FEEL free to weigh in on this one, but I think a lot more people would go to the opera if they could do so while lying out on the grass, eating hamburgers and drinking chocolate milkshakes. These are the sorts of things that I found to be top of mind while in Houston, simply because it is the sort of city where you can do just that.
It was a recent Saturday evening in February. Being Houston, it had been about 80 degrees that day. Also being Houston, you can get a lot of really good food that is bad for you. Not possessing an incredible length of time in which to eat all of it, I had decided to do one of those round robin sort of deals, eating a little bit here and there. My plan went awry after an early stop at local burger favorite Becks Prime. Halfway through a formidable bacon cheeseburger and a thick chocolate milkshake, my appetite was shot. I flipped on the radio, where a live broadcast of the Houston Grand Opera was about to begin.
Turns out, I’d stumbled upon a free, citywide night-at-the-opera event. The announcer listed a host of venues for those interested in viewing the simulcast. Being new in town and not knowing the way to either Jefferson Davis or Cesar Chavez high schools, I was pleased to learn that there would be a big screen out on Discovery Green, a pleasant downtown park that I knew how to find. (It’s the newest milestone in the local effort to turn the city center into a regional magnet; an effort this visitor certainly applauds, even if there’s a long way to go still.)
On the site of an old parking lot next to the convention center, Discovery Green was full of people, it being a warm evening. The grass was green, it not being the frozen tundra that New York had now been for about two months solid. There was something kind of satisfying about sucking down a chocolate milkshake while watching people mill around and socialize in the park, all set to an opera soundtrack that included the thunderous “O Fortuna,” from Orff’s Carmina Burana. The evening’s program turned out to be a sort of Opera’s Greatest Hits, that some how managed to pair, for instance, Kurt Weill’s “Alabama Song” with the “Witches Chorus” from Macbeth.
That afternoon, I had been driving around the rather scattered and terribly chaotic city, trying to make sense of everything. It was my first time here. Heading back to my hotel, just a short hop down the parkway-like Memorial Drive from downtown, I realized that it was best not to try. Seeing as the Grand Opera soon moved into “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” from Carousel — which came as a bit of a surprise after “The Chorus of Hebrew Slaves” from Verdi’s Nabucco — this proved to be all for the best.
TEXAS IS A GIFT
A lot of people don’t trust Texas. This is understandable. Texans are in your face. Everything in Texas is the best, ever. The center of the universe, according to Texans, is somewhere southwest of Abilene. (I’m sure I have this wrong and will be duly corrected by the first Texan that reads this.) Whether talking politics or local beer, it’s generally a Texan’s way, or the highway.
Personally, I think that Texans are a lot like New Yorkers, who believe the United States of America to be little more than an attractive nuisance, convenient to Manhattan. I have now come to the conclusion that New Yorkers are more annoying. First of all, Texas has more land, allowing its citizens not to have to live on top of each other. It also has better barbecue, not to mention that people wear cowboy hats, which I think we can all agree just look really classy.
Over the years, I have found it difficult to dislike a state that so fiercely asserts its identity. Not in the insecure way that people do in some parts of this country, as if they were trying to prove something to themselves. Texas has little to prove to itself, and has long moved on to proving things to outsiders. For instance, the state used to be a separate country. Texans will make sure to remind you of this at every available opportunity.
It is also hard to dislike a state that provides the traveler with so many colorful memories — many of them involving alcohol, which comes in handy when trying to discuss the affairs of a state where the Legislature semi-regularly, and apparently quite seriously, takes up the argument as to whether or not to allow hormonally imbalanced students to legally carry concealed weapons on the state’s college campuses.
What’s fascinating about Texas, though, is that it is big enough and broad enough to both live up to all of its stereotypes and yet, simultaneously, turn the expected on its head. You can spend margarita-fueled afternoons surrounded by cougar ladies and their silver fox suitors in the bars of Uptown Dallas, but within minutes, you could be sitting at a curious old coffee house with a bunch of unwashed creatives in the down-to-earth, very creative Bishop Arts District just south of the Trinity River.
