Texas Hold 'em
Headed to the interdimensional dive bar we always thought was nice
Every late January, I make a plan to get out of town for a long weekend, someplace where Kurt and I can get a quick hit of sunshine and blue skies amidst the homestretch of Midwestern winter. This year, our weekend trip coincided with Inauguration Day, the news cycle spinning like the Roadrunner’s legs kicking out a barrage of headlines, each more anxiety-inducing than the next. Work was so busy that I gouged a giant groove into my night guard from gnashing my teeth while sleeping. My stress levels peaked when our cat was diagnosed with lymphoma and our dog contracted a case of severe gastroenteritis; I ran to three different veterinary offices in seven days. How was I? Not great, Bob!
Somehow, we scrambled and got things covered just in time to get out of town. I printed out three pages of pet medication instructions for my brother who agreed to housesit, slapped an Out-of-Office notification on my work email account, and tossed some clothes into my suitcase for a much-needed mini-vacation to Houston, Texas, to visit our good friends Bob and Amy.
There’s nothing like having local tour guides, especially in a city that at first glance seems like a mess of spaghetti bowl highways and sprawling strip malls. But Houston is filled with hidden gems; it is one of the most diverse cities in the country with a food and arts scene that reflects its multicultural population. I’ve racked up many great memories there over the years: eating breakfast tacos on sunshine-drenched mornings, digging into slabs of tender brisket and elotes served on trays covered in paper, catching up with our friends over queso and chips and grabbing drive-thru margaritas. One of my favorite distinctly Houstonian things is the Art Car Parade, a public art tradition featuring vehicles turned into wildly inventive artwork on wheels; you can spot art cars at any time of year all over town.
Houston is also home to Meow Wolf’s newest exhibit, Radio Tave. For the uninitiated, Meow Wolf is an art collective originated in Santa Fe, New Mexico, first known for turning reclaimed junk into gigantic whimsical large-scale art installations and throwing raucous warehouse parties. I heard about their earliest exploits from my college suitemate, whose brother was one of the original co-founders. After receiving financial backing from George R.R. Martin, Meow Wolf created their first permanent exhibit in a former bowling alley in Santa Fe, which retains the group’s DIY vibe and “hot-glued trash” aesthetic. The success of that first location became a launchpad to build new exhibits in Denver, Las Vegas, Grapevine, and Houston, with a sixth spot currently in the works in Los Angeles. From the moment I first visited the House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe and walked through a refrigerator door into the multiverse, I was obsessed1. It was catnip to a geek like me who spent my childhood checking the backs of closets for Narnia.
Each Meow Wolf exhibit has its own theme, but a consistent motif is starting out in a mundane real-world setting (a suburban home, a grocery store, a transit station) where wormholes and secret portals open into a multiverse populated with its own mythological creatures, geological features, and sonic landscape. A narrative is layered over the immersive art, and visitors can try to uncover the hidden storyline, or skip entirely and just enjoy the trippy art.
Our friends Matt and Lindsey also traveled down from Chicago for the long weekend, and the six of us arrived at Radio Tave early on a Saturday. To enter the exhibit, you start in the front office of a local radio station called ENTL, whose wood paneled walls and community message board look straight out of a late seventies/early eighties small town America. The fliers on the office’s bulletin boards and the papers strewn on the front desk contain hints to the story about five station employees who got jettisoned to an alternate realm.
It’s fairly impossible for a big group to stick together in a Meow Wolf. I paused to peek inside a fuse box at a DayGlo diorama, and my friends disappeared on their own adventures. This was fine. This is actually my absolute favorite part of exploring Meow Wolf—getting lost within a maze of hallways and hidden rooms, opening doors, exploring, and feeling a sense of curious wonder like being a kid again.
