If you missed the free Fallout Boy and Kendrick Lamar concerts during Final Four weekend, here’s your chance to catch both, condensed down to less than 5 minutes (no sound, though). This week photographer Geoffrey Lyon posted his time-lapse capture (from the upper levels of One Park Place) of Discovery Green filling up during the Friday and Saturday events held in conjunction with the college basketball championship finals; the park reached its maximum capacity on both that Saturday and the following Sunday and stopped admitting visitors. [KTRK; previously on Swamplot] Video: Geoffrey Lyon
Turned Up and Down Downtown
I thought about going–for a microsecond! After hearing of 60K+ glad I didn’t!!
The boys and I did our twice a month Sunday bike ride downtown that Sunday and it was almost completely bum free. Where did they all go for 48 hours?
@Young creative
Many are taken to the drunk tank (under the 59/10 interchange) to be let out the day after. Many are booked into the jail, to be let out a couple days later. A few are taken to the psych hospital at 288/MacGregor, to be let out in the 3rd Ward along Elgin or Alabama from unmarked vans a week or so later (yes – this actually happens). Once word gets out that the cops are on the beat, many hop on the train and get a free ride to Peggy’s Point Plaza Park/Fort Sears or to Hermann Park, where they get free handouts during the weekends from church groups (they then do things like take dumps on the playground equipment, take baths in the fountains, and toss the trash from their free meals all over the ground). A few more move off to encampments under the 10/45 interchange, in the trees along the 59/288 shoulder, and up under the underpasses along Brays Bayou, where they then smoke meth to be inhaled by people like me riding our bikes by for exercise (what are the exact dangers of second-hand meth smoke?) and once again discard their debris all over the ground. Some more of them wander over to Midtown, Eado or the 3rd Ward on their own (see comments on what goes on at BWW in the other post today), haggling customers at various businesses with made-up stories about needing bus fare or trying to get to their mother in the hospital.
As an avowed bum fighter (much to the chagrin of a few other commenters who feel the opposite way, based on responses to some of my previous comments), I find these occasional “cleansings” quite refreshing for downtown, but they do just shift the burden to nearby areas, like my neighborhood. I did notice the uptick in activity this past weekend, and even called the cops on a new bum (I know most of the locals) pissing on my neighbor’s front-yard oak tree on Saturday.
Fort Sears! Wow – I have seen them with a Little Smokey cooking dinner before. Not a care in the world.
Superdave – When I lived in Midtown, you could follow the trail of trash from the Church Groups who fed the bums on Sunday’s under the Pierce Elevated. Like a dirty Hansel and Gretel from Pierce to McGowen. The best thing Mayor Parker ever did was ban these groups from feeding the bums.
Ok, you can be homeless, that’s cool, but respect everything around you if the superdave write up is all the way true. I’ve got a new look, now, and definitely people without respect don’t need to be in any public environment and should be pushed out. They need to be arrested or find a relative or friend that will deal with them. For the respectful homeless and not lying, and trashing, etc. then you get my utmost respect even if you’re sleeping outside.
(Oh but there IS a soundtrack! and it’s super annoying.)
How many thousands were outside the perimeter unable/waiting to get in?!
I do like to see Houston hosting fun, successful events.
Notice how towards the tail end of the evening more people were leaving than arriving, and the area in front of the stage is not that full.
I heard that because they completely shut off entry in the late afternoon due to reaching capacity, by the time that the headliners went on at the end of the evening they were playing to a very sparse crowd as many people had already left
Most of their fans did not get the opportunity to enter the area, so there were hardly any people at the venue! I hope they learn from this lesson, and manage the crowds better for the Super Bowl.