As the City of Houston prepares to crack down on sexually-oriented businesses, the Chronicle reports that SOB owners have found a little loophole:

Facing a looming city crackdown on sexually oriented businesses, some strip clubs in Houston have a fallback strategy to keep their operations open: requiring their dancers to cover up.

A little.

Topless and fully nude clubs could avoid regulation altogether if their dancers wear bikinis, or even skimpier opaque coverings, allowing them to get around the "sexually oriented" classification, police and city officials acknowledged.

That would allow the clubs to remain open at their current locations, despite an ordinance now prohibiting them from operating within 1,500 feet of churches, schools, parks and residential areas.

The Chron's portrays this as "dancing around the law", the same way that they might report the gun show loophole in anti-gun legislation. But saying that nudie bars are "skirting" SOB laws by having their employees wear bikinis is akin to saying that someone skirted anti-marijuana laws by selling cigarettes instead. We're talking about completely different things!

As for the law itself, my main problem with it is that, as far as I can recall, there is no grandfather clause protecting the investment of people who opened those clubs back when they were not regulated into a difficult business model. Then again, it's difficult to have too much sympathy for people that decide to make a living exploiting young women, exploiting the sexual frustration of men, and profiting off an overly-sexualized culture.

The Houston Chronicle interviews a libertarian on Houston's city planning (or lack thereof) and I think it's more interesting than it is intended to be.

In my observation a Q&A of this sort is generally an opportunity for the interviewee to express their thoughts. Part of that is to confront counterarguments, but by and large a Q&A is not supposed to be a debate. But read it and tell me if it doesn't. The interviewer quite obviously seems to prefer Portland's aggressive planning over Houston's laissez faire strategy.

Q: Metro has been criticized for getting into transit-oriented development, but the kind of growth we had here for years — often called sprawl — is also abetted by government policies: The state or county builds a road out in the prairie where a developer puts a subdivision. In both cases, tax dollars are spent to encourage a particular residential pattern.

A: First, roads pretty much pay for themselves, and your toll roads really do pay for themselves. You didn't have to create a huge sales tax to build them like you did for the rail system. Second, about one in five Americans say they would like to live in the city near jobs, transit and shops, but the large majority say they would rather live in a suburban home with a large yard.

Q: Doesn't that one in five have a say, too?

A: In a city like Houston with no zoning there ought to be plenty of housing density for people who want it. But once that market is saturated, the only way to get more density is to subsidize it.

Q: I've been to Portland and it seems really nice.

Look closely and you will notice the distinct lack of a question mark at the end of that last "question".

Anyhow, more interesting than the point-counterpoint aspect of the interview is that the in the debate the Houston Chronicle writer takes the side of Portland against Houston.

What do former Congressman Chris Bell and I have in common? We're both tall? We both don't like Rick Perry much? C'mon, you're not thinking!

Here's a clue in the form of his congressional biography:

BELL, Chris, a Representative from Texas; born in Texas, November 23, 1959; B.J., University of Texas, Austin, Tex., 1982; J.D., South Texas University*, Houston, Tex., 1992; journalist; lawyer, private practice; member, Houston, Tex., city council, 1997-2001; elected as a Democrat to the One Hundred Eighth Congress (January 3, 2003-January 3, 2005); unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 2004.

The answer, obviously, is that neither of us has tried a single case as a prosecutor in Harris County!

This little detail hasn't stopped some from salivating over the prospect of Bell running for Harris County District Attorney. Bell would be great cause... well... DA Rosenthal sucks. As it happens, I agree with their assessment of Rosenthal. I've voted against him in every primary and general election that I could. But come on... Chris Bell? Being a good guy or even a good councilman and congressman (if you consider him thus) does not qualify one to be the boss of a bunch of attorneys that have... you know... actually prosecuted cases.

Fortunately Bell has stated unequivocably that he is not going to seek the DA post.

* - There is no South Texas University. Presumably they meant South Texas College of Law, which is not affiliated with any four-year institute of higher learning.

