A Little Houston History

And a Question about Urban Sociology

I was walking around in my neighborhood this morning and passed by these two shopping centers. As anyone in Midtown knows, there are a lot of Vietnamese restaurants here. The reason for this is that after the defeat of South Vietnam by North Vietnam, there was a terrible refugee crisis, the so-called “boat people”. Many were resettled into Texas for some reason, and in the 70s, many ended up in the Houston neighborhood now called Midtown. Back then this was a pretty run-down neighborhood, but over the years it has gentrified quite a bit. The Vietnamese residents gentrified, too. As they became more middle class, they moved out to southwest Houston’s vast suburbs.

But 40 years later, they still have left a mark on the neighborhood through a film of Vietnamese restaurants here, like Mai’s. So the Vietnamese people moved away, but left their cuisine. However this may be ending.

This is the Midtown Centre building today. The restaurant Les Givral’s is gone, as well the salon and bar. The Vietnamese character of that block is being erased.

The urban sociology question is this: in an American city, in a neighborhood that has a particular ethnic make-up and flavor, if people of that ethnicity move away, how long does their culture remain? Based on a sample size of one, I’d have to say about forty years.

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