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Now I could say a lot of bad about Houston - 9/4/2011
However, I'm going to try to be as nice (as well as honest) about the city.
To start off I'm going to go with the weather. It's hot and humid for 5 months out of the year, which I personally can't stand. Thunderstorms do happen a lot during this time of year as well, thus limiting outdoor activities in the summer. Winter however, many Houstonians will claim that winter doesn't exist in their city. While it's not extremely cold or snow like the Midwest or Northeast, it can get as low as 30F in January easily, and snows once every decade. So it's 5 months of cold, 6 months of extreme heat, and only 2 weeks out of March and November of tolerable, California-like weather.
Transportation. Expect a lot of SUVs, although this is changing because of gas prices, it's still quite common believe it or not. As well, the only public transport is a bus system, and a light rail Downtown (which for some weird reason people crash into all the time because they're too dumb to read signs or see they're RIGHT UNDER A FREAKING TROLLEY CABLE. C'mon people, they do it in Portland with the MAX, why can't Houston?) Supposedly the MetroRail is being expanded, but not by much. Expect to use your car ALL THE TIME because you won't want to deal with the heat or heavy rain, and not many things are within walking distance. In other words the attitude of "if it's more than 2 blocks, I ain't driving". (If you live within 610, this is most likely a different story, since I didn't live there nor was I there much.)
Food...Houston does have good food, unfortunately more than half of it is fast food. No joke, go anywhere in Houston, there's fast food within a few blocks. There are plenty of good local Chinese, Mexican, and Vietnamese within Houston however. Keep in mind though, if you are on a special diet and/or dislike fat, greasy foods altogether, it won't be as enjoyable.
Along that subject, Houston has plenty obese people, and many will argue against making food more healthy by law because "it's our bodies, we can do what we want" when they are uneducated about trans-fats and other such organ-damaging ingredients. Again, if you want a healthy, fit city, don't move to Houston. With how hot, humid, and rainy it is all the time, you'll see why people turn into big chunks of meat just living there, because they end up sitting on their sofa doing nothing.
People are friendly, but this isn't always true if your a minority. Politics are generally conservative, however if you live within the 610 it gets more liberal, as well as the fact that their current mayor is a lesbian.
Now lastly, on the subject of housing and such, just take a look around most residential areas. You'll noticed most houses older than 40 look at least somewhat run down, due to the fact that everyone builds cheap housing, and then gets bored, so they get abandoned new, 'better' houses are built even further from Downtown, so currently all the rich people live an hour from work for this reason, that or a condo in Downtown. Most neighbourhoods in between these two seem to look a bit haunted and with overgrown plants. Another thing to blame for this is no zoning laws. Do you like having a manufacuturing plant next to your school? Or a school in an office buliding? If you do, this is your paradise. Keep in mind with lower prices comes lower quality. The wood siding on my house was made of cheap plywood, and the windows were formatted for Colorado, which doesn't make sense why they would sell cold weather formatted windows in a semi-tropical climate.
So there you go, that's my take on Houston, I know it was probably a lot more negative than it was intended to be, but I tried to remained as unbiased as possible. Remember, these are only my experiences, yours could end up being completely different for all I know.
Cheers!
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