Before this year’s SXSW (which I blogged rather cynically, last post in series, go back from there) I spent a couple days in Houston and one in San Antonio. I was reminded to blog about this side trip yesterday when I got a note from Schmap Guides that a couple of my photos had been used in the Schmap Houston Guide: Hobbit Cafe and Rothko Chapel. Schmap has been using Creative Commons licensed photos to illustrate its guides for over a year, though this one is nice, as my photos are generally mediocre to awful.

Overall I loved Houston, perhaps in part as a reaction to all those who told me I would hate it. Yes, it has massive highways with continuous feeder side roads, but they seem to work pretty well. Other things being equal, I’d like to see cities become more extreme versions of themselves, and thus more highly differentiated. Light rail is a travesty in Houston and San Francisco should become Sanhattan.

For a more sterotypically urbane feel, the Upper Kirby neighborhood is nice. Hobbit Cafe, which I highly recommend, is located there. Montrose, where the Rothko Chapel is located, is even nicer. I was not overly impressed with the chapel, but the nearby Menil is very nice. I felt the building suited very well to being a museum, unlike many museum buildings. I loved the temporary Robert Rauschenberg cardboards exhibit.

Sugar Land seems like an excellent place to tour a wealthy but inexpensive suburb, but don’t order a five pepper dish from Thai Cottage II, for it is artless and not very spicy either.

The Houston Chronicle has one of the best newspaper web sites, which is to say it isn’t awful.

I look forward to visiting Houston again, having not even scratched its surface.