Over in Fort Worth, there’s room for all types as well — the historic Stockyards are red brick and impressive, but so is Tadao Ando’s Modern Art Museum just west of downtown, an island of Zen architecture in a calm, reflecting pool. This is the state that is big enough to house both the weird art colony of Marfa and George W. Bush, not to mention his father, who now not only has an airport named after him, but also a statue erected in his honor on the banks of the Buffalo Bayou, right near downtown Houston.
You learn things in Texas. You learn that German settlement on both sides of today’s international border is what gave Mexico its love of beer, and also why every time you tune into a Spanish language music station it seems as if there is an accordion involved. You learn that no two Texas towns are ever alike, even if they are right next door. Regionalism often supersedes love of state. Sometimes, these regions are almost microscopic. This is how you can find a city like Austin, which fancies itself a sort of embassy of rational thought, just an hour or so away from San Antonio, where not too many years ago they were still debating whether or not to add fluoride to the city water. Then again, Austin keeps voting down proper transit, so you have to wonder how much of that progressiveness is just a lot of posturing.
Simply, Texas is endlessly interesting. It is the gift that keeps on giving. You could spend your whole life trying to figure out Texas — it is simply too big. Every visit brings with it a series of new surprises. I hate waiting too long to go back.
Then, there’s Houston. Three out of five Texans no doubt agree with out-of-staters who remain uncertain that the Bayou City has all that much to offer. There is no great reason for this kind of thinking. Does there have to be, really? It’s Houston, for goodness’ sake. People say that the car killed American cities — we should probably take a closer look at its accomplice, the air conditioner, which is, if you look at it, one of the only reasons there are nearly 5.5 million people living in a climate such as the one that Houston enjoys.
Then there’s the fact that the city is famously unzoned. Seriously. No zoning, pretty much, unless you band together with your neighbors and make a list of rules, such as they do in areas like the Houston’s exclusive River Oaks district. If you or I wanted to buy a house and operate a bar in our front room, we could, providing the neighborhood association had no laws on the books prohibiting such an activity.
This is, at least, my understanding. As much as I can understand it, being a life-long resident of northern nanny states. In New York, we are so conditioned to the idea that the government will have their hands in all of our business affairs. To Houstonians, this seems downright Canadian.
BUILD YOUR CITY, THE PLAN-FREE WAY!
After a couple of days in town, I was starting to see the upside of letting your city just, well, happen. First it looked nonsensical and chaotic, but it turns out that letting the people decide on just about everything makes life really interesting.
For instance, you could buy a multi-million dollar home on a shaded street just off of the busy west side thoroughfare that is Shepherd Drive, and not have to drive any further than the end of your block when you feel like a beef and cheddar sandwich at Arby’s. If you think about it, this is awfully convenient.
Barreling down I-45, the chasm of a freeway that connects the steel and glass castles of downtown Houston with the tattered Gulf city of Galveston, I am thinking a lot about the city’s freewheeling style, which leaves a lot of room for creativity, a lot of room for things to get downright strange. The longer you’re here, the more Houston starts to show off ways in which it shares nearby New Orleans’ embrace of the weird. You realize that it’s not just the proximity, the levees, the bayous and the punishing suburban architecture that puts you in the mind of the Big Easy; it’s the live-and-let-live spirit that gives rise to outbreaks of insanity such as The Orange Show, then proceeds to celebrate them as a vital part of the local cultural heritage.
The late Jeff McKissack created The Orange Show, a hard-to-define curiosity on Munger Street, just south of downtown. The plot of land on which his celebration of the orange was built was originally going to be a nursery. That turned out to be too much trouble for McKissack, who had a day job with the postal service. Then it was going to be a beauty parlor, except then it wasn’t — McKissack had inside information that proved beauty salons were a thing of the past. Which is how he came to find an entirely new use for the land, which buts up against some sort of industrial-looking business in a neighborhood that looks a lot like other neighborhoods in this part of town. Land that people aren’t exactly banging down the doors to move into.
Construction began on the project, which is remarkable in its pointlessness. Within the project, there are elements of an amphitheater, a museum, a jungle gym and perhaps a failed amusement park. It is not immediately apparent that the visitor is supposed to take away the knowledge that if one does not drink or smoke, gets plenty of exercise and eats lots of oranges, one can live to be 100 years old. There is, apparently, a companion book: “How You Can Live 100 Years . . . and Still be Spry.” I have added it to my reading list. After all, the only thing better than living until 100 is having a pulse past ninety.
