HARD SUMMER I N H-TOWN

Houstonians know all about disasters. We saw what happened in New York. But when the pandemic came, we did what much of America did: Ignore it until it’s too late

- Shannon Sims

It’s Friday night in Houston: 9:30, 102F, 90% humidity, and the patio at Flava Restaurant & Bar is packed. Friends are sucking on hookahs. Waitresses hustle by in booty shorts. Someone climbs on a picnic table to twerk.

The place looks overcapacity. Owner Louis Watson knows it. Houston Covid Task Force Chief Keith Kennedy knows it. And judging from the expression on his face when Kennedy rolls down his tinted window, the valet knows it, too.

In the rearview mirror, I watch the valet hustle over to the bouncer, who calls Watson over from his perch on a railing beside the DJ. By the time Kennedy, who’s also the chief arson investigator for the Houston Fire Department, has parked and made his way to the entrance, Watson is outside with a light blue folder spread open on the hood of a matte black Jeep Wrangler.

When the pandemic started, Watson was a young Black businessman coming into his own, with a corner property on the Richmond Strip, not far from the moneyed Galleria Area and near Polekatz and La Bare, two of Houston’s better-known strip clubs. His main concern now is no longer just beating the competition—it’s also avoiding being shut down or fined into extinction by the tangle of rules officials have deemed necessary to keep Houstonians from dying of Covid-19.