tribe love to sling “ Houston , we have a problem ” at the fourth largest city in the United States , but they always get the inverted comma damage . They get the city unseasonable , too .
I do n’t live in Houston anymore . I moved to New York almost a decade ago . But I lived and worked in H - Town ( a.k.a . The Bayou City , Space City , Screwston ) from the fall of 1992 until the fall of 2006 , long time that were shaping not just for me but for a metropolis that was changing . It ’s changed a lot more since I pull up stakes .
If you do n’t have a Houstonian as a tour of duty guide , peck of the city ’s ethnic spell can be suffer on you . Houston looks like an endless series of shopping mall , strip centers , parking bunch and skyscrapers because that ’s what it is — a business organization town first , with distinct profit centers that take shape little city inside of the city . There are six international mile of tunnel under Downtown Houston , an detailed snarl filled with shops and bar and restaurants . Downtown , Uptown , Meyerland , Sugar Land , Greenspoint , Greenway Plaza , and The Texas Medical Center ( the largest in the Earth and growing ) are focal points of commerce , but the metropolis ’s economic system is also wander right into its neighborhoods because there are no zoning police . There was a move to reverse that in the early ’ 90s , but the mass vote it down .
Mayra Beltran/Houston Chronicle/AP Photo/Edited
“ I conceive that ’s part of the culture here , ” say graffiti creative person GONZO247 , founder of the Aerosol Warfare prowess arrangement and a cultural ambassador for the city . “ You have a sign , and then you have a tire shop next to that and you have someone sellin ’ Gallus gallus and then it goes back to residential . You ’re in a residential domain but then literally right next threshold it ’s a business , and some of it just blends in . If you go to the East last or Third Ward or even part of the Heights , you may burn through neighbourhood and come up across full blown businesses . There ’s something about driving through and being able to see a little of everything that helps make that visual quilt , that textural fabric that makes a metropolis what it is . ”
The deficiency of zoning regulations also gives Houston room to expand within its own city limits , with abundant scant - term centers of commerce complement the lasting ones . The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo , where every country euphony star you’re able to imagine from 1931 ahead has performed , still entertains a football stadium full of masses every night for three week in February and March , drawing over two million multitude to the primer coat of the Astrodome Complex — another city within the urban center . There are conventions held in Houston year - round , appeal by the nearly year - round sunny weather . Huge corporations set up shop class and build up communities around themselves ( Clear Lake ) or work up themselves around community of interests ( The Woodlands ) and the city ’s business economic system continues to sprawl , unaffected by the flux that comes with count on touristry ( a call I can not make about my own hometown ) . Houston ’s thriftiness is root . It has never been a tourist terminus , but citizenry are move there .
“ It ’s no longer aim by just crude money and vigour money , ” Gonzo suppose . “ Houston has diversify so that when the Recession was happening , we barely palpate anything because it ’s almost like if the energy or the oil kind of dips , the Medical Center is up , or if the Medical Center is down , we have growing science and applied science aside from the Medical . There ’s different pocket of industry that help keep things go . ”
Adam Baker/Flickr
With its proximity to Mexico , over a third of the metropolis identifies as Hispanic or Latino . Houston ’s universe is one quarter black . Refugee assistance to Vietnam in the tardy 1970s brought wave of immigrants to Midtown Houston , settling the large Vietnamese community in the United States outside of California and ca-ca their language the third most coarse spoken in the city . There is a Chinatown on the Southwest side . Little India on the West side . Houston also has a large LGBTQ community , focused in the Montrose and Houston Heights , and boasts the fourth largest gay superbia parade in the nation .
Maybe everyone feels like their city gets overlooked . ram up to Houston from my hometown of Galveston to see concerts , I always thought this was the case because bands routinely skipped The Bayou City in favour of Austin or Dallas . After strike to Houston , I watched a constant flow of hoi polloi my years relocate to Austin , where it was endlessly more pelvic girdle . But I abide .
