Alright, I've been a Houstonian for 5yrs now. I LOVE this freakin' city!! I've lived in Chicago & Miami, but Houston is my kind of town. What I want to know is, and maybe you long time Houstonians can fill me in here... Why does Houston get no love?!? Be it sports, or place to live, respect, etc.... No love!! Everyone mentions Dallas, Austin, even San Antonio, but Houston, if mentioned at all, is added as filler. I know our downtown isn't the most beautiful, but we're getting there!! We have so many clusters of activity; Downtown, Uptown, Greenway, Greenspoint, etc... Is it because we're not all clumped together like an LA or New York. If we developed every bit of land Houston has, we'd dwarf the other cities. I'm reading things like, Houston didn't deserve to have such a great presence such as Hakeem in town. Or how big name free agents wouldn't want to come here. But they NEVER give a reason!! So, did we do something to piss everyone else off? Or are they just jealous that we are one of the few cities, where all our sports team are pretty damn good. Let me in on the secret here. I love this town, and as a young man coming up, I'm going to do my best to make Houston better.
Coma; I was born and grew up in Houston but left to go to college on the West Coast. Since then I have lived in the SF Bay Area, Boston, Singapore and now in Minneapolis . Through it all I've always kept a soft spot for the place that gave me life. On my computer I keep a screen saver of Hakeem, have a Texas flag hanging in my house, and even wore an '80's vintage Astros uniform when the Astros played the Twins (now that is love.) Through it all I've heard all sorts of derision and slights thrown at the Bayou city. All I can say is that you gotta live there to understand it. If you have ever driven along Allen Parkway in the rain and watch that incredible skyline pop-up you know what I mean. There is something about Houston that can't be explained. It has the forward look and beat of LA but with a Mississippi delta soul found under the live oaks and in the muddy bayous. Its all about Clutch City; championships won out of many hard fought struggles and past failures. So next time you feel theres no love for Houston just remember you live in city thats been written off many times but keeps on growing and getting better.
Actually, many NBA players live in Sugarland. They just don't want to play for us. Speaking of no love, Houston routinely gets drilled by the media. (Yes, I know. You're thinking, "Hey, thanks, Captain Obvious.") No one seems to like Houston. I can't figure out why. One of my college buddies once told me he thought Houston was the worst city in the country due to its liberal zoning laws. Of course, he had never been there to visit. Apparently, he was just reiterating what his college professor had taught him in class. Jesus, an Ivy League professor teaching his class about the evils that Houston embodies? Is there no limit to the abuse? Why I boycott Sports Illustrated: Every year, after a team wins the Finals, SI puts that team (or a player from that team) on the cover of its magazine for national distribution (okay, I'm assuming, but I'm almost positive this is correct). Back in 1993-94, after the Rockets won their first title, SI elected not to run the Houston cover nationally. Instead, the cover could only be found regionally. Apparently, SI didn't think the Houston cover could help sell magazines elsewhere, but they felt the need to throw us a bone (because of obligation or something). This p*ssed me off to no end. Granted, they DID run the second title cover nationally, but I guess that's not good enough. I can't wait for next week's eventual biased SI cover story of "10 Reasons Why Houston Will Never Every Win Again" and the sidebars of the article detailing 1) a one-sided Fegan interview on why Hakeem spurned us, 2) how Rockets management (including Rudy T) should be dragged out in the street and shot, and 3) how the Rockets are the new Clippers of the league. All written by, you guessed it, Peter Vecsey.
I remember at the Rockets champ party at the dome.. I was there .. and they like booed the guy from SI really really bad
This is a topic for the hangout forum, but I do agree with you. A lot of times I wondered if it was just me who noticed that, but I always see people who feel the same way. I've been to other cities and can say Houston has everything I need to be happy. What I've seen is that most people who talk bad about the city haven't been here. That's ok because this can be our secret. Houstonian til the day I die!!!
Every time I've ever been to another big city (LA, Miami, Denver, OKC, KC, Atlanta, Cleveland, a few others) I always get the same response when people hear where I'm from: "Texas? I thought Dallas was the only big city there? I thought it was all farms and cows and stuff?". None of these people have ever been here, of course. I do not understand why Houston isn't "on the map", so to speak. We're the nation's energy capitol (most important), it's space capitol (very underappreciated), increasingly it's tech capitol (as companies move out of LA and NY to Houston for tax and cost reasons), we're the largest port city in the southern US, I think the 4th largest (will be 2nd-3rd in a few years) in population terms, we've got the best cost-of-living ratio in the nation, possibly the most diverse city in the nation... The list goes on. I don't know why we're so underappreciated. Maybe it's a national conspiracy to dis' Houston... I'll tell you this: if I was a terrorist and had a single nuke, and I wanted to take down the US, I'd use it here. Forget about Washington DC, New York, LA - the energy capitol is the heart of America. But I'm not a terrorist, and I don't have any nukes, and if I did I'd use them on someone else, so... Oh, did I mention that every sports franchise we have is always from "pretty good" to contenders? And we have a bunch of basketball championships. And someday the Astros will pull it off... Yeah, this ought to be in the hangout.
Houston is the largest city in the southern US, PERIOD. Not "largest port city", not just largest city in Texas, but THE largest city in the southern U.S. I apologize if that IS what you meant.
In the southern US, yes. Largest port city being a comparison to New Orleans (we are far larger). But yeah, that's what I meant.
Houston is a great city, we just don't have media like the LA's, NY's and Chicago's of the world. I thought that the whole SI cover was about us beating NY for the championship and SI, being based in NY, felt bitter and didn't give Houston the cover.
I lived in H-town growing up for 14 years. What I have noticed from people I talk to is that they dis on Houston, yet they have only been there once or have only visited the outskirts. People will visit Kingwood and think they are in Houston. People will visit Pasadena and think they are in Houston. People will fly into Hobby and drive through the ghetto and think they are in Houston. People will stay at a hotel near the Astrodome and think this is Houston. People will visit Katy and think that is Houston. The problem is that Houston is waaaaaaaaaaaay to spread out, thus visitors who go and see there friends in Jersey Village for instance think Houston blows. When someone disses H-town around me, the first think I ask is where did you stay and what did you do. If they say Jersey Village and we hung out in the Willowbrook Mall area, I say: "You havent experienced the REAL Houston." When friends want to hang out there with me, I take them to the cool places: Galleria. downtown, Rice Village, etc. We go hit the bars downtown, and they notice how many hot women are there and start drooling. Thats when I can tip my hat and say: "Now this is Houston." Unfortunately I live in Austin, so I have to take buddies on road trips just to prove it.
