I moved to the Houston suburbs from Philadelphia three years ago for a marriage that ended up not working out. If it wasn't for our children, I would have been on the literal first plane back to Philadelphia after the marriage ended. I simply do not belong here in any capacity. That's the most generous way I can put it. I do not begrudge anyone who wants to live here (cheap houses! Great BBQ! H-E-B!), but I can't see a way I will ever belong in a place with book bans, everyone telling me to have a "blessed day," endless elaborate Punisher/Blue Lives Matter-mashup truck decals, the looming threat of a natural disaster at any point, and people who longingly embrace the cultural low-point of an event you laid out above.
I don't really have a positive spin to end with here. I'm...stuck. Therapy helps.
Perhaps curiously, my mom says largely the same thing – except in the opposite direction: she moved from Austin to suburban Philly a couple of years ago, and is constantly complaining about how she moved there to get away from Texas's political BS, only to see PA flip red yet again.
Also, I guess you missed the memo that Pennsylvania also has school districts with banned books (or attempts at doing so), and the one in Central Bucks is still one of the highest-profile in the country. Also some districts in Montgomery County, where my mom lives, have attempted it. I'm in no way whatsoever defending the practice, but suggestions that Texas is somehow the only culprit are entirely off-base. (Also guessing you must've never ventured out into rural parts of PA, otherwise you'd see far more BLM/pro-Trump insanity than anywhere in the Houston area. Like, say, Butler.)
Most fascinatingly, you seem oblivious to the realities of just how similar Houston & Philly area. They have two of the largest Black populations in America, and are longtime Democratic strongholds. (I know some people mistakenly believe Austin's the only liberal part of Texas. It's not: every large city in Texas has flipped blue.) Both are bona fide cultural melting pots, never mind all the "cliche Texas" shit described in the article. And both have deeply entrenched problems with no obvious solutions: homelessness & environmental justice in Houston, and arguably America's most infamous open-air drug den in Philly's Kensington environs.
Both cities have suburbs Democratic supporters should steer away from, at least if they want to avoid all the standard-issue MAGA absurdity. If you wanna pretend the likes of Berks or Lancaster County are somehow "superior" because they're "less Trump-y," I guess that's your call, but it might be better to just accept reality that both states have a whole slew of raging assholes.
P.S. If my mom can learn to love Wegmans, you can learn to love H-E-B.
Hi Jeff. I think you might have misinterpreted my comment in a couple ways. "I guessed you missed the memo" and "Most fascinatingly, you seem oblivious to..." come off as a bit condescending, and I don't think that's necessary.
Suburban Houston isn't for me. My ex-wife was raised here so I can understand her sentimentality toward it, but to an outsider, it's not a place I'd like to be in longer than I have to for the reasons I mentioned above. It's not simply a "there's more MAGA enthusiasts here than in Philly!" issue (although Harris only received 39% of the vote in the county I'm in to Trump's 59%). I don't enjoy being in the path of hurricanes, the level of enthusiasm for general God Stuff, the sheer volume of vaguely threatening Blue Lives Matter bumper stickers/decals, and the limits put on my children's exposure to black history implemented by our school district. And I didn't even get into the weather. It is agonizingly hot for 9 months of the year. Not ideal!
Yes, I'm keenly aware of what happens when I venture(d) into other areas of the state as I was regularly in NEPA, Lehigh Valley, Reading, and even the more blue collar Northeast Philly area. I'm not "pretending" it's anything other than what it is.
PS: I love H-E-B. That's why I included it in the small list of things I don't blame people for liking the area for. I will never understand why people call Whataburger "Waterburger," though. That just doesn't make sense.
I apologize if I came off as condescending, and you make quite a few excellent points here. Also, I did the same thing myself once, though in my case I decided NYC wasn't for me after four years there & returned to Austin, so apologies for also being hypocritical.
"Suburban Houston isn't for me."
If last November's vote was 59/39 in Trump's favor, I'm assuming you live in Brazoria County (Pearland, maybe?). While I'd love to sit here & get pissy about Texas stereotypes ... well, in this case I *really* can't blame you for wanting to get the hell out of Dodge. That place has extremely few positive qualities & a whole boatload of "WTF?!?" going on at any given point. (It used to house a core element of Ron Paul's libertarian constituency: neo-Nazi bikers. Long story.)