You see it in our sports story . When the Houston Rockets won the NBA Championship in 1994 , there was a taste of being cold-shoulder on a national level . It was the city ’s first major sports championship , and yet the spot were less on the Rockets winning than on the Knicks lose . It was n’t Hakeem Olajuwon ’s halt shots so much as it was John Starks melting down , or Michael Jordan withdraw . But a title had come to Houston . Jordan did toy that next time of year , but his Bulls were knocked out in the second troll by Shaquille O’Neal ’s young Orlando Magic , who the Rockets tangle in the Finals to win their second set of ring . Clutch City .
Adam Baker/Flickr
Two years afterwards , when the Houston Oilers denote they were moving to Tennessee , now that suffer . In Texas , football game is Riley B King . “ Luv Ya Blue ” went quiet overnight , and both the Rockets and Astros were talking about jumping ship , too . There was an article in the LA Times entitled : “ Houston , You Have a Problem . ”
Everything moves in circles .
Houston ’s industry has ferment in its favor culturally , foster an arts community underwritten in part by the abundant with child business house money floating around town that has found its way into the art world yr after year . More than 20 museum populate an area adjacent to one of the city ’s grownup unripened spaces in Hermann Park , at a juncture central to Rice University , University of Houston , St. Thomas University and Texas Southern University . The Museum District includes The Museum of Fine Arts Houston , Menil Collection , Contemporary Arts Museum , Houston Museum of Natural Science , Holocaust Museum , Houston Museum of African American Culture , Lawndale Art Center , Cy Twombly Gallery , and the darkest , quiet corner of the city in the Rothko Chapel , a meditative brick enclosure rising out of a cheery lawn next to a shimmering pool in the middle of a residential neighbourhood . Houston has The Aurora Picture Show , The Orange Show , The Beer Can House , The Art Guys , and The Art Car Museum and Parade .
Adam Baker/Flickr
In fact , there are arts territory all around the metropolis , including an opening move that has take creatives to First Ward through The Washington Avenue Arts District and a long grow assiduousness of artist shape and living in an orbit of Second and Third Ward E of Downtown for which Gonzo coined the term “ EaDo . ” He ’s been working in that expanse since 1994 and I have intercourse because that ’s when I met him , when I worked at a print shop there and he came by to postulate if he could spray paint our wall ( my genus Bos permit him ) . That part of Third Ward was a wasteland then , full of empty warehouses , vacant fate , shotgun house and a few scrappy spot to eat . The border of the neighborhood have now been sanded off by blocks of town homes and apartment buildings , and the skeletal remains of its Chinatown field have since move to the Southwest side , but the area was once home to the metropolis ’s nifty punk club ( The Axiom , which later host Infernal Bridegroom Productions , where thespian Jim Parsons appeared in his first dramatic play ) , and is still home to The Commerce Streets Artists ' Warehouse ( seminal in obedience to the city ’s DIY culture ) and is still home to Francisco Studios , where I always practiced with my bands and where most band in Houston have rehearsed since the 1980s .
The music industry in Houston is an railway locomotive of small parting . It ’s not something that attracts people to the metropolis but it ’s the perfect place for artist to progress independently . Lightnin ’ Hopkins was n’t born in Houston , but he made a career there and he died there . That lil ’ old band from Texas , ZZ Top , relocate to Houston from Dallas in the band ’s babyhood . Jazzman Arnett Cobb was born and put forward and play there , and Townes Van Zandt got there by accident and could n’t stay off . Peacock Records was plant in Fifth Ward , where Don Robey shaped Houston ’s talented player into gifted artists , launching the life history of Clarence ' Gatemouth ' Brown before eventually coalesce with the Memphis label Duke to become legendary Duke - Peacock Records . Rap - A - Lot Records was also found in Fifth Ward and its flagship group Geto Boys have been together since the Mid-’80s , cutting the urban center ’s first platinum - selling rap record album . Destiny ’s Child is from Houston . DJ Premier of Gang Starr . Jason Moran . DJ Screw build an integral civilization around his slowed down tapes in the Southside neighbourhood of South Park , give birth a new awareness of Houston ’s culture after his death in November 2000 that would make his manner of turntablism the most influential in hip - hop , a universal genre if there ever was one .
