Sole Of Houston: Airline Drive, Part 1
By John Nova Lomax in Sole of Houston
Tuesday, Jan. 13 2009 @ 12:13PM
The longest walk in the history of the Sole of Houston requires the longest piece. This being a blog and all, we have decided to break it up into three installments.
Coming today, tomorrow and Thursday in this tale of 22-plus miles of concrete, mud, and fairly cold weather: The fending off a potential psycho killer and the drunkest crack dealer who ever lived, the most sinister strip mall in all of Greater Houston, a sprawling, festive Mexican mercado, a drink in a historic off-the-radar nightspot, a shot of fine tequila amid murals of Mexican TV stars in a bar called Recuerdos, and more wildlife than we've ever seen before. And before it was all over, one of us would be caked in the puke of a total stranger.
Come with us as we hike from the land of 8-Liners and cockfighters to the northern edge of hipster Houston...
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The latest installment of the Sole of Houston takes David Beebe and me way up north.
The plan was to go downtown and catch Metro's new Airport Direct express bus, turn around at IAH and make our way to Aldine Bender, where we would hang a right and slog over to Airline Drive. We would then walk the length of Airline to North Main. From there, Warren's would be just a short triumphant march away.
Sadly, owing to an epic clusterfail, we didn't quite make it to Warren's on foot. (Lesson learned: always carry a street map.) We did make it as far as Spanish Village, though.
View Larger Map
The latest installment of the Sole of Houston takes David Beebe and me way up north.
The plan was to go downtown and catch Metro's new Airport Direct express bus, turn around at IAH and make our way to Aldine Bender, where we would hang a right and slog over to Airline Drive. We would then walk the length of Airline to North Main. From there, Warren's would be just a short triumphant march away.
Sadly, owing to an epic clusterfail, we didn't quite make it to Warren's on foot. (Lesson learned: always carry a street map.) We did make it as far as Spanish Village, though.
Let's take it from the top. Beebe was supposed to have been at my house at 8:30 AM the Sunday morning just after Christmas. Owing to a Saturday night El Orbits gig and subsequent festivities that continued until six in the morning, Beebe didn't make it over until ten. And, it must be said, in sorry shape at that.
Nevertheless he didn't balk when I suggested that we hike the two miles from my house to the light rail instead of waiting for the #2 bus to come collect us. It was on its Sunday schedule and would take forever, I reasoned. Plus, we needed to walk the stretch of Bellaire between my house and South Main to complete our Bellaire hike of 2007.
We chose not to walk that stretch for a reason. The latest building boom has leeched almost all of the funkiness out of Bellaire / Holcombe between Auden and South Main. Today, it's a bleak procession of Walgreen's/CVS's, fitness centers, branch banks, sketchy alternative healing emporiums, gas stations, boring medical supply shops and other such uninviting tedium.
About all that redeems it is that odd Filipino restaurant/bakery, a Spec's, Southwell's burgers, Fred's Italian Corner and the old Sicilian joint in the converted two-story house, and the name of (if not the fare at) Happy All Chinese buffet. And then there's Gas Light Video, the West U's one and only X-Rated video store, if you are into that sort of thing...
What true gems it had have been obliterated.
That ramshackle flower shop down around Kirby?
Gone, replaced by a branch bank.
The Gallant Knight, the funk/R&B/jazz club where generations of white Houstonians reenacted that scene from Animal House where the frat boys cross the tracks to see Otis Day and the Knights?
Gone, replaced by a branch bank.
And of course even the mighty Shamrock Hotel was slowly, agonizingly pulverized decades ago, replaced by the Texas A&M Health Science Center and one of the oddest places in Houston - the little known Wortham Fountain.
Words fail me in describing one of the Med Center's two analogues to the Transco WaterWall, so I'll let the Houston Architectural Guide attempt to speak for me:
Most people have seen the overpass-looking part, but not the walled watercourt, which is an inversion of the overpass section and also deeply weird.
It certainly agitated Beebe. First it reminded him of "Scientology." Then he said it was like a tomb, which in a way, it is - the Shamrock's watery grave. Then he said it reminded him of the Bellagio in Vegas. And then the capper: "This reminds me," he said, "of some place where Nixon would talk with Kissinger about how many more tons of bombs he needed to drop on Hanoi."
Houston Architectural Guide: meet your new capsule writer.
It was almost noon by the time we made it to the TMC Transit Center MetroRail stop, and then on to the Downtown Transit Center, where Metro offers up its new Airport Direct Service.
