Come along with Nick Johnson on a road trip along the Texas coast, where he uncovers the hidden gem that is Galveston. Often overshadowed by its bad reputation, Galveston is a bright spot along the Texas coast. Nick takes you on a tour of this historic island, exploring the neighborhoods, the downtown region, and the unique charm that makes life in Galveston so impressive. While there are challenges such as a lack of jobs and unaffordable housing, there is also a different tale of growth and progress that sets Galveston apart. With a rich history, a bustling downtown, and a significant port, Galveston is proving to be much more than just a tourist destination. Join Nick on this journey through Galveston, where he shares stories about about the island’s past and present, and provides a unique and refreshing perspective on a city that’s often overlooked. With vivid descriptions and insights into the culture and community, Nick Johnson’s video will leave you seeing Galveston in a new light.
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It’s just hard to get out of here yeah you remember that time you remember that time try to get you California see your parents yeah yeah and you told me it’s just hard to get off here cuz once you’re here you’re here this a lot of things to go into man yeah
That’s Eric he’s living on the streets I met him down at the gulf one day when I was in Galveston Texas it’s a big problem with this island there’s just not enough jobs and it’s expensive to live here however this is a different tale Galveston’s on its way up right now
Unlike most places in America where there aren’t enough jobs and affordable housing things are looking good here for once I have a good story to tell and I was happy about that it was day 11 on my big Texas road trip and this was my final stop along
The coast sun was out there were people all over I’d been on the Texas coast for a week and for the first time it really felt like it I was in galliston for a couple days checked the place out saw some history and some growth and of course bad stuff
Because that’s what YouTube wants bad there’s plenty of that here too but it’s time for me to put on my get up and Saddle Up and look out Beach bunnies cuz these Cowboys are in galeston Galviston oh galeston downtown galeston Texas pretty nice down here isn’t
It wonderful place right now it was just a quiet day and you can actually think not like in New Orleans uh-uh and I bet you’ve never been here so where in the Texas are we anyways well galison’s an island it’s 30 m long and 3 Mi wide there’s just over 50,000 people
Here there’s houses on the entire Island but most of the people are on the North End closer to Houston this is actually considered a Houston BB there’s a lot of history here Mister in 1837 this was the temporary capital for the Republic of Texas believe it or
Not and this was a big deal here for a long time there all these industries corporations everything was in galvaston they even called it the New York of the south in the late 1800s because of all the banking that was here this was actually the second richest city in the country per capita
For a long time yeah I know galon Texas I mean they have this big port and people would come down here from the east coast to gamble and hang out with prostitutes it was wild and wonderful back then wish I could have seen it but then the hurricane in 1900 ripped
Through here and basically ruined galvaston I mean the place was gone there were like 7,000 buildings wiped away and 10,000 people died and then after the hurricane left there were hundreds of bodies washing up on the beach every day it was terrible it was the deadliest natural disaster in US
History up to that point well the whole island was underwater so all the companies and all the people and all the momentum took off to Houston it took a long time but by the 70s and 80s this island was booming again and there was money everywhere
Everybody had jobs and rent was cheap it was great and then the ’90s came and crack hit the island it was bad bad bad here a lot of stuff closed down and all the old money left the island for Houston again God what a roller coaster right even downtown was all boarded up
Up well they finally got a hold of things but by then galvaston had a really bad reputation you may have heard about how bad galliston was back then here we are today where things have leveled out you could say galison’s booming again but you could also say that we’re just in between
Hurricanes so every time a storm comes through the place gets wrecked people leave prices drop and then people slowly start to come back again we’re currently in a people are starting to come back again phase but no matter how bad things have been here the tourists have always come
They get like 8 Mill million people a year here they come to see the history and explore the downtown and just be near the beach this is the closest beach for Houston people and Houston is the fourth biggest city in the country there’s a lot of people coming down
