A funny thing happens in Pooja Lodhia’s teevee report on the whole Tampico Heights dust-up. Yes, she gets Jim Badger, the creator of the Tampico Heights website, to come on camera, and she notes that his renaming project was meant as a sort-of joke. But more interesting: She finds a couple people who claim that the inside-the-Loop neighborhood west of I-45 and east of North Main St. should be called Northside.
They aren’t wrong.
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That neighborhood, which incorporates Brooke Smith and East Sunset Heights, is actually a part of the Greater Northside Management District, an official entity created in 2006 (see map at right). But then again, the same is true of all of the Heights-ish areas east of Studewood, including Woodland Heights and the various Norhills.
And didn’t a whole bunch of Northsiders go on a sign-holding spree a short while ago saying they didn’t want their neighborhood to be renamed Tampico Heights? Well yeah, but that was different. Those were residents of the Near Northside, also known as Northside Village, a designated superneighborhood that’s entirely east of I-45 (PDF).
East Sunset Heights and Brooke Smith (and the other lesser-known parts of the east-of-North-Main triangle just west of I-45) may want to brush off the Tampico Heights designation — perhaps because of that whole Heights creep thing. But they’re already part of the Heights as well, as this Greater Heights superneighborhood map (PDF) shows. And that’s what one Swamplot reader had depended on: “I assumed that my neighborhood, East Sunset Heights, was actually part of Greater Heights. After [seeing the map of the] Greater Northside I’m even more confused!”
- Northside’s New Nickname ‘Tampico Heights’ Faces Backlash from Some Residents [abc13]
- Tampico Heights coverage [Swamplot]
Maps: abc13 (Tampico Heights); Greater Northside Management District (Greater Northside)
I-45 is the proper dividing line; in many ways, Houston defines itself by where it put its highways.
How about Northside Heights?
Stop the madness!! Why all this foolish nonsense over a neighborhood’s name? You live in the neighborhood that is listed on your Deed and HCAD’s legal description. If my legal description says, “Sunset Heights,” that’s where I live. Plain and simple!
Who is this Jim Badger cat and what interest does he have in any of this? Does he live in the area? Does he have relations to people who do? He sets up a website (which does not hint at all to being tongue-in-cheek) as a “joke”???? I don’t get the joke and nobody else does either. Great job smiling and making nice with everyone, Pooja….
Progg, the reaction you just gave is exactly what he was looking for, congrats you fell for the joke.
I live in this area and I don’t even know what to tell people where I live. Sometimes I tell them the Heights or maybe Northside or maybe even Glen Park. I usually just tell people I live in the Heights just to make things easy… But I never have said I live in Near Northside. I mean, the name just doesn’t even make sense. You aren’t near to the north… You are the north of Houston!!
Instead of neighborhood names, we should us gerrymandered congressional districts. Now THAT would make for some interesting Swamplot debating!
@dag,
Yes, that’s it. The guy a website all this so that a local news station interviews him and someone makes a comment on Swamplot. Damn you, Mr Badger. You got me! I think if anyone got the reaction Jim Badger wanted it was channel 13.
Anyway, my comment was really directed at the work of the reporter who either didn’t bother to ask the questions she needed to make sense of his story or she did but didn’t like the answers she got so just ignored them. Either way it’s pathetic.
Nobody creates a website to tout a new name for a neighborhood “for fun”. The claim that he was just joking is absurd based on the fact that there’s nothing inherently funny about it whether you like the name or not.
If Jim MacIngvale doesn’t recognize the Greater Northside Mgmt District’s authority, then neither do I. Tampico Heights it remains!
http://www.chron.com/business/article/District-sues-McIngvale-over-48-000-in-unpaid-1745784.php
I was on board for the name when I thought it was named after Tampico’s the restaurant because, margaritas. I cannot abide by it being named after a concession stand that sells so-so licuados, canned elote and NO MARGARITAS. I think they should go back to the drawing board and rename it Teotihuacan Heights because seeing people trying to pronounce that would be hilarious, also margaritas. Seriously, being angry about this just gives the name more attention, thereby insuring that it will stick. You guys who feel passionately about this should let it die and then reexamine what you are passionate about because this is dumb.
Lived in the area a few years back; it is Tampico Heights. With nights filled with neighbors about to exchange gun fire over the outcome of the latest WWE event, no other name comes close.