| | Southern hospitality
I'm fortunate enough to have been spared Katrina's wrath. Not
only did the weather miss Texas completely, but also--thanks to my
still-unplugged TV--I've dodged the mind-numbing barrage of
reporters in slickers on the beach or in wading boots amidst floating
debris and "breaking news" updates in which tired anchors relentlessly
inject verve and freshness into the same depressing statistics and
video montages over and over and over again until at 4:30 AM they lose their shit on live television and begin bickering like whiny schoolchildren.
Millions of other people, however, have not been nearly as fortunate,
and many of them have ended up here in Houston. I'm proud to say
that my hometown has welcomed them with open arms. Anyone with a
Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama ID has the run of the city.
They get free admission to all of the museums, tonight's Comets (WNBA)
game, the zoo, the symphony, and a bunch of other attractions around
town. Six Flags Astroworld, not too far from my apartment, is
also offering half-price tickets, so I expect I'll be seeing plenty of
out-of-state license plates around here in the next few days.
I think a bunch of local bars are also waiving their cover charges,
restaurants have half-price deals, and some of the apartment companies
are setting up supercheap short-term leases for people who need a place
to stay. If it were me, I know I'd have a hard time having fun
not knowing whether I still had a house. Still, a day at the
museum sure beats sitting in the hotel lobby watching looped footage of
your neighborhood under ten feet of floodwater.
I doubt I have any readers from the affected states, but hey, if you've
stumbled across this page and are looking for ways to spend your time in
Houston, click here
for a list of things to do while you're waiting for the power to come
back on in your hometown. And y'all stay as long as you'd like; we've
got plenty of room. This is Texas, after all.
[Edit: It looks like they'll be
evacuating the Superdome and bussing thousands of people over to the
Astrodome (also down the street from me), to be housed there for an
indefinite length of time. The refugees will mostly be
Louisiana's poorest, as everyone else would have evacuated before the
storm hit, and I'm guessing many of Houston's homeless will make their
way to the Astrodome as well to join the crowd, which I suppose is a
good thing.
Things are about to get a lot crazier, a lot more crowded, and a lot sadder around here.]
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| | Posted 8/30/2005 11:43 PM - 26 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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