McKissack seems like a likely candidate as a poster boy for the genre now termed “outsider art.” Sadly, he died in 1980, shortly after completing the project, which is made almost entirely out of salvaged material or found objects.
“I think at that time, they just called them nuts,” laughs Beth Lee. Lee is a staffer for the Orange Show’s parent organization, which carries the rather serious title of “Orange Show Center For Visionary Art.” The correct term, I am informed, is folk art, but to my uneducated ear, that sounds like we’re talking quilts, which doesn’t really begin to describe the experience of visiting a place that the owner was convinced would one day be more popular than Disneyland or the Grand Canyon.
The crowds have yet to materialize, Lee points out. Still, more than half a million people have dropped by in the past 30 years or so. The Orange Show is now on National Register of Historic Places, which proves that Houston does care about its history. At least, when its history is really weird.
BRINGING ART TO THE PEOPLE
While Houston is primarily a car city, it does not engage in car worship the way you might expect in say, Southern California or Detroit. For example, one of the hottest events of Detroit’s social season is a day when people drive their cars up and down a major thoroughfare of the region for other people to ogle them.
In Houston, they have a similar event, except on the annual Art Car Weekend, Houstonians come together to celebrate not the perfection of the car, but rather the car’s desecration. Car lovers compete to turn their wheels into rolling works of art. A roadster becomes, for instance, The Roachster: A giant, rolling cockroach.
Now in its 22nd year, the event centers around the now world-famous Art Car Parade, for which about a quarter of a million people show up in May. So popular is the event that there’s now an Art Car Museum, which keeps the celebration going year-round. Next to a gas station on Heights Boulevard, not too far north of Washington Avenue, where hot restaurants with valet parking are moving in next to meat markets, taquerias and liquor stores. On the day of my visit, the museum is currently winding down on their annual, open-call exhibit that invites anybody to contribute anything. This year’s theme was “Green Texas.”
Not seeing the theme in the mix of paintings, strange sculpture and art cars on the gallery floor, a gallery staffer (who, as it happens, drives a beautifully painted Nissan Xterra) admitted that it had all been open for interpretation. All the artist had to do, really, was consider the color green, and the state of Texas. Which explained the pickup that had been transformed into a “monster” truck, the likes of which you might expect to see in a Pixar cartoon. It was green, said the staffer. Also, it was in Texas.
The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art spearheads the Art Car Museum and events. Proving that it likes to keep a diverse portfolio, it presented the next stop on my tour: the Beer Can House. (There’s more, actually, but the Beer Can House is all I have time for today.)
Sandwiched between new condominium buildings on the other side of Washington Avenue, the Beer Can House is the brainchild of yet another eclectic Houstonian, this time the son of Austrian immigrants, John Milkovisch. The main interest here is the way beer cans have been integrated into the architecture of a bungalow that is otherwise classic Old Houston; a sensible house of reasonable size with big windows and lovely wood floors.
Milkovisch, who for the bulk of his career worked as an upholsterer for the railroads, always had plans for his property, which he worked on as he had time. Once he retired, however, he was able to really give in to his passions, which included not wasting things (empty beer cans, which he had been saving for 17 years) and making improvements to his house. Today, the home is entirely sided in flattened beer can bodies, and adorned with curtains made from the tops.
The yard itself is a work of art, utilizing stone, marbles and other bits of salvaged junk. As long as he doesn’t start on the inside, his wife Mary once said.
IT’S A BIG TOWN, DAMMIT
I had hoped to see a lot more of the city’s creative side, but I very quickly realized that you can’t just jump into Houston and see everything in a couple of days. I tried, feeling horribly guilty as I rushed through some more of the quirkier stops. In the traditionally poor Third Ward, there is a row of shotgun shacks now known as Project Row Houses, the focal point of a growing organization that not only stages compelling gallery shows, but also offers residencies, creates housing for single mothers and offers a gathering place for the community.
In the historic East End, just out of the shadow of the baseball stadium — famously once known as Enron Field, now called Minute Maid Park — I found the Tlaquepaque Market, a piece of neighborhood shopping history that is now being revived as a cultural magnet. Here, local musicians Lupe and Sid Olivares (a husband and wife team, Sid is the lady) have opened Bohemeo, a coffee house that’s gaining a reputation as a live music venue. There’s a large outdoor patio where you can sit and drink coffee and look back towards the downtown skyline.
