Texas, lets talk about Texas

and the food is great.

houston is clean. and modern. and the weather's nice...

otherwise? kind of a big thumbs down.

she is a rebel state
she is a rebel state
and it's not too late for her to break
from a sick, sick union
an unhealed wound and separate

My dad grew in in Brownwood and Waxahatchie and West Texas

West Texas = desert, scorpions, flat bleak drear
Austin = college students, rock shows with at least 6 bands on the bill every night at every bar (it seems like); lots of transplants from all over
San Antonio = TOO HOT, and a "revitalized" downtown area, i.e. remodelled to look like a Denver Hilton
Houston = generally lame with pockets of grooviness (Rice University for instance)
Fort Worth/Dallas = DULLSVILLE (sorry, only going on my experience here; my 1,000,000,000 yr old grandparents live in Ft Worth and they don't know jack about their own town so I only see the dull parts maybe) (Ft Worth has the best chicken-fried steak in the world) (too many 'urban cowboys' though, gareth you should check out some of the 'Western stores' downtown by the stockyards, they would blow your mind)

Okay, now that I've got that out of my system, I'll talk a little about my home state. Austin is a very cool place, altough I do have to say that its a tad bit over-rated as of late. A few landmark clubs'n'record stores have closed due to real estate bullshit. They've also got an awesome theatre scene. San Antonio is very nice, especially if you're into Heavy Metal. And then there's Houston.

I'd like to think Houston is finally getting it's shit together. We've got a nice little music scene developing, from Indie-Rock to Hip Hop and Rap to Jazz and to latin music (If you want Latin-anything, come to Houston. That scene covers all these bases and more). So far we've been able to maintain most of the clubs, but some of the real estate BS is rearing it's head here too. Montrose has been slowly turning from the Queer (no offense) capital of the South, to the Yuppie enclave of Southwest Houston over the past few years:Replacing numerous institutions with Mini-Malls that'll close the next time Oil, Software, or Energy takes a hit.

I haven't been to D/FW in years, but I imagine is all good up there(altough not as good as other places I've discussed).

I'm a native Texan, and I'm ashamed that George W.Bush owned a baseball team with the word Texas in its name. So you can imagine how I feel about him being elected both Governor and President.

http://www.wim-wenders.com/art/images/photography/photo_6.jpg

http://www.wim-wenders.com/art/images/photography/photo_5.jpg

http://www.wim-wenders.com/art/images/photography/photo_7.jpg

http://www.wim-wenders.com/art/images/photography/photo_3.jpg

Austin isn't as cool as everyone I grew up with thought it was going to be (if you grow up in D/FW, Austin is Mecca if you're into anything but horses, domestic lite beer, church and bad young-country music). Lots of hippies, too much gentrification (the mega-GAP on the main drag), but still better than the rest of Texas.

Arlington (my hometown) is one of the five or six biggest cities in Texas, but has zero redeeming qualities unless you like overpaid baseball teams and theme parks. As of the last census, we're the largest city in the United States that has no form of public transportation. Last year a transport plan got defeated because of fears about it bringing in the "wrong kind of people."

San Antonio is boring and a tourist trap. If you've seen one Spanish mission, you've seen them all.

I've gone my entire life without stepping foot in Houston, so no comment there.

Dallas' bane is its utter lack of art culture. We have a nice contemporary art museum, but good luck finding it in the midst of a very exclusive Swiss Ave area, strategically surrounded by wildly off-putting downtown liquor stores and hooker hangouts. We also have a decent regular art museum, but it's located in the heart of the fairgrounds, conveniently far away from decent socienty. The music scene here is pretty dire. Lots of cover bands and alt-rockers who might have been popular had they decided to latch onto trends from 1996 as they were actually happening.

(generally, where there was free wine involved)

*grin*

Sez you. I happen to find many exciting and great things about my hometown that aren't limited to tourists alone. Sure, if you go to the usual places you'll end up feeling bored, but if you put a little bit of effort into it you'll find great things about this city.

I love to take my relatives to the slightly obscure places around here -- the big downtown main public library, the Institute of Texan Cultures, the McNay Art Museum, San Pedro Park, the SA Museum of Art, the Witte Museum, the Zoo, the various historical districts (e.g. Monte Vista, King William), the Mexican restaurants on the West side (where real local Hispanics go to eat), the Carver Cultural Center, other local restaurants (we've got lots of good, rather inexpensive Asian restaurants and hamburger places), North Star Mall (to see the mall our "vieux riche" shop at), the Regal Cinemas Fiesta 16 (our big "art house" theater) etc. Heck, even grabbing some Subway sandwiches and heading over to any one of our local parks is a better excursion, IMHO, than dragging them to the Alamo.

