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Houston, Texas
I wanna see the flame behind your silent rage
I've never been a big fan of folk art, possibly because it just usually isn't all that good. It often seems to me that it rewards crazy people for doing crazy things regardless of the quality. Say for example that you're some guy who lives in a residential neighborhood in Houston who has to fix up the yard and also happens to have some beer cans lying around. The next thing you know the yard work gets more and more complex and takes over the whole house. Fast forward a few decades later and your house is now a tourist attraction run by a local folk art concern, one that celebrates craziness by rebranding such ideas as either eccentric or (in more of a stretch) visionary. Welcome to Houston’s own Beer Can House.
The Beer Can House was not without its charms. The beer can screens make wonderful chime sounds during light winds and also keep the house surprisingly cool in hot weather. The exterior of the house and garage is generally well done and the artist/crazy guy/homeowner knew when to stop- the interior is surprisingly normal and happily almost beer can free.
While the folk art at the Beer Can House has an almost loveable quality to it, the folk art at The Orange Show is a much, much creepier and just downright dark enterprise. Designed to be the world's greatest tourist attraction by a local mailman who was obsessed with oranges, the complex of squat buildings and tacked on 'found objects' is damn disturbing and just gets worse and worse the more you know about it.
After the mailman's death (he died very disappointed and confused that his pointless, messy, under thought, badly designed and badly conceived attraction was somehow not the most popular thing ever), the site was preserved and is now run by the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, the same people that run the Beer Can House as well as an annual parade of 'art cars.' They are also probably the most likely candidates to buy that life size sculpture of Fozzie the Bear that you have been thinking of building out of toothpicks, chewing gum and old Parkway tokens.
LOVE ORANGES and LIVE!
While it may have been designed as loving advice, it just comes across as a threat if you ask me.
Recommended to me by the extraordinarily knowledgeable docent at the Beer Can House, local sculptor David Adickes studio is the best place in Texas to come face to face with giant heads of ex-Presidents in a parking lot.
The NASA training and control facility in Houston (which is a good 30 to 45 minute drive southeast of downtown) is world famous as the once and future home of Mission Control, a small room on the top floor of a nondescript government office building deep in the NASA Campus. For the benefit of history (or maybe I mean nostalgia), the original Mission Control was renovated to recreate its glory (Apollo) days while a new higher tech Mission Control was moved a few floors down. Visitors (like me) to Space Center Houston are now treated to a visit to that classic Mission Control's VIP Gallery (complete with built in ashtrays and cool 1960s decor) that overlooked the famous small room with all the amazingly old computer equipment that was somehow still able to send astronauts to the moon.
As for the current mission control, it was updated and active (there was a shuttle in orbit that day) and a few floors down and not part of the tour. One can only imagine that its VIP Gallery is filled with VIPs instead of lowly, sweaty tourists (like me) who paid $19.95 to see a now fake Mission Control in an awfully small room that was once the center of the world(s).
A real Saturn V Rocket that was planned for launch but never made it is dissected and knocked on its side at Rocket Park, one of the highlights of the Johnson Space Center. The tripartite display is no accident, the rocket was separated to show its three stages and allow a rare glimpse into the inside of such a tremendous engineering feat.
And while the artifacts and displays at the Johnson Space Center are just plain fascinating, it is impossible not to come away with at least a sense of loss, or maybe just lost opportunities. Decades of under funding of NASA are painfully obvious at the Johnson Space Center- the facilities are old, the technology (even the space shuttle technology) feels outdated and even the new projects don't feel all that special. A hard to miss, end of empire moment faces you at every turn.
The third big thing to see on the tour is the massive training facility where prospective astronauts learn what they need to before venturing out into the cold dark unknown. The massive hangar contains a full size International Space Station mockup (it turns out its not all that big) as well as a Space Shuttle and a fully operational cargo arm.
Why all of the blue tarps over that full size International Space Station mockup you ask? Well after Hurricane Ike hit late last year there was significant roof damage that has yet to be contained. So they can put a man on the moon but they can't fix a leaky roof.
