A rum row (a line of booze-laden ships from Cuba, Jamaica, and the Bahamas) became a fixture approximately 35 miles (56 km) beyond the coastline where smaller boats fetched the goods and brought them to shore.

(Via The Free State of Galveston on Wikipedia)

Hurricane season starts tomorrow. So far in my tenure as a Houston resident, we’ve been super lucky with regard to missing the storms. For Katrina, Rita and Ike, we’ve been out of the country each time. But this year they’re predicting a hectic season. We shall see.

This weekend is the 10-year anniversary of Tropical Storm Allison. I hadn’t yet moved here, but I’ve seen the pictures and heard the horror stories. I’ve kind of always loved dramatic weather though, and in a small way hope for a storm — one that brings a little excitement, but doesn’t leave us without power for several days, or floods our house, or damages anything.

This time of year always makes me think bout the glory days of Galveston, mostly about the Victorian era and the 1900 hurricane and Kate Chopin’s Awakening, which I know is set in Louisiana but which represents the same time period I romanticism with regards to Galveston. Then I read this crazy comment on Swamplot about a very out of place house built in the 1920s in Dickinson, Texas.

During the 1920s, Dickinson became a significant tourist destination resulting from investment by the Maceo crime syndicate which ran Galveston during this time. The syndicate created gambling venues in the city such as the Silver Moon casino.

Ahh, the Maceos. That set me off remembering the old Balinese Room and my many fond memories of the place. Which in turn led me to a Wikipedia wormhole. So here are some links to enjoy. Did you know there used to be a military blimp base on Galveston Island?

• Free State of Galveston
• 1915 Galveston Hurricane
• Rosario Maceo
• Balinese Room
• Galveston Movement

SlutWalk Houston is right around the corner. In case you’re not familiar with the march, SlutWalk was born of a Toronto police officer’s comment that women should avoid “dressing like sluts” in order not to be raped. It’s a chance to stop the cycle of victim blaming when it comes to rape, and possibly to strip a dirty word of its sting by owning it as only true sluts can.

Here’s an homage to our five favorite Texans who took a stand through the name of sluttiness.

(Via Five Texas Sluts Worth Admiring – Houston News – Hair Balls.)

Even in its hedonic infrastructure, Galveston displayed grand aspirations. The city had five hundred saloons, more than New Orleans, a city not exactly known for banking its fires. Galveston’s poshest whorehouse was situated right behind its richest men’s club, the Artillery Club, which barred women except for an annual ball and the occasional coming-out party of a member’s daughter. The city’s most disreputable block was Fat Alley, between 28th and 29th. In Galveston alcohol was blood, but one could also gamble, acquire love, and lose oneself in an opium mist.

The city exhibited a rare harmony of spirit. Blacks, whites, Jews, and immigrants lived and worked side by side with an astonishing degree of mutual tolerance.

From Issac’s Storm. Oh how I wish the city was still like this.

My shitty iPod tape adapter only plays music out of one half of my speakers, and I was sick of the 10 or so CDs I had. For some reason I thought it might be worthwhile to scan the dials, hoping there would be listen-worthy radio on a Friday night. Somewhere between Schulenburg and Luling, I caught several Christian/self help stations in a row, including one where three gossipy women were having a would-you-ever conversation regarding stripping for one’s husband/boyfriend at his request in the privacy of one’s home. All three women talked about this hypothetical request as if it were the most scandalous thing they could possibly think of doing.

It took all I had inside not to swerve to the side of the road and pull a Sailor and Lula after that.

Yep, that is Dean’s Credit Clothing 41 years ago, when it was actually a clothing store and not a music venue. Also, in the background:

The Lomas & Nettleton Building originally housed offices, but was converted into a residential loft tower in 1999 and renamed the “Franklin Lofts”.

Although given the title of Houston’s first “skyscraper”, the structure is not actually a high-rise. As the Franklin Lofts is considered to be a low-rise building, the 10-story 711 Main, now known as “Capitol Lofts”, which was completed in 1908 and rises 10 floors, was actually the city’s first “high-rise” building to rise at least 10 floors.

MONTROSE TEXAS: The Transformation of a Neighborhood from FAST CUT FILMS on Vimeo.

