Houston, the City that Works

I was just watching another movie about New York City. Someone in the movie was full of lament about how boring it was in New York because everything and I mean just everything had already been done.

I'm board of New York. I'm tired of a city I have never set foot in. I will have lived a full life whether or not I ever venture to the city so nice they named it twice. I live in Houston.

Houston is technically the biggest city in Texas. It is not really the biggest city because the metropolitan area that is Dallas Fort Worth is actually bigger, but it is two cities that grew into one another. Houston has the third largest port in the U. S.. Houston is The Bayou City. We are named for our plumbing. Houston was built on a swamp as an after thought. Named after a guy who was a real estate speculator. I don't think any battles took place on Houston soil for whatever reason.

People in Houston work. We Play. We live and die. All under a sickening purple gray sky. We are famous for our roads and the high water table. Footprints practically fill with water in Houston.

NASA is just south east of here. The only famous line we get in a movie is all about problems. Our big stadium is named after the electric company. Our other stadium is named after orange juice.

This city runs on two economies. Oil and landscaping. For the billions of dollars spent annually on Houston landscaping, this city will never get the Olympics because the city is just ugly. The skyline is ragged. The ocean beside us is filthy. There are no hills that belong to this city. The lakes are mud puddles. The rivers are fun if you get away from Houston.

Houston is famous for freeways. The web of freeways. Half are built taller than buildings just to keep from running in to each other. They are like the bow tied around a garbage bag. A broken, leaking garbage bag that no one wants to take out.

Houston has touched me. I've had a gun pulled on me on her streets. I've been hit by cars. I've walked and choked on the black air. Some say every third vehicle has a gun in it in Houston. Depending on what neighborhood you are in, I believe it.

People do not know how to party in this town. Most concerts pass us by because our venues suck. The one big concert hall we had, which was a basketball stadium, is now a church. This is part of the bible belt. I guess that's why Houston had no "don't touch" law for topless dancers until recently. That is why Houston is famous for 'couch dancing'. That is why Houston is where breast implants were invented.

Houston has oil, and chemicals and landscaping and restaurants and NASA and hurricanes and hurricane refugees and mosquitoes and floods.

Houston has workers. Houston works. We are the no shit worker capitol of the world. I don't know what that means exactly but it feels like it is true. We work here.

I tripped over a homeless guy while bar  hopping down town a couple years ago. I just don't care. I'm one missed paycheck from joining him. I can't care. It is not the city. It's me. If I were somewhere else, I couldn't blame the city so easily. The heat and humidity, the ugly that follows you around, the rank landscapers following the money.

It is all Houston. We try to live. We try to love. We try to sing and dance and fly free. We get drunk and drive home because there is no other way to get home. We work. It is what we do. We do it and do it and fall down. Get up and go back to work. My God we work.

Houston is a hard working city. That's our motto. Houston, The City that Works.