Downtown Houston Texas & Giant NASA Rockets

Sep 10, 2022 • By Leonidas K. • 3 min read

Travel USA

Going To Houston Texas To Get My Shot

By May of 2021, I had lived in Mexico City for a full year, and managed to avoid most, if not all, lockdowns, quarantines, and whatever else was causing people to go wild and conspiratorial in other parts of the world.

After all, the Mexican government wasn’t going to pay for people to stay home, nor did it have the capability of enforcing such measures. So they let the people decide on their own fates.

So, my time in the land of freedom was ending and it was time to go home to Canada, but to get there involved two complicated steps.

Step One, I needed to hop into Houston Texas to get a single shot of the J&J Vax. Then step two, wait a full 2 weeks for the vax to start working, and ensure I didn’t have any symptoms.

Thus, I would hop into Houston, explore for 3 or 4 days, then, instead of staying just in one place, I would hop into El Salvador, then Costa Rica, and then finally, back to Canada.

Complicated, but not an impossible mission objective.

Houston Texas, A Place of Inter-planetary Importance

But other than that, Houston is also home to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and home to the first rockets that send humans to the moon. Thanks to tireless human competition in war, science, economics, and more, we, as a human species were able to set foot on another terrestrial body… our moon.

And it all started in Houston, Texas.

A massive Boeing jet lifts the space shuttle and flies it to its launch destination

Inside the space center testing area. Here is where all of the intellectual magic happens

Nasa requires a replica of each space module, both for the earth and in space, so they can test quickly any issues that might arise in space

NASA works closely with Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency (at least, they will until 2024)

Little Joe, one of the first attempts to launch a rocket into lower earth orbit

The size and complexity of rocket engines in the 1960’s.

The enormous scale of the Saturn-5 Rocket, which took humans to the moon

Another perspective of the jet used to carry the Space shuttle

Both planes are absolute marvels of human engineering, from the 1980s to say the least

One of the very first Space-X rockets that completed a landing operation

A Casual Day in the Suburbs and Parks of Houston, Texas

After getting the vax on my first day, and visiting the NASA space center, I could feel the effects starting with malaise and fever, so later that night, I went to sleep in a feverish condition. But the following day, everything was back to normal, and it was time to explore the suburbs of Houston.

Every country and every city has its own characteristic feel and style when building their cities. Houston texas felt similar to the open, non-walled-off style of Canada, with a large grass lawn, a parking garage, and various ornaments and flags commemorating nationalism or whatever else.

I walked around peacefully while listening to various podcasts and taking photos, and also stopped at the Holocaust Museum of Houston.

Large swaths of the USA became ghost towns during the pandemic

A vegan restaurant in Houston. The prices, after living in Mexico, were shocking… I think I spent usd for a lunch. — A vegan restaurant in Houston. The prices, after living in Mexico, were shocking… I think I spent $30usd for a lunch.

This style of construction is quite prevalent in upper-town Toronto suburban areas

If I didn’t know any better, this could easily be Toronto, Canada

This looks like a typical protestant-style high school, but in Houston Texas

A contemporary church in the suburbs of Houston. I believe this one has a mainly black congregation

A Casual Stroll Through Hermann Park in Houston Texas

Unlike in Latin America, walking around in a park in Houston felt much more tame, peaceful, and safe.

A historic president of Mexico, who helped win the war of Independence against the French empire, Benito Juarez

This park incorporated a few different cultures, to signify openness to new cultures

A statue in honor of one of the generals who took Texas from Mexico

Houston Texas Homeless Situation

Although these photos are all nice and rosy, there were times when I felt uncomfortable and vigilant in Houston Texas. Especially when walking under bridges, which had various homeless men conversing among themselves. I had to pass the bridge below multiple times, especially at night time, and there wasn’t much pedestrian traffic, thus things could become insecure quite quickly.

I didn’t take any photos of the homeless, for the security of my camera, and all of the other gadgets I was carrying around.

Under bridges in Houston can be a dangerous place

Downtown Houston Texas

While the suburbs of Houston felt similar to that of Toronto, the downtown of Houston was quite dissimilar to Toronto. The downtown of Toronto is quite lively, with a lot of foot traffic, shops, bars, restaurants, and people milling about their days either for pleasure or business.

For the days I spent in Houston, and the days I was downtown, AND based on what a new friend I met in the hostel said, downtown Houston didn’t feel alive at all. There wasn’t a high concentration of shops, bars, restaurants, or even convenience stores. It seemed more of a high density of business buildings, and not much else.

But it could have simply been the time and circumstances, due to the pandemic.