In the forum over at blogHOUSTON, Shreela puts up the kinds of ideas I like to see. Specific ways to improve things that take into account possible snags along the way:

1. Contraflow would have bottle-necked once we got out of Houston/Harris Co if things hadn't been coordinated with the government ahead of time, so what good would it have done without the towns-in-the-evac-route's cooperation. Perhaps if Govenor Perry would have mandated certain routes to be contraflowed until point x, including all small cities along the way, it won't be so difficult next time. One of our neighbors told us that once I-10 had finally been contraflowed, other than getting traffic to the other side, everything went really smooth.

2. 18 wheelers! Everyone I've talked to from my neighborhood commented on the vast amounts of 18 wheelers on the road, some of which broke down or ran out of gas.

Maybe they could come up with some type of formula that "all 18-wheelers not involved with emergency supplies will not be allowed to enter a medium or larger city if they're in a strike zone of a cat3+ hurricane within x number of days (or hours), until a time when the hurricane has shifted to x number of miles of striking that particular city".

3. Country roads with wide shoulders. Many of the routes outside of Houston were two-way roads, but had a shoulder that was as wide as the main lane. We saw quite a few people trying to turn the shoulders into a second lane, but there were line-riders (J. B. Hunt 18 wheeler on 1960 eastbound was the worst I saw) blocking people from trying to use the shoulder as a second lane.

I'm fully aware that bottle-necking would occur at intersections that didn't include the shoulders, but we did see some intersections that DID include the shoulder. So, for the wide-shoulder routes that could be converted to two lanes, the line-riders just slowed things down for everyone (with a few exceptions, most of the wide shoulder routes had fairly level grass easements for the people needing to pull over for whatever reasons).

If these types of routes had been predesignated to be turned into two lanes during emergency evacuations, the press could have informed us which roads were considered two lane routes, and the line-riders might have stopped preventing the flow.

It's weird. Yesterday just about all my Houston friends logged off throughout the day and didn't log back on.

Most of them talked about leaving town.

Is there a holiday this weekend that I don't know about?

Go (as far away as fast as possible from) Houston Day or something? Maybe Go (as far away as fast as possible from) Houston Weekend?

From the latest issue of The Onion:

Refugees Moved From Sewage-Contaminated Superdome To Hellhole Of Houston

HOUSTON—Evacuees from the overheated, filth-encrusted wreckage of the New Orleans Superdome were bussed to the humid, 110-degree August heat and polluted air of Houston last week, in a move that many are resisting. "Please, God, not Houston. Anyplace but Houston," said one woman, taking shelter under an overpass. "The food there is awful, and the weather is miserable. And the traffic—it's like some engineer was making a sick joke." Authorities apologized for transporting survivors to a city "barely better in any respect," but said the blistering-hot, oil-soaked Texas city was in fact slightly better, and that casualties due to gunfire would be no worse.

Awful food? Surely you jest.

Oh, and it's not August.

The other day I commented on the Ten Second News sideblog on a NY Times regarding Houston's benefiting from the New Orleans disaster. I said:

I'm a little resentful of the tone of the article, though, as it seems to suggest that Houston has been a vulture at the gate. Rather, the Bayou City has been going far above and beyond the call of duty in helping New Orleanians. Is there an ulterior motive? Not really seeing as how the ones taken in are, to be frank, the ones it's probably least excited about keeping. As far as the scramble, I'd be upset with Houston officials if they weren't taking a longer view of things.

The thing is that these businesses have to go somewhere. It's not a matter of pilfering businesses and people that would otherwise be sticking around. Many of them will move back and I'm sure that we wish them all the best. But Houston has a lot to offer to those looking for a solution, temporary or permanent. It would be a mistake not to point that out.

The article in question was actually not in the NY Times but rather the International Herald-Tribune. This is significant because according to KTRK (ABC), there is some difference between the two:

Houston is home to the largest relief shelter in American history. From donating shelter, clothes, and food to making room in its schools, the city and its people have given of themselves.

So who could find anything bad to say about Houston? Apparently the New York Times could, which on Tuesday printed an article about Houston's response to Katrina in two different newspapers. In one, the article seems relatively even handed. But in the other, some say it is overly critical, ill-timed, and in poor taste.

