[video] Astrodome celebration commercial

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Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Date: SUN 06/26/1994
Section: C
Page: 1
Edition: 2 STAR

Riding rocket of intangibles

By THOM MARSHALL
Staff

FEELS good, doesn't it?

Pride? Spirit? Excitement? Whatever is saturating our city like a welcomed rain that brings an end to a long drought.

It is as difficult to precisely identify or define as it is impossible to measure.

The Rockets sparked it by becoming national champs, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that what is happening now far exceeds the total of the parts.

Parts like the basic statistics, for example. Record books will preserve them and from now on folks can look up results from the season just ended and see the number of games won by the Rockets, how many points were scored, and so on.

Also, someone somewhere could provide a tally of the number of fans who attended each game, ticket revenues, the estimated size of the TV viewing audience, and so on.

And you could, with enough phone calls, probably come up with a pretty good estimate of the number of T-shirts, hats, and related souvenirs that have been produced and peddled in the past few days.

Plus, you could get a count of the championship celebration parties and estimates of the number of people who attended. For example, the big one Thursday night at the Astrodome Thursday night drew some 52,000.

Add the number of folks who turned out to watch Friday's big victory parade. I heard one estimate of 500,000. Then tack on thousands and thousands more who got stuck in traffic jams trying to get downtown to join the throngs.

Something mystical

Put these and any other related numbers you can come up with in a long column, push the button, and even if your calculator burps up a figure twice the size of the national debt, it won't equal this spirit thing. This pride. Or excitement. Whatever it is.

One thing we do know about this mysterious stuff is that it is powerful and contagious.

People start feeling it and they want to do something. And do it well. Try to be the best. Like. . . OK, maybe it sounds hokey, but like those basketball players.

As a result, we've had the best victory celebrations, the best parade. . .

No doubt you have noticed how politicians are quick to respond to championship decisions? City council members, mayors, county officials, governors, even presidents, all play high-profile roles in the celebrating.

Partly, they do it because politicians are attracted to crowds and cameras like bees are attracted to pollen. But partly, I think, they do it because of the power that is generated by this whatever-it-is.

Maybe they hope some of it will rub off on them. Maybe they hope somehow to capture some of it and use it to win re-election or generate support for a bond issue or the like.

After all, politicians and civic leaders often try to generate as much of this kind of mystifying magical power as they can in their campaigns and promotions.

Remember when President Bush brought the Economic Summit meeting to town? Or the National Republican Convention? Remember all the effort that went into stirring up community support and excitement and involvement?

The results of those attempts fell far, far short of what's happening in the city now. This whatever-it-is that got started by the Rockets.

Will it grow or whither?

And now there is no telling what will happen next. Will this stuff dwindle and fade until Houston is back to being just about the same as it was before? Or will it continue to grow and spread to other areas of Houston life?

I don't know how you could begin to monitor such a thing. Say, for example, that someone caught up in this whatever-it-is decides to help the city look its best by painting a house or cleaning up a vacant lot or whatever.

Unless he puts up a sign that says, "Another Clutch City Improvement Project," the rest of us might not realize that the improvements could be traced back to the Rockets championship.

Or say, for some other examples, that someone finally buys the Rice Hotel and turns it into something real nice again. And that whole part of downtown is reborn. And the Allen Parkway Village controversy gets worked out in a way that makes everyone happy. And the city's numerous other blights and blemishes and headaches get all cleared up, removed or renewed.

We won't be able to tell for sure whether such things, if they happen, have anything to do with what we are experiencing right now.

But no matter what the future holds, it is obvious that we've tasted something we really like. Victory pudding, call it.

Some cities can't handle the stuff. A dish of it makes them crazy. They break out in riots.

But victory pudding agrees with Houston. It has filled us with this whatever-it-is that feels so good.

 

Apparently some people don't understand what Mattress Mack had to do with all of this

 

I'm only mad that they burned down the original Gallery Furniture.

Poor Mack. That dude was always a big Rockets supporter.

 

Remember the NBA all star game was played at the Dome.

 

That's awesome dude, would love to see that video!
I remember booing the SI person.