Downtown Houston Texas is a garden of glass and concrete

Each building represents a decade of huge financial successes from selling oil, technology, and the architectural style of the time

A rail system cuts through the center of the city

Enjoying life, one city and photo at a time

This was the largest gathering of people I saw in Houston. They were doing a scheduled bike ride around the city

A rail system cuts through the city of Houston

As the evening comes, rain clouds start to form

An interesting way to gain more commercial space. Build a bridge across the street, and populate it with bars and restaurants in Houston

One of the stylistic live music bars I visited in Houston

Compared to Toronto, the city center is extremely quiet in Houston

As the night starts to fill the skies of Houston

Taking the free rail metro system in Houston has its risks, because there are usually homeless sleeping inside, and it always smelled like urine

More Exploring Houston Texas

After a quick sleep, the following day, I went to Best Buy really quickly to buy something, and then continued wandering around. Luckily, the same area of the Best Buy had more wonderful monuments and architecture to see and enjoy.

This is where the middle class lives, I presume, in Houston

Taking a selfie with the shiny Williams Tower in Houston

America has an over-emphasis on using flags

Back to the Downtown Core of Houston

I eventually made my way back downtown, but not before stopping at some mosquito-infested marshes and bayous to record a video about being vegan for 2.5 years. Unfortunately, that video didn’t make the cut, but I did have a fun memory of getting completely eaten by vicious mosquitos.

Afterward, I did a second round of walking around the sparsely populated downtown core of Houston Texas.

Despite enormous constructions, there weren’t that many people around

Skyscrapers in Houston show off the immense wealth of the state

A financial building in Houston, perhaps built in the financial boom of the 1920’s.

The rooftop looks like a cross being a railyard, a marketplace, and a basilica or cathedral in Houston Texas

An old municipal building, contrasted by a darkening sky, and towering skyscraper

The tall red building on the left is reminiscent of something built in Toronto, probably from the 1970s

A shopping center and cinema that barely had anyone around it

From giant concrete slabs with windows, to completely glass-covered steel giants, in Houston

Walking around the downtown core of Houston

Downtown Houston looks like a mirror of another reality

Almost no one, in this financially and scientifically successful city of Houston, Texas

Strange rectangles jot out into the sky of Houston, Texas

More modern interpretations of residential and financial buildings

One of the few remaining representations of the old world, First United Methodist Church, Houston, Texas

The residential buildings on the left look similar to what is being built in Toronto at the moment, thousands of kilometers away

Houston As A Hub for Hospitals and Medical Technology

One of the acquaintances I met in my hostel was a nurse. He came to Houston as a high-pay nurse in a particular industry, and mentioned that Houston features some of the world’s top hospitals and Medical universities in the world!

I managed to get a brief glimpse of all of the nurses in their scrubs before the sun started to set, and it was time to go back to my hostel.

Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church in Houston Texas, in the Hospital District

Other Smaller Hedonistic Objectives

To make things even better, I wanted to receive the new Sony WF-1000xm4 in-ear, noise-canceling headphones IMMEDIATELY upon their release. The timing would have to be perfect, as I already had a flight to leave Houston Texas.

Furthermore, I wanted to buy the Google-Fi SIM card which gives you internet anywhere on the planet (as long as you drop into the USA every 6 months, otherwise they cut the internet).

A Run into Aggressive Police

The second night I was in Houston, I took the rail system in the downtown core. There were two relatively disheveled drug addicts bickering in the back. One was a woman sitting down, and the other was a man pestering her. She insisted she would hurt him if he kept bothering her, and he kept pushing her on something (perhaps for sex). The conflict was loud, vicarious, and obnoxious, and it seemed like it could escalate at any moment.

After a few minutes, the metro stopped at my station, and I got off right next to 5 police officers. I quickly walked over to the police and told them that there could be an escalating altercation in a moment. Almost immediately, one of the police side-checked me out of the way and ran towards the situation.

By this point, the man had gotten off the metro at the same time I did, and it seemed like things had concluded before any police action could take place.

It was at this moment, that I understood the police aggression that many Americans had been protesting against for many months before. The same police officer I had asked for help, had aggressively body-checked me out of the way, without even thinking about it.

But then, you need to realize that Americans are, in response, aggressive towards the police, thus there is this cyclical nature of civilian aggression that begets police aggression that begets more civilian aggression.

This must be associated with the level of entitlement that Americans have accumulated in their culture, resorting to “I will sue you” as a catch-all when things don’t go their way, along with hundreds of videos of police incorrectly diagnosing a situation based on emotion, rather than law enforcement.

Anyways, food for thought.

Houston Texas Conclusion

I got a brief glimpse of, not only Houston but a little bit of American culture in the mix. Whether it was the abundance of homeless under bridges and urine-smelling metro systems, to the contrast of towering skyscrapers showing off the financial invincibility of the USA.

Houston was a perfect duality of capitalism-first and caring for the population, second…

On the 4th day, I hopped onto a direct flight and made the 2nd stop of my journey in El Salvador.

Cheers

Leonidas