{"id":38989,"date":"2014-05-07T23:51:53","date_gmt":"2014-05-08T03:51:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=38989"},"modified":"2020-07-11T23:52:07","modified_gmt":"2020-07-12T03:52:07","slug":"photos-an-afternoon-in-houston-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=38989","title":{"rendered":"Photos: An afternoon in Houston, Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

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As I\u2019ve always said, baseball is the perfect excuse to get out and travel, and see places that I never gave much thought to.\u00a0 I\u2019d never been to Texas before in my life; it\u2019s not that I\u2019ve never wanted to go to Texas before, but I\u2019ve never really had any excuse to go prior to the pursuit of baseball parks.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know enough about the areas and cities, and there\u2019s never been any sort of event or occurrence in any Texas that has drawn my attention to demand a warranting trip (that I\u2019ve been able to make happen).\u00a0 But thanks to wanting to visit all the baseball parks, I have reasons to visit Texas, when the opportunities present themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

And as my schedule revealed, I had the opportunity to make a day trip to Houston over the weekend.\u00a0 First time visiting the state of Texas, seeing a city I\u2019d never been to before, and take in a ballpark that makes me one ballpark closer to having visited all 30 Major League teams.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t spend a tremendous amount of time in the city, since I had a few small objectives, and with a baseball game, there wasn\u2019t a massive amount of free time to simply explore and wander too much, but for what it\u2019s worth, I had a pretty decent afternoon in Houston.
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My impressions of Houston overall are somewhat favorable, because for the longest time, I\u2019d only ever been given the impression that Houston was a shithole, and not necessarily a very good representation of the state of Texas.\u00a0 I\u2019d heard that there were lots of ghettos, crime was high, traffic was bad, and it was \u201ctoo urban\u201d and even some comparisons to Detroit.\u00a0 The Detroit comp is what probably sunk my expectations to next to nil, but it did put the city in a position to pretty much do nothing but pleasantly surprise.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll agree that being in Houston didn\u2019t really feel like I was in the state of Texas; I\u2019m not entirely sure what that really should have been, perhaps more cowboy crap, or at least more Hispanic or Western kind of feel to the place, but when I was sitting down and taking in where I was, I\u2019ll admit that it felt like that I could have been in just about any nondescript city in America.\u00a0 I had to remind myself that I was in the state of Texas a few times.<\/span><\/p>\n

But yeah, it does feel like somewhat of a city with an identity crisis.\u00a0 Based on commerce alone, it felt like there was tremendous influence from Cajun country out east, as well as Mexican-American down south; and not like in any elaborate fashion, we\u2019re talking about giant clusterfuck shopping centers offering creole seafood or Mexican cuisine.\u00a0 Now if this is what real Texas living is like, then I\u2019ve truly, truly been way too influenced by television and movies about the kind of place Texas really is.\u00a0 But I have a suspicion that it\u2019s more a Houston thing, than it is Texas.<\/span><\/p>\n

The roadways scare me, though.\u00a0 Driving on the litany of winding highways and twisting ramps, it\u2019s no wonder that Houston always ends up on the country\u2019s worst traffic cities on an annual basis.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t help that the roads are in abysmal condition too, and I guess if there was one Texas stereotype that felt reinforced, it was probably the sheer number of massive pickup trucks, everywhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

Either way, my time in Houston was short, but not bad at all.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t really feel like I was in Texas, but thankfully is also didn\u2019t feel like I was in Detroit.\u00a0 I can\u2019t say that I\u2019ve got an innate desire to come back to Houston any time soon, but I do know that this won\u2019t be the last time I\u2019m ever in the state of Texas.<\/span><\/p>\n