I've lived in Austin for 25 years after living in a small town in Iowa. To me, Austin is almost paradise! I love the live music on 6th Street. If I want to hear music, I can just walk down 6th street until I hear a band that interests me, any night of the week.
The climate isn't perfect - it gets HOT here in the summer, but it got hot in Iowa in the summer too and it was more humid there than here! Our winters are usually pretty nice. The temps are normally in the 50s-60s and one year it got up into the low 90s in February! Someone else said that there are temperature swings in the winter, and that is absolutely true. It may be 70 degrees outside, then a cold front blows through and the temps may drop into the low 40s within a few hours. In a few days, the temps might be back up in the 50s, 60s, or 70s again. Compared to growing up with winters that got down to 20 below zero and worse, these temperature swings are nothing.
We have 50,000 students at the University of Texas (UT) here. If it wasn't for the college students, Austin would be much less of an interesting place. I think the students are a big part of what keeps Austin alive, rather than turning into a Dallas (sorry, Dallas people, but Dallas seems pretty sedate to me). Dallas has a lot of nice homes, nice stores, etc. - it just seems rather dull and boring to me.
We just had a celebration of Eeyore's birthday at Pease Park this past Saturday. It is an annual event that brings out all sorts of people - old hippies, young free spirits, white, black, brown, you name it skin color. People in silly costumes (two invisible men, three topless women - yes, that's legal in Austin - one middle-aged man in a speedo who was spray-painted silver from head to toe, women costumed as fairies, etc.
Austin is very liberal. If you aren't a liberal, you may find other cities in Texas more to your liking. Austin is the liberal oasis of Texas, as the rest of Texas is pretty conservative.
Austin has a pretty big gay community, but unlike Houston or Dallas there is no gay neighborhood - gays are integrated into the city and although I have to say there have been a few bashings over the decades, fortunately they have been very, very few.
Taxes are a big problem in Austin. As someone else pointed out, since Texas has no income tax, the state/county/city have to get their money somewhere. There's no free lunch! My 1400 sq. ft. house is valued at over $400,000. The house was built in 1942 and isn't fancy. My property taxes are right at about $10,000/year right now. The state caps the amount that local taxing districts can increase the valuation of your home to 10%/year. I've lived in this house for 13-15 years and my appraised value has gone up the permitted 10% every year I've been in the house (but my salary certainly hasn't kept up - I don't know anyone who has gotten a 10% raise - ever!). When I bought the house, I paid $160,000 for it and property taxes were about $3,000/yr. We might have to move outside of Travis County or at least to a cheaper neighborhood. By the time I retire (in about fifteen years or so), it looks like my house will be worth $1.5 million, and my property taxes will be around $35,000/yr., assuming the appraised value of my home goes up by 10% a year as it has done every year that I've owned it. So, basically, you get royally screwed on property taxes!
We have two spring-fed outdoor pools - Barton Springs (which is more like a huge, long swimming hole with rock walls) and Deep Eddy pool. Deep Eddy is split into a general swimming area and a separate area for lap swimmers, so regular swimmers and lap swimmers don't get in each others way. There is a hike-and-bike trail along Lady Bird Lake in the middle of town. I used to run the trail pretty regularly and enjoyed it very much. Parts of it are shady, which helps in the summer! I don't know how long the trail is, really; I think it is at leatst 8 miles and may be longer. You can run it in a big loop if you want so you don't see the same scenery twice on your run. Walkers are very common on the trail too. Cyclists share (and sometimes don't share) the trail, but the more serious cyclists seem to like the velodrome over by the Lady Bird Johson Wildflower Center. It's a paved cycling loop, several lanes wide and I don't know how big a loop it is, but it seems to be very popular with serious cyclists.
Traffic, well... traffic sucks, but everyone from everywhere seems to complain about traffic in their city. Mopac, a north/south freeway, becomes a parking lot during rush hour in the afternoon. Best to take the back ways and avoid Mopac during rush hour. Interstate 35 goes north to Dallas and south to San Antonio from here. I-35 is damn dangerous and I avoid if at all possible. I-35 between here an San Antonio is said to be the most dangerous stretch of I-35 in the nation.
