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I really don't understand who would ask a group of strangers whether or not they should move (either to a place or from a place). It seems ludicrous to garner support from unknowns.
I only joined this forum before I moved her (had already decided) to get some information on good places to groom dogs, etc.... But I am constant dumbfounded by the number of people who solicit advice from strangers about major life decisions (not where it the best pizza, but what city should I move to). Sorry but people should be able to make these decisions without consulting people who don't have a clue about one's life (and conversely, whom you have no clue about). Social networking is not the answer to all life's decisions.
I dont think this is right at all. If you came to visit austin, there is still no way you could really tell if it was for you. Getting the opinions from people who live here is incredibly valuable. In addition, many people have lived in many cities and can compare. One person is an anecdote, but at some point you collect enough opinions to actually get a reasonable understanding of what a city is like.
I think it is completely fair for someone to ask a question like:
Im a black male, want to date black females and love hip hop music and hip hop clubs. My career is in investor relations for public companies and I have an offer from dell. Im not a big outdoors person and prefer more upscale events and clubs. Do you think I would be happy in austin?
It might be very hard for an outsider to understand that this is the complete opposite of austin.
Well then I,m sorry. Your initial post gave the impression that the hype did play to some degree -- in your decision.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Austin97
I dont think this is right at all. If you came to visit austin, there is still no way you could really tell if it was for you. Getting the opinions from people who live here is incredibly valuable. In addition, many people have lived in many cities and can compare. One person is an anecdote, but at some point you collect enough opinions to actually get a reasonable understanding of what a city is like.
I think it is completely fair for someone to ask a question like:
Im a black male, want to date black females and love hip hop music and hip hop clubs. My career is in investor relations for public companies and I have an offer from dell. Im not a big outdoors person and prefer more upscale events and clubs. Do you think I would be happy in austin?
It might be very hard for an outsider to understand that this is the complete opposite of austin.
Yeah, I'm just ignoring people who have a problem with my question/phrasing at this point. A lot of the answers on here have FAR exceeded my expectations of an online forum and I really appreciate it. Most of you have been incredibly helpful. I probably will end up giving it more time here, pursue the comedy scene, and see how to pans out. If after the summer/a full year of living here, I still feel the same, I'll move on. Gosh, one thing that happened recently that wouldn't likely happen in another city...the week before last when it was pouring all week, I turned down the wrong street coming home, and tried to turn around in a crammed lot, my back window had fogged in the rain and I accidentally backed into another parked car, leaving a huge dent/crack. I felt awful and obviously left a note apologizing with my phone number, so that he could get my insurance information. Long story short, after talking to the man he decided to not pursue it, and seemed genuinely concerned about me having to pay for the damages. Now THAT kind of kindness you don't run into a lot back east.
When I was looking at moving here I read threads more for the justifications people gave than for their summary opinion. Like, why do you think it's great for x and bad for y? What's your experience? Those are useful to me, even anecdotally.
We hire kids right out of school at 45K. Within 3 years they can be making 80-90k. They need to have great analytical skills but we will pull from any major and train them.
Consulting companies like accenture, ibm global services, etc all will hire generic majors, but you have to be smart.
The arts in general dont pay well, so Im not sure what the OP expected.
I think 9 months is plenty. Austin is not a type A town. I think others recommended chicago, but maybe LA would be good. There are plenty of inexpensive areas in LA.
Can you be more specific about what you want to do?
This would be assuming the OP attended a target university, had a GPA above 3.5 and could still participate in on-campus recruiting. Some firms pay $70K to start for 22yr olds with no job experience, so the jobs are out there, just have to compete for them.
$9hr? I made that as an 18yr old (nearly 10yrs ago now)
I dont think this is right at all. If you came to visit austin, there is still no way you could really tell if it was for you. Getting the opinions from people who live here is incredibly valuable. In addition, many people have lived in many cities and can compare. One person is an anecdote, but at some point you collect enough opinions to actually get a reasonable understanding of what a city is like.
