The City Through Food

This is Noah using Travis's account. I can't remember my password for my gmail account and he very generously let me use his account to do my assignment.

Houston has always been a place that emphasizes community. In a city so spread out people naturally gravitate towards each other despite. It's funny how that works. My communities in Houston have, strangely (and i like to think uniquely), have always been formed by the restaurants I eat at. My mom loved cooking, and food, and people, so restaurants were a natural place of happiness for her. She made friends so easily by the time we left a restaurant she'd know the cooks. Two diners stick out in my mind the most, Jenni's Noodle House and the West Alabama Ice House. As a young child I frequented the West Alabama Ice House with my parents on friday nights.
Why would a sub 7 year old be going to an Ice House on friday nights? Free. Hotdogs. It was at the West Alabama Ice House that I enjoyed my first true community. I played basketball with other kids like me taking advantage of the free food, I played my first game of poker on an electronic poker machine, I listend to my first live music, and I learned how to deal with people of all different backgrounds. Treat them the same. It's the best lesson to learn early on, because when you're a kid hanging around an Ice House for free food you really don't know any better than that. I knew the man that grilled the hot dogs, and the lady behind the counter (bar) and the people that owned the place. It's places like these that are why i love Houston. In Houston people allow you to be yourself. A 6 year old can go to an Ice House every friday and receive his free hot dogs and a few words of wisdom. He is allowed to grow and take on the ideals of the city. The ideals of community, and kindness, and the celebration of human diversity. Those are the ideals I learned every friday at the Ice House. The city of Houston was always presented to me through restaurants and the Ice House was always an open forum of learning. From lessons in toughness received by getting knocked over on the concrete basketball court, to lessons of humanity from watching the owner giving his hot dogs to the homeless. The Ice House was a celebration of the city itself. 

But as I grew older we frequented the Ice House on west alabama less and less. It was soon replaced by Jenni's Noodle House. JNH resides on shepherd street and appropriately shepherd is what the Noodle House and it's owners always were to me. The restaurant is a cozy little vietnamese place that you wouldn't know was there unless you were looking for it. The food is cheap and the portions are big their dumplings hold the answers to the universe. It's over those dumplings, or noodles, or rice that I pondered my coming of age questions, and around me, the patrons of the restaurant and the owners themselves always held the answers. It was at Jenni's Noodle House that the original idea for the Stefan Schwartz Pancreatic Research fund was hatched, and at Jenni's Noodle House where my mother's rehearsal dinner was had, and it was at Jenni's Noodle House where my first birthday as a highschool student was had and at Jenni's Noodle House where I learned what it meant to work.

The owners are just as special as the place itself. Overly friendly, obsessively detail oriented and hard working in the extreme only watching them would leave an impact on anybody. Getting to know them cemented my foundation. Everything I learned from the Ice House could have been filed away and forgotten if not for Jenni's. The restaurant breaths Houston and embodies it. It showed me that the values I learned as a child are not to be forgotten or written off as impossibilities but rather ways to succeed in the world. Without the city, without its restaurants, without the people you meet there world views could not be shaped as they are today. The idea of multi-cultural, multi-economical, multi-cerebral would be just that, ideas. They wouldn't exist as part of our realities on a day to day basis. That is why restaurants are the true melting pots of any city, places where people of all backgrounds and races can come together jovially. Places where the ideals of all peoples can be spread and listened to and accepted. "All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door." 
-Albert Camus  

"Houston's Awakening"

The city of Houston has long been known as a city of industry, business, etc. For a while, it really was a destination for these purposes, and almost nothing else. Although Houston has maintained its industrial title, it has become a more complete city throughout time. A major addition to the cities vast attractions was the construction of the Reliant Stadium/Park.



The Reliant Park brought along with it much more than just a football field, the Rodeo, and various other sporting events. It brought with it a sense of the "American culture" and community. Instead of attracting the people of the city for business meetings, it invites everyone to enjoy the vibrance of the city through public sporting events. These events create a sense of community along with an almost city-wide "bonding" experience where folks from all over the world get to exist in unity for whatever period of time. The Reliant Park represents an almost "liveliness" of the city rather than viewing Houston strictly as a polluted city with no heart.

Chinatown, A Peak into Corruption

Roman Polanski’s renowned film Chinatown calls attention to the role of corruption and reflects the corruption of Los Angeles in the 1930s and 40s. Higher up and millionaire Noah Cross controversially and illegally diverts water to dry farm lands outside of Los Angeles for self-prosperity. Meanwhile, Private Investigator Mr. Gittes searches for the killer of Mr. Mulwray who opposed new water department policies and later he finds out Cross killed Mulwray to keep him quiet about Cross’ plans in the hill country.

            In Mr. Gittes’ investigation he trespasses on the Department of Water and Power land to find out about the inner-workings of the department. He discovers the department is secretly dumping water at night. Two gang looking men approach him and threaten to cut of his entire nose off if he returns. (Upon further research I found that Polanski cameos in a role as one of the threatening thugs.) While the men do not permanently scar Mr. Gittes they violently cut his nose forcing him to have to wear a large white bandage for the majority of the movie. This bandage is visually distracting throughout the movie, which symbolizes the glaring violence of corruption that cannot be escaped. The bandage also serves to reflect Gittes’ personal improvement on the case. By the time the bandage is removed he begins to find out more details in his case.

            In the infamous scene when Gittes slaps Mrs. Mulwray repeatedly to gain information about the woman, we learn she secretly hides the woman her husband had an affair with. More twisted, this woman is Mrs. Mulwray’s daughter and sister. Noah Cross, Mrs. Muwray’s father, raped his daughter at a young age producing an incestual daughter. The idea that Mr. Cross, someone with so much power and influnce, is so personally corrupt reflects the larger city of Los Angeles. In the hierarchy of power and money many leaders were corrupt and this trickles down through their families like it does to Mrs. Mulwray. The widespread dispersal of profanity affects the larger community creating the sense of citywide corruption by the end of the movie. This message is supported by the darkness and Film Noir style of the picture.

            The film ends with the murder of Mrs. Mulwray as she tries to escape the police and more importantly her father who wants custody of their daughter. After the police shoot her driving away her head falls onto the steering wheel honking the car horn making for an overly dramatic ending. This last scene takes place in Chinatown, or the “red-light district,” and as Gittes tries to help the daughter one of his men tell him “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown!” His partner is telling him that Gittes cannot change the way things are. He is commenting that no matter what Mr. Gittes does corruption will continue and that Chinatown is everywhere. Mr. Gittes is only one many but he represents the helplessness of everyone.     

For more Film Noir titles: http://www.imdb.com/genre/film_noir