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Ok. You are on. Being that my entire family still lives in the Baltimore and DC area, and I lived there for the first 18 yrs of my life, I can speak to this. Have you ever met the people? OMG. Rude. Now, granted, I grew up in a NW Baltimore suburb, but the people there are fake, judgy, and flat out rude. It is unbelievable. And I admittedly include some of my Baltimore family members in this group. I couldn't wait to get away from Baltimoreans. As for the Harbor. It was gorgeous. I remember riding the light rail down there for the day with friends. No way would I do that now. It is unsafe. Dirty even. It is not the harbor I remember. Now, I give credit to the Orioles, Berger cookies, and crabs. Those things I miss.
The Baltimore beltway is dreadful (way too small for the amount of cars that travel it daily, yet there is no room for it to widen), and as far as traffic goes, try sitting on 495 around DC. You think Houston is bad? 495 and 695 (Baltimore's beltway) are worse. Don't even get me started on crime or schools. The high school I went to, a public school, allowed me to take calculus 3 as a high school senior. The school has gone way, way down since I graduated in the mid 90s. It is a testament to the decay of the area. And I see it when I go back home to visit my family (they still live in the same house I grew up in). You can see the changes on the main road through town, the stores, I can go on.
As far as weather goes, it gets hot and humid in Baltimore too. Now, the summer lasts longer here in Houston, so strike against Houston. But, Baltimore gets the cold winters too. I don't miss that or the snow. My 7th birthday party was canceled because of a three foot snowstorm. That was only one of the major snows. Just ask my sister how much she hates shoveling snow. Same goes for DC.
I agree on Georgetown. It is a fun place. I almost went to college in DC (at George Washington). DC has a lot to offer. But, for me, as a visitor. I would never live in DC with a family. My cousin commutes from Frederick to DC every day for work, and he sits on 270. I can't imagine that either. Here, my husband commutes from Sugar Land to the galleria area for work. His commute is not bad at all.
And for what it is worth, my mom and stepdad are moving from Baltimore to Houston this summer. They want to be closer to their grandkids, and I think they are tired of shoveling snow.
What else do you want to talk about?
People are people everywhere, I found people in DC to be quite nice, I actually lost my wallet in DC(found it later thank god) and a security guard working at a department store asked and was able to walk around a few blocks to help me find it. Now thats just an isolated incident but my point is, there are rude and nice people everywhere.
And as far as traffic goes, at least you have options! Guess what happens if you're husbands car breaks down, and cant get a replacement? He isn't going to work. If people decide not to use what the city gives you, thats their own damn fault.
And when its winter, its supposed to snow, and when its summer its supposed to be hot. And although we dont have snow problems, have you been here in the last week, we're almost flooding, and dont get me started on Hurricanes, they dont happen every year, but then again intense snow blizzards dont happen every year either, sorry about your seventh birthday.
I have heard Baltimore has run down neighborhoods, and rough areas that are deteriorating and thats real sad to hear, but DC proper is quite nice.
Fight me all you want, ODucks. You haven't lived there, and there is no way I am going back to live in B'more. You don't visit there each year. You don't see the changes from year to year. You just don't know. I am right because I know from having been there....much more than you ever have.
If you are so bitter about Houston, move. I am sure Baltimore would love you. And Gov. O'Malley, I am sure, would love to have another head to tax the hell out of too. (Oops, sorry, I mentioned the economy. Flog me!)
oducksftw, you sound bitter. Are you posting that Houston is the "worst" place on earth, or just worse than any other location that will ever be mentioned in this thread.
