Growing up in Texas, I found strip malls as natural to me as any other part of the landscape. I sort of assumed that the sprawling centers full of Best Buys and Burlingtons, stretching endlessly towards the horizon, were like any other of God’s creations: They were here before me, and they will be here long after me.
But when I moved into my first apartment in Houston, just off South Voss and Westheimer, I realized that the strip malls back home in College Station were puny compared to what Houston could build. In particular, I was fascinated by the massive two-story strip malls found throughout much of the city, even in some of the denser parts of the Inner Loop.
Take Rich-Hill Plaza on Richmond in West Houston, near the Mahatma Gandhi District. It is a little bit overstimulating, this sort of chimera of businesses cobbled together, cellphone stores and massage places, a driving school, a place to buy quinceañera dresses, an empanada restaurant. This is not a pleasant place to hang out. But there is something charming about them. In these stacked strip malls, life almost thrives the same way that volcanic vents on the ocean floor teem with bacteria…