And global or not , Houston ’s artists stay attached to the city . Geto Boys Scarface , Willie D and Bushwick Bill have all had residences in other cities over the years , but Houston is still their radical . Lyle Lovett has a tabular array reserved in the corner of his favourite Heights eatery . Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top might still fall away into the unmarked doorway off the lobby of a Westside Mexican restaurant for a cold beer in a quiet booth . The metropolis has room for that .
They ’ve made a bunch of movies in Houston , among themBrewster McCloud , which is set in the Astrodome . Night Gamewith Roy Scheider was also shot in the Dome and on Galveston Island in 1989 ( yours in truth was an extra in one of the carnival scenes).Terms of Endearmentwas film in Houston , as was its sequelThe Evening Star . Urban Cowboy . Jason ’s Lyric . Rushmore . realism Bites . Houston , We ’ve Got a Problem .
There it is again .
Houston has a new picture manufacture in townsfolk as well , too , and mess of telly is shot there . Judge Alex . Animal Cops . Richard Linklater ’s filmBoyhood . tree diagram of Life . pile of horror picture show .
Plenty of Word have been written about the city , but for me the Scripture are the 1955 tomeSig Byrd ’s Houstonby newswriter Sigman Byrd ( from my former paperHouston Chronicle ) , and Roger Wood ’s more contemporaryDown In Houston : Bayou City BluesandTexas Zydeco , each of which perfectly encapsulate the form of ethnic ecosystems that can evolve and thrive in The Bayou City . The stories in those Book also represent a connection between the past and present for some of the city ’s sometime and most marginalized neighborhoods .
In 2005 , Houston rap music bristle onto the national scene when a new crop of artists sprung up and took the H - Town audio worldwide . Mike Jones , Paul Wall , Slim Thug and Chamillionaire help shepherd in an fresh era for hip - hop , ramp up on a phone that had acquire over their life-time , bringing the urban center ’s slab ( the name for elder cars that are refurbished and customized from scratch ) and lowrider culture to the spotlight . Houston was on the spheric radiolocation in a way that it had never been before .
In August of that year , Hurricane Katrina struck our neighbors in New Orleans , and we opened our arms to the tired gobs of hoi polloi coming into the Astrodome Complex by the busload . When Hurricana Rita orientate herself in the direction of Houston a month after , a million of us jumped into railroad car and headed to Austin for the weekend . Luckily the storm disrobe away and struck further up the slide , but Hurricane Ike made good on the threat a few years later .
Adam Baker/Flickr
The effects were more meaning than the storm itself , though . Despite the worries that Katrina evacuees were work with them nothing but crime ( sound familiar ? ) , the culture of Houston was richer for it . Texas and Louisiana are inseparable sister state , and over the next decennary , the mass who flee to Houston from New Orleans became a part of the fabric of a metropolis that was becoming more international all the fourth dimension .
Another tide was plough aside from the one in the Gulf of Mexico . In the early 2000s , Houston was home to a Super Bowl , a World Series , and an NBA All - Star Game . Then the Houston Dynamo won the Major League Soccer cupful twice in a run-in in 2006 and 2007 . Beyoncé Knowles surpassed everyone to become the biggest dad star in the humans , and you’re able to just about give chase Houston ’s global credit with the ascending of her vocation . The city was becoming something unlike . It was n’t just a position you left any longer .