In the Times, there's an above-the-fold article by Houston-based reporter Simon Romero. And apparently what's in the Times is not all the news that's fit to print.

In The International Herald Tribune published by the Times in Paris, Romero's article is on page 15 and it begins with a line not in the Times, which reads "No one would accuse this city of being timid in the scramble to profit from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina."

It later contends, "A surge of business activity in Houston might lift the fortune of a city that is still struggling to recover from the collapse of Enron and two decades of job cuts in the energy industry."

The line about not being "timid in the scrable to profit" really sets a different tone for the entire article. Homesellers giving special discounts to families from Louisiana are not presented as charitable, but almost ambulance-chasing.

I don't know that I've ever been more proud to be a raised Houstonian or Texan as I have been this past week. Houston has gone out of its way to be hospitable to "desirable" and "undesirable" alike. Gov. Rick Perry, Mayor Bill White, County Judge Robert Eckles, and all else deserve a lot of credit not only for being willing to help, but showing a sort of competence that has been hard to find in this whole debacle.

Austin Bay suggests that the object of it might be to knock Houston down a peg:

Tempest in a teapot? Or another example of “mainstream” press bias with a slash and a dram of dishonest editing? It’s both. Call it small potatoes, but indicative small potatoes– and if dishonest is too strong a word, sub “adulterated.” This story (Houston’s business sector post-Katrina) deserved coverage, but not with the rhetorical editorialization. The truth is, an entire swath of the southeastern and southwestern US will eventually “benefit” in the same manner as evacuees arrive and businesses adjust– the first story acknowledges that. Why the editorialization? Here’s a theory: It’s also the NY-DC-LA media axis trying to take Houston down a notch or two. Houston opened its doors and hearts to evacuees. That’s too sweet of a story, especially from a Republican state and a swaggering Texas city. The NY-DC-LA axis responds with: “So let’s suggest that they are really being greedy, eh?” Unfair? Then offer another theory.

I think regional bias may have been involved, but I frankly think a lot of it is a belief that nothing good can come from this disaster. The Americans all have opened their homes and wallets to strangers has been somewhat muffled under the sound of axes grinding.

METRO busses declared safety hazard, may be replaced by rail
Jerry Wahls, Houston Comical

HOUSTON - After yesterday's bus accident, Houston METRO Authorities, Houston Mayor Bill White, and all right-thinking people are re-thinking public transportation.

"The first problem," METRO Police Cheif Tom Lambert told reporters, "is that we're hiring Houston drivers. Unlike drivers in other areas, Houston drivers never make mistakes. METRO's longstanding policy, of course, is never to compensate for regular driver error. As such, we're going to start replacing our drivers with those from a population that doesn't make mistakes."

When asked further where drivers might be imported from, Lambert declined further comment.

Most METRO authorities did agree, however, that one obvious problem was too many bus routes. "Frankly," said one METRO insider, "We have so many busses going that they're practically running in to each other. Well, literally running in to one another, in fact."

While he said that nothing was definitive, using the funds freed up by cutting bus lines to create a more aggressive light rail system was "not out of the question."

When asked to comment, all right-thinking Houstonians agreed.

[Picture swiped from Lonestar Times via PubliusTX, both of whom have more useful things to say on the subject]

It's unusual that I hit random blogs and run across information about my old school district, but it happened yesterday.

Clear Creek alum Miriam gave me all kinds of updates on how the new school construction - or lack thereof - is going. As you may be able to surmise by the 'lack thereof,' it is reportedly not going well:

For the last 15 years, the city government and the Clear Creek ISD school board have been fighting with the city residents to build a high school on land that is already owned by the school district. Indeed, the city’s residents are so opposed to building a new high school that each time it’s voted upon, the vote against is almost 90%. We’ve built over a dozen elementary schools in the last 15 years, two or three junior high schools, and absolutely zero high schools. However, the three high schools that are currently used to house the area’s 50-some-odd-thousand high school students are literally overflowing. Three of the local junior high schools that were adjacent to each of the three high schools were turned into Ninth Grade centers for freshman, while three new Junior high schools were built somewhere else.

