Please give me 10 reasons why NOT to move to the Austin area. (Houston: elementary schools, college)

[love roses]

1. Only if your looking almost centrally Austin or West. There are also light industrial jobs in nearby towns.
2. Extremely true (we've got miles and miles of Texas....)But I actually sort of like that. Lived here nearly my entire life, and still haven't been everywhere in Texas.
3. true, but there are lakes.(I know, not great lakes )
4. It's true isn't it? Texas and Austin being great :P?
5. I'm a little past 30 and still love live music. But true, it's no Dallas or Houston....yet.
6. true, not a wide variety, but I've been other places and the food wasn't more spectacular anywhere else than the best places here for ethnic food are.
7. true
8. true
9. true
10. Not true
11. Could be better in some places, but RR, Georgetown, Taylor, and Pflugerville have good libraries(where I'm at) don't know about Austin ones.
12. true
13. true
14. I have a friend from Nebraska who says if you want to go where things don't come until 5 years after they've been in vogue, go there (Nebraska)
15. Kids shows do come to Austin. Major touring acts, not so much, unless they''re willing to downscale due to the venue. But since I'm 30ish, I've sort of gotten over wanting to go to arena shows.

Naah...couldn't tell

[Phisch]

I thought I saw the Stones played here. I heard they're pretty big.

(that's me trying to get into trouble)

I haven't lived where there are great lakes, the only nice one was man-made. Sure there was the beach, but the bacteria levels were such that I was warned against them and told the man-made lake was better. And parking at the beach can be a pain.

[jread]

I don't see how anyone could possibly say that Austin has terrible drinking water. I actually stopped buying bottled water when I moved here because the tap water is so good.

I also see no lack of recycling. Are you another one of those people who is speaking of "Austin" and actually lives in the suburbs?

[jwb123]

Austin still has a very substantial cancerous growth of cookie-cutter, suburban crap growing around it at an alarming rate. The good news is that the new urbanist projects are becoming wildly successful (Mueller) and the downtown condos are selling like hotcakes, so maybe this will push the market in the right direction.

Welcome to City Planning & development 101. This isn't specific to Austin, it's happened, and continues to happen through out the country. Cities are developed, redeveloped and then the development moves outward as demand requires it. It's called growth, and it happens - you can't just grow "up" it needs to happen "out" as well for several, many obvious, reasons.

I know, I know - you detest suburbs, adnaseum ... though, I am not sure where the anger really lies, or why. Was a suburb mean to you growing up?

Suburbs have their place, and their target demographic, as they have since the birth of the suburb in the 50's. Where do you expect this part of the population to live, if development did not occur past city limits? Pack everyone into an over-priced condo? Or do you want city limits to continuously grow into an even larger city? Blending with the other cities - until it's just one large state of pavement? And if so, what would make such "city" special from the next? And what about the economic, social, agricultural, environmental impact of such a suggestion?

You have a lot of contempt for horrible suburbia - but do you have a better solution?

BTW if everyone lived in Austin, and commuted to some of the larger employers (Dell, HP, IBM etc) that is adding congestion and environmental impact. We live out here in the disgusting crap suburbs, my husband commutes 8 miles on a bike to Dell - and sometimes we don't use a car all day or for several days (we can walk to school, parks, pool, nature and other activities). This is just one positive, among many, for suburb dwelling.

[jwb123]

-Tired of living in a mid-sized city without access to SO many things. Takes days to get out of TX driving, and is getting very expensive to fly out of here, and it takes ALL day, no matter where you're going.

I don't know. We drove here from the Seattle area. We made it, total, in 2.5 days. We did Wyoming, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma and into TX in one.

-No ocean or decent water (i.e. Great Lakes). Very landlocked feel.

I grew up in the DC area, and then moved out to Seattle. The drive to beaches/coast from DC/NOVA is 3.5 hours, the drive to beaches/coast from Seattle is 3.5 hrs, the drive to beaches/gulf coast from Austin is 3.5 hours. It's not landlocked at all. Think of the people in the midwest. THAT'S land locked.

-Boredom with two cultures--the NPR, KLRU lovin' liberal in town, and the untraveled, Bible thumpers just outside of town. They're both kinda boring, and don't want to hear your opinion. Texas is great. Austin is the best. End of story.

I am an Atheist, living in the suburbs. Haven't had any problem with "bible thumpers". Sure, I know people go to church and all that - but going to church doesn't automatically equal a "bible thumper".

-Lack of ethnic culture, and the food that comes with them. No good bakeries, pizza, Greek, Italian, Middle Eastern, Cuban here. Texans will disagree, but if they've always lived here they don't know the difference.
Man cannot live on BBQ & Tex Mex alone. Texas does have THE best iced tea, however.

Really the only cuisine I think is lacking is Asian/Japanese. BUT - coming from Seattle, where I can get Teriyaki and Sushi in at least 7 different places once you exit off a highway... my opinion is probably skewed.

-Service businesses are either snotty kids who think they're doing you a favor by taking your order, or someone who doesn't speak English.