For others reading this: the county in question sits along the southern edge of metro Houston, but extends from there waaaaaay out into the boonies, all the way south to the body of water I will definitely keep calling the Gulf of Mexico. While I'd still argue the article as a whole rests excessively on stereotypes, I have to concede that Brazoria County encompasses most of them. Outside of suburban Houston (maybe 10% of its land), it's almost entirely redneck / religious / racist, as well as an environmental cesspit.
It's also where Woody Harrelson's dad worked as a contract killer, and also where a jury acquitted him – wrongly – for murdering the brother of a prominent Houston lawyer. Despite having no prior experience as a writer, the book reads remarkably similarly to a real-life version of "No Country for Old Men," and amply demonstrates the region at its worst: corrupt & racist / antisemitic AF. (The book is called "Run, Brother, Run" by David Berg, for those interested. I had no idea until reading it, for instance, that back in the '60s & '70s, Houston's River Oaks neighborhood rejected prospective Jewish buyers just as commonly as the so-called "better buildings" on the Upper East Side.)
Finally, it's where Buc-ee's is headquartered, and yes, Buc-ee's is an excellent proxy for Texas's most royally fucked-up attitudes (and people).
But I digress. My broader – and admittedly slightly cheesy – point is that Houston is large enough to embrace people from any given subculture. Despite both Texas & the South's infamy in terms of bigotry (all entirely deserved), Houston had – and still *has* – ample diversity, including large pockets of left-leaning voters (if you know where to look, and no, it's definitely not Brazoria County). But I get that that wasn't what you experienced in practice.
I'm not sure how you ended up where you did, but I think you would've found far more people with similar political views in places like the Heights. (OTOH I know its schools are pretty rough, if you have kids, plus places like Memorial & the Heights are among the area's priciest in terms of housing, so I also get if this wasn't a workable option.) I'm only sorry that you got a far-larger dose of Asshole Texas than Rational / Still Within the Reality-Based World one, but I totally get why you'd hate it.
Haha, but you can't just add a letter that isn't actually there! Is the word long enough that it needs to be rolled up?? This is Brett Favre-levels of phonetic nonsense!
(No disrespect intended. It's just so, so strange to me, but I know I'd feel the same if someone from Texas asked me about saying "yous" or calling someone "cuz.")
As an aside, CBSD immediately flipped back to D at the next election after all the book banning and flag bullshit. People were asleep and a few crazies took over. People woke up and voted them out in force.
You are 100% correct about PA outside of the Philly collar counties. There’s a reason people call us Pennsyltucky.
No, it really isn't, nor was it ever. And, yet again, an obvious non-Texan journalist – one whose work I generally think is fantastic – got it wrong.
The Houston Rodeo is roughly as reflective of the city's culture as the Times Square ball drop is for New Yorkers: a microscopic – and exceptionally tourist-heavy – part of a truly vast area with zero reflection of its true essence of any sort. Had Nolan done any advance research – if he did, I'm not seeing evidence of it here – he'd know that while Texas is insanely huge, the cattle-specific part of the state is up north. (Houston has the world's biggest rodeo, but Fort Worth's nickname is quite literally Cowtown. It's along the Chisholm Trail and played a huge role in its history.)
"Sawdust and cow shit. That’s what the air of our origins smells like. It struck you as soon as you walked into the enormous NRG Center where the Livestock Show portion of the rodeo was being held, overpowering the industrial HVAC system."
My last visit to the NRG Center was to see a concert on Beyoncé's Renaissance tour, but sure, let's cosplay that Houston's still "redneck." But in reality, its annual Go Tejano Day is usually its most popular, and includes the most visited concerts at the rodeo each year. Further, do people also seriously think Black cowboys aren't an "actual thing"? (especially given Beyoncé latest album) I'd suggest educating yourselves if you're under that mistaken impression.
"The Livestock Show building was full of vendors, which were stereotypical: Hats, leather goods, whiskey, beef jerky, barbecue, belt buckles."
Also Super Duty pickups, in another section. Interesting that Nolan caught the stereotypical shit, but overlooked "minor" details that might challenge the narrative here, e.g. the majority of all Houston Rodeo attendees being POC, and rodeos are deeply entrenched in Texas's Hispanic culture as well (and elsewhere in the US). Texas also has a history of Black cowboys dating back to the Reconstruction era. Speaking of which...