As to the merits of Houston. You act as though this" hell hole", somehow has this unfair advantage in economic terms, with the oil industry just happening to be located here. The fact is the oil industry ended up here because Houston won an economic competition against a variety of other locations, for a variety of reasons. There were many other cities that would have loved to be the center of a industry with that kind of import. In fact the oil industry actually didn't start in Texas at all. It started in the northeast. John Rockefeller was from Cleveland. Pennsylvania was where it all really started, and where the first oil wells were drilled, and New York was the center of the oil industry, for a long time. But Houston ended up being the center, not because of divine province or political huncksterism or charity. No Houston won that competition because Houstonians were the innovators and movers of the worldwide oil industry, on top of being in a location that has a lot to offer. Year round recreational amenities along with a pleasant landscape that is fertile and moist lol . Those big paychecks, and yards are not God given, but were won through an economic competition that we are all involved in. So an areas ability to support life, and economic opportunity are the basic, and most important criteria for what makes an area desirable.
Right, those older companies came down here because they were so very impressed by the "innovators". Not because of Spindletop, or the emergence of the Texas Oil Boom in general, but because by golly these Houstonians were just so much smarter than those folks up north .
I've never said that Houston wasn't desirable, but this whole thread turned into what made Houstonians "settle" for the status quo, as was mentioned on Winkosmosis' first post in this thread.
Because folks here are just easily pleased with having again the big house and a fat paycheck.
And you know what? I actually envy that, people that are ignorant and easy to please aren't aware of the things on the other side of the fence. I wish I could just go out on a restaurant and go to some club through my fat paycheck around and then drive back to my house and sleep. But for me, I would much rather have a sense of my neighborhood. Something that makes a city feel like a city, what gives people a sense of pride.
Not a subdivision, or a developers version of what is 'hip and cool'.
And for that I love the heights, and part of montrose, it seems, at least for now, to be a place where the sense of a chic neighborhood, and overall vibe isn't pillaged by a big business developer.
This is what I mean by business over society.
But you see so many Houstonians, perfectly content with a "City Centre" or the Galleria, Kirby, etc. They just want a business to show some shiny lights and marble counters and they're ready to fork over whatever to get it.
I didnt know "fertile moist soil" was so very necessary. And pleasant landscape, you do know Houston is mostly flat grassland and some being a swamp?
Come on. Northern Virginia is part of the Washington Metro Area which has almost the exact same number of people as Greater Houston. We're talking entire regions here. We don't stop at the border at Maryland or DC.
There are positives to living here, but there are significant negatives as well. Just like in Houston or anywhere else you would live.
Recycling?!?! Is that not something that makes Houston a better place? Investing in renewable energy for the city? Honestly, I feel like you probably don't object to either one of those things. I don't see what's wrong with a city helping the economy.
As far as the society goes, I'm not sure what you mean. What's wrong with Texan society or Houston's society specifically? I mean, Houston has one of the largest, most respected arts districts in the country. The best museums in the south. The best food in the south. The largest rodeo in the State of Texas. If United or Air New Zealand ever gets around to starting this Bush-Auckland route Houston will be one of only 4 places on Earth that have nonstop air service to every inhabited continent. Seems like a lot of people are drawn there, for a lot of different reasons.
Sigh. Some people like dogs and some people like cats. People move where they want to move for the reasons they want to move there. Your friends decided being in what they felt were progressive, exciting cities was what was best for them. I've had friends that have moved all around the country for all kinds of reasons, and a few for that specific reason as well. Good for them. The population numbers (specifically by age) speak for themselves. Look at who is moving to Houston. People of all kinds, from all over the country and the world. And a lot of them are young, smart, and ready to continue the process of growing and building the city.
I suspect that the reason that it's difficult for you to appreciate Houston is that you haven't been there long enough to really appreciate how far it's come from what it once was. Another poster referenced the oil bust. I was a small child during the oil bust so that's my baseline for how far the city has come since then. In terms of everything, crime, quality of life, traffic, entertainment (with the exception of the Astroworld and Astrodome fiascos, but that's another story), etc. the city has made huge leaps and bounds. The biggest issue I see in Texas in general is education, and that's not unique to Houston.
I think another poster summed it up well - it seems like Houston just depresses you! If it's really that bad, why are you there? Do you have to be there?
