind that the bayou wasn’t actually navigable, or that there were constant floods, yellow fever plagues, mosquitos, and hurricanes. They named it after General Sam hoping to lure the Capitol from Austin. But if the Allens had anything at all going for them it was timing. Once Galveston became flattened in 1900, the refugees needed somewhere inland to wind up, and Houston is where they went. Ever since, it seems like Houston has been a place for people to get their break, make a new start in life, take a chance. From the Allens to Jesse Jones to Bob Smith to Walter Fondren to Glenn McCarthy to Jim McIngvale, Houston has always been a place where you could pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again, no matter what happened in your past.
Houston has professional sports, multiple universities and colleges, world class medical care, the world’s leading energy companies, famous museums, fantastic performance spaces and artists (separate ballet, opera, symphony and theatre companies), great restaurants, a variety of fun bars, coffee shops (don't forget House of Guys, errr, Pies), tons of child-oriented activities, lots of jobs, a pro-business government and civic leadership, and a distinct lack of displaced, horn-honking Californians driving up housing prices. There’s numerous parks with all manner of facilities and activities (Hermann, Memorial, Armand Bayou, San Jacinto, Bear Creek, etc.). The beach (such that it is) and the lake (windsurfing, boating, jetskiing) are not far away.
As compared to Austin, the people are more solid, more down-to-earth. One can find women covered with tattoos, piercings, and multi-color hair, but not every single place you go. I can’t remember the last faux-hawk I saw in Houston. When out on the town in Austin, you have to watch nearly every step to avoid tripping over some out of work web site developer thinking about working on getting gigs for his band (but not actually doing anything about it). In Houston, you meet people who have jobs. Hmm…I wonder at what point in life I became Mr. Hand.
For all of Austin’s supposed “diversity,” Houston has it beat on that score too. Most southwest Houston road signs are in two languages. Houston has all manner of robust ethnic and religious communities virtually unknown to Austin. But like Austin, everyone goes to and enjoys the many city-wide events, like the rodeo, International Festival, Dickens on the Strand or Mardi Gras, and Clear Lake Christmas Boat Parade. Everyone lives and dies (mostly dies, signed Bills 41-Oilers 38) with the Astros, Rockets and now the Texans. In Austin the cops arrest football players, in Houston they also taser them. Now that’s a town with ambition. Houston gets big events that Austin never would: Super Bowls, PGA tournaments, national political conventions, Final Fours. On top of all of it, the living cost is a lot lower.
So let’s confront head-on Houston’s problems, of which there are many.
Humidity. Yes, its extremely humid. Which, however, is good for the skin, and for growing plants. Its not like its not humid lots of other places. Austin’s humidity on average is only about 10-20 percent lower, especially in summer. Would you rather have dry-cracked skin and constant thirst instead?
Heat. Its also very hot. Not as hot as most other places in Texas, but with less breeze and more humidity. Houston doesn’t exactly have melting sidewalks you know. Generally it rains a lot in summer which keeps the afternoon heat down a bit. Its not like Houston is the only town where it gets hot either. Plus, in the winter, when people are dying of exposure, arteriosclerosis and alcoholism in the upper decks of Lambeau Field or Soldier Field, Houstonians are often wearing shorts.
Mosquitoes. Yes there are mosquitoes. They bite, and are irritating. One or two kids die of St. Louis Encephalitis every year. On the other hand, Houston doesn't have any scorpions, spitting cobras, tarantulas, Tasmanian devils, piranha, or baby-stealing dingoes. Everywhere in the world you go, there’s something flying, slithering, charging, or swooping down from the sky. Mosquitoes are pretty innocuous on that scale.
Traffic. Lots of traffic. And road construction. According to some statistics, it’s the worst traffic in the nation. The untold story though is Houston is now pretty decentralized, so conceivably you could stay on your side of town and not go across town for quite awhile.
Killer mass transit trains. I think they’ve pretty much solved that problem. It took awhile for Houstonians to realize that trains and human beings cannot occupy the same space at the same time, and after about the first year the trains quit killing people.
Its ugly. Again, compared to where? Phoenix? Wichita Falls? Ever watched Rushmore? It was filmed mostly in the areas around Rice University, which is one of the most attractive neighborhoods in the country. Kingwood and the Woodlands and lots of other neighborhoods are in attractive wooded areas.
Pollution. Agreed, its one of the most polluted places in the country. In fairness, its going down. Also, most of the pollution is smog or ozone, which isn't as bad as particulates. The Mayor has made great efforts at rallying business to implement voluntary changes. One of the upsides to Houston’s relentless corporate hucksterism is that when it comes to bear at full force, it usually pays off.
Hurricanes. At least you get advance notice one is coming. My California and Alaska friends wake up every day wondering if this is the day for the “big one.” Houston doesn’t get any blizzards, sand storms, plagues of locusts, presidential election campaigns, or other natural disasters.
So if Houston is that great, why don’t I go back? My house is paid off, I have to go to the PUC too often, I have my restaurants and other haunts, and I’m afraid my 2 ½ non-imaginary friends there might be disappointed for a week if I left. I know my 3 non-imaginary friends in Houston would be disappointed if I were there all the time. Plus, in Austin, I’m the wise and mature person. In Houston I’m just another dime-a-dozen yuppie with wrinkled shirts and a bad attitude. So Austin is where I'll stay, until I give it all up to travel the world. Or raise yaks for a living.
But you should check out Houston.
Then again, I always thought Mrs. Houseman was way hotter than Baby in Dirty Dancing, so what do I know?
Then again, I always thought Mrs. Houseman was way hotter than Baby in Dirty Dancing, so what do I know?
2 comments:
yea, I'd be sad if you left Austin...even though I don't live in Austin. I'd rather visit you there than in Houston. I'll be in Houston all summer and I'm not looking forward to it, except that it's only 2 hours from Austin. Road trip!
Ah! You finally begin to see what draws so many! Houston, for all its flaws, is a welcoming and amazing place to work and live. As one of your non-imaginary friends in Houston, I invite you to spend more time there. Change is good!
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