What the fuck is wrong with Corpus Christi?

[eleanorigby]

@Darth Nader

Corpus also has the deadest shopping mall I’ve ever seen, and I remember Crossroads Mall in Boulder. It’s right next to the second most abandoned mall I’ve ever been to. What a mess.

.

I remember Cross Roads mall! It was a shell of nothing in the 1980s–please tell me it no longer exists.

Corpus Cristi sounds sad. Too bad–you’d think with the beach, there’d be some tourist traffic.

[robby]

@Little Plastic Ninja

Oh God.

I went to high school in a small town just north of there. Corpus Christi was where we went (mid to late 90s) because it was The Big City and More Fun than Aransas Pass.

It will come as no damn surprise that I moved out of that cesspit the very morning after high school graduation. The car was packed when I put on my cap and gown, and at 8 am the morning after the graduation lock-in I was on the road to Austin. I’ve returned a few times to visit friends and try to convince them to leave, leave, leave. They never do. I think there’s something in that place that ties and devours the soul, bite by bite.

Sunrise Mall was always (read: since 1992) a sad place, Padre Staples was rather better, but for anyone who knows Austin, it’s like Northcross Mall now. Sunrise was like that before; I understand it’s even worse now.

I’d gone back to Port Aransas to take some friends to the beach I’d remembered so well. That was about six years ago…you could feel the blight even then, even if you’d never been there. It inspired some interesting conversation:

“I think this is bleak.”
“No no, this is just grim. Bleak is a few miles up, trust me.”
“My God, this land is so… it looks like a 3D renderer without anything built yet.”

And the beach itself… I can imagine going to the beach in Communist Russia, if Communist Russia had beaches, was like that. Grey skies, grey water, grey sand, brown scudge kicked up from a storm out to sea and stinking up the beach. We threw it at each other.

When I went last summer for my high school reunion… urgh. It was worse than I had remembered. Everything seems to be disintegrating. The aquarium was worth going to – the dolphin show and the birds-of-prey show were good examples of their type, though the aquarium’s exhibits pretty much haven’t changed to my memory.

The whole city just reminds me of an old woman with Alzheimer’s in a nursing home with a family that never visits. Tired, failing, waiting to die.

I’m originally from Houston, and only made it to Corpus Christi twice in my life–both times because the Navy sent me. (It had the nearest Navy base to Houston.) Anyway, I agree–what a bleak place.

[robby]

@ralph124c

I have been to the gulf coast of Texas, and the beaches are really crummy. The water is dirty, and the beaches are not clean. Why is this so? Are the beach towns being run down because of the hurricane issue?

The water is often dirty because of the “tar,” washed-up residue from off-shore oil rigs.

When I was a kid, I always used to get black spots on the soles of my feet that you couldn’t wash off. They took days to wear off. I have a Frisbee that still has tar flecks on it from 20+ years ago.

It seems to be getting better, though. On our last visit to Galveston, I don’t remember seeing any tar at all on the beaches.

[El_Cid_Viscoso]

@eleanorigby

I remember Cross Roads mall! It was a shell of nothing in the 1980s–please tell me it no longer exists.

Oh it’s gone gone gone.

[pravnik]

@InLucemEdita

Pravnik. Paging Poster Pravnik.
Please report to the Pit to tell us how people who live in Texas actually like their shitty hotels, pathetic cultural attractions, and filthy beaches. And please remind us to just stuff it we can’t say something nice about the place.

And why would I do that, exactly? Corpus Christi has some shitty hotels, the beaches are pretty shitty even by Texas standards, and Whataburger is not a dining option unless it’s two in the morning, everything else is closed, and you’re at least moderately intoxicated. Nothing particularly bad about the OP as far as I can see.

[whenvel]

@Darth Nader

I drove down the street a few blocks one night to get dinner at the world famous Whataburger flagship “by the bay”-- Ordered three burgers, every single one was prepared wrong… 0 for 3 at the best there is?

I don’t have enough experience with most of Corpus to have a dog in this fight, but I have eaten at the Flagship Whataburger ‘By the Bay.’ It was filthy, full of unsavory characters, and I had to go back to the counter twice to get my order fixed. But the BBQ Cheddar Burger was out of this world.

If you’ve been a Texan for any length of time, this can’t be your first experience with the customer service juggernaut that is Whataburger. Flagship location or no, if I get one correctly prepared burger out of three, I high five my buddy like I just won the lottery.

I can’t count the times I’ve been left at the drive through for 15 minutes or gotten a burger with extra onions when I ordered no onions or ordered lunch for myself and gotten a credit card receipt for $35… I’ve sworn never to return to Whataburger more times than I’ve eaten at other fast food places.

If they just didn’t make such a damn good burger…

[Bridget_Burke]

@Audrey Levins

I grew up in Corpus Christi. The title of the OP made me laugh out loud.

That town sucks. It’s flat, dirty, brown, smelly, and broke. The refineries stink and so does the bay half the time. It has a truly pathetic downtown area–lots of historical potential and zero interest, apparently, in revitalizing it–and the beach is covered in tar and seaweed half the time. You can’t see your feet in the Gulf once the water reaches your ankles.

There are a few things I like about the city–I grew up there so I do have some fond memories–and mainly they are sentimental in value. Nothing you could advertise in a travel brochure.

I went to school in Austin and now live in San Antonio. Both cities I love. I meet people from CC all the time; we call ourselves “refugees.” Seriously. The joke is that anybody with half a brain leaves that place behind as soon as they get half a chance.