Which is a fine service, but at $30/round trip, it really doesn't seem to make sense for anything other than fools' errands like ours or long vacations. For what its worth, the driver told us business had been slow. "Not many people know about it yet," he said. Indeed they don't - we were the only two riders on this bus, and the driver seemed to leave not because he had any schedule to obey, but because he had two riders.
At any rate, we were soon whizzing up the Eastex (to our consternation - we wanted to be on the west side of the airport) amid what is quite likely some of the ugliest roadside scenery this side of Detroit. Soon enough we were dropped off in the piney woods of Will Clayton Parkway, near the corner of Lee Road, just on the other side of the big "Welcome to Houston" sign in the esplanade. Humble, in other words.
We headed over to Lee Road and started the long walk south. For the first mile or two, as Lee Road winds through raw forest land owned by the airport, we might as well have been out by Cut and Shoot. It was isolated enough to feel a little creepy, and about 30 minutes in, a crappy white Japanese sedan slowed to a stop near us.
"Where y'all goin'?" asked the driver, who with his shaven head, a squashed nose, dead eyes, and tattooed fingers, looked like every artist's rendering of a north side psycho killer.
"Just headed down to Aldine Bender," I said.
"Y'all need a ride?" asked Police Sketch.
No thanks, we told him. Not only were we on a mission, but we could easily see that he wanted to take us to some Montgomery County motel and gimp-u-lize us.
As we crossed what I guess was Greens Bayou, we spied about four or five deer bounding from the water's edge into the woods, and hawks wheeled overhead. After an hour or so, we started to see the occasional house, and at last we came to the first convenience store, where we bought cans of beer from a clerk behind bulletproof glass while an old man sat listlessly nearby, frittering away a Sunday on one of several 8-Liner machines. Outside, a rooster crowed.
"Northern Harris County," pronounced Beebe, "the land of 8-Liners and cockfighters."
And it continued like that for a couple more miles - fortified convenience stores, mini-warehouses, dogs snarling behind chain link fences, the Boyz 2 Men Development Center, and an old Rolls Royce limo going sour in the sun. Save for three teenagers who looked up to no good, we saw no other pedestrians.
At last we reached the North Belt, where we made one of the worst strategic decisions in the history of the Sole of Houston project. We knew we needed to get to Aldine Bender, but we weren't sure if Lee Road intersected it. (Indeed it does, after changing names to Homestead.) Instead, we chose to walk the Beltway access road, and there followed a dreary slog of more than an hour. Beebe's internal Halliburton-detector went off, and minutes later we came upon a huge Halliburton complex, and other than some utterly dreary apartments, there was not much else out here beyond raggedy pine forest and white noise from the Beltway.
IAH-bound airplanes were still distressingly low and frequent overhead. We had walked about seven miles, and our feet were already sore, and we were still about a mile from IAH, albeit on the other side from where we had begun. Warren's and its glorious Martinis seemed a planet away.
We pretty much stopped talking to one another. I dialed up some Mississippi fife and drum music to keep us marching on, and we finally made it to Aldine Westfield, and a short jaunt later, we made it to the longed-for Aldine Bender. Never has that unglamorous name meant so much to two vagabonds.
-- John Nova Lomax
Nevertheless he didn't balk when I suggested that we hike the two miles from my house to the light rail instead of waiting for the #2 bus to come collect us. It was on its Sunday schedule and would take forever, I reasoned. Plus, we needed to walk the stretch of Bellaire between my house and South Main to complete our Bellaire hike of 2007.
We chose not to walk that stretch for a reason. The latest building boom has leeched almost all of the funkiness out of Bellaire / Holcombe between Auden and South Main. Today, it's a bleak procession of Walgreen's/CVS's, fitness centers, branch banks, sketchy alternative healing emporiums, gas stations, boring medical supply shops and other such uninviting tedium.
About all that redeems it is that odd Filipino restaurant/bakery, a Spec's, Southwell's burgers, Fred's Italian Corner and the old Sicilian joint in the converted two-story house, and the name of (if not the fare at) Happy All Chinese buffet. And then there's Gas Light Video, the West U's one and only X-Rated video store, if you are into that sort of thing...
What true gems it had have been obliterated.
That ramshackle flower shop down around Kirby?
Gone, replaced by a branch bank.
The Gallant Knight, the funk/R&B/jazz club where generations of white Houstonians reenacted that scene from Animal House where the frat boys cross the tracks to see Otis Day and the Knights?
Gone, replaced by a branch bank.
