Please give me 10 reasons why NOT to move to the Austin area. (Houston: camping, live in)

[Marat]

Forgive me for not going though all 18 pages of posts before posting. I don't know if anyone else posted this or not.

You said what would you have liked to have known before moving to the area. Fire ants. That is what I would like to have been warned about. Check out this picture. http://www.antbait.com/antstings.jpg The stings hurt and itch like crazy afterwards. They are difficult to get rid of if they settle in your yard.

[brattpowered]

Originally Posted by TheHarvester

So, if you live on a one-acre property and your house is by a small stream, should the public be able to come and picnic in your front yard? Park in your driveway? Maybe they should be allowed to camp on your land as well.

Every state has laws prohibiting access to smaller waterways. Every large body of water and every large stream or river in Texas has free public access. I'd list the access points but it's so easy to find them that it would be pointless. And no, you shouldn't be able to walk through someone's yard to get to a stream. Good grief...

If you could reread my post and try to comprehend it better this time, you'd notice that I did NOT mention "camping on land" or even crossing yards, just owning a stream or waterway. It's wrong to lay claim on a river or creek, especially if it is somewhere that can be publically accessed (via a bridge, etc) and can be swam on or floated on. I've seen fences and barbed wire across wide creeks, and I can't believe my eyes sometimes. Some people in this state have major God complexes.

[MJT]

I've been in Austin 25 years now, and it is quickly becoming the snottiest, most aggressive, pretentious city on the planet. I HATE it. The Hill Country is beautiful, but nothing like the Pacific Northwest. The people here are rude beyond comparison, with a Texas-size appetite for entitlement and vulgarity. I'm here by necessity, not by choice, and I'd leave in a heartbeat if I could. Austin is nothing like it used to be, and certainly not what people make it out to be.

[jhwest]

There are a lot more horrible places to live in this country. Try Detroit for a while. You can't possibly convince me that Austin is worse!
I think Dallas is much more snotty and pretentious. Though not as bad as LA or NYC.

[love roses]

I agree that it's gotten snottier, more aggressive, and a little more pretentious (Note the massive homes on Lake Travis)...But I don't think it's the most pretentious place on the planet. LA would be that....NYC is, but for some reason, most people I meet from new york seem friendlier and a little more down to earth. (Having worked in the salon industry, you meet so many people from all over and it's amazing how people treat you from different areas; which is a whole other topic. I'd say about 70/30 on Californian pretention. Noticed very little from New Yorkers. Floridians and Iranian/most hispanic women were the worst).*IMO

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by Marat

Forgive me for not going though all 18 pages of posts before posting. I don't know if anyone else posted this or not.

You said what would you have liked to have known before moving to the area. Fire ants. That is what I would like to have been warned about. Check out this picture. http://www.antbait.com/antstings.jpg The stings hurt and itch like crazy afterwards. They are difficult to get rid of if they settle in your yard.

Use AMDRO. You sprinkle it on the mound and the mound is dead in a few days. Fireants are pretty quick to get rid of. Although new mounds are always popping up.

[TX-Griff]

Originally Posted by Marat

They are difficult to get rid of if they settle in your yard.

Is this the experience of others...?

Everyone I know has said that if fire ants are allowed to get a foothold, they'll do so gleefully (you can see the smirks on their itty-bitty faces )... followed by saying that 3-6 months of monthly treatments will clear fire permanently except for the occaisional (I've had two so far this year) mound that'll crop up.

My experience is if you clear 'em once and then treat 3-4 x/year you'll be fine, but mebbe I've got it easier than others...

TX Griff

[TheHarvester]

Originally Posted by brattpowered

...I did NOT mention "camping on land" or even crossing yards, just owning a stream or waterway. It's wrong to lay claim on a river or creek, especially if it is somewhere that can be publically accessed (via a bridge, etc) and can be swam on or floated on. I've seen fences and barbed wire across wide creeks...

Thanks for correcting my interpretation. I had no idea you were talking about fences ACROSS navigable streams.

Of course this opens the door to endless debate about how big a stream has to be before it's defined as "public property." That is impossible to solve with any precise measurement. You can take a ten-year average of stream flow, make the law based on that, and then suddenly enter a decade of very wet or dry weather. In each case the laws would be interpreted very differently. If the stream is right by a person's house then it creates a problem if it's a small seasonal creek. But this year in Texas, there ARE no seasonal creeks. It won't stop raining, so does that give me the right to walk down every drainage ditch I find and trespass on the land of others? I dunno... It's a very nuanced area of property rights that is becoming increasingly contentious as humans continue to breed like roaches.

[TheHarvester]

Originally Posted by saxymeg

I just don't get why everyone is bringing up scorpions. I've lived in Texas all my life and Austin for 10 years now, and I have never seen a scorpion in my life!

It depends on where you live. I was in Austin for 14 years, never saw a scorpion, never heard anyone talk about them. Then I moved to a place in the country, on a wooded rocky hill SE of Lockhart. During my year at that place, I had at least a dozen scorpions INSIDE my house.

It all depends on where you live. The roaches are worse in the city because they have more places to live, more to eat, etc. The mosquitoes tend to be worse in the city as well, with all the flesh (humans, dogs, squirrels, etc.) to munch on and all the dumb humans who inadvertently leave standing water in their yards. In the country, you get more problems with scorpions, fire ants and snakes. Though I never had a problem with snakes, I like them and enjoyed the ones who lived with me in Lockhart.

As for controlling fire ants (someone else asked about this), Austin97 is absolutely correct. Buy a container of Amdro, sprinkle a bit around fire ant mounds, and they're gone. They're EASY to control, and I had to do that on 5 acres. If I could do it on 5 acres, then people living on 1 acre or less have nothing to gripe about. Feed the fire ants, watch them disappear. It's even good for the environment as long as it doesn't get into streams or ponds. The non-native fire ants are an environmental menace far worse than Amdro or any other weapon that's commonly used against them.

[fil]

Fire ants?
Those are everywhere.

In Georgia they were equally bad, so this is not an Austin negative in my book.

I guess it all depends on what you're use to.

As for snooty, materialistic, and aggressive people, that's also much worse in many other places, but, again, it's all about what you're use to.
TIP: Avoid them. Don't feed the animals/trolls and they'll go away.

I think a lot of the Californication of Austin is what's changing this town, but we all have to admit that it's also what brought a lot of people from Cali to Austin. The Californication of Austin, hipness, ubercool attitude and lifestyle is also what has appealed to many on this board as a positive aspect of this town.

I'm one that swears to never live there, but I don't think we're that bad. When we do get that bad, I'm sure some of the straight forward Texas directness will come out and put the overly Californian attitude in its place (or on their butts).

I just don't understand why people here keep defending the town.
It's like if you live in the City, ATL, Dallas, wherever, people don't think twice about if their city is cool or not. In Austin, I've bumped into a noticeable amount of people that make claims about how cool and hip this town is.
It's weird, almost sophomoric in trying to "act" cool.

My $1.50