Either way, I'm going to go catch Iron Man 3 with the misses. We could catch the same movie in Houston for probably 2/3 of the price but, c'est la vie.... at least there's lots of historic buildings and trees and other things we can look at while we're sitting in traffic or walking down the 4 story Metro escalators that never work.
You guys in Houston are winning. It's a great place to be. Maybe I'll rejoin you one day but y'all should hope that it stays a "secret" for as long as possible because the smart people are increasingly discovering it. And unless the city government completely screws the pooch, it will continue to grow toward that status that Oducks wishes it had already attained.
Just be patient, my friend. Houston never stops making moves (even if some of them backfire from time to time).
We're comparing city to city, but if you want to involve the suburbs, as i've posted, most of the suburbs in Houston are monotonous and exactly the same(except for the Woodlands, they put in an artificial lake, big whoop) , you really cant tell the differences.
People are drawn here, undoubtedly, but thats not what I'm trying to address. What im addressing is posted just prior to this post. And I was in DC, you guys have a very good railway systems and yes the escalators worked when I was there.
I guess you could complain about a movie ticket costing a few bucks more, but I would like to see hills and cleaner air.
And you're right I might appreciate Houston more if I was here when it wasn't all that much, but its stands as it is, and although most Houstonians are perfectly happy with the status quo and willing to wait. But others demand more.
Right, those older companies came down here because they were so very impressed by the "innovators". Not because of Spindletop, or the emergence of the Texas Oil Boom in general, but because by golly these Houstonians were just so much smarter than those folks up north .
I've never said that Houston wasn't desirable, but this whole thread turned into what made Houstonians "settle" for the status quo, as was mentioned on Winkosmosis' first post in this thread.
Because folks here are just easily pleased with having again the big house and a fat paycheck.
And you know what? I actually envy that, people that are ignorant and easy to please aren't aware of the things on the other side of the fence. I wish I could just go out on a restaurant and go to some club through my fat paycheck around and then drive back to my house and sleep. But for me, I would much rather have a sense of my neighborhood. Something that makes a city feel like a city, what gives people a sense of pride.
Not a subdivision, or a developers version of what is 'hip and cool'.
And for that I love the heights, and part of montrose, it seems, at least for now, to be a place where the sense of a chic neighborhood, and overall vibe isn't pillaged by a big business developer. This is what I mean by business over society.
But you see so many Houstonians, perfectly content with a "City Centre" or the Galleria, Kirby, etc. They just want a business to show some shiny lights and marble counters and they're ready to fork over whatever to get it.
I didnt know "fertile moist soil" was so very necessary. And pleasant landscape, you do know Houston is mostly flat grassland and some being a swamp?
As they say, ignorance truly is bliss.
Many of those people who came here for the oil boom were from the north, my point was these people were smart innovators and movers who had other choices and Houston was picked by these types to be the center of this new industry. BTW Spindletop only lasted a year or so, most of the oil that has been recovered in Texas and the world for that matter was extracted by technology developed in Houston.
"Remember when Howard Hughes was the richest man in the world? This wastebasket-size piece of equipment is the reason. It costs $3,500, weighs 78 pounds, and can turn up to a hundred times a minute. It’s called a tricone rotary rock drill bit and is used to drill oil wells. It’s made by the Hughes Tool Company, of Houston.
In 1933 two Hughes engineers invented the tricone bit, which drilled holes straighter and faster, and for the seventeen years that the patent on it ran—1934 through 1951—Hughes’s market share approached 100 per cent. The bit found virtually all the oil discovered in the glory days of wildcatting, and Howard Junior got to be the richest man in the world."
Your contention that Houston was somehow built by fortunate hicks, who just happen to be in the right place, is simply not the case. Many fortunate hicks benefited from the oil boom, but were not the drivers of oils development.
I must admit your love of the Heights is a bit disarming, but don't you think the original inhabitants of the Heights were people who were looking for a better life through the big paychecks of their day? What this tells me, is perhaps you yearn, for a romanticized version, of what American life used to be, and is not a specific incompatibility with Houston.
