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Houston, Texas
And watch the migrants smoke in the old orange grove and the red rocket blaze over Cape Canaveral
Houston is more than just a hub for Continental Airlines, a gathering of aging NASA facilities and a mecca for questionable folk art, it is also the home of big oil, a fact that is damn hard to miss. The Pasadena Freeway (no, not that Pasadena Freeway) connects Houston with the areas out toward the Gulf of Mexico, and the refineries and tanks that line it make the New Jersey Turnpike through Carteret look like a country road (ok, a fourteen lane country road with too many trucks and horrible drivers, but that's not the point).
This aerial view is of the typical local scenery is from the observation deck of the San Jacinto Tower, a stone monument with a big Texas star on top that just happens to be taller than the Washington Memorial, just like the Texas State Capitol Building in Austin just happens to be taller than the US Capitol Building. The tower marks the battle site where Texas gained its independence from Mexico before ceding its independence to the US Government, you know that bunch of damn yankees with their slightly shorter monuments and slightly shorter capitol buildings.
This is the San Jacinto Monument. For purposes of scale, if you can imagine a monument that is 2.6% shorter, then you can imagine the height of the Washington Monument.
When Hurricane Ike made landfall in Galveston last September, the damage was extensive and horrible but also not all that bad in the main parts of downtown and the tourist areas. Sure there was the occasional destroyed building and (almost) all of the highway fast food and retail signs were damaged, but somehow it didn't seem quite as catastrophic in person as expected. Of course I did not survey all of the barrier island residential communities that were decimated or even have a full knowledge of what Galveston looked like before the hurricane (it was my first visit there after all). That said there was destruction to be seen- a case in point is Brodie's Beach Hut Restaurant and Tiki Bar (pictured here), a local haunt that appears that it may be closed for renovations for some time to come.
Facing each other in an immortal struggle across Louisiana Street, two iconic towers by Philip Johnson and John Burgee show two different styles from one of the country's most prolific architectural firms. Pennzoil Place (the black glass towers) was built in 1975 when Modernism wasn't a bad word, while Bank of America Center (or Republic Bank Center) was completed a decade later when Postmodernism wasn't a bad word. Taken together it's a fascinating contrast that shows the strengths and weaknesses of each style as well as of styles in general. Pennzoil Place is a striking design but extremely unforgiving at street level, while Bank of America Tower looks like it should be in Amsterdam and not Houston, although it is certainly a well enough designed building and at least somewhat more engaging at street level.
I chose to stay way out of the way by the Houston Galleria at one of two completely different Westin Hotels separately located inside the mall. And while life at a mall isn't that great (I'm not really a mall/shopping kind of guy), at least I had a next door view of Philip Johnson and John Burgee's Transco Tower- the one with the massive public fountain (it was shut down for maintenance that weekend) and the one with the rotating searchlight on top. At the time that I watched the searchlight I was reminded of the Sopranos episode which saw Tony trapped in purgatory near an eerily similar tower, a predicament which seemed totally appropriate at that Westin at that mall. Upon further research the Sopranos episode was not set at that hotel but rather out at one in Costa Mesa, California- another place I've been to and one (just like Houston) with just the right mix of parking garages, shopping malls, nice (enough) hotels and rotating searchlights to make you think that while purgatory might have its issues at least it's a place where you can get a decent smoothie.
Located in a museum ghetto south of downtown, Houston's Contemporary Art Museum (designed by Gunnar Birketts) just about holds its own against Mies van der Rohe's Houston Art Museum down the block. The art inside however is a different story. The museum is more of a Kunsthall than a museum, a building which hosts rotating temporary exhibits and has no permanent collection. During my visit the art was nothing special, a series of video installations that could have been anywhere, although at least I didn't feel all that ripped off since the museum admission (no charge) matched the quality of the exhibition.
The main gallery building of the de Menil Collection (designed by Renzo Piano) is dominated by a series of overhead sun screens that bring filtered light into public spaces inside and then extend to a loggia surrounding the otherwise fairly simple building. Inside your (free) admission lets you see some world class art in a world class building. What else can you ask for?
One thing that separates Houston from all other American cities is that it literally has no zoning laws. So if you buy a piece of property in a residential zone and want to build a 50 story hotel or a medical research center or an oil refinery, go right ahead. This lack of planning could be seen just about everywhere but was really noticeable at the Menil Collection, a world class museum complex located on several lots (and completely out of place) in a generally single family old school residential neighborhood. The museum features the Rothko Chapel (with haunting and wonderful black/purple paintings by Mark Rothko), the Byzantine Fresco Museum (with a partially recreated chapel inside), a Dan Flavin installation in what looks like an old car dealership, the Cy Twombly Gallery (I'm not a big Cy Twombly fan) and the main gallery building designed by Renzo Piano way back in 1987. The museum has ties to New York's (and I guess now just Beacon's) Dia Art Center, evidenced here by the hard to miss (unless you're not looking down) Michael Heizer sculpture dug deep into the main building's front lawn.
