The Galveston short list

You may remember that last month our fair neighbor Galveston was in the news because of the perceived need to hire a marketing firm to revamp the city's image. North Star Destination Strategies out of Nashville, Tennessee was hired to try and persuade a few more folks to head south to the island. After conducting a few surveys and finding out that most thought of Galveston beaches as dirty, stinky cesspools of sorts, North Star decided that the sand and water was not the way to tourists' hearts (and wallets). They even considered a name and dialect change (yar!) for the city, but that was soon scrapped (and reminiscent of Missouri City's plight, with potential Friendswoodonian fears, perhaps?).

North Star did find that a large amount of non-Texan visitors hail from Chicago, and that some of the advertising funds will be targeted to those outside of Texas.

Criticism of the island's cleanliness runs throughout the presentation, with comments about ''not very pretty beaches,'' ''remarkably seedy'' neighborhoods and the town's ''unpolished'' reputation.

Brown said there is little sense in hiding the obvious.

''Our beaches are what they are,'' Brown said. ''A lot of places do have white sand and clean water. Galveston doesn't. I think North Star was just saying it's no surprise that the water is not clean or very pretty, so let's focus on other things Galveston has.''

Th $76,000 promotion report was commissioned by the Galveston Island Park Board of Trustees, which is responsible for overseeing tourism promotion. Officials plan to spend another $24,000 designing and distributing print ads and billboards promoting Galveston around the state of Texas and to targeted cities around the United States and Canada.

Without shell-ing out a dime, we'll give a crude rundown of what's neat off the brown-stained sand: