Houston Sucks
And here are some reasons why
I went on a long walk today east of downtown Houston. (I live downtown.) I came across a couple of interesting graffiti murals. This is the first one.
“Light, bright, refreshingly Houston.” I feel certain that the graffiti artist did not come up with that phrase. I am pretty sure that the city of Houston has paid for this mural, presumably hiring an ad agency to come up with the lame slogan.
Here’s the other graffiti mural I saw.
The thing that interests me about these (and many similar murals in other parts of the city) is that they seem aimed primarily at Houstonians. This kind of ad campaign for a city is common enough, but my impression (and correct me if I’m wrong) is that they are usually aimed outward. They are aimed at tourists or at potential investors. The ones I saw today on my walk seem to have the goal of making Houstonians feel better about their own city. The city that they have already made a choice to live in. It seems like a bizarre thing for a city to do.
But I understand, because Houston sucks.
I was not in a good mood as I went on my walk, so maybe that is souring my view of this city where I grew up and currently live. And as I walked, I kept coming up with reasons why Houston sucks, which I will now present in a handy listicle form.
Houston is part of Texas, a state run by a coalition of the Ku Klux Klan and big business.
Texas hates Houston because Houston is run by a coalition of a non-white Democratic party and big bidness, and Texas works hard to make life hard for Houston therefore.
Houston is hot as fuck.
Houston is as humid as my crotch after a four-mile walk in Houston.
Houston is fugly. Vast parking lots behind which are slapped-up shopping centers with dollar stores and mattress stores.
Houston has no terrain—it is a flat featureless nowhere.
Houston has little in the way of intellectual pursuits. You can’t name many great Houston writers, filmmakers or composers, and the ones you can name moved away as soon as they could.
Houston’s art scene is weak tea. That might seem funny coming from someone who writes about Houston’s art frequently, but compared to similarly sized cities, it blows. Think about art in Chicago and Philadelphia, for example. (Although I think Houston’s art scene is about the same as in Dallas-Fort Worth. But Dallas sucks, too.)
Houston has terrible mass transit.
Houston has tons of homeless persons, and any reduction in the number of homeless leads to a hearty round of undeserved self-congratulation.
Houston has to pay artists to make propaganda to make its residents like the humid, carcinogenic hellhole in which the live.
If this wasn’t enough, I strongly endorse this video.
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My impressions of Houston have definitely shifted somewhat from when I first viewed the city as an outsider, then as someone who lived nearby and now as someone who lives in Houston itself but honestly I'm not sure how much of my impression of the city is tainted by the impact that Covid has had on the art community here.
When I left Dallas the arts community had been experiencing some sort of small arts renaissance that some writers and friends of mine called a DIY movement of younger artists who were banding together and doing things. They were renting out spaces for cheap and starting galleries to give shows to their friends or being loaned spaces by real estate moguls for a weekend and putting on art shows or just putting on big parties. Musicians were mixing with visual artists and I came to know a lot of people through there and I learned a lot about how things worked and how people got attention.
My impression of Houston was from that vantage point but I definitely saw Houston as a sort of big sister city to Dallas. I participated in the Huntington Art Prize twice. The second time I did I came out onto the floor of the exhibition early and was surprised to see the judges arguing loudly and passionately in front of my work. I thought that I might even win but I wasn't really surprised when they gave the prize to someone who had made a large drawing of a photorealistic saddle. This is Texas after all. As a consolation prize, I did sell the drawing to a wealthy businessman. A hay-seed who had managed to make more money than he knew what to do with. Later that night I went to some art party with other young people where we stayed longer than I wanted to (we still had to drive back to Dallas) because my friend who had traveled down with me ended up getting naked for some girls who wanted to paint him. It was a strange night.
I had a few other experiences with Houston, one of which is a huge adventure and a long story that I won't get into here, but I was generally left with the impression that there was money in Houston and that Houston was more open to various kinds of art than Dallas was. If Dallas were a human I would say that Dallas is a man who feels like he has something to prove. He has an inferiority complex and it shows in how he presents himself. Houston doesn't feel that way and I do like that about it.
For some reason, everything started to crumble in the Dallas art scene all at once. The Fire Marshall started to shut down DIY spaces, parties and events, the former museum curator Rick Brettell who had worked with UTD and a landlord to gentrify a certain part of downtown with an artist residency/exhibition space turned against it and they shut it down. Artists left. I left. I moved to Spain and then to Galveston and now I'm in Houston where the scene now seems... a bit decrepit?
When I first got here I saw some fun things and the scene seemed younger. I remember going to a show where a guy had built a machine to destroy a gas station and we all stood outside and watched as this machine tore apart the gas station little by little. I loved it. Now though it seems like I'm not seeing much more than the same few galleries holding exhibitions and honestly I haven't seen anything impressive to me in a very long time. The art all seems... old. Maybe it's just Covid.
The other day I saw that there was going to be a performance at the Houston Contemporary and we rushed to get there in time only to find that the performance had already occurred. I suppose there must have been some sort of miscommunication with Glasstire... The basement was full of a bunch of people in their early 20's which was so unusual since all of the art events I have been attending for a while seem populated by older people.
So I guess that young people are active in the art scene though I found it odd that it was happening at the Houston Contemporary and I'm not sure how often they exhibit or where outside of that. I really do wish that I could be a part of growing some sort of Renaissance here in Houston but I have little money and I don't know any wealthy people who are interested in loaning out space for young people to have art parties in. Oh well. I wonder if I'm going to regret never having lived in New York City which I imagine is a dream for most artists but Houston is affordable compared to New York and I don't need any kind of city to make art at all.
One more reason to be critical...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWLn6uwPETY