Are there any Houston HAMBers? Pucker factor here at the jobsite. Hundreds of craft being laid off, about 550. If they dont need folks to put stuff up, will they need me to receive more stuff? Dunno, not sure about hanging around to find out. There are opportunities in one of our main offices in Houston. Im thinking about it. I like Texas, its in the south, good food/barbeque,... what else?
I'm in Houston... whatcha wanna know? Houses are cheap, food is excellent, there's good music in town, and it's close to Austin and the Gulf. What else?
I like it here..far enough away from the hippies in austin, but close enough when it's roundup time. Plus it's nice and flat here. John
Come on down and wrap your face around the best barbeque, Mexican, Vietnamese etc. etc. food in the country and wrap your head around some serious red state karma which, the intense wonderfulness of the Roundup and the Austin music scene notwithstanding, you won't get from the People's Republic of Austin. Flatness, 50 inches of rain a year, more AC than any spot on the planet, and as much greenery as anyplace in WA, extremely infrequent ice & snow, blah blah blah. Come help pump up the traditional rodding scene in this end of the state.
I love Houston for lots of reasons. but if your looking for drawbacks i can shoot out a few.... 1. !00% humidty, 350 days a year - but We don't get chapped lips here 2. Terrible traffic - but great toll roads to get around it 3. Petro-chemical plants and smog - lots of jobs 4. average rainfall 40 inches a year - we get it in two days 5. Average Temp in the 70's - can't think of any drawback there. We are cool or just right 7 or 8 months out of the year...it's the really hot 4 months that everyone remembers. 6. 7 or 8 hour drive to New Orleans, 5 hour drive to Dallas 7. It takes an hour and a half to drive from one side of town to the other....Houston is a study in urban sprawl.... that being said - it has some really nice burbs.... if you like the city life.... living inside the loop ( 610) is really fun... lots to do.... 8. Houston is a very lush and green place..... most people that haven't been there wouldn't think it would be.... live oaks and tropical plants that would make you think of Florida.... north east houston is part of the piney woods....loblolly pines and yaupon holly forest.....azaleas grow with hibiscus. hope that helped. - kyle
Does Houston get all 50 inches of rain on the same day? I like the desert, no income tax, and guns. Do I qualify?
Some of our "tropical storms" can dump what seems like 50 inches of rain, but its usually pretty well balanced. Like everyone said, mild weather, great food, good lookin women, eveything you could want except maybe gambling. Bring your guns and come on down.
Well maybe 2 or 3 days. None of that wimpy eternal mist of the NW coast for us. It does get droughty in mid-summer but we do have moments when we're sure the whole dang city might float off into the Gulf of Mexico. We're several hundred miles from desert but there's no income tax and there are billboards around town advertising a big gun show "NRA---5 Acres of Guns & Gear" 2 outa 3 ain't bad.
I think someone put it best when they said get ready for rain of biblical proportions. I have rental property that floods every other year consistently, once it was almost to my waist and I'm damn near seven feet tall. But besides that and the occasional humidity so thick it feels like you're breathing water it's not too bad. Check this thread out too http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=42341 Later, Saulgoode
Sure everywhere floods but we specialize in mind bending biblical deluges about every 4 or 5 years. Tropical Storm Allison dumped up to 35 inches of rain in a 24hr period on the area in June 2001. Freakin' awesome. Lotsa places go nuts over a lousy 4 or 5 inches while we expect that much routinely in big thunderstorms.
Well pretty much all the goods & bads of any other large American city---a zillion Starbucks & Mickey Ds. And it is large. The overall metro area is about 40-50 miles west to east and pushing twice that North to South---almost to Galveston. About 4 million in the metro area but spread out over about 2500 sq. miles. Job situation is no worse and probably a little better than nationwide. Relative to most parts of the U.S. we have cheap gas and cheap housing. Like the rest of the country we got way overpriced sports teams and insanely expensive all brand new stadiums. It's not SoCal in terms of rodding but besides SoCal what the hell is? Like most places you make of it what you want.
It's cool here. I moved back a year ago. I live north of town in Spring off Cypresswood. I love the hell out of it. Everything about Houston has changed in the last ten years or so. It's easier to get around and we don't have the traffic we had some years ago. It can back up but not like the 4 hour jams I remember. Weather is .....well.....Texas. If you don't like it....wait a few minutes. SC is humid. There is no comparison though. The first week or so here you'll hate it. I tell my friends to practice breathing through a sponge soaked in hot water to prepare for it before they come down. We have to move away from here for an extended time to realize how humid it can actually get. You won't find chili, BBQ, or Tex-Mex any better than here but I know that's subjective.
blacksix nailed it for the most part. I'm a little farther north of Houston and like it. Post Oak would be a commute from here.
Everyone has been fairly accurate about Houston. The job situation isn't at good as it used to be, but it's still better than the rest of the country. Last time this came up I wrote a lengthy reply... http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25617&highlight=houston
When Stevie Ray was singing Texas Flood, he was talkikn bout Houston...also there was a made for TV movie about one of our floods on last week..
Hot Humid. Great Food. Lots of Fat People. Traffic. Gun Shows Once a month. Can cruise all year long. 2 1/8 mile tracks close by and one world class 1/4 mile track close. Plus it is the Great State of TEXAS.
You mean once a week. Seriously. Carter Country is offering a Concealed Carry License special for $99.
Houston's kind of the middle ground between the two main places I've lived all my life, New Orleans where I grew up and Austin where I've lived for the past 10 years. And while I wouldn't necessarily say it encompasses all the "good" aspects of both places, it still has a lot going for it. The food is great. Austin is a mere 3 hours away. New Orleans, only 5-6. The Gulf coast is, what, an hour from downtown? It's close enough to Austin, but as has been mentioned, you don't have the in-your-face liberal hippies telling everyone how they feel about everything all the time. Yeah, that gets old. At least in Houston, you'll be farther from it. And Texas really is a cool place to live. There's more pride in this state than I've witnessed anywhere else. Not "we're better than everyone else" pride, but just "happy to be here" pride. That's pretty cool... The bad? Traffic sucks. Big time. The weather? Hot, humid, and lots of rain. In that regard it's like New Orleans, but without the food and culture. I'd also expect short summer showers most afternoons, just like in New Orleans. Just enough to make the streets wet, not necessarily much more than that, typically. So I guess in summary, I'd move if you've got a job lined up. Lots of fun and cool folks down here. I wouldn't have stayed in central Texas for so long myself had that not been the case. Lastly, I'll just leave you with this: Lone Star Roundup!!! 'Nuff said. Tommy
You may not have hippies in your face telling you what to do, but you'll find plenty of people puttin' their non-registered GUNS in your face! H-Town crime is f#ckin' pandemic, across the entire sprawl. I'll take a pamphlet in hand versus a knife in the ribs any day... The floods suck-Houston was built on a swamp filled with Galveston sand by the Allen Brothers. Drainage is horrible and most people are super-uncool about you leaving your car parked in the property (but the tow drivers won't mind parking it in their impound). Attitude-wise, my wife and I came up with a term for it 'The Dogshit Smell Face". If you're ever in traffic, at the grocery, or walking around, you'll see it alot. Say hi to these people and they might say hi back but you'll inevitably get this non-verbal response. I always felt like everyone there felt like their lives were the most important things in the universe and anyone else was just an intrusion. I have a lot of animosity toward H-town-I was robbed and ran over by an uninsured driver. I had friends killed, etc. Moving to Austin has been the best thing that's happened to me in the last 3 years- I spent 26 in Houston (southside represent..)
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