galveston oh galveston

Tom and I have been in Galveston the past couple of days. We loved it.

We did note how much our respective families-of-origin—-mine from Manhattan, his hardcore Chicago--would hate the tacky, ramshackle, moist and not particularly lovely island city. This is no place for sophisticates or poseurs.

The beaches on the Gulf of Mexico are not breathtaking. The water is warm and gentle but murky and brown and surf warning flags include one for “venomous organisms” in the water—mostly jellyfish.


And Galveston evidently lacks zoning laws, like Houston, so the collection of buildings lining busy Seawall Boulevard is a cockamamie hodgepodge with no attempt at beauty, unless you count the fake volcano on top of the Rainforest Café, which spews fire on an unpredictable schedule. It scared the crap out of me one night as I lounged on our hotel room balcony.

Once a wealthy port city to rival San Francisco, Galveston was all but wiped out in 1900 by a giant hurricane—a natural disaster unrivaled in our nation until Katrina blew through. Galveston rebuilt, but the Houston Ship Channel, which went through various stages of widening and deepening, siphoned off much of Galveston’s ship traffic and therefore wealth over the decades.

Galveston floundered through decades of casinos and crime and decay in the moist sea air, and then, in the 1980s, when Texas was shaking off the meltdown of the oil industry by investing in tourism, the island revived and now it’s a popular family vacation destination (it appears no one visits the island in summer with fewer than four children) and cruise port.


The last time I visited Galveston was the mid 1990s and I expected to see it changed, riding the wave of prosperity that has luxurified everything it washed over. But from the looks of it, new hotel development along Galveston’s seawall (built to protect the city from a repeat of the 1900 disaster) ended around 1989, unless you count the prefab chain hotels popping up here and there. Residential development is somewhat more robust, with high-end developments such as Beachtown, rising from the sands. (Beachtown is designed by the same folks, and along the same lines, as the planned communities Seaside and Rosemary Beach in Florida.) We’ll see what happens now that the bottom has dropped out of our crazy housing market.


Across the narrow island, on Galveston Bay, The Strand (modeled after London’s Strand) survived the storm and now the lovely iron-front buildings house souvenir stores of the most craptacular nature. Put down the elephant made of seashells and walk away. Nobody needs it, nobody wants it. Streets of surrounding neighborhoods are studded with spectacular Victorian historic homes and mansions, some open for touring.

We mostly bummed around the beach side. Our hotel, the San Luis Resort, has a crazy pool with grottos and waterfalls and a slide and a cool bar--poolside and swim-up--and enough children to populate one of the smaller nearby islands. We spent some time there, some time walking the long beaches, some time eating greasy seafood and more time than we intended in a semi-ersatz biker bar with a view of the beach and some of the most godawful loud cheezepop music we’ve ever suffered through. We stopped in for a quick drink and snack and hours later had new friends and a fuzzy view of things.

Galveston is hot and humid and it has many smells, among them the whang of eccentricity. It is island people and beach people and Texans and historians (the Galveston Historical Foundation is strong and motivated), all iconoclasts. It’s an urban beach town, a ripe concoction of seaside and industry. It's a tourist destination but without the sheen that has polished the authenticity right off a lot of places. (Think about Antiques Roadshow--when you strip the original finish and redo a piece of furniture, it might look prettier in a superficial sense but it loses much of its soul.)


Galveston reeks of soul. I might could live there. I might be just eccentric enough.

P.S. Good luck getting the song out of your head.