She puts forth a pretty seering indictment of Texas being anti-education, but I'm not sure that's the case. But this sort of thing is certainly indicative of something wrong. The high schools are approaching 5,000 students in schools originally built for half that. But only recently did a bond pass to actually get the fourth high school built that they've been talking about since I was about to enter high school, twelve years ago.

I think there are two related problems. The first problem is an assumption that education is automatic. As long as you sit the kids in school for a certain number of hours a week, they'll do just as good as the parents did or better. It doesn't matter so much what kind of facilities the school has or teachers as much as they go to a school with a solid state rating. No effort required on their part. And if anything goes wrong, it can't be their fault or the kids' fault, so they'll duke it out with a teacher. They rely on the school to educate their kids, but then often treat the system as though it is an obstacle to their kids education.

I exaggerate, but a lot of the country does seem to be drinking this kool-aid that convinces us that education is something that someone else takes care of. Part of the reason that there is such a rat-race to get into the posh suburbs is so that they can get into the best schools. It never even occurs to them that a student with more involved parents at run-down Galveston Ball High School has as good a chance or better at getting a good education as a student at posh Deer Park High School. Besides, they're so busy working to pay down the inflated mortgages and property taxes that they don't have time to get involved. Working so hard, ironically, so that their kids can get a better education.

They're surprised when their kid's C average won't get them in to the University of Texas, even though that's where mommy and daddy went.

The second issue is an obnoxious Not-In-My-Back-Yard mentality. They want more access to the city and other parts of town, but everyone's an environmentalist when it comes to expanding roads near where they are. More schools is good, just as long as it doesn't inconvenience them. A better education shouldn't require more schools that require building that inconvenience their lives.

This isn't a Clear Creek ISD thing and it's not a Texas thing, it's a suburban thing. It's one of the main things that I really don't like about suburbanites and even much of the upper middle class in general.

A couple things worth noting that might account from my slightly different perspective from Miriam's:

1. She went to Clear Creek and I went to Clear Lake. While my upper middle class tag would apply to Clear Lake, it may not to Clear Creek. I do think that by-and-large the economic differences between the two are exaggerated (even by myself, at times). Seabrook, where I'm from, is demographically more similar to Clear Creek towns than other Clear Lake ones. But Seabrook and League City are more similar to Clear Lake than they are to the urban Third Ward or rural Texas City. People on the Clear Lake divide are more likely to commute to the city, though most people who live out there also work out there.
2. From what I gather she's moved around more than I have, so she has more compare-and-contrast opportunities than I do. Other than the part of Idaho where I'm living now, I have little experience outside of Texas. But the similarities and differences between Idaho locales and Texas ones suggest that it's dangerous to paint all of either with a single brush.
3. My views on all this neatly dovetail with my more general views on class. Too neatly, really. One should acknowledge one's biases as openly as possible.
4. I lived in the Clear Lake area for sixteen years prior to jetting off to UH, various parts of Houston, and Jersey Village. I probably have more loyalty, disdain, and overall stronger feelings for the old neighborhood than do most. Then again, I don't live there now so this entire subject is more academic to me than it is to a traveller like Miriam.

More on the subject:
Hometown Friends 2004 (2/5/2004)
The New School (2/10/2004)
The Suburbs & Education Stratification (2/15/2005)

blogHOUSTON has been following the fallout from a Houston Chronicle editorial that suggested that Florida's new laws regarding child molesters is too tough.

While there's outrage abound by the editorial itself, I don't actually think it too far gone. Less so cause it's mean to child molesters and more because if it doesn't work then I wouldn't want to pay the $4 million pricetag. That's not to say that I agree with the editorial, but there may be some legitimate questions there.

I do, however, have one question. The Chronical editorial board has suggested that it would be more effective to have better (or more) probation officers with more tools. Fair enough, but didn't they just say a few months ago that probation laws are too tough and that they should focus on educational programs? So by combining those two editorials, are they not suggesting that child molesters just need to be sent to night school?

Now that is scary. Disregard second paragraph.