Texas Monthly-the city is a bustling, economically vibrant, progressive place I hardly recognize (Houston: how much)

[SAguy]

Excellent article in the Texas Monthly-

I tell you all this because it is the easiest way to convey my shock and awe at the way San Antonio has changed over the past ten years. San Antonio’s population has boomed so much in that decade that it bounded ahead of Dallas to become the second-largest city in Texas and the seventh-largest in the U.S. It ranked first on the Milken Institute’s 2011 list of best-performing cities, a directory that rates job creation and sustainability in U.S. metropolitan areas, jumping thirteen spots up the list in one year to surpass, yes, Houston and Dallas. The Bay Area Council Economic Institute’s annual report named San Antonio one of the top 25 metro areas for tech-business growth from 2010 to 2011. Last fall, the New York Times, adding modifiers like “progressive” and “economically vibrant,” called San Antonio “a kind of Berkeley of the Southwest.” Southtown, the section of San Antonio that includes the King William Historic District, the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center, and the neighborhoods between what was long a no-man’s-land between South Flores and South Presa streets, has evolved into an arts quarter that teems with seductive restaurants, shops, and bars. There are plans, finally, to turn the forgotten HemisFair Plaza into a sprawling, central city park. Northwest San Antonio, which twenty or so years ago was converted into an avoidable theme park mecca with the likes of Fiesta Texas, now feels like a rich enclave of Mexico City, with a Neiman’s and a Nordstrom. Lately, when I return home, I feel more and more like a South Texas version of Rip Van Winkle.

(“We have more college students than anywhere in Texas but Houston,” Castro noted); the second-largest University of Texas campus; a second Texas A&M campus; the country’s largest new military medical complex. “The demography, the economy, and the pragmatism here represent the Texas of the future,” Castro insisted.

Read More-
San Antonio Rose | Texas Monthly

[Mom2Feebs]

hmmm. Interesting. I'm glad to see such love lauded on our city but it seems just a little over-enthusiastic. Don't get me wrong, I love SA, but this article is kind of like when your friend sets you up on a blind date. They tell you how good looking their friend is, and when you meet them, you're like...uh....not my kind of good looking? But you spend the evening with them, get to know them, have a few dates, and end up falling in love with them despite the fact that they have more than a few warts on their face.

[Merovee]

Originally Posted by Mom2Feebs

hmmm. Interesting. I'm glad to see such love lauded on our city but it seems just a little over-enthusiastic. Don't get me wrong, I love SA, but this article is kind of like when your friend sets you up on a blind date. They tell you how good looking their friend is, and when you meet them, you're like...uh....not my kind of good looking? But you spend the evening with them, get to know them, have a few dates, and end up falling in love with them despite the fact that they have more than a few warts on their face.

Oh, it seems spot on but might be focused on parts of the city that a suburban lifestyle seems to avoid by design due to long standing historical trends of moving away from the city in both body and spirit.

Did you not once claim to never have a need to come inside the loop because you do everything you need to outside of it? And the one time you did come you called the news over bat guano...

It is quite understandable if you don't get this and that is OK we need the suburbs to keep performing while rearranging themselves for great sustainability as we are already doing in town.

The article was also more about how SA has changed and is changing and not really about trying to claim how good looking it is at this very moment as one would do when selling a blind date.

[dpantle]

Originally Posted by Mom2Feebs

hmmm. Interesting. I'm glad to see such love lauded on our city but it seems just a little over-enthusiastic. Don't get me wrong, I love SA, but this article is kind of like when your friend sets you up on a blind date. They tell you how good looking their friend is, and when you meet them, you're like...uh....not my kind of good looking? But you spend the evening with them, get to know them, have a few dates, and end up falling in love with them despite the fact that they have more than a few warts on their face.

This is just another typical TM article. They have a long history of "overly optimistic" and provocative pieces such as this. We dropped our subscription 20 years ago. Their slant evolved to the point that you couldn't even trust their restaurant reviews.

[Gilah G.]

Listen, I was born and raised in. S.A.. Moved out in 2001. I always tell my husband, when he passes (god forbid) I am selling our home in Dallas and moving back home. Only reason we don't live there now is because of the tech job market.
Anyway, when I read that article a month ago I was like" wow this doesn't seem like my home town at all."
from my visits, yes the growth is just staggering to see. Every 3 months when I go back
I am amazed at how much it has changed, YET hasn't changed. For that I am grateful.
I did think the article was bit exaggerated though.

[Mom2Feebs]

Originally Posted by dpantle

This is just another typical TM article. They have a long history of "overly optimistic" and provocative pieces such as this. We dropped our subscription 20 years ago. Their slant evolved to the point that you couldn't even trust their restaurant reviews.

I remember there was a HUGE brouhaha over the Best Burgers in Texas a couple (? more than that?) years ago. I think there was one for Tex-Mex too, people just about lost their minds. For good reason, too--many restaurants that deserved to be on there were not!

[huckster]

My return to San Antonio after decades of being gone was weird. Exactly what I have been so surprised to experience, this article included by saguy from Texas Monthly Magazine describes. While the adjectives describing San Antonio may be a bit overstated and optimistic, but not by much, I too saw the tremendous differences around town.
After being gone for decades, just like the author of the article,from San Antonio, I agree. The place has boomed. It all looks so brand new compared to when I left it has been a very surprising return. Surprising is an understatement . Astonishment was not.
There are areas around town that were completely unrecognizable upon my return due to this very rapid growth. Vistas have vanished, city streets re-routed and extended many miles, huge areas - miles of wooded
countryside have disappeared.
Particularly driving on Loop 1604 between 281 North and Universal City. I would look for some of the old familiar landmarks from memory, exit ramps etc. to sort of orient myself from the old highway and so place myself geographically to the new areas and there are none, the old scenery is completely gone. It is strange to be familiar and unfamiliar with an area at the same time. Great things have happened here.
What a contrast compared to the old. This is a very busy place nowadays. Good fortune has smiled on this city.
Freeways were rebuilt, San Pedro north from loop 410 to 1604 was filled with new growth and unreognizable.
I didn't know the place anymore. In the beginning, overconfidence in my familiarity with S.A. streets would cause me to get lost. One time just trying to get to a long time ordinary destination..
It was strange to return here and be familiar and yet unfamiliar with directions and places, simultaneously.

[ChrisSA_wxatUIW]

Originally Posted by Mom2Feebs

hmmm. Interesting. I'm glad to see such love lauded on our city but it seems just a little over-enthusiastic. Don't get me wrong, I love SA, but this article is kind of like when your friend sets you up on a blind date. They tell you how good looking their friend is, and when you meet them, you're like...uh....not my kind of good looking? But you spend the evening with them, get to know them, have a few dates, and end up falling in love with them despite the fact that they have more than a few warts on their face.

XD

This post made me laugh, thank you