Galveston ramble: Bishop's Palace and Moody Mansion

They're both worth seeing, but Bishop's Palace is more about art (in its architecture), and Moody Mansion is more about history (with its place in Galveston lore).  We are art people, and so we preferred the Palace. 

Rainy Saturday and scratch another one off the Bucket List.  I didn't feel like fighting Houston traffic in the rain, so we headed south down an empty freeway to the island.   My husband and I have both lived in greater Houston for a gazillion years but neither of us had seen this previously.  It's one of those things that fell into the "one day" category that we never got around to. 

Did I say art?!  What was this mason smoking?!  Many different unrelated styles and stones, and yet it all works together perfectly. 

We are also not very big on velvet rope, of which there is more at Moody Mansion, where the tour we took was closely led by a narrator instead of being self-guided and self-paced, as it was at the Palace.  If you have small children, the Palace is probably your better bet because they might get fidgety during the long but interesting Moody discourse. 


For all their wealth, the Moody family didn't make a huge spectacle of their living quarters.  The third floor of the mansion remains unfinished to this day because they reportedly never needed it. 

Note that you better buy your tickets early in the day for the Moody tour because it sells out. 

No interior photos to show you in this post, because photography was prohibited inside both places.  I could have spent another hour just examining the exteriors, the craftsmanship is so fascinating.

I'll go back one day for a closer look when the sun is out.  Yeah, "one day". 

GCARC de non-triomphe

Sad news from Galveston County Animal Resource Center (GCARC), which appears to be suffering a leadership crisis of the most profound type.

Back in June of this year, when I passed on the information about the shelter reaching capacity, I could not have imagined the allegations that are now surfacing.  We didn't witness anything remotely like the conditions now being described when we adopted our dog from GCARC.  The staff and volunteers at that time (3 years ago) were wonderful and the animals were well cared for (we went into the kennel areas on two occasions and saw a great deal of the facilities).  And we did our adoption BEFORE the shelter's $5 million physical expansion, back when they had far more modest accomodations. 

But we were also there BEFORE Kim Schoolcraft resigned as its leader amidst an initial wave of controversy.  Could these factors be related?

The shelter has been the subject of at least one expose' presented by KHOU.  Volunteer groups are disgusted with the status quo, and just as an army marches on its stomach, an animal shelter marches on its volunteer base, so losing them is the kiss of death. 

Discussions are underway on how to resolve the problems, possibly via out-sourcing of its management.  Whatever happens, I hope a turnaround can occur quickly, for the sake of all involved. 

Building Galveston

Every time I go to Galveston, I get a little bit depressed by its latent capacity for redevelopment, capacity which remains unrealized decade after decade. 

One of an uncountable number of beautiful old buildings boarded up. 

It contains a row of carved faces near the top, but they all look very sad. 

When I ask people why this languishing perpetuates, I've consistently gotten the standard pat answer over the past twenty years: "Galveston is controlled by a small number of wealthy families, and they don't want to see increased development because that would dilute their power and they'd lose their ability to control it."  I have no way of knowing how much truth there is to this, but that's the urban legend that tends to serve as an explanation.  Maybe someday, someone will investigate this and publish a proper analysis (hint, hint). 

Whatever the real story is, not even billionaire BOI George Mitchell can seem to truly breach it despite his phenomenal contributions over the years.  He's often credited with the famous quote "Any fool can make money in Houston, but it takes a genius to do it in Galveston", but he himself actually attributes that gem of a summation to one of his brothers. 

Anyway, it's a shame that Galveston doesn't achieve its potential.  It's a shame in the larger social context but it's also a bummer specifically for the several hundred thousand of us who live at this node, the center point between Houston and Galveston. 

Our subdivision's developer didn't pull our name out of thin air.  Sometimes I joke that our personal center of everything is in the exact middle of nowhere, but we literally are at the center of gravity of these two cities.  This is the sign at eastbound FM 518 and IH-45.  Our freeway exit (League City Parkway) is about six thousand feet south of here, which quite literally puts us in the middle.

