WHERE HOUSTONIANS HIDE FROM TOURISTS Writing in the travel section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, devoted Cardinal fan and reporter Diane Toroian Keaggy blows the lid off the great Houston population hoax: “Who am I to argue with the U.S. Census, Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau and Post-Dispatch pal and Houston native Aisha Sultan? But no way is Houston the nation’s fourth largest city. Where are the people? Certainly not downtown, which cleared out immediately after the Astros win. The Museum District, easily reachable from downtown by rail and home to the Houston Zoo, Children’s Museum and Museum of Natural Science, also seemed strangely quiet. We wanted to visit the Contemporary Art Museum, the Byzantine Fresco Chapel, the Menil Collection, the Houston Center of Photography and the wacky folk-art mecca called the Orange Show. Each was closed on Tuesday. We could have visited the Space Center Houston, which includes the tram tour of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, but it’s 25 miles south of downtown and costs $21. That’s too much money and time for a short two-day trip. Instead we visited the Museum of Fine Arts, which features an impressive collection of Impressionism and the Weather Museum, which feels more like a seventh-grade science project than an actual attraction. Don’t bother. . . . We continued our search for life at the Galleria, one of the nation’s top malls. A-ha! So that’s where everyone was hiding. Home to Fendi, Dior, Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Versace, Tory Burch and other impossibly expensive boutiques not found in St. Louis, the Galleria boasts 375 shops spread across two large buildings. Bring comfy, but fashionable, shoes. The mall claims to attract 24 million shoppers each year, and only a few seemed to be buying Gucci glasses, Kate Spade earrings and Jimmy Choo pumps. The rest could be found skating on the indoor ice rink or slumming it in Banana Republic, Apple and Claire’s.” [STLToday]
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Tag: Tourism
Upset at New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s oh-so-cruel insinuation that Houston isn’t much of a tourist town, local talk-show host Michael Berry has responded with an ad on this billboard, carefully situated at the scenic crotch between the Southwest Freeway feeder road and the Westpark Tollway near Chimney Rock, surrounded by a number of fine automotive repair establishments. It’s been 13 days since your outrageous insult, Senator. Apologize now or it’s just going to get worse. Sure hope it doesn’t have to come to that, but don’t think we won’t resort to putting a bunch of those inflatable gorillas on top of the Downtown Aquarium to get our point across — if we have to. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox
The Woodlands Convention and Visitors Bureau has launched a new website that features 28 unique 360-degree virtual tours of various locations throughout the future township, produced by a local company. Showing up most often: The Woodlands Mall, with 5 separate panorama views, followed by the Waterway Marriott with 4 panoramas and Waterway Square and the Avia Hotel on Market Street with 3 each. Organization president Nick Wolba tells the Chronicle, “So many people in the Houston market think of The Woodlands as a place to live. We want them to know this is a great place to visit . . . It’s a very special place as a destination.”
- The Woodlands Interactive Tour [The Woodlands Convention and Visitors Bureau]
- Virtual tour highlights Woodlands features [Ultimate Woodlands]
Panorama: Epic Software
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HERE FOR THE MONEY “I think coming to Houston to work and make money is a great thing – let’s face it, we don’t have mountains, the weather is horrible (except for when it’s not), and the beach is too far away to be much of a draw. No one is going to come to Houston because of the city’s natural beauty – they will come here because there is no better city in the US to pursue the American dream. What exactly is wrong with that? Last time I checked, most of us do have to make money to survive – there is no shame in having to earn a living. Houston fosters an [entrepreneurial] spirit bar none. Personally, I think that is great. You can keep your East Coast, blue-blood cities and your reformed Southern Aristocracy – I’ll take good old fashioned, pull yourself up by the bootstraps raw capitalism any day. Y’all so down on Houston need to go back and re-read some of the quotes on http://www.houstonitsworthit.com. There are thousands of reasons why people do love Houston – and not all of them have fallen under the bulldozer of Perry Homes.” [LT, commenting on Comment of the Day: Battle Hymn of the Inner Loop]
WHY HOUSTON THINKS IT’S A TOURIST TOWN The single biggest group that visits Houston is . . . wait for it . . . Houstonians, according to a recent survey commissioned by the Greater Houston Convention & Visitors Bureau. That’s probably because the survey counted local residents as tourists if they spent the night in a hotel or made a special trip of 50 miles or more. 58 percent of Houston visitors last year were from Texas; the next biggest source of visitors — accounting for 8 percent — was Louisiana: “And the No. 1 reason travelers report they come to Houston? Last year, 51 percent reported they come to visit family and friends; that is a higher proportion than the other cities in the survey.” [Houston Chronicle]
The Hospitality Apartments at 7300 Bertner just north of OST are “not posh. But they’re perfectly nice,” explains Ann Hightower, whose husband Joe founded the organization that runs them 42 years ago. “Totally functional, with linens, dishes, a stove and oven, a microwave, TVs and access to free laundry.”
Where’s the swimming pool? There isn’t one, but that’s not usually too much of a concern of the people staying there. All the residents of the 42-unit complex are out-of-towners undergoing treatment at the nearby Texas Medical Center.
Joe [Hightower] estimated the apartments have been filled “99-plus percent of the time†over the years.
“You could probably have four projects this big in Houston and just barely meet the demand,†Ann said after the organization’s annual meeting on Super Bowl Sunday. “And then you would uncover another layer of need.â€
Residents stay anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months — for free.
