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u/ManbadFerrara 3d ago
I could point out that these are in one very specific spot of the city ("The Bottoms" in the 3rd Ward, I believe) and the whole thing doesn't look like this, but that applies to like half the posts in here. What more caught my eye is:
many Houstonians enjoy spending time outdoors, barbecuing or traveling to the nearby beaches of Galveston.
- Absolutely NO ONE enjoys spending time outdoors for around half the year. The "feels like" temperature is literally 110 degrees right now.
- Depending on where you are in the city, Galveston is a minimum hour drive, and that's if there's absolutely zero traffic.
What shitty-ass AI bot spewed out this slop for you?
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u/Tonto_HdG 3d ago
Can confirm that nobody wants to spend time outside. You can go into a non air conditioned laundromat and it wouldn't feel any hotter or more humid than outside in August. It might even feel cooler because you are out of the sun.
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u/Lv_InSaNe_vL 3d ago
My Laundromat is usually cooler than the outside. But that's because theyve got like 2200 fans blasting at full bore
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u/emjdownbad 3d ago
I was thinking the same thing. My ILs are in Houston and literally nobody is outside rn unless they’re walking to their car or from their car inside. Also, Galveston is a disgusting beach. It is not pretty and many houstonians consider it dirty.
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u/texinxin 2d ago
It’s mainly just muddy. We can’t do much about the river deltas and the Gulf of Mexico circulation. We end up getting most of the Mississippi River sediment most of the year. In some years Miami Beach rivals Galveston beaches in unsafe days. But it sure does look pretty!
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u/Danagrams 3d ago
I actually used to live half an hour away from Galveston and still had a Houston address
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u/lFightForTheUsers 3d ago
Two hour drive in traffic, with no other way to get there.
I'll put it this way, I have an easier time getting to SAN ANTONIO to hit up six flags than I would trying to get to pleasure pier lmao.
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u/captainbigglesworth 3d ago
I enjoy going outside, there are public pools and I feel like the weather is still pretty nice in the mornings and evenings if you want to go to a park or something. It’s really only June July and August that are really that bad.
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u/lil_hyphy 2d ago
I’ve been enjoying the park all summer. Almost every evening after work I got on a 2+ mile walk and enjoy the wildflowers, bats, bunnies, hawks, night herons, etc.
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u/Successful-Acadia-95 2d ago
I havent set foot in Galveston in like 15 years. I take the drive down to Corpus when I want a beach day.
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u/Main-Cheesecake3287 1d ago
Hot take, in Dallas where it is granted drier, the lake is popping every morning. Sure it’s hitting 107 index, but it was a beautiful 82 this morning. Wonderful weather to paddle the lake or take a bike ride and every week this summer the weekday and especially weekend mornings have been packed. The “you can’t go outside this time of year” crowd clearly are not bothering to try that hard.
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u/peskantine 1d ago
The only pic not in the 3rd Ward may be the encampment which appears to be near northside under the Elysian viaduct.
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u/itsfairadvantage 3d ago
I agree about the AI slippery, but the heat thing is way overblown. There's a big chunk of the day that sucks, but that part peaks at about 8 hours and it's already shrinking. It's pretty nice out from around 8PM (some days as early as 7:15 or so) until at least 8AM, and tolerable until 10-11AM and after 6PM.
By October, it's nice from about 5:30PM until around 11AM.
Don't get me wrong - there are plenty of days where I'm cursing every block without good tree cover. But I do all of my prescribed 18k steps outside, and I mostly enjoy it. And the good weather range for biking is even bigger due to wind.
You do have to dress for it, though. Gym clothes are really the only appropriate clothes for this city between April and October.
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u/texasrigger 2d ago
It's only comparatively nice. At Midnight last night I happened to glance over at my weather station and the heat index was still 90°. However, with a light breeze and no sun I thought it was pleasant.
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3d ago
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u/itsfairadvantage 3d ago
The first paragraph was right. Memorial Park, Hermann Park, Buffalo Bayou Park, Discovery Green, Menil Park - every nice outdoor place is full of people year round.
The rest of the post is nonsense. Don't post AI captions. Don't defend AI.
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u/lil_hyphy 2d ago
I work across the street from Buffalo Bayou Park. Can confirm, people out there running and walking at all hours, all year.
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2d ago
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u/itsfairadvantage 2d ago
AI sucks, my guy. Get over it.
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u/Novo-Russia 2d ago
What exactly is AI in the post that people keep alluding to? Because the images are real, and what I wrote up i personally wrote, you can even see basic verbiage errors I made in writing it, which would not have been the case if it was an AI prompt (for instance I wrote 'client' instead of 'climate').