I think it is completely fair for someone to ask a question like:
Im a black male, want to date black females and love hip hop music and hip hop clubs. My career is in investor relations for public companies and I have an offer from dell. Im not a big outdoors person and prefer more upscale events and clubs. Do you think I would be happy in austin?
It might be very hard for an outsider to understand that this is the complete opposite of austin.
Yeah, I'm just ignoring people who have a problem with my question/phrasing at this point. A lot of the answers on here have FAR exceeded my expectations of an online forum and I really appreciate it. Most of you have been incredibly helpful. I probably will end up giving it more time here, pursue the comedy scene, and see how to pans out. If after the summer/a full year of living here, I still feel the same, I'll move on. Gosh, one thing that happened recently that wouldn't likely happen in another city...the week before last when it was pouring all week, I turned down the wrong street coming home, and tried to turn around in a crammed lot, my back window had fogged in the rain and I accidentally backed into another parked car, leaving a huge dent/crack. I felt awful and obviously left a note apologizing with my phone number, so that he could get my insurance information. Long story short, after talking to the man he decided to not pursue it, and seemed genuinely concerned about me having to pay for the damages. Now THAT kind of kindness you don't run into a lot back east.
If you like kids and can keep them entertained, have high energy etc, good nannies in our area get around $15/hour. They can get 25/hour for two kids.
To answer the OP: Don't give up on Austin just yet.
Believing the media hype and banking on my SO's terrific Austin experience back when hair bands were in, I moved here just a few months ago. Really should have checked it out first, because I discovered that much of the close-in housing stock is pretty crappy and overpriced, overall walkability is a joke, the downtown scene needs a facelift from all the rundown storefronts and so-so eateries, many of the drivers are either too slow or too aggressive, much of the city seems rather decayed and most of the residents and businesses seem never to have heard of recycling. Talk about primitive.
On the other hand, city officials recently approved a long-term zero-waste plan aimed at businesses and residents, gentrification and urban renewal may be winding their way through parts of the area, more and more modern homes are springing up and the city and surrounding areas do offer some reasonably nice parks, trails and waterways.
I, too, felt ready to buy a one-way ticket outta here not long after my arrival. But with my and my SO's jobs a necessity for the foreseeable future, I'm going to brave the heat, count my blessings, continue discovering what I DO like about Austin and help change - when reasonable and appropriate - the things I don't. For one thing, this city and the whole state need a bottle bill to further encourage recycling, reduce litter and put some helpful extra $$ into the pockets of those who need it. Onward!
Chicago might actually be a pretty good fit. It has a good theater and comedy community. Have you considered Minneapolis? It's slightly colder, but it has always seemed theater friendly to me (I could be wrong, but I'm thinking about the Guthrie Theater).
Minneapolis is reputed to have the second highest number of live stage performances on any night, only trailing New York City. They have museums that are very highly rated if that is the type of "arts" you are into. And they have numerous comedy venues also (and some of their graduates end up in D.C. as politicians ). And the biggest plus for moving there now is: If you can buy property now, it ten years it may become oceanfront and very expensive if global warming continues.
I've been here almost 20 years. Austin (and Texas in general) are not for me, but I have to wait until I retire to move. In 18 months I'll be heading north to establish my final resting place.
I read through this thread at work today and thought I'd offer some comments.
I'm a native Texan who's lived in Austin for 30+ years. I came here from a podunk Texas town when I was 18 to go to school, got lucky enough to find a job and never left. I kept telling myself I was going to move to Dallas, but for various reasons it never panned out. So I guess I'm here for the duration.
My wife is from the northeast, so I'm somewhat familiar with the way things work up there. I've been to Hoboken and NYC several times, Boston once. There is definitely an energy there that you just don't see here, and I can understand how you would miss that. Heck, I've only visited those places and I miss it.
