In Houston

We're in Houston for the FIRST World Robotics Championship. Never been here before. From the highway downtown Houston looks like a modern city with lots of high-rise buildings, etc, leading me to expect a city-like environment. And while it is urban, it's not much of a city in its core. Instead, it's more like a dense, highly-centralized office park, with parking decks appended to office buildings and hotels. In lots of places, you can be walking past a window and you turn and look and there are parking spaces behind the glass. That's how valuable street-level retail space is.

For eating, there are lots of expensive steakhouses where one might wine and dine a client but very few places to get, say, a sandwich, a piece of pizza, or a bowl of noodles. Praise the Lord there are food trucks that have come down to where the robot thing is happening and there are some vendors inside the convention center.

Actually, there's a very nice park area next to the convention center. But even that -- as I was told by my college buddy David who is a city councilman here -- used to be a big parking lot. They've done a lot of work to make Houston as inviting as it is. 

To be clear, I'm well aware that there's lots of great stuff and great food around Houston -- David gave us some excellent tips. I hope we are able to go check some of it out. But it ain't downtown.