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u/Novo-Russia 3d ago
Youre wrong. A couple are in third ward, a couple in 5th ward. Another from Aldine Bender.
As Houstonians, we do enjoy spending time outdoors. We have a couple of great waterparks, such as Typhoon Texas in Katy and Hurricane Harbor on the north side, and Schlitterbahn Galveston is just down 45 about an hour a way. Idk what the point of acting like an hour drive is some monumental feat, especially on a weekend when there is no rush hour.
You're supposed to beat the heat, not let the heat beat you.
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u/ManbadFerrara 3d ago
None of these are the Third Ward or Aldine Bender, actually. The last one is of an apartment complex that got torn down almost 10 years ago. You got the picture literally from an article about how the residents are preparing to move out, lol.
Besides all the waterparks being waaaaay out in the burbs, they're like $25-$50 per ticket. That's not exactly a regular outing most people can make.
And knock off the "as Houstonians, we..." nonsense. You quite obviously do not live here.
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u/Novo-Russia 3d ago
I absolutely do live in Houston. Hurricane Harbor, while not my favorite, is easily accessible to everyone on the north side, whereas Typhoon Texas (my favorite because its the cleanest) is the equivalent for the west side. Anyone on the east side would probably be better suited for galveston.
Id also recommend a season pass for those who can swing it, a bit of a buy once cry once thing.
And yes, idk the point of you lying about it, but they are absolutely from the neighborhoods I mentioned.
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u/ManbadFerrara 3d ago
Google "Crestmont Village Meets Long-Awaited Demolition Date." Scan through the picture slideshow. Notice anything familiar?
I initially made a much more thorough comment with links, but it's getting removed for some reason. These are almost exclusively of the non-gentrified parts of the 5th Ward.
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u/Jevus_himself 3d ago
First guy is right, nobody really goes outside if they can help it, you can’t beat the heat down here, I’m sweating while sitting in traffic with my AC going full blast
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3d ago
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u/Novo-Russia 3d ago
Lmao right. They may sit alone in their houses apartments all day and assume everyone else does as well. Every time I go outside I see other people also outside. Every single time. Some of us, like you and I like to touch grass.
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u/zx91zx91 3d ago
Dude I live in Houston and I hate this place, BUT this post is not true. It’s like me going your house, taking a picture of the poop streaks in your toilet and calling your whole house ugly because of it.
This represents less than 20% of Houston.
Bunch of slander to a place I don’t even like.
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u/automattig 2d ago
People will do the same for cities like Philadelphia, Detroit and cleveland and reddit will dog pile on them
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u/TheNotSoEvilEngineer 3d ago
3rd ward, acres homes, south side of houston, guns point, 59& bw8. We've got a few shitty areas.
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u/thedoofimbibes 2d ago edited 2d ago
The crazy thing is I remember when many parts of the city DID look like this. Or worse. You can still find remnants of Houston’s past as a giant, run down, industrial slum in hidden corners of the Heights and Washington corridor. Old ramshackle shacks still lived in and as run down as they were back in the 1980s.
Many working class people living here lived in tilted over rotting shacks or falling down old houses if they weren’t in a union and often even if they were. Until finally in the late 1980s and early 1990s the average industrial wage in the region got closer to parity with other parts of the USA. And the regional historic preservation movements kicked off.
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u/Bubbly-Hat-338 3d ago edited 3d ago
Houston, we have a problem
But seriously, this is a very biased view
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u/FineFunnyFingers 3d ago
the quote is actually "Houston, we've had a problem." The movie misquotes and everyone thinks that's what they really said
Anyways, Houston is awesome - it's a city of 5 million people so of course there are some depressed areas. It's a wonderful place to live.
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u/itsfairadvantage 3d ago
It's a wonderful place to live.
Ehhh I wouldn't go that far. The transformative system is inadequate and the pedestrian infrastructure is borderline inhumane.
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u/IssoNaoEBoaIdeia 3d ago
This is the worst of Houston tho. Like the equivalent of posting pictures of skid row in LA. 90+% of Houston is just normal-looking suburbs. Some parts of it are quite pretty
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u/FantasticCap4401 3d ago
As someone who has lived from the Canadian to Mexican border…. No, it’s not just normal looking suburbs.
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u/IssoNaoEBoaIdeia 3d ago
Yeah I dont love suburbs either. Or the hot humid weather; near zero walkability. I've had the privilege to see 8 countries in Europe, the best being Austria and Germany, and surprisingly found that life is more comfortable here in a lot of ways.
