Ok, I'm glad you see it also, I thought it was just me seeing all these misrepresentations about my hometown. I have been here 36 years, I don't consider it really hot until it hits 100. Which I don't think it did more than once or twice this year. Humidity?...oh please..I got used to that years ago.. And the housing? I can't speak for inside the loop or on the west side (which I understand is expensive) but over on my side of town is real inexpensive. I have a 3 bedroom/2 bath with a nice high peaked living room...and I only pay $650/month. Is that expensive? 2 hours from the city? where is that? Huntsville? I live as far east as you can and still be considered part of the Houston metropolitan area, and I can be at the Laptop in 35 minutes. Just some more misconceptions I needed to clear up..
i live on the far west side of town...and considering the quality of the school district, i don't think it's inordinately high. yeah...huntsville is 75 miles from houston, i think...you can make the trip in under an hour and a half.
OK, I lived in Houston for three years, so here's my take on why you don't get props: a) It's basically very ugly. It's not that there aren't nice *parts* of it - the skyline, Montrose, the Heights, West U - but mostly it's just endless freeways, endless enormous billboards, brown, flat, spread out... that's the impression you get driving through it, and you're *always* driving! I kind of liked its ugliness by the end, though. I found it endearing, if that makes sense. b) It's hot as ******. I'm sorry, but I found Houston absolutely *miserable* most of the time. Going outside during the summer months was like taking a bath in warm broth. You had to steel yourself against it. I turned into a mole - 'outside' was mostly something to get through in order to get to another air-conditioned enclosure! c) Third reason - and I think it's one of the coolest ones - is that you have a huge inferiority complex because everyone who visits b****es about you all the time. So this leads to either total over-compensation, which is hilarious, or total self-deprecation, which is also hilarious. Oh, and frankly, I don't think you can ignore Urban Cowboy. That movie did a lot of damage to - or really improved, depending on your point of view! - your reputation. I actually agree with the OP. There are some really cool things about Houston that no one gives it credit for. Cheap housing, great food, cool folk art scene, great multicultural stuff that's pretty unheard of elsewhere in the south (there's an Indian part of town, a Vietnamese part of town, the Hispanic stuff is all great, etc.). It's just that you have to drive for eighteen hours to get to all of them!
HWY 6 represents everything that's wrong with Houston. Strip mall hell. Tons of empty abandoned stores, and gas stations on every corner. This goes on for miles. No green, just traffic lights, concrete, and strip malls in every direction. There's a reason that the cost of living in Houston is so cheap. The land is just flat out ****ty. Try going to a proper city with mass transit and local watering hole bars. How many of ya'll who live in Houston have the luxury of walking down the street to the bar or to the coffee shop? The air quality is horrendous from the pollution, and there are cars everywhere.
To be specific 59 @ 610 Loop during rush hour. I think there's only 1 intersection in the nation that has more traffic and it's somewhere in Los Angeles.
Ok, youve said a lot of the same things I have but no one is yelling at you (except the real estate part which apparently displeased all the Real Estate Agents in the audience) And I didnt even say we had an inferiority complex...double standard
Cool, I didnt know you live in Sugar Land too. Which part?? I'm in the Austin Parks subdivision near Austin Parkway Elementary right on the lake. I love living here-its the perfect place to live-- Irecently went to NY and hated being so cramped and the housing there was too high!
To sum up my view as accurately as is possible, H-Town = Hellhole, USA. But I will admit that Tex-Mex is GREAT
God, MadMax, you're obsessed with me 'not liking' you guys. I didn't say I didn't like it there. I was there for three years, after all, and I didn't have to be. I said these are the reasons why it doesn't get props, and they're all objectively true. It's generally ugly, it's hot, it's trafficky, and everyone (looking particularly in your direction here) has an inferiority complex about it being ugly and hot and trafficky! I also devoted a paragraph to Houston's virtues, you'll note. Would you like me to list all the others I can think of just to make you feel better? Hungover and snappy due to New Year's Eve drinking of vodka. Possibly overreacting to everything. Don't mess with me today. Happy Fricking New Year.
