Houston News Blog

Photos by Jay Lee

I just can't get enough of Houston's East End/Second Ward/Ship Channel area, so that is where the latest installment of the Sole of Houston took us. I don't think I can recreate the route with anything more than about 90 percent accuracy, but my best guess is that it looked something like this.

David Beebe couldn't make this one, so I took a couple of Sole rookies along. Jay Lee, the high-tech renaissance man and Flying Fish Sailor was invited along for both his conversation and his downright frightening photography skills. (His most humdrum shots are better than the best I have ever taken on these walks.) Chris Henderson, a former Nightfly contributor, had wanted me to reserve him a spot on the next one a while back.
    
That Beebe was unable to come also explains the route somewhat. I didn't want my brave companion of some 200 miles of asphalt marches to be cheated of virgin territory elsewhere, so this one was selected to very nearly, but not quite, follow in the footsteps of our hikes on East Side thoroughfares like Leeland/Telephone, Navigation, and Harrisburg. The plan was to just sort of meander out to 75th Street and then head north to Canal and thence back to town.
   
The trek began a little before ten in the Press parking lot and carried us up Travis. After a short-cut through the very quiet Houston Pavilions, we emerged near the Convention Center, where a knot of African cabbies were squabbling as two of Houston's Finest tried to sort them out. Good luck with that -- I'll bet that feud had its roots in the Eritrean Revolution or something like that.
   

With another Sole stroll nigh, we thought now was as good a time as any for a look back at what we've accomplished already. Here is the Google map of our past adventures.



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Looks like we're gonna need to tackle Fifth Ward / Kashmere Gardens, the Heights, Sunnyside, Acres Homes, Memorial Villages, the Northside barrio and Pasadena / South Houston before we can consider this project close to done.

And here is the final installment of David Beebe and John Lomax's 20-plus mile hike from Intercontinental Airport to Spanish Flowers restaurant. Part one is here and part two is here.

David Beebe's accounts of the same hike are here and here.


Airline's furthest reaches are lined by sprawling and run-down '70s apartment complexes. And yet there's a weirdly rural feel in patches. The 281 area code hangs on for a longer time than you would expect, and there are plenty of fireworks stands, as a swath of unincorporated Harris County extends far toward town. The few houses we saw looked like they had once been out in the middle of fields.

The entire area is also pretty much 100 percent Mexican, with a couple of Salvadoran businesses for variety, and one gringo barbecue -- the Hungry Farmer -- holding out.

 

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.

This is part two. Yesterday's is here, and we'll wrap it up tomorrow.

In this installment, we venture west down Aldine-Bender from Aldine Westfield to Airline Drive.

Aldine Bender is cockfighters and 8-liners deluxe, an intensification of the sparse version of same way up north.

One of the prime attractions, for us, anyway, of its eastern stretches is one of the most foreboding strip malls in the city.

In one corner lurks a closed down bar called Sassy's. The doors of this place were open even though it was abandoned. Someone had pulled much of the furniture out of it and left it on the sidewalk out front.

  

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.

Well, it’s been awhile since we’ve posted an account of one of our long, boozy walks across Houston, and no, we don’t have one under our belt or even one coming up soon. Still, the project is dormant, not extinct, and there will be another one done before the end of the year.
In the meantime, we’ve busied ourselves sifting through the hikes of the past. What’s more, we’ve finally caught up with the technology of 1994 and learned how to make slideshows, and even set them to music.

We think this project lends itself pretty well to that technique, so starting with Bellaire, we’ll be setting all of the Sole of Houston treks to carefully selected tunes over the next few weeks.

– John Nova Lomax

That ours is a city of many gas stations, nail salons, cell phone boutiques, and chain drug stores is well known to even the most casual of Houston explorers, be they afoot or aboard an automobile.

Other aspects are revealed only to the most dedicated of adventurers, a category in which, if I may be so bold, I would place David Beebe and myself. After all, we have by now walked something close to 150 miles of Houston sidewalks covering every corner of the metropolis, from the Fifth Ward to Alief, the Pasadena Area to the far side of Spring Branch.

A couple of weeks ago David Beebe and I and special guest Sole-r Sam Smith attempted an overly bold trek from the Brazoria County Line all the way up South Post Oak to Willowbend, from whence we intended to continue hiking on to South Main and thence downtown, to Allen’s Landing.

We didn’t make it.

For two reasons: one, it was too hot. The heat index had to be about 107 degrees, at least.

Number two, the prospect of slogging up South Main through that sterile low-end big box retail zone around the Astrodome, and then through the equally bland Med Center, somehow failed to enchant us after 12 miles in the scorching sun.

So this trip ended up as little more than a Bataan death pub crawl, taking in three unjustly obscure near southwest side strip mall taverns.

Did you know Google Maps has now added walking directions? It seems to work pretty well for strictly local trips.

For example, I asked it for the best way to walk from my house near the Palace Lanes on Bellaire Boulevard to my office here at the Press downtown, and it suggested that I head up to University and then Fannin, which is a pretty decent route. It also estimated that the trip would take about two-and-a-half hours, which is about right, unless I stop in some pubs.

But then I got to wondering…Let’s just say I wanted to walk to San Antonio. Google Maps comes up with a route that seems to carry you down the I-10 feeder road for much of the journey, and then claims that the estimated time is a hair under three days. I don’t think even the Pony Express could match that time.

Looks like David Beebe and my expose on the epidemic of stray shopping carts is bearing fruit. Here’s what the Chronicle says H.P.D. is doing about the problem:

“’There are more shopping carts than bushes out there,’ said Lt. Richard Zajac of the Houston Police Department's South Central Patrol Division, which this year launched a special detail to curb cart theft in hopes of stopping more serious crime.