Here and plus galison’s a stop for the major cruise lines and they say there’s even more big cruise ships going to be stopping here one day it’s pretty clear when there’s a ship in Port there a lot of tourists wanding turn around Port of Galviston whatever that is looks like a big deal
This port right here is pretty important for the State of Texas there’s a lot more coming in here than just old drunk people this port brings in 3 billion a year and provides 13,000 jobs that’s a lot I’m going to bet most of those people live in the Houston BBS and then
Commute down here 30 minutes each way right where the cruise ships getting ready to leave lot of oldtimers heading off to Florida I like downtown Galviston a lot this is what they called The Strand it’s this little small Charming little quirky area in downtown it all has a very small town vibe to it downtown galon has shopping and places to eat and drink and explore some of the history of the island there’s a
Lot of that ton of History here a lot of galon reminds me of a way cleaner version of New Orleans anything’s cleaner than New Orleans that place is nasty but I guess it’s kind of hard to justify investing in anything along the gulf since it’s all going to disappear in a
Hurricane one day right they say that Marty gr began here 10 years after New Orleans I get that Vibe they have a parade here just like in nins and there’s still beads everywhere from the last time they had one still beads hanging up that looks like a good party to
Me downtown was really bad 30 years ago so they’ve done a good job here cleaning the place up tourists want to come back more the only problem is jobs it’s not that type of downtown some government jobs and some health care and some low-paying tourism jobs that’s just about it if you lived
Here you’d probably have to drive an hour up to Houston every day for job security so there really isn’t much of a homeless problem in downtown Galviston oh but they’re here on the island this McDonald’s has so many loiterers that they put up traffic cones to block the cars go around everybody go
To the other driveway the bums have preceden here most of the homeless people hang out down along the water and sleep under those peers I talked to one of galison’s homeless when I was here his name’s Eric we met him earlier my buddy Rick and I
Saw him sitting out on the grass in the park so we popped by for a few where you staying I haven’t me I haven’t seen you in a long time I thought you had died or gone to jail or the hospital I’m just hanging out right out here on the
Street Eric what’s the hard thing about being down here here and and being homeless what’s the hardest thing to live with down here oh there’s plenty things but uh just getting on your feet it’s hard it’s hard to get on your feet you know when I first met you you
Did a lot of work at my house you doing a lot of construction work are you still doing that kind of stuff or you out of it I haven’t I haven’t been to work in a while man I’m not feeling all that well you know yeah I understand Hey listen if I
Give you if I give you some money you promise me you’ll get some lunch I don’t want to I know you’re going to go buy beer later that’s fine but if I give you somebody you we get you some food yes please yeah yes yes sir you can understand why there’s so
Many people here who are so broke it’s just so unaffordable in Galviston right now they call it an island of renters Rick told me that two out of three houses on the island now are either short or long-term rentals damn where we are right now is what locals would call the Galviston
Ghetto they called this area New Jack City in the 90s when crack waged its war on this place but come on this isn’t that bad Hurricane Ike came through in 2008 and wiped away a lot of the blight kind of clean the place of whatever was left
Over from the old crack days that doesn’t happen often right a hurricane making things better I saw the same thing in buxi Mississippi a lot of their ghettos were erased by Hurricane too even though it might look a little rough there’s little lowincome housing here all this stuff we’re looking at
It’s like $1,500 a room not for the house for a bedroom an apartment here is like two grand I mean we’re on an island not a lot of options not a lot of good paying jobs either a lot of the lower class Works in tourism and those jobs don’t set you up
For a chance to start a family here so they just plot along renting on the island working for the man there’s still a lot of crime and drugs here but not like it was even 15 years ago I kept asking Rick where’s the bad side of town come on show me the real
Hoods he was like this is it good for them right but for a bad neighborhood this isn’t all that bad I’d say and I think you would say that too a big chunk of homes on the island are considered historical most of that’s down by downtown they call it East End super