Our city has culture -- loads of it. It just takes a little bit of digging and local know-how to get to it.

As for the other posts...

Interesting, that mention of the 13th Floor Elevators. One of the members of that band (Danny Galindo) was raised in the same neighborhood my father was raised in. I think that's pretty cool. And the Butthole Surfers were formed in the "Southern Ivy League" university that was sometimes used as a convention facility for our local NHS (= National Honor Society, for our international visitors) chapters (Trinity University -- it's supposed to be a very tough university to just get into, which made me view the BS in a whole new light when I found that fact out).

As for:

San Antonio = TOO HOT, and a "revitalized" downtown area, i.e. remodelled to look like a Denver Hilton

I would have to agree on the "too hot". Our summers are a bitch to get through, but as long as you can run from your vehicle to the building you need to be in (or vice versa), stay indoors as much as possible, eat tons of fruit and drink lots of water, and love to swim, you're in good shape. You do get handsomely rewarded around fall/winter, though. December is absolutely lovely around here, and the only times we have to use big shovels is if we want to plant a tree in our gardens.

I don't know about the "Denver Hilton" remark, though. I've never been to Denver. Maybe I'm being too much of a literalist, though. If you mean "generic city"... hm. Maybe. But I like it. I like the generic aspects of the city. It shows that we're really growing and disconnecting from the whole stereotypical notion of Texas. We've still got some work to do, though -- I mean, many of us still support the Dallas Cowboys, for crying out loud. That's the football team of beer-swilling rednecks.

And thus ends a post by a person who's lived here for 19 years.

I'm currently working on the art for my second Texas tattoo. This one will take up most of my lower back. yay!

In a lame attempt here's a forwarded mail I got that highlights some points of Texas pride.

When you're from Texas, people that you meet ask you questions like, Do
>you have any cows? Do you have horses? Bet you got a bunch of guns, eh?
>They all want to know if you've been to Southfork. They watched Dallas.
>
>Have you ever looked at a map of the world? Look at Texas with me just
for
>a second. That picture, with the Panhandle and the Gulf Coast, and the
Red
>River and the Rio Grande is as much a part of you as anything ever will
>be. As soon as anyone anywhere in the world looks at it they know what
it
>is.
>
>It's Texas.
>
>Pick any kid off the street in Japan and draw him a picture of Texas in
>the dirt and he'll know what it is. What happens if I show you a picture
>of any other state? You'll get it maybe after a second, but who else
would?
>And even if you do, does it ever stir any feelings in you?
>
>In every man, woman and child on this little rock the Good Lord put us
on,
>there is a person who wishes just once he could be a real live Texan and
>get up on a horse or ride in a pickup. There is some bit of Texas in
>everyone.
>Did you ever hear anyone in a bar go, Wow...so you're from Iowa?
>Cool, tell me about it? Do you know why? Because there's no place like
>Texas.
>
>Texas is the Alamo. Texas is 183 men standing in a church, facing
>thousands of Mexican nationals, fighting for freedom, who had the chance
>to walk out and save themselves, but stayed instead to fight and die for
the
>cause of freedom.
>
>We send our kids to schools named William B. Travis and James Bowie and
>Crockett and do you know why? Because those men saw a line in the sand
and
>they decided to cross it and be heroes. John Wayne paid to do the movie
>himself. That is the Spirit of Texas.
>
>Texas is Sam Houston capturing Santa Ana at San Jacinto. Texas is
>Juneteenth and Texas Independence Day. Texas is huge forests of Piney
>Woods like the Davy Crockett National Forest. Texas is breathtaking
>mountains in
>Big Bend. Texas is shiny skyscrapers in Houston and Dallas.
>
>Texas is world record bass from places like Lake Fork. Texas is Mexican
>food like nowhere in the world, even Mexico. Texas is the Fort Worth
>Stockyards, Bass Hall, and the Astrodome. Texas is larger-than-life
>legends like Willie Nelson, Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Janis Joplin,
ZZ
>Top, Eric
>Dickerson, Earl Campbell, Nolan Ryan, Denton Cooley and Michael DeBakey,
>Sam Rayburn, George Bush, Lyndon B. Johnson, and George W. Bush. Texas
is
>great
>companies like Dell Computer, Texas Instruments and Compaq. Texas is
huge
>herds of cattle and miles of crops. Texas is skies blackened with doves,
and
>fields
>full of deer. Texas is a place where cities shut down for the Cowboys on
>Monday Night Football, and NIOSA River Parade in San Antonio.
>Texas is ocean beaches, deserts, lakes and rivers, mountains and
prairies,
>and modern cities. If it isn't in Texas, you don't need it.
>
>No one does anything bigger or better than it's done in Texas.
>
>By federal law, Texas is the only state in the US that can fly its flag
at
>the same height as the US flag. Think about that for a second. You fly
the
>Stars and Stripes at 20 feet in Maryland, or California, or Maine, and
>your state flag, whatever it is, goes at 17. You fly the Stars and
Stripes
>in front of Pine Tree High in Longview at 20 feet, the Lone Star flies
at
>the
>same height - 20 feet. Do you know why? Because we place being a Texan
as
>high as being an American down here.
>
>Our capitol is the only one in the country that is taller than the
capitol
>building in Washington, DC and we can divide our state into five states
if
>we want to! We included these things in as part of the deal when we came
>on. That's the best part right there.

