It also might be one of the reasons the Cubs have been so freaking bad... My family is from NW Indiana (Valpo/Portage,etc) so every summer or so I make it up to Chicago. I went there this summer, but I didn't get to catch a Cubs game (I was there one week and they were on the road), but I went downtown to go visit some museums, and it was very clean. It's a direct contrast from what Houston is. Houston is one of the "newer" cities in that it was planned after cars, so it's a lot more dispersed than Chicago or New York. There's really no financial center to Houston despite being the fourth largest city in the US. Downtown Houston is a flat-out joke. The new basketball arena and Enron Field are just attempts at gentrification of downtown Houston. Most of the economic centers in the city are on the west side and northwest sides of the city in the suburban area. Oh, and I did get to go to a Gary Railcats baseball game, and I didnt feel like I was going to shot! Jermaine Allensworth was playing for them too.