Reviewing Downtown Houston

So, and I’ll spoil this for you, Houston won, I’m currently living in Houston, and I’d recommend it although I’m not sure I can honestly rank it above Salt Lake City. Instead they’re just very different experiences, they offer very different things and where you should go, or at least where I would recommend, depends heavily on what you want. If you want great outdoors, wonderful friends, and a West Coast culture, go to SLC; if you want the big city, urban life with fantastic dating, and Southern culture, head to Houston.

Let me clarify, when I talk about Houston, I’m focusing on a very specific part of Houston, because Houston is big, like more comparable to the entire Bay Area than SF. Specifically, I’m talking about the Downtown, Midtown, Museum, and a bit of Montrose, maybe a bit of Rice. And this sounds like just a few neighborhoods but, like, jump on Google Maps and get directions from the Houston Zoo to the Downtown Aquarium and you’ll see the section of town I’m talking about but that’s like 5 miles long. And zoom out and that’s nothing. Like, if I want to go to Galveston and see the beach, that’s an hour, if I want to go down to Sugarland or up to the Woodlands, that’s 45 minutes easy. To give you an idea, I drove up to Lake Conroe because I wanted to get out of Houston, ‘bout an hour drive, and I never, ever left Houston or saw open space and when I got to Lake Conroe it was just a suburb of Houston, like lake shore house vibes. If I’d done that same drive from downtown SF at like 3:00 AM so there’d be minimal traffic, that would put me…probably in the Tri-Valley, maybe getting over the Altamont. So im’ma call it Downtown Houston, because it’s definitely a different animal than Houston in general, but it’s also genuinely large enough to be its own city.

And it’s, it’s like 90% of the best parts of New York without New Yorkers at 1/3 the price. Go to the downtown, go around the Chevron building, and you get that great “big city, surrounded by skycrapers” giggle and it’s not like the people are super friendly but they’re not unfriendly and you can get a nice place on like the 12^th or 14^th story of a building for $2000/month in rent and utilities which isn’t ya know, affordable for most people but that’s “rent a room” money in SF and a nice place in Houston in the heart. And the big thing, the big damn thing, is there’s so much to do and it’s so easy. Minute Maid park is a 10 minute walk, Toyota center with the Rockets is right there, once fall rolls around the Texans will be playing down the metro line @ NRG and, yeah, they’re the Texans but still…

Honestly, what sold it for me was the Museum of Fine Art. Because it is capital G good, really world class, better than the Legion of Honor or DeYoung, not London but, ya know, Europe isn’t fair. But that’s the thing that drives a lot of people to big cities, it’s not seeing something great but being close enough to be a member, to check their calendar for events, to be so “in” it that going to see the new exhibit at a world class museum is just a $10 Uber on a Wednesday after work and gym. Stuff that good, that easy, and Houston absolutely has it. I don’t want to fuss with whether it’s a little better than SF or a little worse than New York or where it ranks vis-a-vi Chicago but it’s good, it’s in that club. It’s just, hey it’s Saturday night and two tickets for world class ballet are $100 and a 10-minute walk from your apartment, if that’s what you want, if that’s the vibe and the life you want, then Downtown Houston is the spot.

Which segues to dating. I’ve improved my dating life by at least an order of magnitude and I mean that quantifiably. If in California you’re scrolling on a dating app and you have a few chats a month and maybe a date every other month, which does not seem atypical given men’s typical Tinder insights, you should expect to get 11-12 chats a month, of which 3-4 will convert into first dates/chats and 1 will develop into regular dating per month. This is enough of a quantitative difference that it creates a qualitatively different experience. You really do start getting to the point in text chats faster when you’re chatting with 3-4 women at the same time and there’s a clear point coming where, ya know, I schedule out 2-3 “date” nights a week and there might be more girls than available nights, which is f-ing surreal.

And it’s not just, like, the apps. I’ve been running around getting an apartment and furniture and stuff and the apps just kinda of started on the side but when I first came out to Houston I didn’t use the dating apps at all and… here’s the vibe. Like, you go to a meetup at the Museum of Fine Art and only one other person, a girl, shows up but you guys decide to tour around the museum anyway and you talk for an hour and a half and then go get dinner afterwards and talk and then you wave goodnight and get home and you’re like “wait, did I just go on a date?”. And yes, I am that dense, I confirmed that with my more socially-aware friends, but that doesn’t happen in California, that never happens, that’s not a thing, but it happened twice in two weeks in Houston. Like, just falling backwards into romantic situations where I really, really should have got her number.

I genuinely don’t know what’s going on, I don’t think it’s just a Cali thing because I didn’t get this vibe in Vegas or Salt Lake City or anything. I just went out to Houston and noted that I kinda tripped over girls who were into me twice and that was a big factor in coming out here and now that I’m here…it’s like the default switched from girls not interested to girls interested and I’m just trying not to efff it up too much.

And then there’s southern culture….there’s definitely a northwest vibe, there’s definitely a west coast vibe, there’s definitely a southwest vibe, but somewhere driving between San Antonio and Houston you enter the South proper and everything gets green and humid and, just, you’re in the proper south. And I’m not totally sure I get southern culture and I’m not totally sure I like it but…that was part of the appeal. Part of it is that I’m a Cali boy, not born but definitely raised, and there’s a lot that Cali gets right but there’s also some things it gets wrong or…don’t fit me where I am and will be in my life.

Like, trivial example, but everyone here dresses better than me. Every single person. And I dress well by Cali standards, I have well fitting clothes and boots and a watch and I’ve even started using a little cologne but…that’s not even table stakes here. And I like casual attire, I don’t want to be obsessed with my appearance but…I also don’t want to be a 47 year old man in a graphic tee. I don’t want to pretend to be in college the rest of my life. And that’s definitely the vibe in Cali, eternal youth and ultimate frisbee ‘til the grave and I like that but the idea of a clear path in middle age and beyond, of not pretending to be a kid forever…I’ve got something to learn from that. And that’s the big feel. I don’t get the southern vibe, I don’t know if I like southern culture, but they definitely do some things right that we don’t in Cali and I want to learn from that.

But yeah, in toto, there’s a bunch of other stuff, like the summer will be brutal but I never, ever have to go outside if I don’t want to, or any more outside than the front door to the Uber, and so I’m not worrying about that stuff. That’s the vibe, that’s Houston, or at least downtown Houston, and while I can’t honestly say it’s better than SLC, there’s no outdoors, like at all, and the people are cool but they’re not the insanely friendly “instant-click” people of SLC, but it’s exactly what I’m looking for right now.