Let me start this writing flurry by talking a little bit about the city of houston. First, its a fucking crazy city. OMG. It is one of the few cities in the US that has NO ZONING LAWS. Most cities have these things called zoning laws, and if you've ever played sim city, you'd know that you set land aside for farms, and housing, and stores, and big industrial buildings. Well... That would only make sense. So, Houston doesn't do that. So there is this weird feeling to the city because its lacking a social center. I suppose there is a "downtown" but there are really three downtowns, and many smaller hubs. The best way I can kind of illistrate this is to have the reader visulize a city of about 50,000 people (surely you can think of one), and then creating 10 copies of the city, and randomly dump them next to each other in somewhat of a square. Voila. Houston.
The other weird thing is that most of the housing is in these weird like military compound gated communities -- even the shitty housing developments. So there is nothing but like a square mile of homes in the "shady palms happy funhouse village parkway". But right next to my freeking housing complex is a farm, with a strip mall on one side of the farm, and a factory on the other side. So its very random.
Westheimer is an interesting street a well. First its hard to understand how huge the city is. Its a good 45 miles across, without like breaks, and then the burbs, no, the burbs are out farther. So from the center of the city, its 25 miles in any direction to get out of Houston. Its far to big to go to every neighborhood. One thing I have to say about it though, is that even though its a land of strip malls, each "area" has its own touch or flare. For example, there is a "china town" (though it might be a different asian ethnicity, i'm not sure) that looks just like the rest of the city, with strip malls and Tex-mex joints and the such... But all the street signs are in Chinese. Its weird.
Anyways, Westheimer is a street that runs from Highway 6 (which make a loop around the city, and probably takes 7 hours to drive in a circle, its that big), to the center of town, and its nothing but strip malls and regular malls and businesses for 15 miles straight. I have no idea where all the people live to shop at all these places. There is a ton of diversity in the city. I expected a lot of Hispanics, but I've run into large numbers of every ethnicity. Its a very very diverse place, which I like a lot about it. Columbians, Indians, Arabs, just every ethnic group is here in large numbers.
BTW... there is a plan in place to make ANOTHER loop even farther out....
Its big.
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