What are Houston’s nicknames? We trace their origins and meanings

Continue ? Okay… Space City. Screwston. Hustletown.

Like the late Apollo Creed, the Master of Disaster, the King of Sting, the Count of Monte Fisto, Houston has a multitude of nicknames. It’s a big city. And it’s a place that means different things to different people at different times. So it’s only natural that it has more than its fair share of nicknames.

Here are a few, with origin stories that we can confirm as best we can:

The magnolia is mentioned in a notoriously misleading 1836 advertisement by Allen Brothers in the Telegraph and Texas Register: “The large and beautiful magnolia grows in abundance.” In the 1840s, French missionary Emmanuel Domenech described the region’s magnolias with their “large white flowers and delicious perfume.”

Such stories—with their abundance, their floral and aromatic auras—fail to mention that when the Magnolia Park neighborhood (now the East End) was founded in 1890, its planners had to plant 3,700 magnolias.

We have largely forgotten the usefulness of this nickname. Author David G. McComb lamented in his 1969 book “Houston: The Bayou City” that in 1916, sewage was flowing into Buffalo Bayou, “a deplorable state of affairs for a place known as the Magnolia City.”

This one is pretty self-explanatory. The opening of the Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center) in Clear Lake in September 1963 gave the city a forward-looking cultural identity as NASA’s base of operations. The Chamber of Commerce initially opted for “Space City, USA,” a name that was eventually shortened. The name was adopted by an influential counterculture newspaper. Space City News launched in 1969 and changed its name to Space City! after eight months. Among nicknames, this one still holds true, as the Houston Astros adopted it with their City Connect alternate uniforms that read “Space City” across the chest with the NASA logo.

Unlike Magnolia City, Bayou City evokes the resilience of nature, referencing the murky waterways that have run through this region for thousands of years. Houston was founded in 1836 along Buffalo Bayou, so Bayou City has an inescapable quality.

As for its use, a steamboat named Bayou City was launched in 1861 as a mail ship from Houston to Galveston before being converted into a Confederate gunboat. A military unit based in Houston also appeared during the Civil War: the Bayou City Guards. So the nickname has been around for almost as long as the city.

The Chronicle contributed to the nickname with its “Choke City” headline in 1994, after the Rockets blew two fourth-quarter leads against the Phoenix Suns in the second round of the NBA playoffs. The headline expressed the city’s exasperation with the incompetence displayed by the Astros in the 1980s and the Oilers, who in 1993 lost awkwardly to the Buffalo Bills in the greatest comeback in NFL playoff history.

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Chronicle columnist Fran Blinebury and assistant sports editor Reid Laymance clearly stirred things up by coining the term “Choke City.” The reeling Rockets went on to tie the series with Phoenix, prompting team owner Les Alexander to come up with another slogan for Blinebury and Rockets sportswriter Eddie Sefko. “Clutch City,” he told them.

The Rockets beat Phoenix in that series. They beat the Utah Jazz in the conference finals. And on June 22, 1994, they beat the New York Knicks to win the first of what would be back-to-back NBA championships.

For downtime in Houston sports, there are still independent businesses that keep the name alive: Clutch City Coffee, Clutch City Cluckers and the truly perfect Clutch City Transmissions.

The Rockets’ mascot arrived in 1995: a bear named Clutch. The team’s dancers? The Clutch City Dancers.

Houston’s local hip-hop scene has given it its own nicknames: Screwston, City of Syrup, Hustle Town.

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Two of the three men have at least one connection to Carlos Coy, the rapper known as the South Park Mexican. SPM is said to have invented the name Screwston. (Coy has been in prison since May 2002 for sexual assault of a minor.)

That same year, one Arthur Coy—a name shared by Coy’s father and brother—filed a trademark for Screwston, in honor of Robert Earl Davis Jr., the artist who, as DJ Screw, gave the town its distinctive sound.

SPM is also linked to another Houston nickname thanks to his 1998 album, “Hustle Town.” His music still circulates through Hustle Town Distribution. Other locals have attached the name to their businesses: Hustle Town Tattoos, a smoke shop in Hustletown, Hustle Town Phone Repair, and, for those looking to declutter their lives, Hustle Town Junk Removal.