I know it’s de rigeur to rag on Houston, and rightly so—among other things, the megalopolis is famous for its freeways, mosquitoes, mind-numbing heat, pedestrian and bike-unfriendliness, and pollution. But as a native, there are plenty of things about Houston I’ll go down fighting to defend. Over the last week, I got reacquainted with some of them.
ADDENDUM: 1a) Not really a “does” but an “is”: Diversity. Houston’s racial breakdown: 49.27 percent White, 25.31 percent Black or African American, 0.44 percent Native American, 5.31 percent Asian, 0.06 percent Pacific Islander, 16.46 percent from other races, and 3.15 percent from two or more races. 37 percent of the population was Hispanic or Latino of any race. Seattle’s? s 67.1% white, 16.6% Asian, 10.0% African American, 1.0% Native American, 0.9% Pacific Islander, 2.3% from other races, and 3.4% from two or more races. 6.3% of the population is Hispanic or Latino of any race.
1) Outdoor dining. To all those who object that outdoor dining spaces are “impossible” in Seattle because of our lousy weather, I present Exhibit A to the contrary: Houston, where you can find outdoor dining most of the year despite weather that goes from 70 and sunny to torrential downpours to 110 in the shade in the blink of an eye. (Outdoor misting systems were invented for Houston summers—the same way sidewalk umbrellas and propane heaters were invented for Seattle falls). Just about every street in Houston is dotted with tons of cute outdoor dining spaces like the one below (the Empire Cafe on Westheimer). If they can do it, why can’t we?
2) Light rail. Yes, overall, Houston’s transit system sucks. Yes, it’s useless if you’re going to the suburbs (where my parents live, there literally is no bus service, and the closest park-and-ride is many miles away). But damned if they didn’t manage to get light rail on the ground sooner than we did—and despite the concerted efforts of right-wing extremists (e.g. Tom Delay) the likes of which we’ve never seen in Seattle. And the kicker is, it’s been so successful, they’re expanding it.
3) A Real Museum District. Say what you will about Houston’s lack of zoning, its museum scene kicks our museum scene’s ass. In the 1.5-mile area that makes up the city’s designated Museum District (also within walking distance of awesome Hermann Park and the beautiful Rice University campus), there are nearly 20 world-class museums, from the tiny-but-storied Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum to the massive Museum of Fine Arts to the meditative Rothko Chapel to the Museum of Natural Science, home of the fascinating Cockrell Butterfly Center. The gorgeous (and free!) Menil Collection is one of the nation’s great modern art museums, with a collection of Cornell boxes (one of which is pictured below) that I never tire of visiting.
4) Cheap real estate. Yeah, yeah, national economy, who wants to live in Houston, blah, blah, blah. Compared to Seattle’s hyperinflated real-estate market, Houston’s a bargain. For example, that classic 1930 2-bedroom bungalow on a 5,000-square-foot lot in the Montrose neighborhood (Houston’s equivalent of Capitol Hill, only bigger and with better stores and gay bars) pictured below will set you back all of $270,000.
5) Great Food. I’m not just talking about Tex-Mex and barbecue (photo, actually of barbecue in Elgin, by Flickr user joshbousel), although just about any place in Houston obviously has Jones and Azteca beat. According to Houston Chronicle restaurant reviewer Ken Hoffman’s estimate, Houston has around 10,000 restaurants—more per capita than any city in the world. I couldn’t hit close to that many, but I did like the bacon-wrapped, chorizo-stuffed dates at T’Afia, the fajitas and soupy beans at El Jardin, the grilled double pork chop with pork belly at Shade, the Cuban tacos at El Rey, and the barbecued brisket at Pizzitola’s. And if I can find a willing dining partner when I go back, I really, really want to try everything at Feast, which Frank Bruni just wrote up (glowingly) for the New York Times.
I’m not saying everything about Houston’s great, or that I’d recommend living there. The drivers are crazy, the weather sucks, it’s polluted, and a car is a must. But to those who think of it as a backwater, I highly recommend visiting some time. I’ll even give you recommendations.
Any good points that this post makes are undermined by the assertion that montrosse is better than Capitol Hill. Really? Pray tell me what those better shops would be. The head shops? The shitty record stores? Brazos bookstore is ok. But come on. Monstrosse is more like Lake City than Capitol Hill
nah, I don’t think so. I’d rather not spend my tiny bit of vacation money in the state of Texas. Neither would you if you were not from there.
