Until I visited the new incarnation of La Griglia, the popular Italian restaurant that has been around since 1991, I had completely forgotten about something that used to be intrinsic to understanding Houston.  Once upon a time (starting when I moved here in the metazoic year of 1976) the past was a country no respectable Houstonian would bother to visit. Nostalgia was for chumps; sentimentality for suckers.

Back then and in many ensuing decades, the future was all: from NASA, to Philip Johnson’s skyscrapers, to Enron until it went south, to the oil business that became the energy business, to mayors who were not straight, white, and/or male. Maybe it was because we were so afraid of being labeled “backward” that we had such fervor about always moving forward.