TUPF wrote:
I've never known anyone FROM Houston, only folks TO Houston. It's the most singularly unimpressive major city I've ever been to. Makes Los Angeles look cultured by comparison. Sidewalks roll up at 6, no there there, ebbs and flows with the price of a barrel of oil. No heart, no soul. Pickup trucks with chrome hubcaps. Reserve trendy names for a place that deserves it.
This was how I first felt about Houston. I thought it rounded out my personal four corners of hell (along with LA, Baton Rouge, and Atlanta). But we've had to go a lot over the past 6 years between 2 Rice football games, IKEA runs, and ongoing projects at both the French and Spanish consulates. And I've come to actually like Houston. Not love it. Not want to live there. But compared to most places in Texas..... And DEFINATELY compared to LA/Baton Rouge/Atlanta. I'll take it in a heartbeat.
Great public infrastructure and family things to do (more so than most any big city I've been around). One of the best greek restaurants I've found in america (esp for the price) and one of the few places in Texas you can find some examples of actual Mexican food (not just Tex Mex).
I wouldn't look to live there and I wouldn't seek it out for a vacation, but I've slowly come to like it a lot, lot better than my first impression of it.
As for knowing people "from" there, we have two couple friends in NOLA in which the woman in both cases is from Houston (and the man from NOLA). My NYU roommate was from NY, but had just gotten his BA at Rice, and was Houston obsessed. He was the first person I heard consistently call it H-town (which I then heard again from my friends in NOLA and Anthony Bourdain's phenomonal episode on Houston last Fall---one of his best). I think its a silly term, but it is a common one, and as I admitted, I'm a lazy typer

Come to think of it, the NYU roommate had some fairly bro-ish tendencies at the time I knew him (so we can link this with that thread!), so I'll choose to attribute some of the H-Town stuff to that. Although he went on to be one of the top national security advisors and meanwhile the women I know in NOLA from Houston are anything but bro-ish, so I don't think it's "just" that