After the very opening introductions of the golfers, there's a glorious 5 minute sequence here about Houston - the city of the future. Looking at the age of Hogan and Snead and with the references to the Apollo programme and building the Astrodome I'm guessing this is about 1964?
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s.aureus has spent time there. -
The Astrodome opened in April 1965, with an exhibition game between the Astros and the New York Yankees. I recall watching it on television. They still had a grass field at that time.Last edited by ursus arctos; 03-04-2020, 01:35.Comment
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My first MLB game was at the Astrodome -- i was like 3 or 4. Can't remember anything of it.Comment
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I went there a few years ago for a family wedding - most depressing fucking place I've ever visited in my life. Town centre - a few high-rises housing oil companies, that was it. One of the wedding events was in one of these places (the groom and the bride's father worked at the same company as that cunt Rex Tillerson) and the walls were adorned with framed pictures of fucking oil executives and all their fantastic oily achievements. Next day the reception was in a... country club. Took fucking ages to get there, driving along freeways spanning nothing but strip malls, for miles and fucking miles. It was even more depressing than Newark, New Jersey, that's how bad it was. Pockets of obscene affluence among vast swathes of misery and ugliness. The bride's father asked me what I thought of Houston, and I just about diplomatically managed to say something vague and neutral. "Lived here all my life," he told me defensively, though I hadn't asked. "Would never live anywhere else." End of small-talk. I got drunk and danced without inhibition, and it apparently caused much hilarity on the official wedding video. And though I would never want to watch that video, I'm glad it's on there.Comment
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Yes, lived in Houston for a few years starting 1989. I can't really argue with Imps's assessment, except it wasn't so bad a place to live - all the usual kind of city stuff, good food, bars, lots of immigrants though rather segregated. Can't recommend it as a place to visit, though. Downtown, at the time for me, was kind of interesting for the over-sized architecture, though it was pretty much deserted most of the time as far as I could tell (though I don't think I ever went there in the daytime during the week). Houston was just starting to get past the major oil bust of the late 80s by the time I left. My main gripes with it were that there are no hills anywhere near it (it's basically built on a swamp), the weather is horrible, and that it's very hard to get places without your own transportation (it's very large and doesn't encourage pedestrianism). I've probably mentioned before that I was pulled over by the cops several times simply for walking - though only when in the more affluent neighborhoods. The mix of squalor and affluence didn't really seem any different to any other American city that I've been in - clearly not good, but unfair to single out Houston.
People round here generally view you as having walked through hell when you say that you've lived in Texas, having some weird view that (with the glorious exception of Austin) it's all gun-toting rednecks.Comment
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The same people who say "Well, Austin isn't really Texas"Originally posted by S. aureus View PostComment
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My wife's got a cousin who lives in Houston, well, Sugar Land (great name), and another who's either in San Antonio or possibly still in Del Rio.
We've never visited and nothing on this thread is suggesting that that was a poor decision.Comment
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Sugar Land's minor league baseball team pays homage to another ubiquitous element of local life
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Does the San Antonio/Del Rio cousin work for the Air Force?Originally posted by Nocturnal Submission View PostComment
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My only experience of Houston was driving through. It was huge, and full of highways, and charmless. I have a couple of friends who live in the 'burbs who tell me that it is actually pretty artsy and cosmopolitan these days in the middle. But they both work in the oil industry, and both seem delighted by the fact that houses in the Houston 'burbs are utterly immense - and don't care that they're also almost all hideously ugly.Comment
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I once had some absinthe confiscated at Houston airport...Comment
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Originally posted by S. aureus View Post
Nope. Her husband has or had a garage, I think. Not sure what she does.
Actually, there is another cousin, one of her brothers, who's in the air force but he's in Arizona.Comment
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Houston is one of the handful of major US cities I have never been to. I’ve never been to Austin or San Antonio either.
It’s universally disdained by visitors but people from there claim it has merit.Comment
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It has gotten considerably better in the last 20 years, largely as a result of immigration, though the weather is still abysmal, much of the architecture atrocious and many of the oil people as awful as ever.
But if you have a local guide and a car, you can eat well and have a good time. And the Rothko Chapel remains sublime.Comment
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Apparently Houston is, along with Chicago, one of the best cities in the US to get authentic Indian food.Comment
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