Red Flags: Houston Edition

Houston has friendly residents, great Tex-Mex, huge highways and cheap gasoline. Affordable housing and warm weather keep the population booming and there’s no shortage of beautiful women in the Bayou City. But even some of the beautiful women in Houston have their issues, so we’ve decided to lay them out right here…

She’s from Dallas

It may seem strange to start a Houston red flag by referring to a woman from Dallas, but just wait until you meet a girl who moved to Houston from Dallas and you’ll understand. She’s the one wearing heels in the produce section at Randall’s complaining about the lack of selection of organic strawberries. She doesn’t judge a guy based on the quality of his car. She judges him based on the quality of his 2^nd car (it should be a low mileage, luxury SUV) and the zip code of his investment properties. She grew up in an affluent Dallas suburb and used all of her parents’ money on high grade heroin, or if she couldn’t stand needles, she just settled for strong doses of youth soccer and Young Life. She claims she moved to Houston for her career (she works the M-A-C counter at Nordstrom), but really she moved here to try and snag a sugar daddy in the oil industry. She thinks Houston is too muggy, poorly planned, and full of illegal aliens and that’s frustrating mostly because it’s going to be hard for us to win that argument. We may not be able to defend Houston against those insults, but we’ll put a red flag sticker on her butt once she turns around and stops bitching about those strawberries.

She owns a house

Houses are cheap enough in Houston to attract a lot of idiots who don’t need them. This includes a ton of single women who thought a teacher’s salary and a Gallery Furniture sectional sofa were the only two prerequisites for home ownership. Renting was just throwing money down the drain, while buying was a foolproof investment that signaled her official entry into adulthood (or so her parents reassured her). Nevermind that she bought a starter house in a neighborhood that wouldn’t impress a home owner in Juarez. And, her yard looks like the downtrodden grassplots where the drug hoppers get their re-ups in The Wire. She’s not looking for a boyfriend, she’s looking for a live-in security guard and free lawn service.

She works at a golf course or a health club

Houston’s golf courses and health clubs are like job placement centers for good-looking women who are otherwise unemployable. These are also places where men make foolish decisions to date women based solely on their appearance. If they looked a little closer, they’d notice why working at a go-nowhere, low-paying job at a primarily male recreation facility is a red flag.

These women are too bad at math to be waitresses and either too conservative (or too uncoordinated) to be strippers, so they end up driving golf carts and teaching spin classes. Just think, if she had grown up on MLK Drive instead of Memorial Drive she might be hugging the pole at Treasures instead of hugging the turn in a beer cart on the 14^th at TPC Woodlands.

She went to the University of Houston

She worked so hard to get good grades and stay out of trouble in high school and then she threw it all away by going to college in a ghetto.  The 5^th Ward is where we go to get our purple drank, not where we go to get college diplomas. We know that Rice University was certainly out of the question, but even HCC would have been a better choice.

She wants us to be impressed that U of H is the most diverse college in Texas, but being the most diverse college in Texas is like being the classiest resident of Oklahoma. She brags that she minored in Spanish and we tell her that’s good because that’s who she’ll be competing with for jobs. She disagrees and lets us know that she majored in hospitality services (or something like that) and that she’s well prepared to enter the workforce. At that point we have to agree, as we’re sure her transcript that’s full of courses like Crack Slanging 101 and The Art of Trick Turning  will catch the eye of middle managers everywhere.

She doesn’t know the chorus to Wanna Be A Baller

Houston isn’t exactly a hot bed for rap talent. So when one of H-Town’s finest drops a hit like Wanna Be a Baller, we embrace it to the fullest and demand that 97.9 The Box plays that jam until we’re tired of it (which isn’t until 3 years later). In fact, everybody who was anybody in Houston back in 1999 knew the whole song. To this day, we get a little excited and crunked up when we we hear it on our iPods.

We’re not expecting you to love DJ Screw, or get fired up about UGK, or go bananas for Paul Wall, but you have to show some love for a song with lyrics like: “we’re grooving down to Luby’s, watching all the movies, drop the top it’s cotton, and you know I’m in a jacuzzi.”

Red flag exemption granted on this if you arrived in Space City after 2001 or are over 40 years old. Bonus green flag points if you know which part of that lyric is technically incorrect.

She roots for the away team at Astros games

The average female Astros fan shows up in the 2^nd inning, leaves in the 7^th, cheers only for home runs, and considers her hotdog and Blue Bell ice cream to be the highlight of the evening. But at least…let us repeat…at least she’s rooting for the home team. Now that the Astros have royally sucked for a few years and women can no longer fantasize about Biggio and Bagwell, it’s become en vogue for Houston women to act like they’re fans of other teams. They think they look cool in their Pirates hat or their Kansas City Royals jersey, but quite frankly they’re embarrassing themselves and their city. No, we don’t give a damn if you think the Florida Marlins have cuter uniforms or a better chance of winning the world series. If you were born in Houston, you must support the Stros at Minute Maid Park – or you’ll be leaving the Juice Box with a red flag.

She considers Galveston her go-to beach destination

Galveston is a perfectly acceptable destination for teenage spring breakers and people trying to escape the stench of Pasadena. Renting out a dumpy beach house and then cruising Crystal Beach with a case of beers in the backseat and a beer can on each windshield wiper was a favorite past time of ours, too. But at some point we woke up and realized that, damn, those beaches look shitty, and damn, that water isn’t even close to blue.

BP could’ve dumped their entire load 300 yards from the sea wall and we wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. As an adult, you realize that Galveston is the beach destination for women who accept mediocrity.

She doesn’t like chips and salsa

Chips and salsa is like crack for Houston’s middle class. Put a bowl of Fritos and a bottle of Pace picante in front of a family of four in Katy and you’d think something really valuable to white people was at the bottom of the chip bowl. Kobayashi would be impressed with the pace at which Houstonians can take chips and salsa to the dome. Which is why we’re always a little put off when we meet a Houston girl who isn’t a big fan of chips and salsa. How did such an integral part of our tex-mex culture completely miss her? Is she a strict calorie counter? Can she not handle spicy foods? Does she really think pita chips and hummus is an adequate substitute? If the answer is yes to any of those, that’s a red flag.

She goes to see the pop music acts at the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo

When you ask a girl who she wants to see at the Houston Rodeo and she says something like Enrique Iglesias or Maroon 5, you know you need to walk away. The Rodeo is about chili cookin’, bull ridin’, calf scramblin’, mutton bustin’, dip spittin’, and boot scootin’. You drink beer, praise God (for blessing Texas), and curse Obama (for ruining it). It’s a country ass event, for country ass people, who like listening to country ass music. You go there to see guys like George Strait, Alan Jackson, Clint Black, Tim McGraw and Jason Aldean.Now where the heck do you think a couple little sissies like Enrique Iglesias and Adam Levine fit on the Rodeo schedule? They don’t.

But somehow, every year, some group of pansies ends up on the Rodeo docket. Why? Because there are enough dumb women in Houston to buy all the tickets. They fill up Reliant Arena (R.I.P. Astrodome) acting like boy-crazy schoolgirls who got a little too hopped up on Pepsi before the show. We think that instead of holding up goofy neon signs and Bic lighters they should have to spend the evening holding up red flags.

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