and FTW is one of the best museum cities in the US.

the flowers were this guy - Pierre Joseph Redouté

Mexican villagers stone 'witch' to death
Monday, April 14, 2003 CNN.com
SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico (AP) -- An angry crowd stoned to death an Indian man accused of practicing witchcraft in a southern Mexico town with a long tradition of religious violence.

The man, Domingo Shilon Shilon, was also hacked with machetes Sunday by the crowd in San Juan Chamula...

Could Boutros Boutros-Ghali have had something to do with this? Just asking.

I smell oil!

not just to talk about houston/san antonio/austin/dallas/fort worth.

but also el paso! i hear it is a crazy town?

You say that as if one or more of those might be bad things! I love both!

Good enough for me.

From what I can see, El Paso is not representative of Texas as a whole. I'd like to visit Austin someday.

But back to El Paso, it has the distinction of being the only major city in Texas that's in Mountain time.

... in general, California has the most consistently high quality beaches than any other U.S. state, except for Florida. Not saying there aren't fantastic beaches outside California and Florida, but I don't think any other state quite measures up to those phenomena...(aside from the unfairly huge coastlines of both states)

I'd swear this is the third or fourth time that I've seen this exact same article in the Times.

(I don't know what to say about that article, if it's shown up numerous times before.)

Rain is pouring down like a motherfucker right now. I got stuck on I-20 west for 30 minutes because half the SUVs on Earth were afraid to do more than 15 in the rain. Use your four-wheel drive, Hummer-driving yuppie scum.

i'd like to go to austin sometime, or houston... in the winter.

But, hey - which drive-thrus?

Passing on the shoulder - yeah, I see it almost daily. Does that not happen elsewhere?

i got my undergrad at A&M about 4 years ago, and im sure the town is a lot different now. but it's a pretty nice place, peaceful. also i saw more gorgeous sunsets there than anywhere else in my life.

It is entirely too fucking hot here. I don't even want to go to work today b/c I don't want to have to wait at the bus stop in the heat.

waahh

spent way too much time running around in the heat yesterday, ugh.

as for general comments on Texas: there's stuff to be found in unlikely places. Some small towns have really neat stuff tucked in storefront on the old square. Painted churches in Schulenburg, Elgin sausage, Archer City's bookstores.

Austin is great, but not the typical tourist stuff. We finally have a decent art museum (Blanton). Surefire way to stay alive in the heat is Barton Springs and Casey's New Orleans Sno Cones. Ruby's has all natural beef bbq and awesome mac n cheese. Late March is a good time for wildflower viewing (everywhere--along highways, vacant lots and at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center) and the weather is usually ideal.

Dallas has its cool bits, namely Lower Greenville. Most of my time there is spent visiting friends and inlaws, so I don't have a lot of other recommendations. Marco's for pizza and Stein's is a great bakery.

Houston in the Museum District and around Rice is fantastic. Great art to be found all over. Project Row Houses in the Third Ward is pretty incredible: http://www.projectrowhouses.org/ (in addition to all of the usual Houston art stuff).

worst, everything else.

Yes, there is some great beer in Texas.

It's a whole lot strip-mally in a whole lot of places. The center of the city is nice, if less populated and more spread out than other large cities with a lot of look-alike suburbs, partly because of its age. The bulk of the city is arranged as a ring of places that were nice when they were built, or at least "nice," but now look like the leftover spaces of wealthier people who were perfectly happy to build something awful and disposable, then toss it over their shoulder on their way further and further out of the city. It's tempting to say that Houston is all suburb, but that's misleading, because that would imply that there are no neighborhoods or ethnic communities, which there certainly are. It's just that a lot of them are part of an aging strip-mall, cookie-cutter landscape. Inside of the nearly-abandoned strip malls that high-end businesses moved out of long ago are are some great mom-and-pop businesses and some very unique restaurants. It's can be an interesting place to be, but it can be an even more depressing place to look at.