"You might expect the Houston Rodeo in 2025 to be freighted with a heavy dose of politics. Not so."
I wouldn't have expected anything of the sort, but OTOH I'm a native Texan – one who's lived in Houston, Austin & Dallas, along with NYC & London – and know which stereotypes are either misleading or mostly/entirely false. The rodeo runs for three weeks & attracts a cross section of the entire region: conservative, liberal, older, younger, white, Black, Hispanic, even queer (and multiracial). Shit-stirring is decidedly unwelcome.
Despite this article attempting to somehow tie it in with conservatism in the Trump era or something, the Houston Rodeo isn't some outdated aspect of entirely white Western "frontier culture." And contrary to popular beliefs rooted in stereotypes – which even journos with decades of experience often fail to steer clear from – Texans are rarely at each other's throats over political matters. Rodeos are for friends & family – honestly – not politics. (Even now.)
I've lived in Houston almost all my (middle-aged) life. Been to the rodeo carnival maybe 10 times, to the rodeo itself fewer than 5. It funny having the rodeo so much in the zeitgeist this year -- I heard it on NPR's Marketplace yesterday morning. Whoever's doing their marketing gets a gold star.
Roughly 75% of Texans--millions of people, most of them moderate or center-left--live in the metropolitan areas of our 6 largest cities. But our politicians are selected by a tiny minority of mostly older, white, rural voters, who are the people voting in the Republican primaries. We have poor turnout of city-dwelling voters, for multiple reasons. It's a problem. We're aware.
Outsiders getting Texas all wrong is nothing new. I'll never forget one episode in the aughts: I was running a magazine about art in Texas and knew all the galleries and museums statewide. The Sunday NYT Arts & Leisure section had a huge, full-page story of an art exhibition in Texas. It was an artist I'd never heard of, a gallery I'd never heard of, and the work was black-and-white photographs of squalid mobile homes with dirt-covered children in front of them. Think mediocre knockoffs of Dorothea Lange or Gordon Parks. THAT was the art in Texas that the NYT chose to talk about, and I thought, well of course. This just reinforces all the received ideas that so-called progressives elsewhere parrot about Texas.
Very well put, and while I only lived in Houston for three years, one of my favorite spots there was (and still is) the Rothko Chapel. Despite its significance as a work of modern art – both as a structure, but also including the art inside of it – among people only generally familiar with the field, I remain consistently stunned how many people even in Austin art circles who don't know it exists. (Admittedly newcomers to the state, but still, and I meet more than most as part of some of my volunteer work.)
And yes, it seems like the NYT (and the Times Magazine in particular) is far more fascinated by the arts scene in Marfa, a remote town with fewer than 2,000 residents, than Houston's, despite it being the fourth-largest US metro area with over seven million residents and housing a literal Museum District. (Also one adjacent to the Med Center, and you might be surprised how few Texans realize it's the literal largest medical campus on Earth, and is highly acclaimed in numerous fields for very good reason.)
I was a travel writer at one point (before the interwebs killed traditional journalism), and the biggest "tell" that a journo assigned a piece about Texas didn't learn a damn thing while here is if it includes specifics on where to procure batshit crazy-priced custom boots. Taylor Sheridan seemingly relocating half of Hollywood to Texas isn't helping matters, either, what with the "check out where 'Landman' was filmed!" type of claptrap being published.
Perhaps ironically, Sheridan actually *does* get Texas right on "Landman," and if anyone reading this wants to really understand what a large element of Texas culture is truly like, I'd definitely recommend giving it a watch. It's a far more accurate picture of a broad swath of Texas – basically the entire 400-mile region between DFW & Midland/Odessa – than anything in this article.
"specifics on where to procure batshit crazy-priced custom boots" ha ha! True.
Though I would love to have a pair of those boots...
I'm interested in the "Y'all Street"-ification of Texas mentioned in the WSJ the other day (Nasdaq opening a headquarters in Big D; tech bros having state crushes on TX, etc). Interested in how all that will intersect with our traditional industries.
This piece hit coincidentally close to home for me.
