Galveston’s Beginner Guide

By Nellie Cornett

Galveton is home to double poverty levels. There are a few “old money” families that still rule the island.

Strange relationship between the people of mass wealth and the poor exsist and this is a potentially problematic dynamic because no relationships are forged, just an enabling cycle of give and take.

There is a high percentage of locals with service industry jobs which can lead to a culture of high levels of drunkenness, alcoholism being a pretty major problem here. Be warned.

The benefit of everyone knowing each other is that you can ask around to vett a new dating prospect. People will pretty much shoot strait with you about what they know.

It is extremely common for people to date the same person. You will have to get over that. People don’t even catch feelings about this as it is normal here (this type of thing is 100% unheard of and looked down on in somewhere like Houston).

Dating is egregious. It seems the only way to date someone here is to find someone who is “new” and snatch them up. Some people survive the dating scene by staying on the down low and are promiscuous in those circles, or only date people in other cities to avoid the drama swirls. Some people, and it’s surprising, choose to be long term vocel’s (voluntarily celibate) which is an intense but actually very common choice.

There is perhaps more “crazy” people living in Galveston because; a) no one truly reasonable would willingly live in a place on the path of inevitable hurricane destruction, or b) people who are running away dead end at the most southern point of Interstate 45 so we must get a higher level of law runners.

It would seem everyone has such a high level of relationship overlap, where each person has multiple things that connect them together (for example; I went to high school with him, dated his sister, his son is my boss, his uncle ran over my cat when I was 4, we’re on the same pickleball team, our sons went to jail onetime etc etc etc).

There can be a high level of cliquishness that has A LOT OF PEOPLE feeling left out, for their entire lives living here, not really sure what that’s about.

People are pretty open and chatty and friendly. The community in general is fairly liberal and tolerant of people. I have my ideas about why, but this is only speculation.

People in Galveston handle gossip differently than in other cities. The saavy locals tend to more readily not listen to gossip or participate in gossip. They let their personal interactions with people hold a higher priority. This is in fact a survival trait in my opinion, because social conflict has dire and potentially permanent consequences. This can add to the tendency for long term residents to “disappear into the woodwork” because sometimes the only way to survive and navigate treacherous social waters is to lay low.