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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