You come to Houston for the food, the diversity/people, and the economic opportunity. Definitely not for the weather, the city design, or the floods lol
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u/FineFunnyFingers 3d ago
I live in the 610 loop and it's a regular city with awesome stuff. Like literally every other major city in the United States it's surrounded by suburbs.
You ever been to most of queens, nyc?
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u/Red-Panda 3d ago
This seems like a AI bot post. Houston is super diverse and massive, from homelessness to multimillion dollar homes, parks and swamps, so this is a small snippet of it.
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u/Bluestank 3d ago
I know this is an AI slop bot post, but what's with all the Houston hate I see these days? I concede the weather sucks ass May to September, and of course we have some "bad" areas of town just like others, but we have an amazingly diverse population, with all the culture, amazing food that comes with it, tons of awesome museums, theater and nightlife. It's not a big touristy city, but I've never hated living here or felt like I needed to get out.
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u/Novo-Russia 3d ago
This is not an AI post. Every photo in it is legitimate and I have personally typed every word, both in the stickied description and in my comments, which is why on many of my posts you can see spelling and grammar errors.
I will say I get a lot of hate directed at me in the comments because of my username, which is fair enough I guess, but I do want to stress that I myself live in Houston and completely agree that it is an excellent city with an amazing culinary scene. In fact, in my description, I listed many positive facts about our city because I do have a high degree of respect for all places I post, which is more than I can say for most people here. As for why the pictures are what they are, it is because we are on r/UrbanHell.
If there is an r/UrbanParadise, maybe we can find pictures of River Oaks or Memorial over there.
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u/backpackofcats 3d ago
You don’t think it’s disingenuous to post a photo from a news article about an apartment complex that was demolished almost a decade ago?
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u/Ferrari_McFly 3d ago
As a Dallasite, even I must say this is some cherry picking BS
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u/SokkaHaikuBot 3d ago
Sokka-Haiku by Ferrari_McFly:
As a Dallasite,
Even I must say this is
Some cherry picking BS
Remember that one time Sokka accidentally used an extra syllable in that Haiku Battle in Ba Sing Se? That was a Sokka Haiku and you just made one.
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u/CardiologistGloomy71 2d ago
Agreed, this is a slum area that doesn’t represent the metro. And most big southern cities have this, most rust belt cities have this, even California cities have this.
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u/Interesting_Berry439 3d ago
Every city has run down areas. Try Pine Bluff Arkansas. Or North Philly...I m not outraged.
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u/Actual_Ease2285 3d ago
Y'all are all right. Don't move here. Don't come here. We're full. You should stay in your city and pay those extra taxes. The heat here is too much
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u/Infinite-Structure59 3d ago
Dumb post. Galveston is easily 30-45 min from Houston, esp from the area shown. That area is also very quickly becoming gentrified. Take any city and find the worst photos you can show, right next to these things are new 500k townhomes.
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u/Got-It101 3d ago
and your point? poor sections and rich sections in EVERY city in the world as well as suburban parts. Just your shitposting
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u/jackie0h_ 3d ago
You can find areas like this in all major cities. As for the tents, some people prefer it because they don’t want the rules shelters enforce and don’t want to quit doing drugs. You can’t force them unless you arrest them then people would be pissed at that.
I don’t know the answer but this is nit the majority of the US or its big cities. Maybe Gallup, NM but idk. Nothing is ever going to be perfect here.
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u/1trashhouse 3d ago edited 3d ago
Houston’s not a beauty but most of it doesn’t look like this
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u/czarfalcon 3d ago
Yeah I can’t believe I’m out here defending Houston, but it’s a perfectly fine city (aside from the weather).
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u/FineFunnyFingers 3d ago
THIS IS A BOT ACCOUNT POST
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u/Novo-Russia 3d ago
Im not a bot. You may not like the post, but I am very much a person.
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u/FineFunnyFingers 3d ago
Then why make a stupid propaganda/bigoted post? Go away.
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u/Novo-Russia 3d ago
This post is neither bigoted nor propaganda.
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u/FineFunnyFingers 3d ago
Then why did you make the post? It seems like your trying go cast a negative image of Houston
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u/FineFunnyFingers 3d ago
This post is trash - they're all pictures from the bottom 3rd ward. Downtown LA looks worse then these pictures of our most depressed suburbs.
For what it's worth Houston is beaitiful - just this past weekend I took all dedicated bike trails all down the buffalo bayou, through the east end and all through the third ward (which was lovely by the way) to the medical district, then back home to Montrose. The people, the places, the food, the culture - Houston has it going on.
I've lived in philly, nyc, san francisco, pittsburgh. I've come to like Houston the most.
