11 News: Living In Texas City Really Stinks

[jfre81]

Originally Posted by texas7

and show the good and the bad.....it is sort of a mixed bag over there.

Indeed.

My grandfather lives in what would probably qualify as the nicest spot in town, or at least one of them. There are a couple houses over there that wouldn't entirely look out of place around River Oaks or Rice, kid you not. Mostly up there off the "loop" (which isn't a true ring road like 610) and 14th Street, and also up near Moses Lake. I haven't been up that way in a few years.

[Oildog]

Sorry jfre, couldn't resist. So this is celebrating TC style.

Birthday guest stabbed to death in all-female brawl at Texas City bar | Houston & Texas News | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

[jfre81]

Originally Posted by Oildog

Sorry jfre, couldn't resist. So this is celebrating TC style.

Birthday guest stabbed to death in all-female brawl at Texas City bar | Houston & Texas News | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Yeah, pretty much.

Although most people in TC will refer to that as La Marque. It all runs together there around FM 1765. And really, there isn't much difference.

[JL]

I used to live in Texas City. After a while, you get used to the smell. I lived right next to the Amoco plant . The flames from the stack would heat up my bedroom windows. It was kinda nice during the winter.

[SouthernBoy205]

Originally Posted by jfre81

Who is being paid to do research reaching the same conclusion (http://www.khou.com/news/local/stories/khou080212_ac_bpstress.b5dc4d7e.html?npc - broken link) I could've offered for free, and who is paying them?

There are apparently people employed or otherwise preoccupied with confirming the obvious. I really can't lie though....if they put together some kind of magazine list of the "Worst Places To Live In U.S. Under 50,000 Population" the first sign of its credibility is the presence of Texas City, Texas at or near the top. I spent much of the first 20 years of my life no more than a mile or so downwind from the refinery complex which is similar in size to the one around the Port of Houston. I have toxic waste running through my veins, I irradiate everything I touch and I lower property values just by taking a stroll through your neighborhood. In all honesty I should be exterminated for the good of mankind at large, but someone's got to live and work in the Valhalla of benzene emissions to help fill your cars and your cigarette lighters with petroleum byproducts that will burn. That's part of what big, smelly refineries do, aside from making the air smell like crap and being the scene of fatal accidents.

There are two kinds of people in Texas City - those who smell the refinery fumes and those who are used to it enough to no longer pay attention to it. They should leave somewhere and get some clean air (meaning a trip to Houston doesn't cut it ) and then go back. Also, oil refineries are loud. The best way I could describe it is if a mob of people was constantly standing on 5th Avenue South shaking milk jugs filled with marbles ...then there's the weekly testing of the sirens that go off when there's a chemical leak or something at the plants...Crime in some parts of town rival Houston's rougher areas, if lacking the near constant stream of murders of the Fondren Southwest area. In Texas City, either you work for the plants, you're an overpaid administrator for one of the schools, you commute a good ways to work, or you're poor and barely able to afford a house worth maybe $65K.

In a nutshell, my hometown is a veritable hellhole, and more than likely I can produce a large abstraction of statistics to lend credibility to this viewpoint if asked to. If you hate where you live, wherever that is, you might be relieved to know you can do better.

But if you want to buy a big house for under 100 grand and you don't care about anything else, you might try looking around there. And it's close to Galveston, whose citizens get a nice view of the industrial skyline of TC from Harborside Drive, Seawolf Park etc...

Anyone else here who either has lived and/or works (or lives and/or works) in Texas City? Or am I the only one shameless enough to admit it?

Interesting..........

[tac2008]

Originally Posted by jfre81

Anyone else here who either has lived and/or works (or lives and/or works) in Texas City? Or am I the only one shameless enough to admit it?

I've worked in Texas City for about 3 years now. Your description of the population that lives here is spot on. ~90% of my coworkers commute at least 30 minutes, and the ones that don't only live here because they can't afford to move.

[jfre81]

Want to hear (or read?) my impression of the Texas City emergency sirens?

doo-dee-doo-dee-DOO-DEE-DOO-DEE-DOO-DEE-doo-dee-doo-dee

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrr rr






...well, that's the old one. It sounded cooler than the new one. I say "new one," it's been there for 10 years or so.

I still hear it in my head every Wednesday at noon. Like today when I was riding the rail downtown.

[SouthernBoy205]

Originally Posted by tac2008

I've worked in Texas City for about 3 years now. Your description of the population that lives here is spot on. ~90% of my coworkers commute at least 30 minutes, and the ones that don't only live here because they can't afford to move.

I agree!

[zkov]

Hi, everyone!

We recently moved from NY and live now in downtown Houston, but looking for a lake house for a weekend...we found a few nice houses on moses lake/dollar bay near Texas City, but not sure about closeness to Texas City (i.e. pollution, smell, crime, safety). Obviously, the real estate agent says it's a great lake, but i'm trying to get more information about it. I like the Moses lake is so pristine, quite, not very populated..but may be there is a reason for that?!
Would be greatful for any information about living on the Moses lake?
Thank you!

[jfre81]

Might as well handle it in this old thread, right?

The neighborhoods/developments around the "lake" are on the far north side of town, on the opposite side of the heavy industry.
From Pilgrim's Landing (what you enter into when you've gone as far north as you can on 25th/Logan St.) it's about a mile from Loop 197 and your nearest gas station, almost another mile to Palmer Highway where many of the businesses, grocery stores etc. in town are located, then almost another mile to Texas Avenue and about five blocks south of there are where the plants are.
Even with prevailing south winds coming off the Gulf, which tends to bring the smells and other nice things over nearer parts of town, I rarely if ever noticed it much that far away.
It's really not that bad up there. There are some nice houses that are not very expensive, it's on/near the water and it's inside the floodgate. Everything that was there before Ike is still there. It's also rather isolated from the rest of town, particularly the seedier parts to the south and east.
I lived briefly in Pilgrim's Landing but this was in the early 90s and it's been built out quite a bit since then. There was nothing west of Logan before then.

Much of the rest of the city is virtually the same though.