At one point, I convinced a local contact to take me up to the historic Heights neighborhood to learn more about Houston’s popular Aurora Picture Show, a new media, film and video center housed in an old 1920s Baptist church. It’s around the corner from a donut shop, Shipley’s, that makes the most insane glazed donut you have ever tasted. Aurora was closed for the day. Shipley’s was not. Sometimes, it turns out, donuts are as fun as art.
THE FINAL PIECE OF THE PUZZLE
Before leaving town, I make one final stop, a stop I had been avoiding. While the scope and breadth of Houston’s art scene may not be widely appreciated by outsiders, nearly everyone knows about The Menil Collection. Occupying a campus-like section of the city’s Montrose district, the Menil, I expected, would be everything that my previous experiences were not: a serious art museum.
The outcome of a life of dedication to the local arts scene on the part of French expats John and Dominique de Menil, the campus’ focal point is the simple and yet enchanting Renzo Piano gallery building. Sitting in a sea of grass, it appears to adore the worship of the bungalow-style homes lined up all around it. Many of them painted in silvery gray which, my guide tells me, means that the Menil owns them. In Houston, you can never be too careful — preserving your neighborhood is often best done by buying it up.
The museum is just one piece of the Collection puzzle, of course; a gallery of the work of Cy Twombly, also designed by Piano, is just steps from the campus centerpiece. Opened in 1995 in partnership with New York’s Dia Art Foundation, from here you’re just a short walk from the old grocery store on Richmond Avenue that was transformed into an installation of fluorescent light. This creates a rather stark contrast with the final pieces of the puzzle, Mark Rothko’s baffling Rothko Chapel, which looks at first glance to be a mid-century municipal power substation rather than the inspired work of a mid-century artist. And don’t forget the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum, just around the corner from there. Admission to everything is always free.
It’s a Tuesday, and the galleries are closed. I’ve called ahead, though — I’m met at the southern entrance by Vance Muse, an old New York hand who used to write for Life magazine. His name may be perfect for someone working at an art museum. Good humored and effortlessly outgoing, Muse is precisely the opposite of what I expected in a representative of the Menil Collection. Then again, I had neglected to take into account that this was an organization that found room for Cy Twombly, an installation of fluorescent light in an old grocery store and Byzantine-era frescoes.
The galleries themselves aren’t all that large — at any given time, you’ll see a fraction of the 20,000 pieces that are constantly rotating in and out. Inside, the museum is a blur of oddity, moving seamlessly from antiquities and beautifully presented African art to a show of drawings by Georgia O’Keefe, Piet Mondrian, Marcel Duchamp and others.
Surrealism is also a strength of the collection, the genre being a favorite of the de Menil family. The stark gallery, the province of the likes of Magritte and Man Ray, leads to a dark, windowless back room which, Muse remarks looks like it had been ripped straight out of the British Museum. Oddly, for a museum that offers very little direction to the visitor (The Menil prefers instead to allow people to respond, as Muse puts it, with their “right brain,” or emotionally) everything in this generously-sized closet is tagged. There is a guide to the show entitled, “Witnesses to a Surrealist Vision.”
Tribal art is a focus — the whole thing looks like some sort of twisted fun house. At the center of the room, a life-sized piece of body armor, covered entirely in nails, sticks out as looking even stranger than what surrounds it, making the fun house suddenly feel like a weird sex dungeon. A very German sex dungeon.
Muse picks up the booklet that tries to explain everything; the object in question turns out to be called a “Wildman” costume. Dating from the 18th or 19th century, it is a “two-piece leather suit with wood spikes and iron chain, and metal helmet with metal spikes.” Origin: Germany or Switzerland.
I started thinking, at that moment, that I know way too much about the dark side of the German mind. In addition, it also crosses my mind the Menil is not really much of a contrast to what I’d been seeing around town. Finding room for both Twombly and frightening German sex torture costumes, the Menil is as Houston as it gets — laid back, vaguely cuckoo, but always 100% serious about its mission. Here, the art community simply celebrates art, whether it happens to a house tricked out with pieces of empty beer cans, or the work of Robert Rauschenberg. (Himself a Texan, of course.)