And of course even the mighty Shamrock Hotel was slowly, agonizingly pulverized decades ago, replaced by the Texas A&M Health Science Center and one of the oddest places in Houston - the little known Wortham Fountain.
Words fail me in describing one of the Med Center's two analogues to the Transco WaterWall, so I'll let the Houston Architectural Guide attempt to speak for me:
In expiation for demolishing the Shamrock Hotel, which occupied this site, the Texas Medical Center, Inc., built [this] curious mixture of events and spaces that combine columns of water that seem to anticipate a freeway overpass with a walled watercourt leading on axis to what was once the Shamrock's front door (now a parking lot.)"Looks like words failed the Guide too...
Most people have seen the overpass-looking part, but not the walled watercourt, which is an inversion of the overpass section and also deeply weird.
It certainly agitated Beebe. First it reminded him of "Scientology." Then he said it was like a tomb, which in a way, it is - the Shamrock's watery grave. Then he said it reminded him of the Bellagio in Vegas. And then the capper: "This reminds me," he said, "of some place where Nixon would talk with Kissinger about how many more tons of bombs he needed to drop on Hanoi."
Houston Architectural Guide: meet your new capsule writer.
It was almost noon by the time we made it to the TMC Transit Center MetroRail stop, and then on to the Downtown Transit Center, where Metro offers up its new Airport Direct Service.
Which is a fine service, but at $30/round trip, it really doesn't seem to make sense for anything other than fools' errands like ours or long vacations. For what its worth, the driver told us business had been slow. "Not many people know about it yet," he said. Indeed they don't - we were the only two riders on this bus, and the driver seemed to leave not because he had any schedule to obey, but because he had two riders.
At any rate, we were soon whizzing up the Eastex (to our consternation - we wanted to be on the west side of the airport) amid what is quite likely some of the ugliest roadside scenery this side of Detroit. Soon enough we were dropped off in the piney woods of Will Clayton Parkway, near the corner of Lee Road, just on the other side of the big "Welcome to Houston" sign in the esplanade. Humble, in other words.
We headed over to Lee Road and started the long walk south. For the first mile or two, as Lee Road winds through raw forest land owned by the airport, we might as well have been out by Cut and Shoot. It was isolated enough to feel a little creepy, and about 30 minutes in, a crappy white Japanese sedan slowed to a stop near us.
"Where y'all goin'?" asked the driver, who with his shaven head, a squashed nose, dead eyes, and tattooed fingers, looked like every artist's rendering of a north side psycho killer.
"Just headed down to Aldine Bender," I said.
"Y'all need a ride?" asked Police Sketch.
No thanks, we told him. Not only were we on a mission, but we could easily see that he wanted to take us to some Montgomery County motel and gimp-u-lize us.
As we crossed what I guess was Greens Bayou, we spied about four or five deer bounding from the water's edge into the woods, and hawks wheeled overhead. After an hour or so, we started to see the occasional house, and at last we came to the first convenience store, where we bought cans of beer from a clerk behind bulletproof glass while an old man sat listlessly nearby, frittering away a Sunday on one of several 8-Liner machines. Outside, a rooster crowed.
"Northern Harris County," pronounced Beebe, "the land of 8-Liners and cockfighters."
And it continued like that for a couple more miles - fortified convenience stores, mini-warehouses, dogs snarling behind chain link fences, the Boyz 2 Men Development Center, and an old Rolls Royce limo going sour in the sun. Save for three teenagers who looked up to no good, we saw no other pedestrians.
At last we reached the North Belt, where we made one of the worst strategic decisions in the history of the Sole of Houston project. We knew we needed to get to Aldine Bender, but we weren't sure if Lee Road intersected it. (Indeed it does, after changing names to Homestead.) Instead, we chose to walk the Beltway access road, and there followed a dreary slog of more than an hour. Beebe's internal Halliburton-detector went off, and minutes later we came upon a huge Halliburton complex, and other than some utterly dreary apartments, there was not much else out here beyond raggedy pine forest and white noise from the Beltway.
IAH-bound airplanes were still distressingly low and frequent overhead. We had walked about seven miles, and our feet were already sore, and we were still about a mile from IAH, albeit on the other side from where we had begun. Warren's and its glorious Martinis seemed a planet away.
We pretty much stopped talking to one another. I dialed up some Mississippi fife and drum music to keep us marching on, and we finally made it to Aldine Westfield, and a short jaunt later, we made it to the longed-for Aldine Bender. Never has that unglamorous name meant so much to two vagabonds.
-- John Nova Lomax
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