If Houston were to come up with a pretentious slogan like "Keep Austin Weird," it probably would be "Keep Houston Humid," or "Keep Houston Sprawling," or, as a bumper sticker I recently spotted proclaimed, "Keep Houston Ugly."
Hated by people who visit, but adored by people who live here, Houston is a messy, ungraceful city. With no zoning, too much air pollution, a strip mall on every corner, and almost uninhabitable summers that last for half the year, it's a wonder that so many folks call it home.
But I love it.
It's like the Wild West of large urban landscapes, a place where there are few barriers and fewer rules - anybody is welcome to stake his claim. Of course, Houston is also a cultural Mecca with a world-class art scene, thriving symphony, opera, ballet and theater and great restaurants.
And, it's the true birthplace of Zydeco. That's right, suck it Louisiana!
While Houston doesn't enjoy a shiny national image, it does have a rich history and enough hidden charm to keep residents busy for a lifetime.
In "Hidden Houston," I'll highlight some of the buried treasures lurking in the nooks and crannies of the fourth largest city in the nation, exploring everything from the mundane to the magical.
This week takes us to the East End to visit The Orange Show. Created over a 23-year period (1956-1979) by Houston postman and self-taught artist, Jefferson Davis McKissack, The Orange Show is a multi-level structure made of tile, wrought iron, cement and found objects from scrap yards and the rapidly growing city's many building demolition sites.
A health nut who was way ahead of his time (his manifesto on good eating, How To Live 100 Years and Still Be Spry, pre-dated the Atkins Diet by decades), McKissack constructed The Orange Show as a monument to nutrition, good living, and the citrus fruit he deemed to be the ultimate food.
Art scholars consider The Orange Show to be one of the great American visionary art landmarks, citing McKissack’s masterful use of color, composition and texture and his intuitive gift for symbolic language, as well as its architectural sophistication.
Folk art enthusiast and trained architect, Larry Harris, notes on his wonderful website that the multi-layered, multi-spatial, maze-like environment is composed of the program elements of a classic Greek city (theater, museum, agora, & temple). It was the theater (or more accurately, amphitheater, that really captured my imagination).
Having grown up in Houston, I was hipped to the site in high school, and although I toured it in 1988, I didn't really "get it" until many years later. To the 16-year-old me, it was just an odd amalgam of junk, a weird obsession of an obviously disturbed man.
Then, in 2004, while I was living in New York, I discovered that the singer/songwriter, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, was booked to play the Orange Show during Memorial Day weekend. My wife and I already had plans to visit my folks, so this would be a great opportunity to see one of our favorite musicians in an intimate environment.
It had been over 16 years since my last visit, so I wasn’t sure what to expect when my wife and I turned on to an unassuming residential street off of I-45 South in the largely Latino working class neighborhood. About halfway down the block we saw it — the circus-like 3,000 square foot shrine to the orange.
From the first note to the last encore 90 minutes later, I was completely mesmerized. The warm, humid May sky rumbled with thunder as it threatened to open its floodgates throughout the entire set. A breeze kept the monument's metal whirligigs in motion, and the intensity of the impending storm seemed to fuel Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's ramshackle band.
It was surreal, inspiring, and unforgettable.