If I were to visit Corpus Christi anytime soon–and I’ve thought about it b/c my SO is from Connecticut and has never seen my hometown–I would get a room in one of the really nice beach hotels down there, lounge by the pool, and seek out the yummy food that only locals know about. (Snoopy’s, Kiko’s, anyone?)

And I wouldn’t stay more than one or two nights, because that’s about all I could stand.

Used to have relatives in Corpus Christi (Flour Bluff, actually) but I haven’t been there in years. Even then, this Houstonian was not impressed.

I don’t see this as a Texas-bashing thread. Most Texans who can only afford an in-state vacation head to San Antonio.

[lieu]

@ralph124c

I have been to the gulf coast of Texas, and the beaches are really crummy. The water is dirty, and the beaches are not clean. Why is this so?

ralph, have you ever considered why this happens on one side of the half continent-draining Mississippi and not the other? How it decreases with distance from the delta, is tolerable by South Padre and returned to Florida-like by the Yucatan?

People are surprised it’s muddy downcurrent from the freakin’ Mississippi? Western Louisiana sand castles suck. That doesn’t change at a state border. It’s physics. Some expectations here may be a tad unreasonable or simply not thought out real well.

[peekercpa]

Well I have a branch office in Corpus and it sure seems like that city is struggling. I don’t mind going to Port A for a long weekend but if it is for longer than that then South Padre all the way. For those non Texans the difference between Port A and South Padre is the difference between MD 20/20 and a really nice Montrachet.

[El_Cid_Viscoso]

@lieu

ralph, have you ever considered why this happens on one side of the half continent-draining Mississippi and not the other? How it decreases with distance from the delta, is tolerable by South Padre and returned to Florida-like by the Yucatan?

People are surprised it’s muddy downcurrent from the freakin’ Mississippi? Western Louisiana sand castles suck. That doesn’t change at a state border. It’s physics. Some expectations here may be a tad unreasonable or simply not thought out real well.

That’s a very good point. A real “aha” moment for me, so thanks. Right now I’m calf-deep in irrigation trying to learn the lay of this land. I’m sure you remember it!

[Little_Plastic_Ninja]

@InLucemEdita

Pravnik. Paging Poster Pravnik.
Please report to the Pit to tell us how people who live in Texas actually like their shitty hotels, pathetic cultural attractions, and filthy beaches. And please remind us to just stuff it we can’t say something nice about the place.

There’s a difference, though.

“Texas is a horrible place with nobody in it but backward Creationist fundamentalist drunken ignorant gun-waving racists and we should bomb the whole place” is, well, insulting. I will get on the hatey train for that.

Corpus Christi is objectively vile, though.

@CalMeacham

I’ve never been to Corpus Christi, but I’ve been to plenty of deptressing and dying towns. Usually they die because some key industry has closed down and gone elsewhere, or disappeared altogether. If this is so in the case of Corpus Christi, what died and cut off the city’s lifeblood? Looking at the Wikipedia site doesn’t help, and the pictures make it look pretty nice. Heck, the town even has a “museum district”, which is more than I can say for most moderate-sized cities:

Corpus Christi, Texas - Wikipedia
So tell me, what’s changed?

Shrimping, for one. The gulf was a big place for all kinds of fishing, shrimping in particular in Aransas Pass (one of the few good things about the area was the tiny pink-painted, as I recall, plywood stall where we bought fresh off the boat shrimp for something like $2.99/lb.). Oysters in Rockport I think. But shrimp from the Phillipines is cheaper for the usual outsourcing reasons, so the big companies moved and the independent shrimpers have a hell of a time.

Corpus is a lot of shrimping and oil refineries and chemical plants, and somehow the oil refineries and chemical plants do not seem to bring much money to the city. What they do bring is really horrible pollution. I remember when suddenly everything in town was covered in a slight sheen of (as I recall) yellowish grit. “Nothing to worry about,” said the refineries, “nothing toxic, nothing to fear, though you might consider not starting any fires or letting your pets outside. But really everything’s fine.”

The refineries do (I think) fund the small outlying town of Tuloso-Midway well enough that they have quite a decent high school. We always grumbled about them… they were small enough that they were still considered in our same region and league for football, but they were much better funded and could afford things like new equipment and excellent coaches.

There are museums and there is (read: was ten years ago) quite a lively (if tiny) local arts scene with some experimental filmmakers and impressive sculptors. They do have city-wide WiFi, which is kind of neat. But it’s pretty obvious that wiki article was written by the chamber of commerce. Of COURSE they’re going to tell you it’s wonderful…

[Darth_Nader]

Thanks for the replies. One thing: I live in a small town halfway between McAllen and Harlengen. I’m not Texas bashing. I wish it was still easy and safe to take the family south for a trip, but it’s not. Laredo loses for the same reason. SPI is what we do on a weekend or day trip, so don’t fucking dare to say we’re spoiled. It’s hard to see a city rot away, but that’s what we saw.

On the plus side, I took care of some “bidness” for my wife and mother-in-law at this place (WARNING–PLAYS MUSIC).

But, here’s the deal: There are no longer any Mexican restaurants in all of downtown Corpus Christi That’s just wrong.

When one stays in a downtown hotel, on shouldn’t have to drive all the way across town just to find a plate of nachos, let alone a Botana plate, in South Fucking Texas.