I love Houston.
It's the 4th largest city in the US, and we've spent days, weeks, and months there with all the appointments and surgeries my husband had at MD Anderson, in the Medical District.
The Medical District is the largest conglomeration of hospitals in the world, and it employs over 65,000 people. It's right next to the Museum District, which is just before downtown.
So many districts, all with their own charm and distinct personalities. The area around Rice University is filled with gracious old homes owned by doctors and professors, and the streets are tunnels of live oaks. The Vietnamese district's billboards and street signs are all in...Vietnamese. Historically Black areas to the north and south of Houston that have been swallowed by the city stubbornly maintain their rural roots, with livestock in the yards and horses being ridden down the streets. If you ever saw footage of protestors during the Black Lives Matter rallies on horseback in front of the Astrodome, that's where they came from, and they didn't trailer in- they just rode there. And as long as the property stays in the same family, there's not a damn thing the city can do to rezone it. *Respect*.
Every trip down to the Medical District, we'd dive off the interstate and drive through the different neighborhoods, because they are amazing each in their own way; from the aforementioned rural-in-the-center-of-town areas, to predominantly Hispanic enclaves, to the very wealthy River Oaks (The Bushes have a home there. Yes. Those Bushes.) then through an area fighting (and losing) to Gentrification, and finally into the Medical District, we knew every house and noted changes good and bad each time we passed through.
Last weekend, I stayed with some friends at an Air BnB between Rosenberg and Houston in one of the hundreds of subdivisions surrounding Houston like sheets of bubble wrap. It was a pretty house on a pretty street where everything was tastefully landscaped and all the homes are two story and brick and various shades of tan and the yards have less square footage than the houses. Each subdivision has an entrance (some gated) and there's a lovely fountain in the middle of a well-manicured park with a cement walking trail where several sets of mom and dad and 2.3 children were walking their well-behaved dog.
The inside of the house was the same neutral palette ranging from off-white to beige with a pop of gray here and there. By the end of the weekend, I was pretty much upper-midde-class-subdivision-vibe vibed-out. I needed color. I needed vibrance. I needed life. And I knew where to find it on my way home.
I had to drop my friend off at the airport just south of Houston, and I set my GPS to take me through the neighborhoods; neighborhoods I hadn't been in before, but I trusted that they would not disappoint, and they did not.
Were they middle-class or better? Not in the least.
Were they dangerous? In most cases, danger is a mindset and it was early afternoon on a Sunday, so no. They were definitely not. I'm not stupid, but it takes a lot to scare me (Thank you, blue collar town between Milwaukee and Chicago upbringing).
Just to be clear, not that it should matter, these are considered "poor, minority neighborhoods." I've absolutely seen worse and accidentally found myself in worse in areas of Chicago. There were no bars on windows here and very few boarded up buildings, no cars on fire or roaming gangs. I did not hear one single gunshot or siren.
Here's what I did see in the hour it took me to drive from South Houston to North Houston where I got on the highway to head home:
I drove through a stretch of live oak tunnel like around Rice University, but this one has small neat homes on one side of the street, and a fenced salvage yard on the right side.
I saw breathtaking murals on the sides of buildings, several of Martin Luther King- not the MLK we see on MLK Day behind the talking heads on TV, but the MLK with fire in his eyes, fist raised, and proudly defiant. I saw one with the background of the flag of Mexico, with a huge golden-eyed eagle gripping a writhing snake in its beak. Murals no one would defile with graffiti. No one except maybe white supremacists. Murals that were not on a main highway to make a statement of how diverse the city is, but that were just there because they should be there to be enjoyed by the people who live there.
I went past a huge urban garden with an attached park and wetland, acres of individual garden plots, fruit trees, playground, and fishing areas and the entire place was immaculate.
In an abandoned corner lot sat what looked like a food truck, but it wasn't. It was a mobile farmers' market. A. Mobile. Farmers'. Market. Fucking genius.
A small neighborhood church was having a Christmas party. There were maybe 100 people there of all ages, sitting in groups at folding tables on folding chairs, keeping an eye on their whole flock of children catapulting around in the rented bounce house. There was a long table of food, and a huge smoker going. All six people manning the smoker were dressed as Santa.
The head of a pretty walking trail that follows a creek with trees and ferns on either side (and zero trash to be seen) is directly across the street from a combination Cajun eatery and bail bondsman.
There were two spots that made me sad, both on busy intersections. Little memorials to a fallen child, with toys and flowers, and the bike they'd been riding when they'd been hit.
As I made my way up the frontage road to the highway that would take me north back into the Pineywoods, the frontage road that looks like every other frontage road with the same exact retail stores and chain restaurants from one end of this country to the other, I shook off the last vestiges of Carefully Planned Communities, thankful to have been privileged to witness very real and very organic communities, and I silently thanked Houston yet again.
It really never disappoints.
