What to do when bored in Houston? (Austin, Vega: home, college)

[XodoX]

Houston is a "work city". The "party cities" would be NYC, L.A. etc.

[crbcrbrgv]

Originally Posted by XodoX

Houston is a "work city". The "party cities" would be NYC, L.A. etc.

Might explain why California and New York are broke while Texas is doing pretty good, no?

[westres1]

Ride your bike down Braeswood or thru Terry Hershey.
Go to the Hot Salsa fest or any other local fest
Go to the beach
Walk over to the Alabama Ice House and have a cold one and listen to music
Do Tai Chi at discovery Green
Go to the zoo
Play golf or tennis
Shop at the village
Go have a sweet at the Chocolate Bar
See an Imax
Feed the ducks at Hermann Park
take a canoe trip down the bayou
paint pettery at one of the many paint pottery places
jeez....there is ALOT to do!

[XodoX]

Originally Posted by crbcrbrgv

Might explain why California and New York are broke while Texas is doing pretty good, no?

No, I disagree. But that's a different topic now.

[theSUBlime]

Originally Posted by Jesse69

What is there to do when bored in Houston?

When I lived in an Apt complex in Medical Center, if I was bored I'd go to the grocery store, Barnes & Noble, or maybe shopping mall. That's it! But in Wicker Park Chicago, I can take a bike ride in my neighborhood and going shopping, eating, and maybe meet people on the street, in a store, or at the park! Houston is really suffering in people hangouts, and going to Barnes & Noble gets kinda old.

So what do you do when you get bored in Houston, - in terms of going out somewhere?

Wait, I'm confused? Are you saying you can't do those things in Houston?

I mean if you said something like get food off the street, or ride the train, or provided some other type of qualifier for the aformentioned activities, then maybe you might be onto something.

Like I've said, I tend to believe people do essentially the same thing in most cities: LIVE, WORK and PLAY (when they have time) based on local and regional influences (ie. going to a deli in NYC vs. going to a taqueria in Houston. I do agree Houston can use more dense concentration of "lively" places, but we tend to forget that our visits to places are rarely as leisurely or exciting as the lives most people live in said locations. For example, my friends who live in Manhattan have told me Times Square loses its appeal very fast and I know I don't need to go to 6th street to get trashed. I can do that very well on my own.

[zdg]

Originally Posted by theSUBlime

For example, my friends who live in Manhattan have told me Times Square loses its appeal very fast and I know I don't need to go to 6th street to get trashed. I can do that very well on my own.

I'm not sure these are valid examples (having lived in Austin, Houston, and now Manhattan).

Times Square is for tourists, not for locals to go "do things." It's a place for people on their first trip to NYC go see a ton of lights and buy I <3 NY t-shirts. I'm not sure what appeal it has in the first place to lose, but I take your friends' point. I honestly don't think anyone who lives here would say "hey, we should go to Times Square for the day!" That being said, I've been trying to think about what we used to "do" in Houston aside from the standard zoo/museums/eat thing (which of course you can do in any major city and which Houston DOES do very well).

Honestly, I couldn't think of anything we did other than "go somewhere else" (specifically to New Braunfels) but I think it's really fair to say that this was OUR fault and not HOUSTON'S fault.

When we moved to Manhattan, we made a very serious point to not just sit on our butts like we did our whole lives in Houston (and other Texas cities) and go out and see the city. Again, this was OUR fault we did that in Texas, not Texas' fault.

But now that we make a point of picking a new neighborhood in NYC every weekend, choosing 3 restaurants and at least 2 points of interest, we will head out to a neighborhood at about 9am. We'll eat breakfast someplace interesting and then walk around looking at people, shops, places of interest until lunch time. Take a long lunch, then head out and try to hit a park so our kid can play for a couple hours, grab something snacky to eat, and take the subway back home. The reason I'm telling you this isn't to get into another Houston vs Othercity battle, but to suggest that the exact same thing could easily be done in Houston. No, you don't have a subway and tight little neighborhoods, but with a car you could easily accomplish the same thing.

Go to the Yummy Corridor on Hillcroft one day. Go to Asian Bellaire one day. Go to Galveston one day. Go to Rice Village for one day. Go to Heights for one day. Hell, go to Third Ward one day.

If you were in a place like, say, Abilene, yeah, I could see where you'd run out of things to see or do. But this is Houston. Go explore it. There's way too much good food and strange things to look at or buy to waste away your time there like we did.

[crbcrbrgv]

As a former resident of Wicker Park myself, I understand where Jesse is coming from. But, Jesse, c'mon. Wicker Park is one of the coolest neighborhoods in the country. And unless you know someone, it is very expensive to live in the walkable neighborhoods of Chicago and other cities. I lucked out when my found that flat across from A.N. Pritzker school. We were paying 1,000 a month while our neighbors paid 2,200 for similar digs. What so many people fail to mention is that the average person cannot afford to live in the cool neighborhoods to begin with and the majority of Chicagoans live in the suburbs which are about as walkable as, well, Fulshear.

[Jesse69]

Wow, the think Wicker Park has become a cool neighborhood! Lotsa money free things to do in Chicago!

I did the museums of Houston. I was bored and went to Joel Osteen's Megachurch for curiosity. Saturdays I would do a 40 mile bike shopping workout visiting thrift stores. The selection of women on Match.com Houston stank. But Houston has way better fast food than Chicago. I tried Hermann Park as a bike workout place but I got bored of it quick, so I road biked the whole city as a workout path. I would visit Galleria on weekends too, eat there, and check out the women there. I never went to a single nightclub in Houston as I didn't know a good one.

[Huckleberry3911948]

go play around the foundation near the art museum.

[zdg]

Originally Posted by Jesse69

Wow, the think Wicker Park has become a cool neighborhood! Lotsa money free things to do in Chicago!

I did the museums of Houston. I was bored and went to Joel Osteen's Megachurch for curiosity. Saturdays I would do a 40 mile bike shopping workout visiting thrift stores. The selection of women on Match.com Houston stank. But Houston has way better fast food than Chicago. I tried Hermann Park as a bike workout place but I got bored of it quick, so I road biked the whole city as a workout path. I would visit Galleria on weekends too, eat there, and check out the women there. I never went to a single nightclub in Houston as I didn't know a good one.

Oh, well so yeah, there's your problem. You want Houston to be Chicago or NYC. That'll never happen.

If the question was what can you do there, it's pretty well been outlined. If you don't find that stuff interesting (and I can't say I blame you entirely coming from where you're coming from), sounds like Houston ain't for you.

I will say, as a follow up to my last post, that we were in Houston as young parents raising a small child. I highly recommend Houston for raising a child (in general). That being said, if I were single, Houston wouldn't even be on my preliminary long list of places to move to.