Neat blocks that go on on for a long time there’s like 5050 blocks of this I was surprised that a lot of this is still in pretty good condition I mean there’s been hurricanes and huge fires on the island in the past these houses are about $600,000
Each and there’s a bunch of them for sale a lot of this is older whiter wealthier people than what’s on the west side of the island that we saw earlier a lot of these houses are bought up by investors who turn them back to their original selves sometimes people live in them but
More and more they’re turning these into Ryals too like something like that that’d be pretty cheap think somebody’s going to swoop that up and fix it up and then turn it into a rental unit probably for 1,500 bucks a room that’s the state of America these days
The rich get richer and everyone else eats cheeseburgers I guess they got to recoup their investment Insurance here is a pain in the butt and the historical district has really super high standards even down to little details like check this out you have nice updated historic homes then you
Come to one that clearly needs some work I’m telling if somebody hasn’t done it yet they’re going to fix this thing up and overcharge the lower class to live in it you know all this stuff’s haunted there’s haunted all over this island with all the Pirates and thieves who have been
Here I think I saw a ghost in the window of one of the historic mansions wondered if that was an old dead wiench these cemeteries some of those gravestones are older than major US cities this is neat so I talked about how Galveston used to have gambling in
Prostitution well rumor on the island is that big statue right there used to point to the red light district in town so when all the sailors came into Port they knew exactly where to go I would have been a great pirate I bet you would have you little
Buckaroo me and you would have had a ship and sailed right into galvaston and swept all the ladies off their feet but we chose to be Cowboys in this life no way Pirates are great no one stands up to them I think we need a pirate for President Joe Biden versus pirate
Mappy that actually would be good TV the coast here is pretty nice looking I’ll get to the water quality in a minute but everything was just very clean and chill I was beginning to like the Texas coast way more than I thought I would and here’s what it looks like to live
Out along the water these houses are really nice this is on the North End of the island where it’s far more desolate now these houses might look expensive but it’s actually kind of middle class out here it’s only like4 or $500,000 for those homes I mean sounds
Like a good deal right on the gulf well it’ll be in the Gulf one day that’s why why it’s so cheap even these super nice homes along the bay on the North End are only a few hundred, each I me think about it the water’s gross Place gets hit by storms
All the time and there just aren’t a lot of good jobs here here’s what an average neighborhood looks like here that isn’t a historic home or a beach house all this is just pretty nice this is also on the east end of the island is a little bit lower than the
National average stuff in here is about 350k this neighborhood’s not very big really kind of the only middle class neighborhood I saw in the entire Island families with careers just don’t move here cu the schools on the island are really bad but the middle class is disappearing from everywhere in America I guess
Now what about the beaches you say well show you over on the far East End of the island is where you’d find the best beach in galvaston this is where the fancy people go it’s called East Beach here’s what that looks like now just like down in Corpus the beaches
Here have a bad reputation people say a lot of them are polluted one study said 90% of Texas beaches are infested with poop and most of them are here in Galveston probably from Houston Poopers well the water’s Brown because of the poop and all the chemicals coming
Down from the oil refineries and the chemical plants up in galvaston Bay and because it’s shallow the beach is pretty the water’s really not so I didn’t go in all them oil tankers the study I read said if you don’t want to swim in a public toilet
The only place you can go on the Texas coast is South Padre Island and the sand sucks too it’s more mud than sand yuck I saw some refineries in the area there’s not nearly as many here as there are in Corpus and then north of here on
The mainland on the way to Houston it is in dustrial city like as soon as you cross over the Bay right around Pasadena it’s all oil stuff it’s pretty much like this all the way to Southeast Houston but we need that stuff we can’t exist the next day we were here the sun
Was kind of out so we took the ferry over to the next island called the Boliver Peninsula it’s a kind of isolated Barrier Island just right off Coast I would have lik to have fed those birds but my driver insisted it would create a lot of drama my driver is no fun