Do they have a good wine selection?
and when you want to “get out of town for the weekend” you are basically suck in…..Texas….yeahhhhhhhh
Hell, I’d buy a house in Houston.
…maybe something in the $8-10 range.
Thank you for having said it, Erica.
Seattle. What’s with the food here?
I mean, other than the exalted crabcakes (zzzzz), and let’s not exclude the sacredness of salmon (meh)… but, really… the only good food around here is international or imported cuisine.
@5: And yet people love to talk about how Seattle’s “a total foodie town.” Is it all about the underground culinary events and not about the restaurants?
ECB — I almost forgot how I coined my Slog handle. Thanks for reminding me.
Houston is way over-criticized. It ain’t Austin, but it also ain’t Dallas.
ECB,
What’s with the cheap real estate? Is it pro-sprawl highway and zoning policies, or lack of restrictions on density?
I have my guess, but I don’t actually know.
Hey ECB!!!
KILL YOURSELF!!!
Oh, Erica… Nice try, but you should know better than to incite the kneejerk responses Sloggers get when they see anything affiliated with Texas.
I lived in Katy for 1 month. I will never return. Only thieves and homophobes live in Houston.
So its basically Tacoma, but in Texas? ( outdoor dining, light rail, museum district, cheap real estate, food)
Hipsters won’t move to Tacoma either.
I rather like Houston’s lack of zoning laws. I’m used to go there often for work and I’d stay at the same hotel. I’d have a view of a huge housing development with a giant skyscraper right in the middle for all the people to work in. It wasn’t creepy, really. It was like Sim City crashed on your 486 computer from 1993.
@5: Seattle is now known across the country for “Seattle-style” hot dogs: Grilled, onions, cream cheese. We’re making our mark.
2) Light rail.
How many hills does Houston have?
erica, please set up a one way ticket fund so we can fund it and get you the fuck out of seattle.
@6 I will say THIS about Pacific NW cuisine…
I’m a hell of a lot slimmer than my southern kin thanks to the lack of temptation.
Usually the best part of the food around here is the description. The “foodie” culture needs to rave less and cook more.
Well, I guess its to bad their state is seceding.
i enjoyed my week in Houston – the BBQ is good, the Museums are good, and…
well that’s about it. the rest of Houston BLOWS.
look around you: those are NATIONAL FUCKING PARKS.
Houston is good for food if you like beef and pork. Which, if you like food, you don’t.
Portland is better than Seattle. I’d go to Austin before I would ever go to Houston. Different strokes for different folks.
@16 — BINGO!
@14: My transplant friend and I *love* those hot dogs. We rave about them to visitors. I didn’t know they’d gone national. They’re effing delicious.
@13: Haha, wow, win.
Houston is like a less-sucky Dallas, but for real art, you head to San Antonio and Austin (first modern art museum in Texas, the Smithsonian’s latin american art museum, etc.).
I’ll give you the Light Rail thing, though. I don’t know how they did it. They even got spanish builder CAF to build them a unique new light rail model at cost rather than what Kinkisharyo did for Seattle (up-price!).
cuban tacos? wtf? they’ll do anything for a buck in tejas!
not to trash the lovely and warm city of houston, which also has, beleive it or not some good salsa clubs. but they also have a decent murder rate, about 300 murders for a city of 2 million, not quite the 589 murders in chicago, but close.
and seattle cries over its 26 murders as if were being taken over by gangs!
Not surprising that Seattleites are closed minded about Houston (or anything else). They ‘knee-jerk’ (thanks 11) to certain words, for example… Texas. I happened to have lived in both places (Houston and Seattle) and agree with most of ECB’s post. The museums, food and diversity (middle-class folks especially) are superior in Houston compared to Seattle. Of course Seattle has it’s advantages, like the outdoors and honestly, the Stranger. Seattle-based slog-readers here is your opportunity to break out of group-think and consider that Houston has it’s advantages and that Seattle in NOT the only place worth living in!
You forgot to mention the cockroaches. Big as your hand, and they’re all over the place.
There are shops worth going to, in Capitol Hill?
You forgot to mention fat people. And big hair.
@20 did you just say they eat pork in Texas? WRONG.
I used to live in Houston.
