The City of Houston turns 180 years old today, and a local TV station is soliciting viewers to name something about the city - past or present - that they think is really cool.
I suppose there are lots of things I could have listed, but the first thing that came to my mind was the Southwestern Bell Yellow Pages. Not the listings inside, the cool illustrations on the cover.
Each new edition brought an updated view of downtown, each with remarkable, and often funny details. You could literally spend hours poring over Russell Cushman's artwork looking for how many more kittens were blocking traffic this year, or was that really a spaceship on the banks of the bayou.
I had always assumed that these Yellow Pages covers were one of things that made Houston unique, but I just learned today that the artist did similar work for the Dallas Yellow Pages. Now, that was a real disappointment.
I always enjoyed those.
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