1. Houston is the most ethnically diverse metropolitan area in the United States. The city has no racial/ethnic majority, and has nearly equal percentages of the two largest groups, Latinos and Anglos. More than 100 languages are spoken in the Houston Independent School District, with Arabic recently overtaking Vietnamese as the third-most-used language after English and Spanish. Unlike a lot of American cities, Houston's suburbs are equally diverse, and Houston's neighborhoods are more integrated than those of New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago.

2. Houston is great food town. The traditional cuisines of Northern Mexico, the Southern United States, and South Louisiana meet and merge in Houston, but the international diversity of the city is what makes the food scene so exciting. It's possible to eat traditional cuisine from virtually any country in the world, at any price point. Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, Lebanese, old fashioned Texas barbecue, Dim Sum, El Salvadorian, Thai. My friends and I used to skip school to get Vietnamese spring rolls for lunch, then sneak back in for afternoon classes.

3. Houston has beautiful sunsets. The city is flat and wide, with plenty of land between buildings. This means you can see a lot of sky. The sprawl also means the city is only navigable by car, and all those cars lead to higher rates of smog and air pollution, which results in stunning sunsets. The best vantage point is the top of a freeway overpass, while sitting in traffic.

4. Houston is the Art Car Capitol of the world. Houston has taken its most ubiquitous object, the automobile, and transformed it into a medium of artistic expression. With roots in decorated hippie vans and low riders, art cars have their own museum in Houston.

5. The Orange Show. Another important landmark of outsider art is The Orange Show. Houston postman Jeff McKissick created The Orange Show in honor of the orange, his favorite fruit. Over a period of 25 years, McKissack used common building materials and found objects - bricks, tiles, fencing, farm implements - to transform his lot into an architectural maze of walkways, balconies, arenas and exhibits. McKissack thought of his creation as a healthful alternative to Astroworld, the Six Flags theme park which opened in 1968. Now The Orange Show is home to many community art programs that focus on making art accessible to everyone.

6. The Menil Collection is one of the best free art museums in the country with an unbelievable collection of contemporary art. The museum's holdings reveal John and Dominique de Menil's personal vision and taste, including a remarkable group of surrealist paintings and artifacts. The Menil is also home to the Rothko chapel, a nondenominational place of worship built to feature 14 murals created by painter Mark Rothko, who also helped design the building.

7. Houston is the most populous US city to elect an openly gay mayor, Annise Parker, who served 2010-2016 and was re-elected twice. Parker led the city through a tough recession, reduced homelessness and crime, and promoted LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination laws.

8. Houston is the most air-conditioned city in the world. This claim, while impossible to substantiate, has nonetheless been a bragging point since the 1960s. For the majority of the year, the weather in Houston is unpleasant-hot, sticky, energy-sapping. But it is possible to go from one's air-conditioned home to air-conditioned car to air conditioned shop or office building without ever actually going outside. If you have an attached garage or underground parking structure, you never need to experience summer. This means you have to take a sweater with you everywhere, especially if it's 100 degrees out. If you get chilly, you can step outside to warm up.

9. Astro turf was coined in Houston. The Astrodome was the first air-conditioned indoor stadium, built in 1965 as the home to Astros baseball. The indoor climate controlled stadium necessitated the use of artificial turf. The product, invented by Monsanto, had been used before, but never so prominently. When it was installed in the Dome, Monsanto changed the name from Chemgrass to AstroTurf. The trademark name quickly entered the lexicon to refer to any kind of artificial grass.

10. Houston is home to the busiest port in the United States for foreign tonnage, even though it's not on the ocean. The Port of Houston is connected to the Gulf of Mexico by the 50 mile-long Houston Ship Channel. The channel was created by dredging the natural waterway of Buffalo Bayou, which has been used to transport goods since the 1830s.