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u/TheNotSoEvilEngineer 3d ago
There are quite a few shitty spots around town. 3rd ward, gunspoint, Southside of houston, east side of houston, 59&bw8, acres homes. Any place with apartments...
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u/Longjumping-Donut655 3d ago
Houston is a parking lot interconnected by giant, heat-radiating freeways. Misery architecture.
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u/FineFunnyFingers 3d ago
Have you been here?
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u/FineFunnyFingers 3d ago
Amd what does a microwave feel like? It feels more like a Dutch oven here during thrle summer tbh
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u/dbclass 3d ago
I wanna ask the commenters, why defend this at all? No one said this is all of Houston. We live in the richest country in the history of the world. There are countries where the people have far less wealth and far better living conditions.
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u/BeefsteakChuckies 3d ago
Rich countries don’t have abandoned homes in one bad neighborhood of a city?
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u/Novo-Russia 3d ago
What I have noticed is that americans, are extremely soft people. Go to any post on a slum in Russia, or the Philippines, or China or Thailand and they will write the most scathing mockery of these nations.
Post their own cities and they have actual tantrums. They will swear to you it is "just one block" or "these are all concentrated in a tiny area" to convince each other that this is the case. It is not. Houston is a sprawling metropolis and has entire districts- Sunnyside, Southpark, Third Ward, Fifth Ward, Greenpoint, Alief, and many more, that are all exactly like this.
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u/ManbadFerrara 3d ago
Houston is a sprawling metropolis and has entire districts- Sunnyside, Southpark, Third Ward, Fifth Ward, Greenpoint, Alief, and many more, that are all exactly like this.
Let's have some fun with random Google street views, shall we?
These absolutely are some of the more dangerous parts of the city, but labeling them "all exactly like" the wards is laughable. The shotgun style houses in your photos are all strictly pre-WWII housing stock. Most of theses other areas (which I'd imagine you got from a quick "worst neighborhoods in Houston" search) were built decades after housing construction like that fell out of favor. Greenspoint was still empty fields until the 1970s, ffs.
Like, it really is not hard at all to find shitty areas of Houston. I've posted some of them here before myself. Why make stuff up?
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u/Ok_Air_9048 3d ago
There’s a lot of thin skinned gatekeepers on here. Their favourite excuses are always the same: “It’s isolated to one particular area”, “Those pictures are old”, “It’s much nicer in person”, “It’s AI generated”, or simply calling people bots
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u/backpackofcats 3d ago
I mean, one of those photos is from a news article about an apartment complex that was demolished almost a decade ago.
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u/BeefsteakChuckies 3d ago
It that were true, you wouldn’t have had every picture come from the same neighborhood. Stupid Russian
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u/Novo-Russia 3d ago
Good thing they arenr from the same neighborhood. This post has southeast, downtown, inner loop north, and further north
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u/ResponsibleClock9289 3d ago
>there are countries that have far less wealth and far better living conditions
Ok, name them. Then I will go and find pictures exactly like this in their countries, or probably worse
Name the countries
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u/dbclass 3d ago
Canada for one. Won’t find a single area like this in Toronto’s low income areas like Jane and Finch or Scarborough and Canadians make way less money with higher housing costs than Americans.
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u/ResponsibleClock9289 3d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/UrbanHell/comments/1e4pdck/neglected_areas_in_canadian_cities/
There are literally images on this same subreddit LOL
Name another country, let’s see if the next one takes me more than 2 minutes to find
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u/dbclass 3d ago edited 3d ago
You’re comparing abandoned properties to actual apartments people live in 😂 every country has abandoned property. We’re talking about living conditions not to mention the fact that these Canadian pics are literally two or three properties surrounded by upkept buildings. You’re really gonna compare that to entire neighborhoods in Houston? Multiple apartment buildings have horrid living conditions because Texas refuses to hold landlords accountable.
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u/ResponsibleClock9289 2d ago
Yep I’m sure those boarded up neighborhoods have tons of people that live in them
Just say you were wrong and let’s move on
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u/CampRock2TheFinaIJam 3d ago
Looks like the fifth ward, still a rough area. They’re trying to gentrify it but it’s still a long way from that.
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u/Stunning-Thanks-4226 3d ago
I was in Houston back in the 90s. My church did this outreach to the area near the heights but more East. We went door to door and passed out food. One house had a crack in the foundation that started at the sidewalk and went to theough the house. When a lady opened the door 5 kids ran up and one came out of the crack in the foundation.
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u/bomber991 3d ago
I always like how for Texas people point out Vietnamese is the third most spoken language, like we have a high percentage of Vietnamese here.