Sometimes now this place is blowing up people are saying the Boliver Peninsula is going to be the next Hampton one day I don’t know about all that but there is a lot of new construction out this way it definitely looks like the rich people have found it there’s plans to turn this
Entire Place into one big fancy Community with Resorts and big old beach homes even a private airst strip rich people ruin everything home starting at $239,000 brand new right near the water so close that they have to be on like twostory high pilings God can you imagine looking down from your porch and
Seeing water under your house that’s why it’s so cheap I just don’t get it like Hurricane Ike just came through here and leveled this peninsula 15 years ago like 500 people died the place was 98% wiped away but all the trailer parks and the low income stuff was gone so it’s a
Clean slate out here now let’s just do it all over again I don’t know if people will ever learn one day none of this will ever be here I would live here this looks nice woman I had a right mind to hang you by that bow
You got tots think of them that’s her future can’t have them get washed away but I would hire all the poor people to come in and wait on me I’d give them all jobs Dames and while we were out on the peninsula we stopped at the tiki Beach Bar and
Grill but there’s nothing Tiki or Beach about the place I was like the sun’s kind of out I want to sit along the water so we went to this massive RV park SL Resort on the island big joint called Margaritaville look at this place telling you this area is blowing up
Everyone so we just had a drink and looked out of the water nice day and then when we got off the ferry back in Galveston I saw a tumble weave down along the docks oh that’s The Bishop’s Mansion it’s one of many famous historical buildings in galvaston it was built in
1892 and then here’s another one called The Moody mansion that place is famous and haunted there’s stuff like this all over the island I love it we stayed at the Mansion on 17th Street a super neat historic bed and breakfast just a few blocks from downtown my fraternity brother Rick runs
The place he and his staff are amazing I just want to say thanks to Rick and Kathy and check this place out they put us in the Alfred Hitchcock Suite Alfred Hitchcock was inspired while he was staying here on this balcony it looked right out at that
House right there it was inspired for the house for the birds cuz all the black birds were landing on the house and and he thought you know what that should be a plot of a movie and the house from the movie was basically modeled after that house that he sat on
This balcony and looked at the whole time he wrote The Birds right there and look at this breakfast that was a treat we were too spoiled biscuits and gravy and fancy coffee from Hawaii and breakfast kiche and brunch toast I tell you we ate very well on
This Texas Adventure best food from any trip we’ve ever taken then speaking of Rick this is Rick he has a lot of knowledge about Galviston um man the last probably five to seven years you see how much um money has come in gon buying up the properties
Um they turn them into uh rental properties Airbnb properties uh the cruise terminal um with all the ships have probably been the biggest driver of business here it seems like Galveston um as a city has put all the chips in that basket and um a lot of the people in the
Island of course don’t like that because of the traffic the people that live here full-time um but the business owners and the people like myself who own these properties you know we depend on the terminal and so I tell you gal has gotten very very very commercialized and
There’s a lot of good and bad with that mm um you said it’s become an island of renters a lot of these homes are being bought by investors and and and turned into housing for but but at the same time need affordable housing too yeah the the the colleges down here the
Hospital um and people are buying this and investing their stock market money into uh real estate and so they buy these single family resident homes like this and they rent out four or five of the rooms that help pay for the taxes and the insurance gon’s very very
Expensive and so a lot of people who live in gson who are fortunate enough to have these bigger houses they rent their rooms out so they can pay for the taxes and pay for the insurance mhm mhm um it seems like gon’s had a lot of up and
Down you get we’re currently would you say in an up swing we’re on a massive upswing um and it all will continue like that until the next big storm or econ or economic downturn but galison’s been on a probably a 15 20 year run um almost vertical house prices everything and
Then next hurricane comes and it’s going to go it’s a reset it’s a reset it’s a pattern and people who lived there for 50 60 years they’ll tell you this mhm who’s primarily moving to the Island right now um from what I can tell it’s people um Houston Austin San Antonio