Houston is one of my hometowns and I just so happened to be there after a long time away last week for a family medical situation. Lots of rodeo folks were staying at my hotel. I saw so many huge white Ford trucks in the garage with school district decals who must have been supporting 4H kids. Met a few interesting people in the elevators. I hadn’t been to the rodeo since I was a kid growing up there and had forgotten all about how the city vibes just feel different during rodeo days. This piece took me back to my roots in the best way. Thanks for writing it and a tip of the Stetson to ya, buddy.
Excellent writing. You bring your biases but you wear them honestly.
To me, your key observation is: monoculture. In politics, as in agriculture, monoculture is dangerous. When nobody feels a need to ask any questions, nothing will ever change, and nobody will ever grow.
Yeah, I came down to the comments to say that. The cows don't automatically obey those kids and it's very stressful for them to be in that atmosphere for so long. They're grazing animals, used to spending their whole lives in an open space with few obstacles, so the winners are well trained, born with special abilities to deal with people moving them around and can be handled easily. And then they usually get slaughtered and sold as prize beef 😥. Lucky bulls might get pasture.
Makes me recall David Foster Wallace at the State Fair. Or, Hunter Thompson at the Kentucky Derby. Excellent writers out of place at American spectacles. I wish you would have said why you were at this event?
Funny and openly honest. I wonder what the Houstonians will think of this. It not only made me laugh out loud-it also made me want to go spend a few minutes in Houston. As a child, though, one of the main things we pretended was that we were cowboys.
Man, I usually love your writing, but I found this one pretty mean-spirited. Silly rituals, implied politics, and glamorizing of the lifestyle are part and parcel of (nearly) every large-scale gathering of people. Why demonize farmers and ranchers for it? I would certainly feel out of place at an event like this as well, but this take reads more like resentful pointing and laughing than actual analysis.
"I would certainly feel out of place at an event like this as well"
That's part of the problem with this article: you probably would *not* feel out of place there, even if you're not Texan. Absent here is any mention of the numerous Black, Hispanic and even queer rodeo event associated with it, or that it draws a truly diverse cross-section with no "clear" political affiliation, unlike what's suggested here. (Houston is barely 25% white. It should be a given that it's as blue of a city as the likes of Chicago, and yet that's rarely mentioned.)
Btw I'm speaking from experience: I'm not into rodeos or country music, and fully expected to hate the Houston Rodeo when a friend first dragged me there. I ended up having a remarkably great time – and returned each year afterwards while I lived there – but unlike Nolan, I admittedly wasn't looking for reasons *not* to like it. (And I truly don't get how he missed that it's in no way a "Trump-y thing," despite the somewhat distorted picture presented here, particularly its sizable POC crowds.)
Well done - Houston has always struck me as LA on steroids. Endless concrete & asphalt, no discernable city center, but a lively immigrant culture that lurks beneath the pervasive whiteness. I've got multiple cousins who left the real Midwest to migrate there and can only ask "why?" despite their multiple invites to come visit. Once when there for a family funeral I tried to find a place to walk in the early morning -- a sidewalk alongside one of the pervasive drainage canals, zooming autos on the other side. I'm sure with a little more luck I could have found a hiking trail. "Carless in Houston" would be a great name for a current events, dystopian novel.
Wow, that was really a really lame article. Snooty writer goes to Houston, the 4th largest city in America with more cultural diversity than almost any city in the nation and decides to go to the rodeo. Not sure where the dumbass writer is from but I could go to a six flags or the boardwalk in their city and make the same condescending remarks. Such a smug a-hole. I grew up in Los Angeles, went to college in the Bay Area and then moved back to Los Angeles and then to Seattle and ended up in Houston. Writer is exhibit A why I don’t miss those cities. Such an ass-wipe.
Man, I can smell this article. Great work brother.
I moved to the Houston suburbs from Philadelphia three years ago for a marriage that ended up not working out. If it wasn't for our children, I would have been on the literal first plane back to Philadelphia after the marriage ended. I simply do not belong here in any capacity. That's the most generous way I can put it. I do not begrudge anyone who wants to live here (cheap houses! Great BBQ! H-E-B!), but I can't see a way I will ever belong in a place with book bans, everyone telling me to have a "blessed day," endless elaborate Punisher/Blue Lives Matter-mashup truck decals, the looming threat of a natural disaster at any point, and people who longingly embrace the cultural low-point of an event you laid out above.