It's not a totally *bad* city, I don't guess, but I don't think it's undesirability is grossly exaggerated. Considering its size, it feels like a collection of missed opportunities. Every time Houston had the chance to make something of its life, it just built another freeway and threw up another cheap residence or godawful sky-colored office building, because hey, we got a lot of land and a lot of cars, so why not? No mountains, no oceans, nothing to do but built out and out and out, faster and faster and cheaper and cheaper. It's a pretty good example of what not to do.

http://www.keeptexasmoving.org/about/

In execution (rampant croneyism, using eminent domain to privatize land for 'development', complete disregard for local governments, toll roads, no direct, tangible economic benefit for the state - oh, and the TXDOT is on the job, so it'll never get finished anyway): bullshit.

Uh, this is the 'toll road BS' that's currently being proposed, or one form of it.

No, not really. This is the alternate option to the "toll road b.s." I mentioned earlier. No, the option I'm talking about (which is a local one) will have existing lanes of certain high-traffic stretches of highway be reworked into toll lanes. The Trans-Texas Corridor isn't involved with this plan.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&ie=UTF8&t=k&om=0&z=16&ll=29.827372,-95.192049&spn=0.013906,0.022531

I may be living there off and on for six or nine months while we build a B&B/lodge on the river, but I've never even heard of it before.

The tourism site is about as helpful as all other tourism sites. "WE ROCK, ALL OUR HOTELS ARE CLEAN AND WONDERFUL, THE GUADALUPE IS NOT AT ALL A MUDPIT BECAUSE OF THE DROUGHT!!!!"

http://www.touringtexas.com/bluebonnet/

I've heard of Llano. But I can't remember why.

A windbag of an uncle of mine said (tonight during this birthday party I attended) some bullshit about A&M being "a prestige university" because his favorite granddaughter graduated from it and was able to hook up a job from a fellow Aggie. I was, like, whatever. A&M is no better than UT, it's just that Aggies are too myopic to see beyond their little alma mater. But I didn't call bullshit because he's old and because I was trying to be on my best behavior.

Um, more about TX -- is anyone else surprised that we're actually getting a winter this year? Like, it isn't cold for four days then suddenly it's all over? I'm actually wearing layers this year!

And -- "six shooters"? "Yee haw"?

Austin, I think it's really been within the last decade and a half that winters have been kinda sucky. Like, there's no reason why a winter day has to be THAT sunny and warm. On occasion it's nice, as a sort of antidote to long days of cold and clouds, but not the way it's been like in those past winters.

I, of course, disagree. :) And I do think UT is regarded as a prestigious university (many programs at least). It is without a doubt one of the best public unis in the US.

Does this mean you think A&M is better than UT, or... ? And yeah, I can totally vouch for the high quality education that one can get from a school in the UT system, absolutely. There are no "dumb Longhorn" jokes, you realize.

Houston was kinda cold last winter. Being from California everything I say is relative tho. I guess it wouldnt effect us as much if we didnt insist on smoking on a balcony on the 25th floor and freezing our fucking asses off because of windchill.

Oh yes, you Californians don't really get seasons, do you? You're like Hawaii in that respect. So anything above or below 80 degrees would be regarded as being harsh weather.

Pleasant Plains, thanks ever so for the Aggie jokes.

I don't know if rain storms that appear out of nowhere, dump eight inches of water in ten minutes and then disappear just as quickly can really count as seasons.

My main complaint with Houston (downtown in particular) is that is a filthy place.

I don't care what state it's in, that's just freaky.

I thought most downtown areas in major cities were really dirty....

And the first day after the freeze felt like (to me) stepping out into an alien world. Having gotten used to seeing just the walls of my house for the period of that storm, the outside world was like entering a Martian colony. But then the next day everything felt like normal again.

They drowned in spring training.

Anybody see the UFO?

Is it worth actually going to Marfa for the Marfa thing? I am worried the peeps wld make me sad and barfy.

The UFO thing or the art thing? Not that I've been to Marfa, but I'd be into the second for real and the first for maybe some pitying yux.

West Texas is absolutely gorgeous and if you can ignore the Eurotrash, Marfa is very nice. Visit, maybe stop off at the McDonald observatory and then head down to Big Bend.

Back in the day, Stylus used to get a lot of hits for people searching for stuff like "pissing dom texas" if I was reviewing some alt.country schmucks and used "pissing" as a adjective.