I recall sitting at a bar with an conversancy maybe a year before I left , bemoaning over beer someone we knew having moved aside . A instant of quiet fall in and he turned to me and said , “ Why are you still here ? ” I did n’t have an answer . draw of folk do n’t . Houston can take in you in like that . You would n’t know it by its status among the res publica ’s biggest city , but Houston is a small town . for certain , it ’s full of highway and dealings and skyscraper , but when you drive around between them , you ’ll witness yourself wave to other family line you bed , zipper into their cars with the air conditioning on full blast . Despite the heat , which is what drives most folks aside , Houston is comfortable .
Vadim Troshkin/Galveston Island CVB
That comes at a Leontyne Price .
No dear alphabetic character is utter without its moment of suspension . Houston is develop , but that ’s meant the border of the city ’s old political dominion – not officially recognized in over a C – have been blurred by development , with shotgun menage exchange by town homes and blocks of flat . Those intrusion have stirred an admirable fighting spirit : The Fourth Ward , once Freedman ’s Town before a main road cut it off from Antioch Church ( which to this daylight stands among Downtown ’s skyscrapers ) , has been nearly rub out , but not without triggering a series of community movements to preserve the area ’s history . Entire Third Ward block have been raze and built over , but the community - base non - profit Project Row Houses has been fighting that tide since the former 1990s , restoring shotgun houses into low-cost housing , arts spaces and learning centers in one of the city ’s oldest African American neighborhoods .
Houstondoeshave another trouble not hold in to individual neighborhoods : it ’s built over a swamp ( it is n’t called The Bayou City for nothing ) , and urban density and concrete sprawling have in mind fewer property for historic floodwater formula to sink in . But the urban center has been mustering its considerable vitality to deal with the issue ; it merely ca n’t take thing idly , not with the ever - present menace of a hurricane choking off Houston / Galveston refineries and disrupting the economic system of , well , the entire United States . There are engine room answer on the table , with citizens voting for flood drainage fee imposition and movement by the Harris County Flood Control District and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to widen the city ’s bayous , canals and reservoirs . There are also multiple serious ( and gravely contemplated ) proposals to build an tremendous gate that would hold the piss back from Galveston Bay ( and thus , the Houston Ship Channel ) in the consequence of another Allison or Ike .
Bread & Circuses/Visit Houston
The city ’s collective spirit in the face of natural disaster is emblematic of its advancement along other line as well . Cuban - support Orlando Sanchez was the first Latino immigrant elect to a citywide position when he joined Houston City Council in 1996 . Houston elected its first African - American city manager with former Houston Police Chief Lee Brown in 1997 , who had been appointed to his previous position ( before afterward becoming Police Chief of New York City ) by the metropolis ’s first distaff Mayor Kathy Whitmire . A light rail was installed in clip for Super Bowl XXXVIII , poor but still loosen some of the metropolis ’s killer dealings problems , and Houston ’s labor adopted it enough to where it has exposit around the metropolis . In 2010 , Houston choose its first openly gay mayor in 2010 with the election of Annise Parker , follow by the metropolis ’s second African - American city manager Sylvester Turner – a longtime phallus of the Texas House of Representatives .
And the underground scene I come up in when I moved to Houston in 1992 ? circle do n’t skip town anymore . nightspot and music venues support the touring circle and the locals likewise . There are bookstores and phonograph record stores give anew . Free Press Summerfest started in 2009 and has grown into one of the premiere music festivals in the nation . Last class , one of Summerfest ’s organizers open up a permanent venue north of the fete site , preserve the ' 70s - geological era Raven Tower in the process . The brainpower drainpipe that had hoi polloi packing for Austin all those years has relented . As certify by its productive , homegrown hip - hop scene , Houston can and does stomach its own .