I don't really have a positive spin to end with here. I'm...stuck. Therapy helps.
Perhaps curiously, my mom says largely the same thing – except in the opposite direction: she moved from Austin to suburban Philly a couple of years ago, and is constantly complaining about how she moved there to get away from Texas's political BS, only to see PA flip red yet again.
Also, I guess you missed the memo that Pennsylvania also has school districts with banned books (or attempts at doing so), and the one in Central Bucks is still one of the highest-profile in the country. Also some districts in Montgomery County, where my mom lives, have attempted it. I'm in no way whatsoever defending the practice, but suggestions that Texas is somehow the only culprit are entirely off-base. (Also guessing you must've never ventured out into rural parts of PA, otherwise you'd see far more BLM/pro-Trump insanity than anywhere in the Houston area. Like, say, Butler.)
Most fascinatingly, you seem oblivious to the realities of just how similar Houston & Philly area. They have two of the largest Black populations in America, and are longtime Democratic strongholds. (I know some people mistakenly believe Austin's the only liberal part of Texas. It's not: every large city in Texas has flipped blue.) Both are bona fide cultural melting pots, never mind all the "cliche Texas" shit described in the article. And both have deeply entrenched problems with no obvious solutions: homelessness & environmental justice in Houston, and arguably America's most infamous open-air drug den in Philly's Kensington environs.
Both cities have suburbs Democratic supporters should steer away from, at least if they want to avoid all the standard-issue MAGA absurdity. If you wanna pretend the likes of Berks or Lancaster County are somehow "superior" because they're "less Trump-y," I guess that's your call, but it might be better to just accept reality that both states have a whole slew of raging assholes.
P.S. If my mom can learn to love Wegmans, you can learn to love H-E-B.
Hi Jeff. I think you might have misinterpreted my comment in a couple ways. "I guessed you missed the memo" and "Most fascinatingly, you seem oblivious to..." come off as a bit condescending, and I don't think that's necessary.
Suburban Houston isn't for me. My ex-wife was raised here so I can understand her sentimentality toward it, but to an outsider, it's not a place I'd like to be in longer than I have to for the reasons I mentioned above. It's not simply a "there's more MAGA enthusiasts here than in Philly!" issue (although Harris only received 39% of the vote in the county I'm in to Trump's 59%). I don't enjoy being in the path of hurricanes, the level of enthusiasm for general God Stuff, the sheer volume of vaguely threatening Blue Lives Matter bumper stickers/decals, and the limits put on my children's exposure to black history implemented by our school district. And I didn't even get into the weather. It is agonizingly hot for 9 months of the year. Not ideal!
Yes, I'm keenly aware of what happens when I venture(d) into other areas of the state as I was regularly in NEPA, Lehigh Valley, Reading, and even the more blue collar Northeast Philly area. I'm not "pretending" it's anything other than what it is.
PS: I love H-E-B. That's why I included it in the small list of things I don't blame people for liking the area for. I will never understand why people call Whataburger "Waterburger," though. That just doesn't make sense.
I apologize if I came off as condescending, and you make quite a few excellent points here. Also, I did the same thing myself once, though in my case I decided NYC wasn't for me after four years there & returned to Austin, so apologies for also being hypocritical.
"Suburban Houston isn't for me."
If last November's vote was 59/39 in Trump's favor, I'm assuming you live in Brazoria County (Pearland, maybe?). While I'd love to sit here & get pissy about Texas stereotypes ... well, in this case I *really* can't blame you for wanting to get the hell out of Dodge. That place has extremely few positive qualities & a whole boatload of "WTF?!?" going on at any given point. (It used to house a core element of Ron Paul's libertarian constituency: neo-Nazi bikers. Long story.)
For others reading this: the county in question sits along the southern edge of metro Houston, but extends from there waaaaaay out into the boonies, all the way south to the body of water I will definitely keep calling the Gulf of Mexico. While I'd still argue the article as a whole rests excessively on stereotypes, I have to concede that Brazoria County encompasses most of them. Outside of suburban Houston (maybe 10% of its land), it's almost entirely redneck / religious / racist, as well as an environmental cesspit.