The nonprofit has never applied for or received money from any government agency. The organization has relied on personal fundraising efforts by the Hightowers and friends and the generosity of Houston congregations, private foundations and hundreds of individual contributors. It has no debt, pays no salaries and operates each apartment for less than $10 a day.
Maybe this is the industry that’ll bring in . . . all those bargain-seeking tourists from Austin?
- Houston Taco Tour 2009 [Vimeo]
- Previously on Swamplot: Houston Taco Truck Tour by Camera Phone
Video: Nelson Flores
THE ASTROLOT: HOUSTON’S NEWEST TRANSIT HUB Another scene from the active afterlife of the former theme park: “The 150 acre lot formerly known as Astroworld has been empty for a while, but is expected to be packed on Friday when it will be available for rodeo parking. . . . Lighting towers will be brought in and parts of the property not suitable for parking, such as areas with holes in the ground, will be marked off. There will be entrances along the 610 feeder between Kirby and Fannin and exits off of Belfort. After the rodeo, all entrances will be used as exits so all traffic will flow out of the lot. There are only about 12,000 parking spaces on the actual rodeo site. Officials welcome the new 5,000 space parking opportunity. . . . The lot is not paved and is bumpy, two factors that do not bother some rodeo patrons. . . . ‘We think it’s great that people will be able to cross the bridge and it will bring back memories of when Astroworld was here,’ [Andi Devera of the Fazeli Group, owners of the leasing rights] said. The Astrolot opens this Friday.” [abc13; previously]
The newly revealed design for that $7 million pedestrian bridge over Buffalo Bayou near Montrose makes a brilliant metaphor for the appeal of this city, no? From a distance, it doesn’t seem like Houston is really . . . “passable,” either! But once you’re looking at it up close . . . sure, it’s all right: You can make it through. An excellent message to send prospective Houston tourists! Plus: Wasn’t that how the Houston Ship Channel got started too?
Official name of this Memorial Heights TIRZ project: The Tolerance Bridge. Perfect!
Sure, we’ve all heard about the damage to Galveston — from news reports and the sad tales of returning residents. But how’s the place looking to tourists? Lou Minatti took his kids for a visit over the weekend:
The island is in sad shape. But there were some bright spots. The Moody Gardens Aquarium is open, and since there are so few tourists they have greatly reduced the entrance fee. (The Rain Forest Pyramid is closed until further notice.) The kids did get to see a beautiful shrimp trawler up close. They were fascinated.
What struck me most was the fact that all of the trees are dead. All of the beautiful live oaks, planted soon after the 1900 hurricane, are no more. They were killed by the flood of salt water. The only trees to survive are the palms and Norfolk Island pines. My best guess is that every deciduous tree more than 5 blocks from the seawall is dead.
Pretending to be a tourist in his hometown, Misha from Tasty Bits puts together a day’s itinerary that includes the Breakfast Klub, the Rothko Chapel, the Menil, Westmoreland and Audubon Place, Nippon, . . . and Discovery Green:
11am: Head to Discovery Green to see exactly how much park $145 million dollars buys you. The corporate sponsorship at this place is a bit “enthusiasticâ€, but overall Disco Green (that’s what the cool kids call it these days, I hear) is a surprisingly good time. I didn’t bring my bocce balls or a putter, but I did have fun reflecting the best of Kraftwerk off the completely awesome Listening Vessels, designed by Doug Hollis. Being a bit stubborn, I also spent no less than half an hour trying to figure out if the Synchronicity of Color sculpture was interactive. It’s not, but feel free to give it a shot anyway.
The most interesting thing about Discovery Green is not how much it cost, but how much more livable Houston Downtown appears to be than it was as recently as 5 years ago. . . . Though a bit crammed with “featuresâ€, the park goes a nice job of combining a nature, architecture and art in a single organic space that anchors a new, far more residential Downtown than ever before.
- Itinerary: Rothko Chapel and Discovery Green [Tasty Bits]
Photo: Misha
GALVESTON AFTER THE SECOND GREAT HURRICANE
“My sense is that Galveston will come back as a weekender community and a modest tourist vista, but that commerce not related to the tourism industry will continue to decline at an accelerated rate. My sense is that what we might see in 20 years is a community comprised of a few high-rise condos and resorts along the seawall, the ubiquitous weekender homes on the West Beach and not much else. It will certainly be easier to evacuate such a community.” [Houston’s Clear Thinkers]
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGhYduLgvZk 400 330]
Probably the best introduction to the particular and engaging humor of the Houston Chicks’ relentlessly cheery stuck-in-Houston-for-the-summer tourist travelogues is the soon-to-be-classic entry entitled “Houston: Day Seven” from last month, which begins with this striking line:
Today, we went to Rice Village…We stayed for 10 minutes…and left…
and ends, 10 photographs later, in a Galleria parking lot — after a brief repose with an egg-salad sandwich.
The brilliance of the Chicks’ photo essays is difficult to communicate in an excerpt. If you’re looking for a quick take, try The Houston Chicks Have Won!, which recounts a popular Houston archetype in only two frames.
But there’s so much more:
While riding the Boardwalk Bullet roller coaster in Kemah this past weekend, Lou Minatti snaps this quick picture of that house next door.
- Another view of that house in Kemah, and be wary of the Boardwalk gimmicks [Lou Minatti]
- The Roller Coaster Next Door [Swamplot]