We Clear Lakers can go either north or south for some of our extra-territorial social recreation, but in the logistical sense, it's one hell of a lot easier to head south.  There are many non-working days where I just wish I could zip out for an hour or two without an epic traffic battle.  Unless there's a holiday or special event in Galveston, it's often easy to just fly down the road and be there quickly without wasting time and energy.  If instead I go to Houston, I'm usually exhausted by the freeway fight before I even get there. 

So I did this - I went to Galveston late Sunday afternoon after getting into a mood of ,"I just want to go for a simple walk and see some stuff". 

Following our recent underwhelming ArtWalk experience, I started off around Postoffice Street, which was quite literally deserted.  I was the only patron in almost all of the stores and galleries I entered.  Not unexpectedly, most of them closed up shop by 5 p.m. on a beautiful weekend afternoon (another Galveston bonus: summertime temperatures are much cooler than in Houston).  No sense staying open if there's no one around. 

I then ambled a few blocks north to The Strand, which is where the action was - but why, I'm not entirely sure, because much of what's there seems to consist of trinket shops and places that sell ice cream and unhealthy sugary drinks. 

And of course the trinket shops are full of cheap Made-in-China clothing which is suitably oversized for fitting folks who tend to overindulge in unhealthy sugary drinks. 

Nevertheless, I found some fun in one of my favorite facets of Galveston - the historical architecture - and so I thought I'd close this contemplative with some of that.  It might not be a good idea for a day laborer to set a single toe onto the public right of way in League City, but if you're a prosperous-looking middle-aged white woman carrying a gallery shopping bag, you can spend hours jay-walking like a disoriented stoner all though the City of Galveston and the only thing anyone will do in response to this is smile and nod.  I call this photo series below "Galveston buildings all taken from approximately the same street angle using a Lumia 928 cell phone", a title intended as a nerdy nod to "More songs about buildings and food".  I'm not even going to tell you what all of these buildings are, because sometimes it's better to simply shut up and look at the art without a lot of verbal details cluttering up the experience. 

Happy rambling, with or without an epic freeway battle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Galveston ramble: ArtWalk

If you enjoy dense crowds, a party atmosphere, plus free wine and finger foods, Galveston ArtWalk might be just the ticket for you. 

Screengrabbed from the current brochure. 

But if instead your primary interest is actually art, then you might be better off choosing a less-frenetic time to wander through the heart of Galveston's historic district, a time when you can actually see what's being offered (because there won't be a massive crowd blocking your views) and hear yourself think as you ponder whether any given piece speaks to you (because the decibel level will be much lower).

Screengrab of The Strand from Wikipedia. 

My non-partying husband and I fall squarely into the latter category.  Our teenager and her best friend, not so much.  They thought last night's venue was the neatest thing since sliced bread.  But they're teenagers.

This preference question is analogous to asking why people go to church.  Some people go because they are drawn to the spirituality, and every other consideration is second.  But other people go because they are primarily interested in the social participation - the fellowship and the camaraderie - such that the spiritual component is incidental to them. 

Anyway, the four of us, two adults and two teenagers, went to ArtWalk last night for the first time - another item from the bucket list - and while I don't regret it, I doubt if we'll be doing it again. 

Prior to setting out on this adventure, we wondered why it wasn't better advertised.  I had only recently heard about it by word of mouth from a BOI.  Galveston.com and a few quasi-blogs such as this one give general descriptions of the event, but they don't really tell you much about the hours it runs or what to expect or what to do.  I suspect that they don't advertise because they don't need to advertise - if more people find out about it, the gridlocking crowds would probably get worse.

Basically the thing runs from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on the assigned dates.  You show up and find a place to park, which wasn't as difficult as I expected.  We were latecomers because we had stopped dinner at my current favorite Galveston venue which is Mosquito Café (best burger I've found anywhere in greater Houston), but street parking was still manageable.  Then you just follow the crowds and start wandering around, trying to see things or socializing, whichever your preference may be. 

So that's my take on ArtWalk, and I'll have more about Galveston's artistic offerings in future posts.