It's also where Woody Harrelson's dad worked as a contract killer, and also where a jury acquitted him – wrongly – for murdering the brother of a prominent Houston lawyer. Despite having no prior experience as a writer, the book reads remarkably similarly to a real-life version of "No Country for Old Men," and amply demonstrates the region at its worst: corrupt & racist / antisemitic AF. (The book is called "Run, Brother, Run" by David Berg, for those interested. I had no idea until reading it, for instance, that back in the '60s & '70s, Houston's River Oaks neighborhood rejected prospective Jewish buyers just as commonly as the so-called "better buildings" on the Upper East Side.)
Finally, it's where Buc-ee's is headquartered, and yes, Buc-ee's is an excellent proxy for Texas's most royally fucked-up attitudes (and people).
But I digress. My broader – and admittedly slightly cheesy – point is that Houston is large enough to embrace people from any given subculture. Despite both Texas & the South's infamy in terms of bigotry (all entirely deserved), Houston had – and still *has* – ample diversity, including large pockets of left-leaning voters (if you know where to look, and no, it's definitely not Brazoria County). But I get that that wasn't what you experienced in practice.
I'm not sure how you ended up where you did, but I think you would've found far more people with similar political views in places like the Heights. (OTOH I know its schools are pretty rough, if you have kids, plus places like Memorial & the Heights are among the area's priciest in terms of housing, so I also get if this wasn't a workable option.) I'm only sorry that you got a far-larger dose of Asshole Texas than Rational / Still Within the Reality-Based World one, but I totally get why you'd hate it.
It’s not that we call it “Waterburger”, it’s that we roll it all into one word that sounds like we do. We ARE actually saying What a Burger.
Haha, but you can't just add a letter that isn't actually there! Is the word long enough that it needs to be rolled up?? This is Brett Favre-levels of phonetic nonsense!
(No disrespect intended. It's just so, so strange to me, but I know I'd feel the same if someone from Texas asked me about saying "yous" or calling someone "cuz.")
As an aside, CBSD immediately flipped back to D at the next election after all the book banning and flag bullshit. People were asleep and a few crazies took over. People woke up and voted them out in force.
You are 100% correct about PA outside of the Philly collar counties. There’s a reason people call us Pennsyltucky.
I’m terribly sorry you find yourself stuck, Comrade. As a SEPA person who did my decade of exile in the Midwest, you have my deepest sympathies.
"Perhaps it is still about cowboys."
No, it really isn't, nor was it ever. And, yet again, an obvious non-Texan journalist – one whose work I generally think is fantastic – got it wrong.
The Houston Rodeo is roughly as reflective of the city's culture as the Times Square ball drop is for New Yorkers: a microscopic – and exceptionally tourist-heavy – part of a truly vast area with zero reflection of its true essence of any sort. Had Nolan done any advance research – if he did, I'm not seeing evidence of it here – he'd know that while Texas is insanely huge, the cattle-specific part of the state is up north. (Houston has the world's biggest rodeo, but Fort Worth's nickname is quite literally Cowtown. It's along the Chisholm Trail and played a huge role in its history.)
"Sawdust and cow shit. That’s what the air of our origins smells like. It struck you as soon as you walked into the enormous NRG Center where the Livestock Show portion of the rodeo was being held, overpowering the industrial HVAC system."
My last visit to the NRG Center was to see a concert on Beyoncé's Renaissance tour, but sure, let's cosplay that Houston's still "redneck." But in reality, its annual Go Tejano Day is usually its most popular, and includes the most visited concerts at the rodeo each year. Further, do people also seriously think Black cowboys aren't an "actual thing"? (especially given Beyoncé latest album) I'd suggest educating yourselves if you're under that mistaken impression.
"The Livestock Show building was full of vendors, which were stereotypical: Hats, leather goods, whiskey, beef jerky, barbecue, belt buckles."
Also Super Duty pickups, in another section. Interesting that Nolan caught the stereotypical shit, but overlooked "minor" details that might challenge the narrative here, e.g. the majority of all Houston Rodeo attendees being POC, and rodeos are deeply entrenched in Texas's Hispanic culture as well (and elsewhere in the US). Texas also has a history of Black cowboys dating back to the Reconstruction era. Speaking of which...