Yes, you can eat outside if you want (you don’t want to), there are better restaurants than Seattle (Seattle is a dreadful food town–only people who have never eaten outside of Washington state can argue otherwise), but you can’t walk anywhere. Everything’s spread out to hell, the weather is never right, and you’re always choking on exhaust fumes. Real estate is cheaper, but the property taxes are three to five times what they are here, which is how they pay for all those roads and light rail systems. Plus, your energy bills are super high because none of the houses have any insulation and you’re running your AC nine months out of the year, so your overall per-month housing costs may not be quite the bargain you’re hoping for.
Yes, the museums are pretty good–there’s a lot of people and a lot of people with money who want to prove that their city is “as good as New York”. Dallas/Fort Worth has them beat there though.
When considering cities in Texas to live in, I’d say Houston runs behind Dallas, San Antonio and Austin.
You left off a great live music scene.
However, Houston fails vs. Seattle for being a scorching hot sweat pig of humidity.
@27, the one time I was in Houston, as a kid, when my dad when to the front desk of the hotel to complain about the sink and tub being left full of standing water, the guy said “oh, yeah, we do thayut to keep the buuuugs from comin’ up”. I saw some of those bugs. Jesus.
Erica, you forgot to mention the neighborhoods where all the houses look like Monticello or Mt. Vernon only three times as large.
It’s also de rigueur for pretension writers to misspell phrases like de rigueur.
@26: Also being from Texas, I have to say that Houston is just a less-sucky Dallas. Bigger, perhaps, but just barely less sucky.
Um…okay.
-Houston was able to build light rail because it’s cheap and easy to build light rail in a city with no topography and wide right-of-ways.
-Houston damn well better have a good museum scene. It has twice the population of Seattle.
-The real estate is cheap primarily due to urban sprawl. Less demand for close in residences = cheap housing. Did you just suggest that low density and sprawl are good???
No right-wing light rail opposition?
Do you not remember tim eyman suing sound transit?
“Seattle-based slog-readers here is your opportunity to break out of group-think and consider that Houston has it’s advantages and that Seattle in NOT the only place worth living in!”
Response by @36: nope, no way! Every single thing about Seattle is the best in the world!
No other city can be better than us, on any single thing! And most of all: we are the most tolerant and broad minded and open minded people in America!
Now everyone, write that down!
Did I miss the memo circulating about how bad Seattle’s food scene supposedly is?
Seattle is the pesto of cities.
Another thing Houston does better than Seattle:
ECB
…and quite possibly the BEST coffee shop/wine bar/patio (where you can smoke!) and read art mags, just a few blocks from the Menil…and of course, there’s Beavers “just south of Hooters”…or so sayeth the t-shirts, that has some damn fine bbq…but really…it is the random art…like the yard of big, giant, presidential busts…
@36, Houston isn’t twice as big as Seattle; it’s not even as big as Dallas. It just looks that way because they swallow their suburbs. Look at the metro areas.
@37: She didn’t say “no right wing opposition”; she said “right wing extremists (e.g. Tom Delay) the likes of which we’ve never seen”. She’s right. Tom Delay eats bugs like Tim Eyman for breakfast without even knowing they’re there. Texas, as you might have heard on the news, has many, many, many extremely hard-core conservatives, and they run that state. They make Dino Rossi look like Che Guevara.
As an EX-Texan, I can say with confidence that Houston is the worst city in that state and a miserable place to be.
Fnarf, sorry, Houston is the fourth largest city in America. As such, it should be better at some things than Seattle, the twenty-third largest city in America. The fact that ECB can only find one or two things better just point out the utter suckiness of Houston. Except for her addendum. Houston has a wonderful collection of the loveliest, hottest, hunkiest, sexiest Vietnamese men in the country. And they like to go fishing with you before they give themselves up. So yay Houston!
Fried okra! Well, that’s just about anywhere in east TX. But still. Damn, you’re making me almost miss Baytown. That says a lot.
Yeah, duh, of course texas has more and “better” gay bars, and that’s the sole reason for this article being written. Tell me, truthfully, didn’t the rest feel like a lie, even though it was partly true? (.00001% true)
we have more psychadelic mushroom species.
houston is poop.
@45, fnarf just wrote, look at the metro areas, and then you compared the population within city limits, which is basically meaningless. But fnarf is a bit off, too: the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown metro is 5.7 mil as of 2007 US Census estimate, while Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue is 3.2 (up to 3.9 for the consolidated metro that includes everything from Olympia through Bremerton through Mount Vernon). Sixth largest vs. 15th (numbers and rankings via wikipedia, sorry, I’m too lazy to go through the info-filled but crappily organized census.gov).