“ Main Street is kinda cool , " tell Jim Pirtle , an artist who bought a building in a abandoned Downtown in 1995 and created the humanities space Notsuoh . " Because Brad Moore got a collective together of all these dissimilar ginmill owners , and they all chose up spots at the same clip , and then they opened all up together and immediately created a scene within two calendar month , and suddenly people were flooding down here . It was translate into a hub . And they ’re not club , they ’re severally own bars . So it ’s not the guys hail in to do a discotheque and then one yr in make the money and walk away from it . This is people here for the long terminus , so it feels like a vicinity . It ’s a decent petty conniption down here of eclectic stripe owners and main and diverse crowd down here . It ’s not a monoculture of flower child or of rich people or whatever . That ’s a real model for city where you have to deal with property proprietor who are avid . We ’re almost at decisive muckle now where there are enough residents down here where a foodstuff store could open up . I ’ve been without a railroad car for five geezerhood now , and that ’s something that ’s surd to do in Houston . I get a rail production line in front of me , I signify I get down bulk transit , but it ’s close to reaching that point where people can survive an urban life style where they do n’t have to use a car . ”
Aaron M. Sprecher/AP Photo
On March 30 , 2015 , the Houston mortal band The Suffers made their electronic web television debut as the musical node onLate Show With David Letterman . Houstonians crowd around TV sets in bars all over the city to watch the group do their song “ Gwan , ” and the nation was introduce to an independent act that started in Houston and stayed in Houston . The city ’s newest creative generation has found a flag .
In New York City , I notice the difference over the geezerhood . It go from people saying “ Why would you ever go to Houston ? ” to “ I wanna check that post out ! ”
Last month , megachef Anthony Bourdain was in The Bayou City to film segments of his television set show with rapper Slim Thug and Houston ’s homegrown Comicpalooza filled the George R. Brown Convention Center with 43,824 fans in its eighth year , produce exponentially since its origination in the lobby of a movie theater . The Toyota Center host The NBA All - Star Game again in 2013 . The NCAA Men ’s Final Four Basketball Championship was held at NRG Stadium earlier this year , and the Super Bowl will return there in 2017 . Houston has always had the universe to make things happen , but the modern communication eld has join parts of the sprawl metropolis that were once up to an hour apart , making the big small town even belittled .
Thomas Hawk/Flickr
There are thing that I miss . You could reason that some of the right food in the creation is in New York City , but there ’s also more mediocre food for thought . Throw a sway down the street in Houston , in the city ’s heart or around its outskirt , and it ’ll bounce off of a great barbeque reefer , Vietnamese restaurant , taqueria , Tex - Mex or soul nutrient eating place that maybe even the thorough Houston Chronicle food critic Alison Cook does n’t know about . There is no orderliness to Houston ’s treasures .
Really , nothing in Houston is centralise , but it is the urban center ’s marrow that will both arise and at the same time homogenise a metropolis of over 2 million where more than 80 languages are speak across 600 straightforward mile . That includes the Town and annex biotic community they call “ Greater Houston , ” the total populations of which have the large metropolitan field in the South creep up on Chicago to become the third largest metropolis in the United States .
And that ’s completely potential . Harris County is the third most populous in the country . More people are moving to Houston all the fourth dimension , and the 1 already there ai n’t allow . Veteran newscaster Dave Ward was sent a credentials this year by the Guinness Book of World Records that read : " The longest career as a television news broadcaster is 49 years and 218 days , achieved by Dave Ward ( USA ) , who began work on 28 January 2025 and proceed ground at KTRK - TV , in Houston , Texas , USA , as verify on 23 December 2024 . ”
Michelle Gardella/Stocksy
When I go back , there are some parts of the urban center I do n’t recognize , but Houston ’s foundation are too big , too weird and too complex to ever really overwrite . Its framework is such that it could never grow to be anything else . Other cities may transform from their midpoint out , but Houston will always be a convoluted , decentralised , prominent beautiful mess of a city , and I will always bed it .
Oh and by the way , it was “ Houston , we ’ve had a trouble here ” that astronaut Jack Swigert call back to NASA from inside of the riotous Apollo 13 spacecraft in April of 1970 . Those boys got back to Earth fine , and in the age since , Houston has done all right , too .
Dave Wilson/Flickr
