Blathr Wayne Lorentz

The Main Street Square fountains are being tested again. These have been broken for the entire year Iʼve lived in Texas, and who knows for how long before that.

Such a nice, elegant French Quarter courtyard. Or, at least it would be if the Hotel Saint Marie didnʼt use it as a smoking lounge. I had to wait five minutes for the drifting smoke to clear to get a nice picture of the fountain.

Honestly, though, this is among the least of the Hotel Saint Marieʼs sins. Never again.

Rome is renowned as the city of fountains. Itʼs my understanding that Kansas City also considers itself a city of fountains. Houston, on the other hand, is a city of dead fountains.

When I last lived in Houston, the city had recently spent millions sprucing up a slice of downtown, filling it with imaginative fountains, and declaring it “The Cotswold District” in sign and literature.

Ignoring the absurdity of the cognomen, what happened after that is a typical Houston story. Nobody maintained the fountains. Today, there are over a dozen of these bulky, trash-filled wrecks beached across half as many city blocks.

I wrote to my city council representative asking what happened, and didnʼt get a response. I guess he doesnʼt need my vote.

I asked some of the locals about it, and they told me that fountains downtown are a bad idea from the start because homeless people will just use them for bathing. OK, I understand that. But the problem isnʼt the fountains, itʼs that youʼre not taking care of your homeless people. Homeless people sleep on the streets, too. Does that mean we shouldnʼt have streets anymore?

A quiet evening at Main Street Square in downtown Houston.

Itʼs quiet because the Main Street Square fountains are broken. And have been for at least several months, if not longer.

Have I mentioned that Houston is a city where everything is broken all the time?