What Do You Like Or Dislike About San Antonio? (Houston: theatre, standard of living)

[beaste]

The high hit and run rates here I HATE. My cop friend was recently involved in one. Thank God he's ok. Experienced someone hitting my car a few years ago also.

[LolaSonner]

Originally Posted by heidiruss

My husband is considering taking a job in San Antonio. I have never been there, but plan on visiting soon. I just want to know from some transplants (people who have not lived there your entire life) what you think about the area. PLEASE be honest! Thanks

What I don't like: It's extremely sprawl-y. Kind of massive and lots of driving. Must have a car. Texas is hot, so yeah. But for SA, I don't like how dumpy it is. I've been around, lived in cities on east and west coast etc. and SA comes off as dumpy, sort of neglected and not pretty. Doesn't have much character unless you go to the Riverwalk. Not much opportunity job-wise. Good neighborhoods right next to bad ones. You can be in a ritzy looking area, walk two blocks and be in a slum.

Apartments are mostly old and going the way of the slum especially inside 410. Now inside 1604 is heading that way.

LOTS of crime.

Terrible drivers and traffic. Heaps of trucks, very aggressive drivers.

Not a very health conscious city at all. Tons of fast food and food in general.


Good things, some nice parks and improvements downtown. Pockets of niceness to live in. Diverse population, not "redneck" or "backwoodsy". Good balance IMHO of political idealogies. Pretty friendly in general.

[steve807]

Ever been through the slums of Camden NJ, Baltimore, Philadelphia, DC, Staten Island, Fresno CA? I have. There's nothing like those places in San Antonio.

[Pancho-Villa]

Does it really have to be as bad or worse? Bad is still bad. Yes, I've been through all of those areas and more.

[huckster]

It is all about how bad the neightborhood is, and how bad even the crooked cops are. How crack infested,
how much the drug trade runs the local economy. Everything is realative. It is a matter of degree
as to how truly corrupt residents , even city hall is. Life is too cheap in some areas.
Ex- mayor Kilpatrick of Detroit is doing 30 years in a penitentiary for corruption, blackmail,
extortion ..........etc. Numerous city council members were under indictment.
San Antonio, remarkably does not have an inner city decay problem as many northern cities do.
Heck our mayor is now HUD Secretary. The differences are enoumous.
The streets of Detroit by night make San Antonio look like a Baptist Picnic. 360 unsolved murders there
in 2014. Detroit Ambulances and firetrucks robbed at gunpoint. Carjackings in broad daylight.
Automobile insurance , full coverage on a new car by Detroit residents is more expensive than the car
payment itself. $600.00 monthly.
Why , one might ask, Pancho Villa is this so ? Because there are 10,000 abandoned homes in Detroit, all stripped of their copper wiring and plumbing. Worthless and too expensive to demolish.
Polluted old factories abandoned all over, dot the city.
In wide eyed innocence to clump all that is bad as the same bad in all cities , you are naive.
Dangerous for children in Detroit to walk around all this stuff. This is the horror. Rape is common. Yes. 40,000 stray dogs. 25% unemployment rate and a 50% dropout rate with 60% of children born out of wedlock.
Panhandlers hit you inside the store. Uncivilized. The infrastructure deterioration is the worse of the problems.
In fairness, Detroit downtown is experiencing a Renaissance , but get away a but a few blocks from there and it can be dangerous.

Cause it just ain't that bad here. In San Antonio. This is why it is all relative here- as in Baltimore, Detroit and other cities just like Steve807 entered... every word true. There is nothing like this in San Antonio.

As far as renaming Robert E. Lee High it should happen but as a political compromise to remain politically correct, so as not to offend, a statue of Trent Lott should be raised in Austin.
This way noone gets their feelings hurt.

[Pancho-Villa]

Bad is bad Huck...what's worse is irrelevant. I wouldn't raise my kids in Highland Park (MI) or the West side of SA...neither one. That was the point You missed it)...not which was worse. I agree it isn't nearly as bad here....but there are still areas that aren't very nice and happen to have higher crime rates.

[huckster]

The Standard of living of these cities is irrelevant, - these cities are only undifferentiated to you because they are far away and out of sight. Don't care and cannot bother to distinguish between them, San Antone and the northern ghettos, lump them all together... People who live there can explain it to you, as you cannot understand what I write of, this upside down world where many times wrong is the right thing and what is right appears absurd. Political correctness there is non-existent. Irrelevant. This makes for a truly bad environment for all kids. There ain't no Robert E. Lee High School in Detroit.

Bad ain't bad everywhere. The degree of contrasts between poor living conditions in these cities is vast, vast. Immense. Opportunities within these areas is the biggest detriment to an escape, there is only a slim common denominator in this respect. Education; and that is second, or even third class.
Seldom is it easy to enter even the lower middle class from these beginnings..... Generations of welfare queens in Chicago , Detroit, exemplify with Millionaire slumlords live off the scant pickings created by these poor people. Some... live even without heat in the bitter cold, or even.... water. Meth is sold in front of the local convenience store in broad daylight. Tricks are turned in front of tourists. Drunks urinate on the ground in broad daylight, traffic flowing by.

If you still cannot identify with these, recall the riots, the percentages of prison population by race...
Recall the old Elvis Presley song " In the Ghetto"? Perhaps you might listen to this to be able to identify with these folks. You live an insulated life and cannot even realize what these people live with everyday.
Mostly the things we all consider like, politics, living standards ,dining out, or even car insurance are inconsequential, irrelevant ; survival is first on their minds. A great many do not even care about ;moralities. What is seen on T.V. commercials is unobtainable, fantasy.
This is where "reality shows" completely miss reality, as it is. All these programs are Drivel.

Maybe a little something at Christmas for the kids is reality. They are trapped in a world that is a ghetto. All around them. This lumping together of cities has naught with where you want to raise your kids or even San Antonio.
This is a reality that is dealt with day to day by these poor people. IT is not all the same. Bad is not bad. In your mind it is.
San Antonio would be but an unrealized dream for most of these folks. A fantasy. An escape.
You miss this, and these people with this - muddling of living standards.
Yes there is very much,a bad and worse. This is it. The difference is a tragic picture painted with a paint roller. You miss this.
Merriest Christmas, to you and, your kids here, of course, but it is good fortune indeed, to have options .
A blessing.

Originally Posted by Pancho-Villa

Bad is bad Huck...what's worse is irrelevant. I wouldn't raise my kids in Highland Park (MI) or the West side of SA...neither one. That was the point You missed it)...not which was worse. I agree it isn't nearly as bad here....but there are still areas that aren't very nice and happen to have higher crime rates.

[Pancho-Villa]

You and I see things very differently, Huck. Maybe you came from a bad neighborhood? "Bad" is in the eye of the beholder in this case. Happy Holidays to you and yours, my friend.

[steve807]

I don't know what it is about San Antonio's rough areas that still contrast sharply to those bad neighborhood high population city slums. Well, maybe I do.

[spurs22]

I've been looking at all the posts in this thread and get a good laugh from the politically correct comments about "I hate the lack of diversity here". Lol. Just say what you mean, folks. We won't get offended. And, there are plenty of cities/Texas towns with "more diversity".