worldlyman

i feel completely the opposite. Maybe its just me but i have had people to agree with me that Houston's skyline is mostly drab the way it is now at night. There are some buildings that do their part in lighting the skyline but some ruin the overall effect.

I find it quite offensive and frustrating when i visit some cities like Austin, Dallas, Philladelphia, Atlanta, and Chicago and they can light their buildings in a tasteful style, while many of Houston's buildings use the same ol' boring white christmas light scheme.

I would definitely like to see things change for a city like Houston. I do agree with you on the uptown skyline though, i love how that's lit up, but it's not centrally located like downtown and might run the risk of being missed by visitors coming into town.

P.S. Welcome to the forum

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Not everyone feels that cheesy lighting is necessary for a skyline. Houston's always been known for its bold nocturnal skyline dress despite not having loud neon outlines, blinking effects, fancy spotlighting and what not. That is what makes downtown unique. It doesn't have to be like other cities that don't have bold skylines, those that need all the makeup and cosmetics for the night time display. "Natural" beauty works for me in this case.

In mid 1988, that was a time well before any downtown revitalization, my friends and I took a visitor from San Francisco driving on I-10 East, for a tour around the Space City.

Peering out the car window, she was genuinely charmed by the nocturnal Houston skyline saying, "Wow, that is sooo pretty." Heck, I was kinda mesmerized too at the moment!

So it's all a judgement call as far as taste.

I've personally seen the nocturnal skylines of cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Austin, Dallas, Miami and Vegas at night...and to be quite honest, I'm satisfied that Houston doesn't use gaudy nightlights similarly.

To me, we try and pretty up downtown Houston at night as you say, then there will be detractors who proffer, "Oh, poor low-esteemed Houston's trying to copy Dallas or Miami."

I do not refer to Christmas lighting but rather the natural lights from the offices at nights that speckle Houston towers...the way they fill up the majestic skyline...to me that will always be cool. Very noir, yet letting H-town's architectural splendor speak for itself.

As far as that perpetual, boring Christmas lighting...I think Houston fortunately is not in the company as nocturnal Fort Worth or San Francisco.

For me, something like a subtle blue on the spires of the former NCNB building might look cool...

And thanks for the welcomage.

Like some posters here said, I like downtown Houston's more straightforward lights that speckle the skylime. I don't think it needs that colorful green neon or lighted x-dots or blinking dandelion tower such as Dallas. That look is good for Dallas but for Houston, the muscular outline of the skyline is majestic as it is! The small accents on top of some Houston towers are sufficient then.

Besides I like the fact that the Uptown Galleria's Williams Tower has that spinning beacon that signifies, "OK, Houston, it's party time!" Reunion Tower does that for Dallas...but to me it's cool that Houston's second major skyline does that major lighting effect.

The Montrose was unique as cruising area and "entertainment" district before many of today's other (typically Sun Belt) cities' became popular.

What do we have in today's "entertainment districts" such as Houston's downtown, Rice Village and such as well as The Sunset Strip, West Hollywood in L.A., Deep Ellum up in Big D, the GasLamp in San Diego, Tempe's entertainment drag, Sundance Square in Ft. Worth, etc.?

They are full of clubs, bars and whatnot but when you walk those streets in general, there is a purpose to the pedestrianism, namely the destination.

One does not see throngs of people simply sitting just for the sake of it, you know, parking their butts on sidewalks or doorways. Well, yeah, you see passed-out bums and panhandlers on Hollywood sidewalks but...that was about the famous nightclubs.

That was the unique thing about The Montrose in the 1980s. Surely it was a pain in the ass every nocturnal weekend for its residents when masses of folks from the suburbs and other Texas cities/towns cruised on in for the drag shows, new wave clubs, tattoo parlors, fights and such. However it was the streetlife cruisers really went for.

Indeed, all that was something to look back on. The 1980s Montrose was not a prepackaged entertainment district that we increasingly know of today but a true nocturnal repository of street life. People were just sitting or standing on the sidewalks and boutique/home porches just for the purpose of gawking! This was a genuine urban carnival in the purest sense. Yeah, there were clubs and eateries in the 1980s but they were not necessarily the primary purpose of "cruising the Montrose." It was for the people themselves, the scoping of each other. For meeting, for greeting, for fighting and for conducting unsavory transactions of one sort or another, it was all there.

I remember in my teens cruising the 80s Montrose, seeing fellow high school mates, greeting them with Schaefer beer from coolers...tossing them across the lane, running out of the gridlocked car and finding somewhere to relieve myself then going back the car since it only moved two feet since leaving it.

The most noteworthy was when some buddies and I went to some heavy metal show, some club now long defunct, and our car got towed! We wandered all over, even making our way to some hotel in downtown Houston. I remember Westheimer that night so full of nightly pesdestrians...looking for something, looking for someone (or someones). I think of an old song by the British hard rock group, UFO, called "Out in the Streets."

As late as 1988, cruising was just there in the Montrose. Untamed, raw but purely pedestrian color in the night. Then one night that year, one hundred or so Houston Police officers put a permanent close to that era.

I know what it was like in Clearwater Beach, Florida in the 1980s, the Tampa Bay area's cruising spot. It was quite more tame and conservative...and Mandalay Boulevard did not offer that unique sidewalk Montrose intimacy.

I didn't know what Westwood Village in L.A. was like in the 1980s but in pictures it looked like the typical destination entertainment district and not the sidewalk folding chair that was known as Lower Westheimer.

The rambunctious Montrose of yesteryear, it can thus be offered, was a unique phenomenon as far as Sun Belt cities' wild zones of the 1980s are concerned.

I've lived in Montrose since I escaped from Memorial.  Except for a period of time in San Francisco during the dotcom boom and one brief foray to the Galleria area, Montrose has been my home for over 30 years.  Lower Westheimer in the early 70s was a pleasant street lined with antique stores and restaurants.  The increase in crime and prostitution (catering to outsiders -- gay men don't frequent transvestite hookers) caused a severe decline in the area.  The oil bust of the 80s caused many gay men to leave Houston in a search for jobs.  Apartment complexes lost tenants and turned to the undocumented to fill vacancies.  Car theft increased exponentially.  High school kids from the suburbs created gridlock on Westheimer on weekend nights and all summer long.  During that time a criminal masquerading as a real investor and developer started a string of fires that gutted Lower Westheimer while he collected the insurance proceeds.  (He's dead now.)  The traffic gridlock and the demise of the restaurants cut down on the foot traffic and, except for the transvestite prostitutes, crime decreased.  At some point in the late 80s and early 90s, some developers discovered that they could make a killing by leveling fourplexes and putting in multiple three-story townhomes.  That change caused a loss of the 20-somethings and an influx of the affluent who had formerly lived in the suburbs.  An incidental result of this development was that the area now floods fairly regularly because they paved over the yards that had absorbed the rain water.  Anyway, these new residents, complete with walls and gates, do not want to live in a neighborhood that is not like the suburbs they know.  Zoning is not going to change their attitudes.  In fact, if past history teaches anything, they would use zoning to force out "undesirable" businesses and neighbors.  It's too bad they couldn't all live in West University Place.  But then, Montrose wouldn't be as hot a housing market as it could be.

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Can templehouston or anyone provide more detail of what the 70s Montrose was like? As far was what templehouston was talking about in terms of the lots of restaurants and stuff. How was the daily pedestrian life like then compared to say, today? I am quite interested in Montrose history, especially from those who had seen it earlier than the 1980s.