Posts Tagged by Texas
Shaking hands and kissing babies
| October 29, 2009 | Filled under Blog |
I met Houston mayoral candidate Gene Locke last night. He gave me a shoulder massage.
He was at the V.I.P. opening of the new St. Arnold’s brewery (a.k.a. “The Newery”). I was there to cover it for Houstonist.
I’ve been pretty unsure of who to vote for for mayor. The candidates’ platforms seem indistinguishable to me. Do I vote for the rich white guy, the sexual minority, the ethnic minority, or the other ethnic minority? I’m still undecided, but I have this to say about Locke: I cracked a joke to him last night, he took that joke one step further, and as a result he seemed unabashedly human, funny and interesting. His wife, by the way, gave him the go-ahead on the shoulder massage.
Unsavory history
| October 7, 2009 | Filled under Internerd |
Yet another accolade for my ‘hood. Houston’s Montrose was named one of the Top 10 neighborhoods to live in in the United States.
Heights Natatorium
| October 3, 2009 | Filled under Blog |
A long-simmering obsession with the Sutro Baths was reignited last night when I discovered the Houston Heights once had a bath house of it’s own, one that was unbelievable fed by White Oak Bayou.
From The Galveston Daily News on April 12, 1895:
“Houston’s new natatorium at Coombs park was thrown open to the public today, and in two hours after the opening every bathing suit in the house was out, and the jolly bathers were enjoying the fresh water. The tank has a capacity of 200,000 gallons of water and is 80×40 feet square, having a depth when full of from 4 to 9 feet of water.”
What is it now? If you look at the map on the cleverly-named Houstorian, you can see the park was once near Hallow Weed Cemetery, a burial place for Houston’s blacks at the turn of the century that is now completely overgrown and surrounded by lean-tos.
Flower Gardens
| September 21, 2009 | Filled under Video |
My blogginess, it ebbs and flows. But I have a good excuse. I have been here, doing this:
Read more at the Houston Press and see all my pictures on Flickr.
Worth it
| September 10, 2009 | Filled under Blog |
I watched from my ex-pat residence in Korea as Anderson Cooper stood on the streets of New Orleans in the days after Hurricane Katrina. And three years later, I sat in a hotel room in Berlin and watched as he stood on the shores of Galveston Island, wondering if my house would be flooded when I got back from vacation.
I was lucky to not have suffered damage in either storm, and to have missed out on the weeks of power outages, roads clogged with debris and subsequent flooding due to our city’s wonderful civil engineering. But I wouldn’t have complained. It’s all a part of living in Houston.
That’s the idea behind the Houston: It’s Worth It ad campaign, and if you live here you already know all about this. But HIWI is a nicely subversive way to answer all those people in other parts of the country who love to tell me how much this town sucks (99% of whom have never lived here or even visited).
HIWI has released a book, HIWI:Ike chronicling our beloved city’s adventures with Mother Nature in the shadow of the other “big storm” a state over and a few years before. Ike made landfall in Galveston on Sept. 13 of last year, but many of the small beach communities along the Texas Coast were hit far worse (and received far less help) than Galvez Town.
Tonight, DOMY will host a sale and booksigning with the creators of HIWI. Check my friend Bargas’ contribution to the book on page 149.
Wilshire Village
| September 1, 2009 | Filled under Internerd, Photo Album |
Then:
Last month:
Now:
Way to preserve your history and a charming little part of the city, Houston.
See also the death of Washington Ave.
Blue fever
| July 29, 2009 | Filled under Internerd |
I’ve had hardcore dog fever for about two years now, desperately wanting to get a young dog to bond with Gus and for CLH to have the experience of raising a puppy. (Gus is the first dog he’s ever had, and they got to know each other after Gus was full-grown and fully-reared.)
Lance set me off on an obsession about the hunting dog the Blue Lacy. How friggin’ cool is it that Texas has an official state dog breed? A dog that is part coyote! Look at how beautiful they are! And now this story, which will make you cry unless your heart is a shriveled piece of rotting plant matter.
Clear Lake family finds missing dog 10 months after Hurricane Ike
Neighbors reported seeing the dog emerge late at night from the wooded area through a break in a fence at the end of a cul-de-sac. Neighbors had become accustomed to leaving food out for her. She would make her rounds then disappear back into the woods at daybreak.
The Mojo Relic
| July 22, 2009 | Filled under Shorts |
In which I go searching for a Mid-century oddity in the ‘burbs of Htown.
A moon with a view
| July 16, 2009 | Filled under Internerd |
Today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission. This is cool: items collected by Norman Mailer as part of his research for Of a Fire on the Moon.