― Ringtone bisexual bible shower (The stickman from the hilarious xkcd comics), Monday, February 16, 2009 1:24 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

West Texas is absolutely gorgeous

An understatement, but understandably so. Words fail the west Texas desert pretty reliably.

Linked because it's too big to post: http://www.gapingvoid.com/0802bigbend2.jpg

Oh this is nice, too:
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_xG0xY1yntBk/SA6kAFPxyGI/AAAAAAAAAOo/F9fLh8k94ZY/Forestry+photos+and+Hueco+020.JPG

Pictures fail it, too. :(

Peyote honors it properly, though.

My deep hatred of Texas requires me to note that West Texas is a piffle compared to east NM.

Those were the best pictures I could find, and I'm kind of surprised by that, because the Texas Panhandle is much deeper into the desert than any of NM, and has some startling sights. Why doesn't the internet have more pictures of this...? I'll keep looking.

By west Texas I meant the jutting out left bit of it that is sort of triangular and its base is formed by the Rio Grande.

That's the one. Have you ever seen it? I can't even find pictures of it, not really. Looks like even om Flickr, all the pictures are off of I-10. Which sucks for me, but is probably smart. What you gotta do is get in a jeep and find the southmost road on the map, and then get out of the jeep a,nd walk for an hour -- you need a compass, obv. You need a compass extra bad to get back. You can die out there. It's the middle of a really big desert.

Anyway, it's incredible. The last time I was there, I had no camera. Someday I'll get back.

Not that eastern NM isn't wonderful, too. :)

It's all about the Apache Mountains -- the Guadalupe Mountains are mostly in NM, and they're discontinuous, but all part of the same limestone ridge that was once a ridiculously huge coral reef back when Permian was all the rage. They are melting very fast in geologic time, 'cause there ain't much to 'em, but they're full of caves and mesas and strange porous outcroppings and just general geological specialness.

(Took me forever to look up the name of the mountains, and I still can't find any good pictures.)

I heart West Texas/SE New Mexico a lot. Yes El Paso is Dodge City when it comes to crime and Hobbs, NM smells like the entire county is about to explode but I've had some spectacular meals in the area.

Some photos from marfa: http://www.flickr.com/photos/quartzcity/tags/marfa/

Oooh... this is a fun page:

http://www.stormeffects.com/2007_chase_images.htm

Those were the best pictures I could find, and I'm kind of surprised by that, because the Texas Panhandle is much deeper into the desert than any of NM, and has some startling sights. Why doesn't the internet have more pictures of this...? I'll keep looking.

Is it really that hard to search for the relevant Flickr groups?

http://www.flickr.com/groups/16274963@N00/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/texaspanhandle/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/bigbend/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/big_bend_national_park/

Ok the last two: yes. I was searching "west texas" and "big bend" didn't occur to me somehow. "West Texas" is those thos efirst two groups, all populated and stuff. Who needs that?!

I've spent several days camped out at Big Bend with a bunch of hippies. Shit is gorgeous.

Yeah, why is it I have only been there with hippies? I guess it goes to show, hippies ain't all bad.

I love this:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3145/2915719184_3f817a0025.jpg?v=1231822038

The mountains are eroding so quickly they're about to be drowned in their own debris. And then they'll just be hills. Geology in action.

http://www.askforjanice.com/photos/BigBend/photos/photo13.jpg

Marfa

Anyway, that UFO looks a lot like a bright fireball meteor
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8c6_1234751121

A giant storm full of tornadoes is headed right at me.

what are the stereotypes for the different cities/regions of texas?

like i know austin is full of pinko hippies, but what else

Dallas - rich oil/finance assholes, fake boobs and bleached hair

Fort Worth - rich fake cowboy assholes

I've never heard catchall stereotypes for SA, Houston probably overlaps with Dallas a lot

what about, like, el paso and amarillo?

west texas is all cowboys afaik

el paso - dry, hot, bad traffic, boring, low crime, prominent/pervasive mexican culture, city beginning to sprawl. all hearsay! never even been there

amarillo - hot, very conservative, more crime than than El Paso, churchy

East Texas = Cederchoppers

San Antonio = Metalheads

Houston = Sizzurpheads

El Paso being extremely low crime is always odd to me, considering arguably the most dangerous city in the world is on the other side of the river and if you look at some photos, Juarez is so close it just appears to be a part of El Paso.

my dad spent many weeks in El Paso for work several years ago and loved the food. this was at peak Juarez murder rate. I asked him if he heard about anything going on over there, he said he didn't hear about anything.

yeah wow didn't know about that