Your condescending attitude towards the city you live in (ignorance is bliss) may have something to do with your inability to more fully assimilate. Yes Houston has a "pleasant" landscape that for the most part is lush and green, not spectacular, but "pleasant", if you just refuse to see that, and want to keep the attitude that Houston is an armpit of a swamp, then I don't see how you will ever be happy here.
Winks problem is that he is forced to ride a bus instead of a dedicated light rail line into the city, and or, cannot afford to live in the neighborhood he really desires. I feel bad for wink, but if wink ever gets some of those big paychecks he complains about, I bet he will tell his fellow light rail riders, to kiss his ass, as he speeds by them on some HOT lane out to the burbs
Many of those people who came here for the oil boom were from the north, my point was these people were smart innovators and movers who had other choices and Houston was picked by these types to be the center of this new industry. BTW Spindletop only lasted a year or so, most of the oil that has been recovered in Texas and the world for that matter was extracted by technology developed in Houston.
"Remember when Howard Hughes was the richest man in the world? This wastebasket-size piece of equipment is the reason. It costs $3,500, weighs 78 pounds, and can turn up to a hundred times a minute. It’s called a tricone rotary rock drill bit and is used to drill oil wells. It’s made by the Hughes Tool Company, of Houston.
In 1933 two Hughes engineers invented the tricone bit, which drilled holes straighter and faster, and for the seventeen years that the patent on it ran—1934 through 1951—Hughes’s market share approached 100 per cent. The bit found virtually all the oil discovered in the glory days of wildcatting, and Howard Junior got to be the richest man in the world."
Your contention that Houston was somehow built by fortunate hicks, who just happen to be in the right place, is simply not the case. Many fortunate hicks benefited from the oil boom, but were not the drivers of oils development.
I must admit your love of the Heights is a bit disarming, but don't you think the original inhabitants of the Heights were people who were looking for a better life through the big paychecks of their day? What this tells me, is perhaps you yearn, for a romanticized version, of what American life used to be, and is not a specific incompatibility with Houston.
Your condescending attitude towards the city you live in (ignorance is bliss) may have something to do with your inability to more fully assimilate. Yes Houston has a "pleasant" landscape that for the most part is lush and green, not spectacular, but "pleasant", if you just refuse to see that, and want to keep the attitude that Houston is an armpit of a swamp, then I don't see how you will ever be happy here.
Winks problem is that he is forced to ride a bus instead of a dedicated light rail line into the city, and or, cannot afford to live in the neighborhood he really desires. I feel bad for wink, but if wink ever gets some of those big paychecks he complains about, I bet he will tell his fellow light rail riders, to kiss his ass, as he speeds by them on some HOT lane out to the burbs
This is exactly right. At this time, Houston is just not a city compatible with folks like Oducks and Wink. A lot of the things being complained about will likely get better as time passes and things progress, and particularly because more people like them are moving to the city. It just takes, time, patience, and the balancing of priorities on the metropolitan level to make it happen. Some things, such as scenery, you can't do anything about. If the flat 1/3 coastal swamp, 1/3 prairie, 1/3 forest bothers you that much, all I can say all it takes is looking out the window on a flight or drive in to see that's all there is. You knew it when you got here.
The only point I'm trying to make is that Houston's definitely not for everyone. Neither is NYC or Chicago (since I couldn't see myself living in either of those two places ). That doesn't mean I'd move there and bash the place based on things I didn't like about it. I'd just try to find another opportunity that would allow me to move somewhere I like better.
Would you agree that any time national press starts to rant about how cool or hip a place is, it becomes a death knell to the locals who have to deal with it all?
Houston is NOT cool or hip or even a city. It does not have any appeal whatsoever. It's like a big, ugly suburb with zero charm and plenty of attitude, unevolved corporate business, dishonest people who are overly out for themselves. And it seems like a lot of people can never be wrong, even when they are. Aesthetically, it is extremely unattractive, also has no personality at all. The gas and oil industry and every one who works for them in Houston are as boring as hell.