Austin drivers: Austin drivers, by and large, are complete idiots and utter morons. Everyone is busy yacking on their phones while driving that they don't hardly even know anyone is on the road with them. Often people get to their exit on Mopac or other busy street and find themselves in the left lane or middle lane. Instead of doing the intelligent thing and taking the next exit instead, they (figuratively speaking) yell "yee-haw" and cross three lanes of traffic in order to get to their exit. My motto for driving here is "driver beware" - you always have to assume that the other driver isn't paying attention and has the brains of a house plant.
Austin (and all of Texas) is "truck-land USA". There are thousands of pickups and SUVs on the road here. Some guys like to drive BIG trucks - 4 door pickups with dual rear wheels and a 10-cylinder diesel engine that roars like a freight train. Others drive beat up old "cowboy" pickups and either cut their mufflers or put on what we called "glass packs" when we were kids - they let the roar of your engine come out. I almost think they amplify the roar to be louder! You'll see a fair number or urban cowboys here too. Guys dressed in tight, neatly pressed, Wrangler jeans, cowboy boots, white cowboy hat, cowboy shirt (snap button pockets, etc) and a big belt buckle. Most people aren't urban cowboys like that, but there are quite a few of them out there still.
I don't think Austin is snobby at all. Dallas seems wealthy and snobby to me, and Houston, well, Houston is truly another planet.
As for the cops, they're about what you'd expect in any city. Some really good cops, some really bad cops, and a lot who mostly don't seem to give a s*** one way or the other. They're just putting in their time. Austin is the state capital so we are also the home of the Department of Public Safety (DPS), aka the Texas State Troopers. Now these guys are just plain unpleasant to deal with. Not mean, just unpleasant and cold as ice and have been mistaken for automations at times.
I have not found Austin to be racist at all. I grew up in an all white town in the Midwest, and for me Austin seems like the soul of diversity - people of all sorts live here - White, Hispanic, Black, people from various Asian countries, Indians (i.e., from India), a few native Americans, Pakistanis, etc, etc. Mostly I'd guess because of UT.
>>>rock concerts we don't get
ZZ Top just played in Austin last night. Al Dimeola, while not rock (jazz/fusion with incredible skill on the electric guitar) was here twice last year. Tommy Castro, rock band from San Francisco, was here last year.
>>>Austin was a great place to live in the 80's.
When I moved to Austin in 1984, I saw lot of bumper stickers on cars that made me feel really good: "Keep Austin beautiful; put a yankee on a bus", and, "if you love NY...GO HOME"!. I don't see that any more (and that's a good thing).
>>>Texas doesn't value education or arts
Austin has the Long Center for the Performing Arts (where we saw "Ten Tenors" last year), the Paramount Theatre (where I have seen Al Dimeola and the band "Return to Forever" last year), we have the One World Theatre where I have seen Al Dimeola playing with his World Sinfonia group, the Bass Concert Hall (home of one of the ten best pipe organs in the world) and where we saw the Broadway production of "Phantom of the Opera". I'm not sure what Julie is complaining about as far as arts. Austin does not have an art museum. Laguna Gloria calls itself an art museum, but it has hardly that. There are some very good art museums in Dallas/Ft. Worth, three hours north of here. We're just not big enough to support an art museum of our own yet. We drive to Dallas/Ft. Worth several times a year to see shows at the art museums. By Texas standards, a three hour drive to Dallas just isn't that big a deal (Texas is a HUGE state).
Austin schools aren't particularly good and if I had kids I probably wouldn't put them in Austin schools, but the suburban schools (like in Round Rock or Westlake Hills) get very good scores.
As for the weather, yeah, sometimes the weather isn't very nice. I lived in Iowa for two decades, and you know what? The weather there sucks pretty bad in the winter (how do you like 39 degrees below zero? and the summer (how about some 103 degree days with 100% humidity and tornados in the evening?). It was 115 degrees one day several years ago. Sounds hot, and it is, but once you're used to 100-105 on a regular basis, 115 isn't much worse really.
Julie mentions Houston? Houston, IMHO, is a hell-hole. It makes Austin look like Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegone, MN! You literally could not pay me enough money to live in Houston - EVER!
Yeah, people have allergies here. So what? In Iowa, people were allergic to ragweed pollen. Wherever you live, you'll probably find something you're allergic to.
I agree with "Susan" - it sounds like Julie really doesn't like it here. If she hates it so much, she should probably find someplace else to live that suits her better. I don't claim Austin is the greatest place you could ever live, or that is has everything you could ever want, but compared to small town Iowa or planet Houston, Austin is a pretty darn nice place to live all things considered.
tim |
Austin, TX |
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