Category: Places

Last night, we went again to a big block party down in the southwest part of town.  Almost two thirds of the houses in this cul de sac was seriously decorated, as was many other houses in the subdivision leading towards their street.

Last year we were invited by friends to this block, who were themselves invited by friends of one of the originators of this event.  My wife was pregnant with the boy at the time so we took a moment to rest on chairs on their driveway.  The originator came out and chatted with us and could not have been friendlier.

She said the whole thing started up years ago because she and some neighbors got tired of going to the mall for halloween and decided to have a small block party instead with a couple folding tables in their driveways.  Over the years it has just grown and really become a major event.

Sometimes things just happen, we just got to be there to ride it.

My wife and I were talking about our favorite season of the year and concluded that it is fall.  Summer is too hot and winter too chilly.  Spring is nice enough, but it is marred with a sense of foreboding; every day brings us closer to the dreaded start of summer.  Late May is the hardest part of summer, when the heat hits in force, but you have not yet been acclimated to triple digit intensity.

In Houston, it’s not the heat in August but the heat in October that gets you.  Out there the relentless humidity lingers until just about Halloween.  With our dry heat, Vegas is much harsher when the sun is up, and equally as relentless around the clock in July, but it does lighten up in the evenings, especially as summer winds down.

This transition between summer and fall sets the scene of my favorite vignette in the city after living here for half a decade.  I’ve seen it in multiple playgrounds as children and parents are released from the coop of their air conditioned boxes.  The kids race around on the equipment as the parents are chatting on the side.  You hear yelps and screams, and three or four languages mix together around you.  Everyone is out.  A collective energy fills the air.

I wonder if any other city has as much a divergence between its public and private personas.  But if you want a glimpse at the heart of this city, drive out to a playground right now, this evening, and we’ll be here to show you.

So during near the end of the trip I took some notes of things that struck my attention. I’ve finally gotten around to going over them (very lightly) and added a couple at the end. I wish I had gone over the list earlier, I’d bet I had have more things to add, but here it is.

1. Shanghai is denser than anything you see in Manhattan, the first ring of burbs around Hangzhou comes close, and brand new luxury burbs just a little less.
2. They don’t ever just make a residential tower out here….they make several at a time.
3. Suburb seems to mean four units stacked on each other instead of a seven story apartment complexes.
4. Hangzhou suburbs, while dense, are definitely trying their best to be utterly boring like those in the good old USA.
5. But damn there’s a lot of cars and they drive like utter madmen!
6. Walking (and driving) around Shanghai and Hangzhou is an almost contact sport.
7. Food is fresher out here…bound to be when they’ve got live chickens and ducks in your supermarkets
8. But their supermarets don’t have don’t have aloe vera lotion tissue papers.  That makes it close to a barbarian society to me.
9. Other than that you can basically buy anything you want out here…and most things will be a little cheaper than the states but not nearly as much as you’d think since all the stuff in the states had to get shipped across the pacific ocean.
10. The US really needs to get its act together and start making $1 and $2 coins.
11. I wonder how obviously american I am to these folks.
12. Not knowing what the hell anyone is saying is both not nearly as bad and much worse than it may seem when you think about it.
13. I really dislike a lot of the fashion choices made by the women out here.
14. That said, Chinese TV is full of ads for skin lotions…which is a step up from being full of ads for beer and cars.
15. Guys don’t like to cut their hair too short and very few people have facial hair.
16. Chinese bed (woven strings) really is a great system.  Not sure why others don’t emulate it.  But I can still sleep on anything (pulled out sofa bed with a big cross bar running down the length of it.
17. People are very energy conscious…they all unplug their small devices.  Hell they even turn off the water heaters at night.
18. A lot of people play cards out here.  I think it must be more convenient than Mahjong or something.
19. Weddings involve a lot of firecrackers.
20. There are a lot of people standing around.  And its awfully wierd to be saluted when driving out the complex.
21. I’d love to hear how great US capitalism is compared to Chinese capitalism with a retirement age around 55 and reasonable health costs.
22. That said, the air here is WAY worse than anything I’ve seen in the states
23. I think grandma is taking this as a time to brainwash my girlfriend into making babies.
24. It was quite an amusing lunch with Grandma and Jo-Ma watching them pressure her to make baby.
25. Food sure is fresher and better.
26. If in Hangzhou, definitely make a point to visit the Ling Yi Temple out here.  It costs 45 RMB to get into the park…skip the extra 30 RMB to get into that temple proper and go visit the other two temples that come for free with the park entry.
27. There are Chinese people selling things everywhere in this country, even at the top of a  hill accessible only by trails.
28. Chinese people are willing to buy things anywhere they are sold, even if they are silly little tchoskies on the top of a hill accessible only by trails.
29. Custmomer service is an utterly non-existant concept around here…so its quite shocking the one time we received great customer service (buying prepacked ramen!)
30. Yikes, at 58 RMB it seems that Starbucks will have been one of our most expensive “meals” out here…for a mango smoothie and a hot choc!
31. There’s a cable stayed bridge in Shanghai on the way to the airport that is almost as awesome to drive across as the Golden Gate.
32. The high speed rail on a viaduct elevated above the agricultural landscape is  a wonder to behold, it must be as impressive as the Eisenhower interstate system was to visitors from war torn Europe.  Three hours by bus, fortyfive minutes by train.

My friend is thinking about coming to Houston around rodeo time and she asked me about any good websites about Houston and things to do here.  Unfortunately I don’t know of any such sites, but I did find an old google map of my favorite places in the city which I had put together when Dongwoo came to town.

I spent a couple hours updating it and here it is!

I gotta say that my most interesting places are really just eateries.  But there is a reasonable helping of odd ideosyncratic places and wacky moments.  If you have anything you think I should add, ding me.  Otherwise, here is a snapshot of my mental map of Houston.

Blue is places of interest
Cyan is Eateries
Magenta is places I still need to go visit

If you click on this link that takes you to google maps, you’ll see a sidebar with all the places listed.

I just had a nice dinner with my girlfriend at Griffs, a local sports bar next door to the Chinese Consulate.

We had $8 pork chops literally in the shadow of the mother country. The bartender/cook was kind enough to give us two helpings of sides (one on each plate) and this one order ended up filling both of us as well as giving us some leftovers for tomorrow.

That said, I think we’ll most likely just stick with Tuesdays Steak Night from now on … for the extra $4 you get MORE GRILLIN’! MORE JUICYNESS and MORE FAT!