I was alone when I first stumbled into the country & western-themed bar-within-the-exhibit, Cowboix Hevven. I felt like I’d stumbled into the Mos Eisley Cantina from Star Wars, or the Fruit Oaty Bar from the Firefly movie Serenity. A bra with three cups was stapled to the ceiling. The bartender running the joint is a chainsmoking batlike creature named Batsy (according to her gold hoop earrings). And if you find the code to enter into the jukebox, you can turn on a blacklight that reveals even more Easter eggs hidden on the bar walls.
At the corner of the bar, there was a tribute to one of the original Meow Wolf co-founders, Matt King, who passed away in 2022. The sculpture was created by his good friends and fellow artists, and you can tell from the intricate details the level of care poured into the tribute, down to recreating his tattoos. There’s something comforting to me about imagining the afterlife as a favorite barstool in an interdimensional bar, passing time until your friends roll through.
Post-Radio Tave, my friends and I regrouped across the street at St. Arnold Brewing Company’s beer garden, where we discussed our favorite rooms and compared our experiences to the other Meow Wolf locations. It would be easy to wile away an entire day drinking pints of beer in the warm Texas sun, but there were places to go (and eat Tex Mex) and people to see (who would bring us plates of BBQ). With each delicious meal shared with our friends, each round of margaritas and laughs, I felt myself shed my pent-up anxieties and stress like removing winter layers.
On our last night in Houston, we rented a private karaoke room in a shipping container where I sang hometown hero Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” and attempted to line dance. I was relaxing on the bench seating, sipping on a margarita as the opening notes of Hanson’s “MMMbop” trickled from the speakers. When the song first came out twenty-eight(!!) years ago, it was ruthlessly mocked by Gen Xers with every drop of haterade in our veins. But in my mid-forties, the lyrics hit different. I mean, do you remember what this song was about?!
You have so many relationships in this life
Only one or two will last
You go through all the pain and strife
Then you turn your back and they're gone so fast, oh yeah
And they're gone so fast, yeah
Oh, so hold on the ones who really care
In the end they'll be the only ones there
And when you get old and start losing your hair
Can you tell me who will still care?
I did not have ‘getting emotional over Hanson lyrics’ on my 2025 bingo card, yet here we are. There’s nothing like spending a weekend with great friends, especially at an age when it can be hard to find time in busy schedules and many of us are separated by geography. In Meow Wolf parlance, it feels like hurtling through a wormhole from our middle-aged reality back to the multiverse of our youth where the decades haven’t weighed us down, remembering what it was like to feel young and invincible, late nights hanging out and laughing till our faces hurt. When I first began dating Kurt, he lived in a three-flat with Bob and Matt, the backdrop to the early days of our relationship where we all watched White Sox games in the backyard and cracked open PBRs at the tiki bar that filled their dining room instead of a table. I felt immediately welcomed, Kurt’s crew melding easily with mine, parties and hangouts alternating between their three-flat and the duplex apartment where I lived with my friends in Logan Square. That was the summer of 2005(!!); two decades have passed and much has changed, but when we all get into a room together, it feels like we’re picking up exactly where we last left off. Now that’s interdimensional travel.
2025 already has us on our heels. Everyone I know is anxious, depressed, rage-filled, scared. So many of our lives are directly touched by the extreme actions the current administration has taken—jobs on the line, uncertainty over access to necessary health care, not to mention the climate change issues that will impact literally every life on this planet. I don’t have any sage advice or comfort to offer, other than make time to be with the people who make you laugh and share your inside jokes. Seek out and explore art that blows your mind open in new ways. Start your own weird art collective. There will be hard, terrible days, but there can also be moments of sunshine and karaoke and the biggest shared laughs mixed in. Moments pass like mmmbops and they’re gone; hold onto them and savor them.
I have previously written about our weeklong road trip to three Meow Wolf locations on my old blog as well as for Roadtrippers.com. It’s still one of my all-time favorite road trips.
Am I about to start crying over Hanson lyrics on the metra? Maybe. In my defense, it’s been a hell of a year (it’s actually not even been 2 months).
Getting together with old friends (from Burton Place for me) definitely helps making you feel young and unburdened again. And I remember your college roommate who lived in New Mexico!