Wes Anderson hatred abounds, buy y’all can all suck it.

Anderson: I always feel like there are specific things about Houston. There’s one museum in particular in Houston. So many of the things that I’m interested in now I can sort of trace back to that museum, which introduced me to them.

Cocker: What museum is that?

Anderson: It’s called The Menil Collection. There was this woman, Dominique de Menil—I think she was French, but she had one of the great Texas oil fortunes—and her art collection was vast. She collected lots of surrealist works—Salvador Dalí and René Magritte and Max Ernst and those Joseph Cornell boxes. She also collected abstract expressionist and pop art. So there were those John Chamberlain sculptures made from smashed-up cars and Dan Flavin fluorescent tubes and pieces by Donald Judd and Cy Twombly. There’s a building they call the Rothko Chapel that’s just these [Mark] Rothko pieces. I’d never heard of any of this before I walked through those doors. But there’s no place where I feel quite as much at home as I do in Houston. Even if Houston is not the place that I find the most exciting necessarily, it’s very peaceful for me to go there, I think, because I’m from there.*

If you’ve ever been to The Menil (my favorite museum in Houston (my favorite museum in the world is The British Museum)) and then watched The Royal Tennenbaums you can see the influence everywhere, from Eli Cash’s obsession with Indian masks to the (fictional) 375th St YMCA, which I’m convinced is modeled after the Downtown Y in Houston.

* From an interview with my boyfriend, Jarvis Cocker, in Interview Magazine, via Culturemap.

I came home, took the hottest shower I could handle, then spent the rest of the day bundled up in bed trying to figure out why my face felt so hot. I left the house only to see a truly horrible concert, then came home again and crawled right back under the covers.

The day before the cold front hit CLH made a huge pot of our friend’s award-winning vegetarian chili and I can swear to you it is the best chili I have ever eaten. It’s been getting us through this cold front better than My Antonia and Eastern Promises consumed in front of a space heater ever could.

When I eat vegetarian, I don’t normally eat fake meats, usually just eat veggie-only meals. But the fakemeat crumbles in this chili give it a more authentic texture. I’m not crazy about canned veggies, but I do like to use Kroger’s organic brand for the canned tomatoes and beans. But that doesn’t help you if you don’t live near a Korger, now does it. Sorry. I also substitute hominy for the corn because I can’t stand canned yellow corn. This chili is easy to make, quick, and one pot will last you for days. Recipe below:

Bob’s Vegetarian Chili

• 1 T olive oil
• 1/2 medium onion, chopped
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 t ground cumin
• 2 T dried oregano
• 1 T salt
• 1 green bell pepper, chopped
• 2 jalapeno peppers, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1-2 t Big Daddy’s Ass Burn hot sauce (available at Spec’s or the Saint Arnold’s Brewery)
• 1 12-oz package vegetarian “burger” crumbles
• 3 28-oz cans whole peeled tomatoes, crushed
• 2 T chili powder
• 1 T ground black pepper
• 1 15-oz can kindey beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 15-oz can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 15-oz can black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 15-oz can while kernel corn, drained and rinsed

1. Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Stir in the onion, and season with bay leaves, cumin, oregano and salt. Cook and stir until onion is tender, then mix in the green bell peppers, jalapeno peppers and garlic. When vegetables are heated through, mix in the burger crumbles. Reduce heat to low, cover pot and simmer 5 minutes.

2. Mix the tomatoes into the pot. Season chili with chili powder, hot sauce and pepper. Stir in the kidney beans, garbanzo beans and black beans. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer 45 minutes. Stir in the corn (or hominy) and continue cooking 5 minutes before serving.

This geologist friend is the same person who was the subject, three years ago, of a Houston Press cover story wherin he kayaked down Buffalo Bayou all the way to the Houston Ship Channel, one of the most polluted bodies of water in the U.S. Who knows what kind of adventures he’ll have in store for us in Big Bend.

At first I wasn’t planning on taking my computer but I might have to do some work on the road. Stops along the way include Marfa, Terlingua and our friends’ cabin in the middle of nowhere. The rest of the nights we’re just playing it by ear.

Here’s to a new year and a new decade.