"You might expect the Houston Rodeo in 2025 to be freighted with a heavy dose of politics. Not so."
I wouldn't have expected anything of the sort, but OTOH I'm a native Texan – one who's lived in Houston, Austin & Dallas, along with NYC & London – and know which stereotypes are either misleading or mostly/entirely false. The rodeo runs for three weeks & attracts a cross section of the entire region: conservative, liberal, older, younger, white, Black, Hispanic, even queer (and multiracial). Shit-stirring is decidedly unwelcome.
Despite this article attempting to somehow tie it in with conservatism in the Trump era or something, the Houston Rodeo isn't some outdated aspect of entirely white Western "frontier culture." And contrary to popular beliefs rooted in stereotypes – which even journos with decades of experience often fail to steer clear from – Texans are rarely at each other's throats over political matters. Rodeos are for friends & family – honestly – not politics. (Even now.)
I've lived in Houston almost all my (middle-aged) life. Been to the rodeo carnival maybe 10 times, to the rodeo itself fewer than 5. It funny having the rodeo so much in the zeitgeist this year -- I heard it on NPR's Marketplace yesterday morning. Whoever's doing their marketing gets a gold star.
Roughly 75% of Texans--millions of people, most of them moderate or center-left--live in the metropolitan areas of our 6 largest cities. But our politicians are selected by a tiny minority of mostly older, white, rural voters, who are the people voting in the Republican primaries. We have poor turnout of city-dwelling voters, for multiple reasons. It's a problem. We're aware.
Outsiders getting Texas all wrong is nothing new. I'll never forget one episode in the aughts: I was running a magazine about art in Texas and knew all the galleries and museums statewide. The Sunday NYT Arts & Leisure section had a huge, full-page story of an art exhibition in Texas. It was an artist I'd never heard of, a gallery I'd never heard of, and the work was black-and-white photographs of squalid mobile homes with dirt-covered children in front of them. Think mediocre knockoffs of Dorothea Lange or Gordon Parks. THAT was the art in Texas that the NYT chose to talk about, and I thought, well of course. This just reinforces all the received ideas that so-called progressives elsewhere parrot about Texas.
Very well put, and while I only lived in Houston for three years, one of my favorite spots there was (and still is) the Rothko Chapel. Despite its significance as a work of modern art – both as a structure, but also including the art inside of it – among people only generally familiar with the field, I remain consistently stunned how many people even in Austin art circles who don't know it exists. (Admittedly newcomers to the state, but still, and I meet more than most as part of some of my volunteer work.)
And yes, it seems like the NYT (and the Times Magazine in particular) is far more fascinated by the arts scene in Marfa, a remote town with fewer than 2,000 residents, than Houston's, despite it being the fourth-largest US metro area with over seven million residents and housing a literal Museum District. (Also one adjacent to the Med Center, and you might be surprised how few Texans realize it's the literal largest medical campus on Earth, and is highly acclaimed in numerous fields for very good reason.)
I was a travel writer at one point (before the interwebs killed traditional journalism), and the biggest "tell" that a journo assigned a piece about Texas didn't learn a damn thing while here is if it includes specifics on where to procure batshit crazy-priced custom boots. Taylor Sheridan seemingly relocating half of Hollywood to Texas isn't helping matters, either, what with the "check out where 'Landman' was filmed!" type of claptrap being published.
Perhaps ironically, Sheridan actually *does* get Texas right on "Landman," and if anyone reading this wants to really understand what a large element of Texas culture is truly like, I'd definitely recommend giving it a watch. It's a far more accurate picture of a broad swath of Texas – basically the entire 400-mile region between DFW & Midland/Odessa – than anything in this article.
Yeah Im a Nolan fan but on this one Jeff and Rainey were the better read ;) thanks for chiming in.
p.s. Here's something I wrote about the Rothko Chapel in 2020. Spoiler alert: I'm not a big fan.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/rothko-chapel-restoration/
"specifics on where to procure batshit crazy-priced custom boots" ha ha! True.
Though I would love to have a pair of those boots...
I'm interested in the "Y'all Street"-ification of Texas mentioned in the WSJ the other day (Nasdaq opening a headquarters in Big D; tech bros having state crushes on TX, etc). Interested in how all that will intersect with our traditional industries.