People who have the income to have a second home down here um there’s not a lot of people who moov down to Galviston are still working um most of the people that live in Galveston even now um they work off the island and live off the island and they buy a second second
Property down here gon doesn’t have a lot of Industry other than tourism and so it’s a very very expensive place to live MH and a lot of the people that work here can’t afford to live here they have roommates you’ll talk to people who live three or four people in a house
They split a 2,000 a dollar a month house um that might be you know two bedrooms two bass it’s very very expensive because of the island and the school and the hospital have taken up so much housing what’s left is um fought for and and paid a lot of money for mhm
It it reminds me of a kind of a cleaner version a much cleaner version of New Orleans you’ve got a little bit of pieces of New Orleans here kind of grammed on one Island yeah I’d say New Orleans is um course it’s bigger um you compare the Strand and Bourbon Street um
The Strand is a lot cleaner it’s a lot nicer um in 15 and 20 years is the same way um it’s hard to say but you know I think if you talk people in galvaston there’s an emphasis on not becoming that side of New Orleans for sure in fact I
Mean it’s talked about a lot that side meaning the the the dirty part the the the dangerous and dirty part I mean I love Bourbon Street um but it’s not a clean place you have to walk over drunk people on the sidewalks and um it’s Ted about down here they don’t want the
Strand to become that so I think the U the effort to not do that is probably will keep it from being like that in the near term Rick let us take his Carriage out for a spin around town that evening check this ride out Cruz and galvon and
Style first night we stayed close to downtown on night one we ateed a place along the bay that is highly recommended it’s called Katie seafood house it’s in the fish man’s Warf area Katie does not mess around look they have their own Fleet right out the back door talk about fresh fish
Right the water’s kind of dirty though Katy is super cool casual but classy just the way I like it I went with the yellow Edge grouper I can see why the place is so expensive cuz it is G good but no matter where you are in Texas you’re reminded you’re in Texas
Choose spit in the urinal in a fancy seafood house for drinks there were many stops believe me most r on the Strand this is the hearsay on the Strand totally over the top I bet this building’s 200 years old wedding cake martinis now normally I’d go for a damn
Lone Star but when you’re in a place like this you got to kind of up your game I guess and then I dialed it down a bit come on now you know me I ain’t fancy drinking guy I asked the bartender where’s the diviest place on the island and he didn’t hesitate drunken
Monkeys my kind of place on the second night we wanted to eat out along the ocean so we picked a much less fancy way more my kind of place called The Spot check this place out I think there might be eight bars and five patios here
Very TIY bar and just a chill Vibe love this joint and you can look out right over the ocean of course I had a lone star and some of the best fish tacos I’ve ever had telling you what guys I did not think I was going to like Galviston as much as I
Do I think it’s a wonderful place it’s got a lot of history it’s safe it’s clean kind of feels like a nicer more modern New Orleans I love it here we’re at the Mansion on 17th maybe a 15-minute walk from downtown The Strand um just a wonderful place to be galeston people I
Had no idea Galveston’s nice I liked it here there’s a lot of neat architecture and it feels very welcoming here maybe it’s because the sun was out the whole time the beaches aren’t the best but it’s our own little coastal city away from Houston I’ve seen way worse places in
Texas I’ll tell you that I was glad to have some good things to talk about and I was blessed to have the Sun out too hell I ain’t seen the coast for years it was a good trip but the next day it would be way different than that the next day I’d
Show a part of Texas that most people haven’t seen before I took a trip out to the Houston colonias one of the most fascinating places I think I’ve ever seen need advice I do consider Consulting that’s right I’ll sit down and talk about where the next perfect
Place for you and your family should be I do it all the time together let’s find you a new home that’s safe and checks all your boxes and I can also help you find your new house too email me and I’ll work with you I’m not just helping
You figure out where to move but I can help you find your perfect home too that’s right I know awesome reliable agents all over the country and I’d love to connect you to somebody who can help you search for that perfect home hey guys if you learned something new about
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Video “Galveston, Texas: A Bright Spot Along The Texas Coast” was uploaded on 02/01/2024. Watch all the latest Videos by Nick Johnson on Gretopia