But neither Austin nor the rest of Texas is the northeast. Our cities were designed differently from the beginning. We have land, so we grow out. New York doesn't, so it grows up. We never really contemplated or designed for the kinds of transit systems that they have up there, because we didn't have to. For the most part, our cities came of age about the same time as the automobile, so mass transit was never that much of a requirement. Retrofitting for it now is going to be ungodly expensive, if it ever even happens, which I doubt. That's just a fact of life here.
Having said that, I'm a little confused that you think Hyde Park isn't pedestrian friendly. Maybe relative to Hoboken, but by Austin standards it's probably the most walkable neighborhood we have next to South Congress (or downtown, if you have one of those $500K lofts). So I'm not sure I get that. If it's that important to you, then yeah, neither Austin nor any place in Texas is going to be acceptable because Hyde Park about as good as it gets in that regard.
Hyde Park is a somewhat interesting mix of run down college student housing, aging bungalows waiting for the owners to pass on, and youngish professionals who can afford a Hyde Park flip but can't quite afford Tarrytown. Because of the proximity to campus, you will always have a bit more of a criminal element than you'd get in, say, Balcones Woods. So I can certainly understand being frustrated about the crack dealer next door. But if you found a cheap place in Hyde Park, as others have mentioned, it's intended for college students who are either willing to put up with that stuff, or don't know any better. Have you checked out the Triangle? How does that compare to your place now?
Jobs. Well, it is what it is. We've purposely pursued the tech industry because of UT and because it's perceived as being "clean". If you're a petroleum engineer, you don't have many choices here but you can move to Houston and make a killing. For all our hype about being the Live Music Capital of the World, I don't know that that really supports a big industry other than alcohol sales, but I'm not tuned into that world any more so I don't really know. You've got the state government which would seem to have something for just about any skill set if you looked hard enough, but like everything it's under a lot of budget pressures right now. I don't think you've said what your background is other than some allusion to "arts", so I don't know what else to tell you. I would generally say that other than music, the art scene here is probably laughable compared to the northeast, but again, I'm not into that stuff so take that for what it's worth.
One more point and I'll shut up for tonight. Please don't take this the wrong way, but because you mentioned it I'm going to bring it up. If there is one thing that turns off Texans faster than anything else, it's a northeasterner with a Type A personality. We are by and large very friendly and welcoming, but we are also much more reserved and subtle than most northeasterners are used to. We have an unspoken code of manners as to how we interact with each other, and we do not like to be blunt or get in your face, nor do we like to be told that we should be doing things differently. I know from personal experience that it is not that way in, say, New York. Up there, it's nothing to get into a shouting match with your cousins over politics (I know, I've seen it with my wife's family). Down here, we don't really talk that much about it - we all just vote Republican and we're done with it. Up there, you don't have time to chit-chat with a customer or explain how big a small slice of pizza is, because there are 50 other people standing in line (excuse me - ON line) behind you, and they're all in a hurry, and there's another pizza shop two doors down that's just as good. You step up, you tell the man what you want when he says "YEAH??" (not "may I help you, sir?"), and you move on. Not unlike the Soup Nazi.
I'm not saying anything about you personally one way or the other because I don't know you, but when you admitted to being a Type A, a certain stereotype did cross my mind. If you are truly unhappy here, perhaps your interactions with other Texans are not pleasant for you, and if so, perhaps this is part of the reason.
Last edited by DashRiprock; 05-18-2012 at 09:48 PM..
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I made that as an 18yr old (nearly 10yrs ago now)
Hang in There
). And the biggest plus for moving there now is: If you can buy property now, it ten years it may become oceanfront and very expensive if global warming continues.
Up there, you don't have time to chit-chat with a customer or explain how big a small slice of pizza is, because there are 50 other people standing in line (excuse me - ON line) behind you, and they're all in a hurry, and there's another pizza shop two doors down that's just as good. You step up, you tell the man what you want when he says "YEAH??" (not "may I help you, sir?"), and you move on. Not unlike the Soup Nazi. 