This piece hit coincidentally close to home for me.
Houston is one of my hometowns and I just so happened to be there after a long time away last week for a family medical situation. Lots of rodeo folks were staying at my hotel. I saw so many huge white Ford trucks in the garage with school district decals who must have been supporting 4H kids. Met a few interesting people in the elevators. I hadn’t been to the rodeo since I was a kid growing up there and had forgotten all about how the city vibes just feel different during rodeo days. This piece took me back to my roots in the best way. Thanks for writing it and a tip of the Stetson to ya, buddy.
Excellent writing. You bring your biases but you wear them honestly.
To me, your key observation is: monoculture. In politics, as in agriculture, monoculture is dangerous. When nobody feels a need to ask any questions, nothing will ever change, and nobody will ever grow.
Cows are friends, though.
Yeah, I came down to the comments to say that. The cows don't automatically obey those kids and it's very stressful for them to be in that atmosphere for so long. They're grazing animals, used to spending their whole lives in an open space with few obstacles, so the winners are well trained, born with special abilities to deal with people moving them around and can be handled easily. And then they usually get slaughtered and sold as prize beef 😥. Lucky bulls might get pasture.
"We must stretch our own imaginations enough to fit the lives that we feel least able to comprehend."
That was enjoyed, but this will be quoted.
Here, Hamilton, I quoted.
https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/civilisation
Fantastic article. Really captured something here, well done!
Makes me recall David Foster Wallace at the State Fair. Or, Hunter Thompson at the Kentucky Derby. Excellent writers out of place at American spectacles. I wish you would have said why you were at this event?
Funny and openly honest. I wonder what the Houstonians will think of this. It not only made me laugh out loud-it also made me want to go spend a few minutes in Houston. As a child, though, one of the main things we pretended was that we were cowboys.
In a few years we should read this again. What you wrote down will make more sense when we put some time behind it.
Really loved this missive - I would take a significant portion more of them in my regular Hamilton diet 💖
Excellent piece. I hope you get home soon.
Man, I usually love your writing, but I found this one pretty mean-spirited. Silly rituals, implied politics, and glamorizing of the lifestyle are part and parcel of (nearly) every large-scale gathering of people. Why demonize farmers and ranchers for it? I would certainly feel out of place at an event like this as well, but this take reads more like resentful pointing and laughing than actual analysis.
"I would certainly feel out of place at an event like this as well"
That's part of the problem with this article: you probably would *not* feel out of place there, even if you're not Texan. Absent here is any mention of the numerous Black, Hispanic and even queer rodeo event associated with it, or that it draws a truly diverse cross-section with no "clear" political affiliation, unlike what's suggested here. (Houston is barely 25% white. It should be a given that it's as blue of a city as the likes of Chicago, and yet that's rarely mentioned.)
Btw I'm speaking from experience: I'm not into rodeos or country music, and fully expected to hate the Houston Rodeo when a friend first dragged me there. I ended up having a remarkably great time – and returned each year afterwards while I lived there – but unlike Nolan, I admittedly wasn't looking for reasons *not* to like it. (And I truly don't get how he missed that it's in no way a "Trump-y thing," despite the somewhat distorted picture presented here, particularly its sizable POC crowds.)
Well done - Houston has always struck me as LA on steroids. Endless concrete & asphalt, no discernable city center, but a lively immigrant culture that lurks beneath the pervasive whiteness. I've got multiple cousins who left the real Midwest to migrate there and can only ask "why?" despite their multiple invites to come visit. Once when there for a family funeral I tried to find a place to walk in the early morning -- a sidewalk alongside one of the pervasive drainage canals, zooming autos on the other side. I'm sure with a little more luck I could have found a hiking trail. "Carless in Houston" would be a great name for a current events, dystopian novel.
Wow, that was really a really lame article. Snooty writer goes to Houston, the 4th largest city in America with more cultural diversity than almost any city in the nation and decides to go to the rodeo. Not sure where the dumbass writer is from but I could go to a six flags or the boardwalk in their city and make the same condescending remarks. Such a smug a-hole. I grew up in Los Angeles, went to college in the Bay Area and then moved back to Los Angeles and then to Seattle and ended up in Houston. Writer is exhibit A why I don’t miss those cities. Such an ass-wipe.