Suddenly, what I had seen down at the Orange Show the other day — a plaque thanking the people who stepped in to save the project after its creator’s death — made sense. There, on the list, was Domenique de Menil. Along with, why the hell not, those other pillars of Houston’s creative community: The guys from ZZ Top.
For more information about the arts in Houston, visit www.artshound.com. To learn more about Houston as a destination, call (800) 4-HOUSTON or log on to visithoustontexas.com.
5 COOL THINGS TO DO IN HOUSTON
1) Some fun on the bayou
Under a tangle of freeway overpasses on the north side of downtown, you’ll find the Buffalo Bayou, a peaceful respite that functions as Houston’s own mini-Hudson River. Spruced up in recent years thanks to the efforts of the Buffalo Bayou Partnership, it’s now a popular spot for exercise, thanks to miles of trail, the best of which takes you through the pleasant wide open spaces west of the city center. To get on the water, you can rent a canoe or a kayak. (Or, as we learned on a recent morning, you could also strip naked and take a bath.) Regularly scheduled boat tours make for a relaxing 30 minutes; in summer, the already thickly-vegetated banks turn positively jungle-esque. Boat tours are $7; learn more about the Bayou at www.buffalobayou.org.
2) History and mystery
While Houston is as newfangled as you’d expect, plenty of its history survives. Join the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance for their monthly walking tours for living proof. February’s walkabout examined the history of Main Street, which has some of the city’s best commercial architecture, including the Deco marvel that is the JP Morgan Chase tower at No. 712. If a guided tour isn’t your thing, you can also celebrate Houston’s heritage like so many others do — by hoisting a glass of whatever it is you drink at La Carafe, an atmospheric bar at 813 Congress Street. It’s housed in the city’s oldest surviving commercial building (1847), facing what’s left of the historic Market Square district. Alliance-led tours are $10; find more information at www.ghpa.org.
3) Resort and the city
Today’s Houston can get crowded in places, but there’s still plenty of room to breathe, sometimes in the most unlikely places. Just north of the famous Galleria, the epicenter of one of the city’s most congested districts, you can slip down a side street and into the park-like setting of The Houstonian, a resort-style hotel that also happens to be the site of one of the most desirable private fitness clubs in town. Staying here is like getting a free pass into the fancy side of Houston — guests have full access to club facilities, some of the finest in the country. Even if you don’t stay over, stop by for a drink at the bar. A recent renovation has given rather straightforward rooms a much-needed sprucing up, though bathrooms are still miniscule. A weekend Bed & Breakfast special including tax starts at $285 for a double room. More information at www.houstonian.com.
4) You gotta eat
While the city at first glance may seem impossibly spread out, don’t be fooled — that sprawl you’re writing off might be the next hot neighborhood. Take Washington Avenue, for years a nondescript and forgotten thoroughfare running west of Downtown. Amid an array of older businesses (some of them well-worth checking out) catering to the once largely working class neighborhood comes a series of very worthy restaurants, among them Catalan, which you might expect to be just another tapas bar. Wrong. Chef Chris Shepherd’s menu is too decadent to be called just another tapas bar. It’s also more than a tiny bit aware of its Gulf Coast location. Go for the cockles with chorizo, or the pork belly on sugarcane skewers (No. 5555). Nearby, a branch of Benjy’s, a popular Rice Village haunt, is reeling in a whole new audience in a sleek space for dishes like incredibly tender buffalo hangar steak, served with a memorable bone marrow risotto (No. 5922). For extremely casual, gastrodive Max’s marries the high brow (a serious wine bar) with the low (a pleasing pub food menu). If you’ve never paired a delicate Austrian Gr 1/4ner Veltliner with a crock of macaroni and cheese, here’s your chance to do so (No. 4720).
5) Into the woods
With a centrally located park twice the size of New York’s fabled front lawn, it’s no wonder Houstonians like the outdoors a lot more than people might figure. Even in this dry winter Texas is having, Memorial Park still looks relatively green and beautiful, an oasis from the clutter of the city. Miles of trail leave you with little to no excuse for getting out of your car and into nature. Best thing ever: Exercisers can reward their virtue at local burger legend Becks Prime; there’s a location right in the park, at the golf course club house (www.houstonparks.org).