I love me some dimsie. Houston was built on a swamp. The original settlers were tricked into coming here. The weather is absolutely unbearable. Our main industry is development. A restaurant closes and is replaced by another restaurant which closes six months later. The traffic is unbearable. The street construction is ridiculous. And we've got to have the worst public transportation of any major metropolis. The best thing you can say about our air quality is that SOMETIMES it's not as bad as Los Angeles. Recent feel good campaigns like Power of Houston and Expect the Unexpected are embarassing. And our one newspaper is really embarassing. It is a terrible, terrible place to live. But I love it. The people who live here make it all worthwhile. That is, the people I know. The ones I don't know make me crazy. On the freeways, in the grocery stores, in virtually every bar but Rudyards, on the radio... But the ones I know are the best people I've ever known. The cost of living remains very reasonable, even while Montrose has been nearly destroyed by Perry Homes and downtown development. I'll never understand why anyone would want to live in the suburbs or even the Galleria area. Outside the loop Houston is my least favorite place in the world. All strip malls, traffic and fat people. Inside the loop, especially Rudyards (did I mention I like Rudyards?), is among my favorite places. And that Infernal Bridegroom is, of course, the coolest theater in the world. There's a bumper sticker which reads "Houston deserves to be a better place to live." I don't know if it deserves it. I'd like it if it was, though. As it stands, I like it fine the way it is.
Now *that's* the right way to start a post. Gotta take issue with your characterisation of Houston outside the loop, though. I speak as someone who married a man from Channelview, which is generally accepted as one of the asscracks of way-outer Houston, right? Well, I lived in the 'view for a while and I liked it. Lots of people there were flat-out hilarious and really fun to hang out with. They were totally self-deprecating about where they lived and they knew exactly what everyone thought of them. They got a lot of mileage out of it. Some of Elvis' friends even wanted tshirts with '77530' on them so that they could recognise one of their own. I mean, yeah, living in Montrose for two+ years was obviously *better* than living in the 'view. More 'culture', more activities, closer to everything, including Rudyards (where I saw a very cool Olivia Tremor Control show once, as I recall. Quite drunk)! If I was forced to choose, I'd live in the Heights. But although outer Houston might be all 'strip malls and fat people', some of those strip malls have good Tex-Mex restaurants, and some of those fat people rock! (And Phil is from Channelview, right? I think he was even the high school quarterback. )
The problem with Houston is that most people have visited one place like Kingwood or Katy (not to knock either location), and assume that is[/] Houston. They have never been to the real city. After only living in Houston for 2 1/2 weeks, I will attempt to compare it to Austin: Austin - Town Lake (really the Colorado River), Lake Travis. Houston - Lake Houston, Clear Lake, Lake Conroe, Galveston. Austin - No professional sports teams. Houston - Astros, Rockets, Texans, Aeros. Austin - Restaurant variety is a joke, waiters are EXTREMELY pissy and dont wear deoderant, food sucks. Houston - Better food, convenient locations, better service. Austin - Dress like a freak to have friends even though you were raised in the suburbs. Houston - Wear whatever the hell you want and no one cares either way. Austin - Yep its hot as hell in the summer too.... Houston - Everywhere in Texas is hot...... In conclusion, Austin is VERY overrated, and Houston does get a bad rap.
Uhh, have you been on I-10 Katy Freeway or 290 Northwest Freeway recently? Much worse then 59. By the way I love Houston, not planning on leaving anytime soon.
I think some people just like to complain and if you looked at the glass as half full instead of half empty you would enjoy Houston more. I lived in Chicago for 4 years so I have something to compare it to. The Weather - Yeah its hot for about 3 months but you can at least get away from it with AC so it is definitely bareable. The rest of the year is absolutely beautiful. We can do things outside year round. When I lived in Chicago it was freezing ass cold for 8 months of the year and then when summer would hit it was hot as hell and most places didnt have AC so you would sweat all damn day and all damn night. My wife and I went up there this last summer and couldnt wait to come home to AC. And one more thing. Snow sucks. The Traffic - Yeah it sucks but it sucks in every large city. At least not all of our freeways are toll roads like in Chicago. The Scenery - What is so ugly about Houston? No trees? You have to be kidding me because there are trees every where especially for such a big city. Also everything is so new and clean looking. Go to Chicago, NY, St. Louis and everything is so old and dirty. We also have the gulf that is nearby and the Hill Country is a couple of hours away. We have access to so much here. Of course there are the other things that every one has mentioned that is great about Houston, the food, the arts, and everything else. I just knew that when we were trying to move back to Texas the last place I wanted to live was Houston but the first job offer I got was here and they paid to move us down. I am so glad that it didnt work out the way I wanted it because I love being here and plan on living here the rest of my life.
Right. Houston's awesome, but so are those cities. There's no rule that says there can't be more than one cool city in the U.S.
There are a lot of things I can give credit to Houston for, but being clean isn't really one of them. I lived in Houston for about 24 years and now in Dallas for almost 5. I can honestly say that Dallas is about 20 times cleaner than Houston (generally speaking) and nowhere near as congested. That being said, I still miss Houston 'cause I wanna buy Rockets season tickets.
i guess this is all about perception...when i brought friends from dallas home with me to houston for weekends in college, more than one remarked how surprised they were that houston was so much cleaner than dallas.