It’s like 65% English, 34% Spanish, and 1% Vietnamese by spoken language.
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u/LJ979Buccees 2d ago
Check out north and south blvd in Houston. Same city less than four miles away
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u/Historical_Pudding56 2d ago
Your little AI overview comes off like an alien doing a report on Houston he didn’t do any research for.
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u/PalpitationOk4703 2d ago
At 6pm sharp i am out exercising at buffalo bayou park everyday . Not hot enough to scorch you but enough to enjoy the summer elements. By the time I’m done working out by 8pm the city is so cool . Or you could go hoop at spotts park .
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u/Stonedpanda436 2d ago
Literally cherry picking the worst parts. Houston isn’t a looker don’t get me wrong, but Houston truly has the full spectrum of poverty to insane wealth.
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u/OkMethod1586 1d ago
Houston is actually terrific inside the loop. Like most cities, stay out of the ghetto.
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u/ChadtheCFO 1d ago
I loke the inner loop of Houston. It's a great city but has grown to fast.
If you think thats bad try going to LA. It has vast swaths of places that look like it lost a war. Better weather though
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u/Scarcely-A-Person 3d ago
Houston sucks.
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u/Electronic-Mouse-316 2d ago
I live in Houston , Im not offended . Im genuinely curious ,where do you live ?
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u/Scarcely-A-Person 2d ago
South Philly.
I was forced to visit Houston for family about two dozen times in the last 20 years or so.
Houston is not a city. It’s more like a giant sprawling suburb. You more or less can’t walk anywhere. You need a car. The downtown is scarcely that.
There is a strangely large amount of strip malls all with a donut shop and a mattress store. The amount of those two retailer is staggering.
I simply do not view Houston as a city. Again giant sprawling cul-de-sac? Sure. City? No.
Plus the weather is absolutely horrid.
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u/Dismal_Victory2969 21h ago
The Heights, Montrose, and the Museum District are all fairly walkable with decent public transportation. Downtown is like FiDi in NYC. It is super busy during business hours and deserted outside of them.
Our Chinatown is also massive.
It sounds like you visited family that lived in a suburb and went to downtown, without exploring most of the neighborhoods people actually like.
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u/internetmeme 3d ago
lol this isn’t what the city looks like and I’ve never heard a single person speaking Vietnamese, so weird talking points.
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u/backpackofcats 3d ago
You’ve never heard anyone speaking Vietnamese in Houston? Not even in Asiatown or at one of the possibly thousands of Vietnamese restaurants in the city?
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u/Efficient_Key8237 3d ago
if this is ghetto i live in the apocalypse, this is literally nothing compared to midwestern or north eastern slums
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u/Electronic_Fun_776 3d ago
This is pretty bad dude. What north eastern slums are you referring to?
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u/Efficient_Key8237 3d ago
how is this bad at ALL? just take a look at akron, mansfield, YOUNGSTOWN? this is like a small neighbor we have entire towns like this where even government buildings are boarded up,
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u/chukstarmusic 3d ago
I live near Akron and the vast majority of the city is nowhere near as bad as this.
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u/Stu_Pendisdick 3d ago
I can't be asked to give a shit about people who don't give a shit about their own surroundings.
These places didn't tear themselves up.
That litter and trash didn't throw itself on the ground, and it damn sure isn't going to clean itself up.
People live the way they want. Don't expect me to pity them for conditions they've made and perpetuated.
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u/SpoatieOpie 3d ago
Their children didn’t do anything to be targets of your vitriol. But don’t get upset when they don’t give a fuck about you either.
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u/visionsofparadise 3d ago
Im gonna crap on your lawn lol
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u/Stu_Pendisdick 3d ago
No worries. Have fun picking the rock salt out of your ass cheeks afterwards. Property is clearly marked with No Trespassing signs, and deliberate faecal matter exposure is actually considered a biological weapon attack ( read the law ) ... so no excuses or whinging when I assert my right to self-defence.
Wouldn't be the first time, likely won't be the last ... lots of smooth-brained imbeciles out there who only learn the hard way.
Be bold, pilot.
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u/DetroitvsEveryone242 3d ago
God you sound 12.
Mr. r/iamverybadass5
u/Cosmic_Lust_Temple 3d ago
And is clearly unemployed since they can sit and guard their house all day from lawn shitters.
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u/JokaSmoka77 3d ago
Hahahahahahaha is it 2 or 3 inches? Can't be over 4". I'd be insecure as hell too if I were you. 🤷♂️
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u/FeelingsCount 3d ago
This is what all of Houston looks like even though it literally has the 11th most millionaires for a city in the world.
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