Comments (0) Best Reminder of Houston's Industrial Roots - 2002
Turning Basin observation deck
There was a time several decades ago when Houstonians bore their city's brute industrialism with pride rather than shame. We bragged about the black gold we refined. On the stench of this process, we just told sneering outsiders, "That's the smell of money, buddy." Those days are long gone, as the forlorn observation deck at the highest navigable point on the Houston Ship Channel attests. No more do we take our children to watch the action on the wharves, as the massive cranes unload the produce of America's breadbasket onto freighters destined for God knows where. Seven out of ten westside Houstonians, to hazard a wild guess, probably couldn't even find the headwaters of that bayou-on-'roids we call the Ship Channel without navigational aids, and that's a pity. As conventionally unpretty as it is, since 1914 it's been the very soul of our city, and it's so ugly it takes on a kind of fearsome beauty all its own.
