HOUSTON — Chicago threw some major shade over Houston's installation of its very own "bean" sculpture, but what Chicago didn't account for was, hell hath no fury like a Texan scorned.

The newly installed "Cloud Column" sculpture was made by artist Anish Kapoor, the same artist who created Chicago's "Cloud Gate."

The new bean, weighing in at 20,000 pounds, stands upright. It can be found outside the Museum of Fine Arts on Montrose Boulevard in downtown Houston.

Chicago Tribune reporters threw quite a bit of shade with its article titled, “Unoriginal 4th place Houston gets its own bean sculpture... whatever.” The article claims Houston is "unoriginal" and "coming for Chicago's status as the nation's third-largest city."

Like any tried-and-true Texan, a Houston Chronicle senior editor did not take this criticism lying down. The paper published correspondence between she and the columnist who wrote the scathing article from the Tribune:

From: Lisa Gray, Houston Chronicle

To: Kim Janssen, Chicago Tribune

Just to recap: Yesterday in the Chicago Tribune, you wrote a column with the headline “Unoriginal Houston gets its own bean sculpture.... whatever.” You grumbled that the sculpture we've just installed — Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Column” — is basically a rip-off of Chicago’s “Cloud Gate,” better known as “The Bean.” You wrote:

Installed Monday outside the Glassell School of Art, Houston's version of The Bean differs in one respect from Chicago’s: the uptight Texas bean is designed to stand upright, not lie on its side like the chill Illinois bean.

If being surrounded by a cultureless abyss insufficiently communicates to confused tourists that they are in Houston, the bean's verticality will therefore act as an additional reminder of their poor life choices.

All of which made me snort. Yeah, it's true that we have a giant new shiny bean that stands upright. But Kim, did it occur to you that maybe we wanted it just because it's a cool thing? It's a piece of art, and works by the same artist often look similar. Our Calder looks kinda like other places’ Calders.

It made me wonder: Is Chicago feeling defensive? How bad is it there, knowing that Houston is set to pass you in population, taking your spot as third-largest city in the U.S.? Are you feeling — well, to steal someone's joke from Twitter — like a "has-bean"?

Condolences,

Lisa

The mudslinging goes back and forth a few times (*awkward*) with the final playful word coming from Janssen:

...I got into this hoping to score a luxury trip to Houston with all expenses paid out of the pocket of some local booster. It doesn't look like that's going to happen. But I am grateful for all the new enemies I made on Twitter, and all of the mean emails I got — even your temperate, good-natured ones. A handful of Houstonians even got that I was poking fun at our own desperate need for prominence.

As a certified hater, I thought I'd never find as chippy a city as Chicago. But the outpouring of bile from Houston has genuinely surprised me, and given me hope that you may one day amount to something worthy of our rivalry.

In the meantime, enjoy your bean, which is not as good as our bean, and never will be.

To read the entire exchange, visit here