I haven't seen this AT ALL.

-While the roads are in good condition, there aren't enough of them. No real infrastructure if you're outside of Austin proper. People are expected to use the interstate to say, go to Target. Nothing is convienient.

Kind of agree. Things are very spread out, and most things are right off the HWY. At least on the east side of 35, in RR - this is improving.

-Drinking water is awful.

Depends on where you are and if you are in a MUD - from what I have found, via my own experience and comments from other people I have met. We have a water softener, and our water is fine. I drink filtered water anyway - never tap.

-Library system is poor.

Our RR library is fine.

-Hardly anyone recycles, a lot of litter.

Agree. Even IN Austin, compared with places like Seattle - it falls behind.

[TheHarvester]

Originally Posted by jread

I don't see how anyone could possibly say that Austin has terrible drinking water. I actually stopped buying bottled water when I moved here because the tap water is so good.

I wholeheartedly agree. Besides, most bottled water is just tap water with a label and a convenient package that increases use of natural resources and pollutes landscapes. Every time I hike the trails around here I'm not just picking up beer cans, I'm also picking up discarded plastic water bottles.

Originally Posted by Jenbar

"-Service businesses are either snotty kids who think they're doing you a favor by taking your order, or someone who doesn't speak English."

I haven't seen this AT ALL.

You know that snooty attitude you've gotten from me? I could give you a list of "hip" coffeehouses, independent video rental places and other such businesses, where you'll definitely get the "attitude" from the uber-groovy person behind the counter. It's especially common in coffeehouse culture, though that's probably true in any city that has an indy coffeehouse scene. Probably no different here from Seattle in that regard so I guess your point is generally accurate (depending on where people hang out.)

As for the language issue, I've mainly encountered that in Chinese restaurants. This problem is fairly minimal in general and is most common (across cultures and languages) in certain districts that attract new immigrants who are least likely to know English.

[jwb123]

I don't know.

We are IN Austin all the time - we are young, still pretty hip considering we have kids (my husband and I are only 28 and 30, we have all the prerequisite tattoos and whatnot ) and we are FROM Seattle, aka hipville or "hipper than thou".... and we still haven't seen any of this at all... we aren't all just about the suburbs. We are here because that's what makes sense, at this point in our lives when it's not about being cool anymore or selfish, but about what's good for our kids.

We actually LIKE that we have left the "hipster" crown behind in Seattle, and enjoy when we go out (be it to a nice restaurant, or scene-type bar or coffeehouse) we see ton of different "types" out there, all pretty casual, varying ages...

My point is we hang in the suburbs, and we hang in some interesting spots in Austin - and I still haven't seen this. Perhaps it's our coming from Seattle - where this attitude is par for the course, so any sort of attitude here, seems pretty watered down...

OR - we are SO cool, that the attitude givers see it and realize we don't deserve it or something.

[TheHarvester]

Originally Posted by Jenbar

We are IN Austin all the time - we are young, still pretty hip considering we have kids (my husband and I are only 28 and 30, we have all the prerequisite tattoos and whatnot ) and we are FROM Seattle, aka hipville or "hipper than thou".... and we still haven't seen any of this at all... we aren't all just about the suburbs.

I think you nailed it with the comparison between what you're accustomed to from Seattle and what you see here, plus your whimsical-but-probably-accurate comment about you being recognized as "one of them." I'm too old to qualify any more. I'd have to tattoo Michael Moore and Quentin Tarrantino on my face in order to pass for anything remotely hip. And just to prove my point, I think the above comments are probably out-moded by about 5 years.

Oh well... I remember what it was like to be hip. It was fun. I kinda miss it at times. Knowing that life has only one direction (older), I have to accept that I'm outta the game.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get to the early-bird special at Luby's.

[twange]

Originally Posted by TheHarvester

Oh well... I remember what it was like to be hip. It was fun. I kinda miss it at times. Knowing that life has only one direction (older), I have to accept that I'm outta the game.

You're only outta the game when you check out for good

My definition of cool is someone who is comfortable in their own skin...whatever that is. Besides, "cool" is something that teenagers aspire to...who the hell wants to go back there??? Sometimes it just seems like too much work.

Then again:

"I'm a sucker for the fountain of youth,
Till I bang my head on a mountain of truth"

...Eliza Gilkyson

[TheHarvester]

Originally Posted by twange

My definition of cool is someone who is comfortable in their own skin...whatever that is. Besides, "cool" is something that teenagers aspire to...who the hell wants to go back there???

Thanks for the reminder. I was mostly kidding. Mostly. There are certain games that I'm happy to be "out of." Like the game of trying to attract the opposite sex with shallow cues. It's much more relaxing to go to Barton Springs these days, knowing that there's no way I'd ever be of interest to anyone so I might as well just enjoy the cold water, hot sun, giant pecan trees and beautiful scenery. No worries. Definitely not interested in going back to the games of my teens and twenties.

And I must admit that some of the "coolest" people I've ever known were over 80 years old.