Numbers & Houston's New Wave / Goth Legacy

Montrose has always been Houston's misfit heart — the neighborhood where the city's queer, punk, art and alternative scenes found room to breathe. At its center stands Numbers, one of the longest-running alternative nightclubs in the country, a black box on Westheimer that has been throwing new wave, goth and industrial nights for decades. This short evening drive uses Numbers as a compass to explore the Montrose corridor around it: the record shops and dive bars, the stretches of Westheimer that have carried the neighborhood's countercultural energy for half a century. It's a tour best taken after dark, when the neon comes on and the bass starts leaking out of doorways. Cue up some Bauhaus and The Cure, and let the city's shadow side lead the way.