Football fandom touches down in Space City for February’s Super Bowl. But the big game lasts only a few hours in a city full of grit and roughneck charm. Here’s where to go once you leave the stadium.
DIRTIER THAN DIRTY SIXTH
Forty-three years ago, Hunter S. Thompson traveled to Houston to cover Super Bowl VIII, which pitted the Miami Dolphins against the Minnesota Vikings. Thompson spent a week searching for cocaine, hanging out at a “sporadically violent strip joint” called the Blue Fox and screaming fiery predawn sermons from a balcony at downtown’s Hyatt Regency. The gonzo-journalism pioneer later described the city as “a cruel, crazy town on a filthy river in East Texas with no zoning laws and a culture of sex, money and violence…a shabby, sprawling metropolis ruled by brazen women, crooked cops and super-rich pansexual cowboys.”
Houston hosts the Super Bowl again on February 5. Thompson is no longer alive, but the cruel, crazy town he described most certainly is. Houston today is bigger, richer and weirder than ever. It still has no zoning laws— allowing a culture of sex, money and violence to thrive— and the rivers (they’re called bayous down here) are still filthy.
You wouldn’t know any of this from the Convention and Visitors Bureau, which has been engaged in a decades-long propaganda campaign to clean up Houston’s image. The city spent $1.5 billion to build a new downtown dining and entertainment district, expedited for Super Bowl LI. Tourists who stay there will find themselves in a glittering ghetto of chain hotels and chain restaurants, all within walking distance.
This story is from the January/February 2017 edition of Playboy Magazine US.
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This story is from the January/February 2017 edition of Playboy Magazine US.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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