No one who has experienced big city life in a real city would ever want to live there, since all it is is a big pukehole suburb of no other city.
I was there for a few months and the majority of the people there were very short minded and unscrupulous. I then moved back to a real city. I found a job about three weeks after moving to the real city and in the interview the VP who interviewed me talked about how horrible Houston was after I told him I had just been there. We both laughed about its total lack of redeeming qualities.
So you think making a city livable means making it Cali 2.0? That's exactly the Houston attitude I can't stand. Houstonians seem to pride themselves on mediocrity. Long commutes with no progressive solutions is good enough. Ever-expanding sprawl is good enough. A few sparse (and expensive) liveable neighborhoods is good enough. Droll treeless unwalkable suburbs are good enough, and smart planning just requires too much thinking. They aren't willing to improve anything, because they have this bizarre belief that Houston is already the best city.
That's not how all cities are. Look at Dallas. They didn't say "We're awesome so we don't need to modernize our infrastructure". They realized that a large city needs functioning mass transit, and they built DART. Not only did they build it, but they built lines to the suburbs, and are adding more. Houston, meanwhile, just voted AGAINST more rail in favor of distributing Metro revenue to the suburbs for more roads.
I think a large factor is that a lot of Houstonians haven't lived in any other city. We are chock full of people who grew up in the suburbs, went to school in College Station, and then moved back. All they know is that this little piece of the world, and that Houston must be the best because it has JORBS AND HOUZES WITH SQUARE FEETZ. Get past that mentality and start expecting better quality of life and Houston will improve. Don't you WANT to be able to spend an extra hour or more with your family, get more exercise, save gas, and
breathe cleaner air?
Houston is NOT cool or hip or even a city. It does not have any appeal whatsoever. It's like a big, ugly suburb with zero charm and plenty of attitude, unevolved corporate business, dishonest people who are overly out for themselves. And it seems like a lot of people can never be wrong, even when they are. Aesthetically, it is extremely unattractive, also has no personality at all. The gas and oil industry and every one who works for them in Houston are as boring as hell.
No one who has experienced big city life in a real city would ever want to live there, since all it is is a big pukehole suburb of no other city.
I was there for a few months and the majority of the people there were very short minded and unscrupulous. I then moved back to a real city. I found a job about three weeks after moving to the real city and in the interview the VP who interviewed me talked about how horrible Houston was after I told him I had just been there. We both laughed about its total lack of redeeming qualities.
Houston makes El Paso look cool.
Glad you left... should have called I would have helped you pack and paid the airfare(beside some one in seattle taking smack.lmao.
Houston is NOT cool or hip or even a city. It does not have any appeal whatsoever. It's like a big, ugly suburb with zero charm and plenty of attitude, unevolved corporate business, dishonest people who are overly out for themselves. And it seems like a lot of people can never be wrong, even when they are. Aesthetically, it is extremely unattractive, also has no personality at all. The gas and oil industry and every one who works for them in Houston are as boring as hell.
No one who has experienced big city life in a real city would ever want to live there, since all it is is a big pukehole suburb of no other city.
I was there for a few months and the majority of the people there were very short minded and unscrupulous. I then moved back to a real city. I found a job about three weeks after moving to the real city and in the interview the VP who interviewed me talked about how horrible Houston was after I told him I had just been there. We both laughed about its total lack of redeeming qualities.
Houston makes El Paso look cool.
Everyone that works in oil and gas is as boring as hell? Well hot damn, you have met a lot of people then to know them all. You flat out suck, you know that? Glad you left. Hope you are enjoying your "real city"!
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If it's really that bad, why are you there? Do you have to be there? 
Who built Houston
). That doesn't mean I'd move there and bash the place based on things I didn't like about it. I'd just try to find another opportunity that would allow me to move somewhere I like better.
