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They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

texasmonthly.com

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Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#121

Post by techsupporter »

peytn wrote: post #114
adjkant wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd answer, but go to the megacities that show resilience and are building housing. In the US, so far that may only be NYC. I know that's not amazing to hear if you have other reservations about NYC, but I think it's the reality until mid-sized cities catch on and get their shit together. The other answer IMO is to pick a city no one in tech is even thinking about, and the growth rate is expected to be slow. Not to j…

DFW is another such megacity. The construction happening there reminds me of parts of China.

The problem is, from my perspective (and having lived there), the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex is neither resilient nor a megacity. Outside of the 635 and 820 loops, it is just suburban sprawl that gets scorching hot in the summer and everyone who lives there has to be reliant on a car.

DFW is going to be in a world of hurt when the water runs out and that day is coming somewhat soon. There are already places in central Texas where the aquifers are dry and the lakes don't refill during the formerly-rainy season. North Texas is reliant on a set of manmade lakes that are already slower and slower to refill, with more and more taps being added every year.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#123

Post by adjkant »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #120
adjkant wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd answer, but go to the megacities that show resilience and are building housing. In the US, so far that may only be NYC. I know that's not amazing to hear if you have other reservations about NYC, but I think it's the reality until mid-sized cities catch on and get their shit together. The other answer IMO is to pick a city no one in tech is even thinking about, and the growth rate is expected to be slow. Not to j…

NYC is building pied-a-terres for money launderers. The whole Hudson Yards was engineered as a phony rehabilitation of Harlem so they could sell visas to millionaires who could then turn around and buy a luxury apartment in the "blighted" neighborhood they revitalized.

No argument here, but what does this have to do with the countless other neighborhoods in NYC and the consistent expansion of housing that has happened in them over the past few decades while other cities experienced far worse gentrification pressures by not building housing?

Hudson Yards is not what I'm referring to in any way in my posts on this article. I'm mainly talking large towers in Williamsburg, along Atlantic Ave in Brooklyn, in the East Village edge near Alphabet City, some in Gowanus, Long Island City, and many others I'm probably forgetting.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#124

Post by techsupporter »

brundolf wrote: post #90
techsupporter wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I held out a small hope that covid and the remote-work wave would stem things a little bit, but it's hard to say whether that's happened. If anything, the influx could have increased due to the exodus from SF. This is exactly what we're seeing in the Seattle area. A lot of people in the various circles I'm in thought, as we entered the early stages of this pandemic really settling in for the long-haul, "well, phew,…

Similar feelings here. I simply don't know where else to go; it seems like every nice-to-live-in medium-sized city that isn't SF is going through this same song and dance. Money comes in like a flock of locusts, consumes the city, and SF is one of the first examples we're seeing of the husk that gets left behind. Then they move on to the next one. Where's a person supposed to lay down roots, without retreating deep i…

> I simply don't know where else to go; it seems like every nice-to-live-in medium-sized city that isn't SF is going through this same song and dance.

Not to sound too defeatist about it, since let's be honest we are still sitting pretty high on the list of people doing pretty well for ourselves, but I'm not sure there is any real escape.

In addition to more people moving here, one of the other reasons the Puget Sound housing market has shot up so dramatically is because lots of us didn't lose our jobs during this pandemic, but we for damn sure lost what we usually spend money on. With so much money sloshing around, people make the decision of "well, surely now I should buy a house, right?" And then they do. And since more money is available to them, housing prices are driven upward.

What sucks is if we have this worry, those of us of the high-five-figure/low-six-figure brigade, how must it be to be of even lesser means? If we're feeling the creep--the only reason I didn't get hit with yet another $100/month rent increase is because the Governor said they couldn't--then what is everyone else doing? I am anxious not only for my family, but for society at large.

I don't know how much longer that can last. Maybe it can last forever, since the monetary policy in this country seems to be that housing prices Must Never, Ever, Ever Fall, because housing is both a required good and the primary "investment" vehicle of everyone with lower net worth than an Apple executive.

My employer has taken up the work from wherever mantle and has said that where our company has offices, even internationally, are places where living is acceptable. As I'm an EU citizen, I wouldn't need work permission to go live there, maybe I give there a go for the second half of my life.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#125

Post by rmetzler »

Bukhmanizer wrote: post #86

There are ways that people talk about gentrification that always makes me slightly uncomfortable. As a non-white person, something always feels like gentrification is something that “good” white people like to blame “bad” white people for doing, when the real problem tends to be wider and more systemic. In this particular instance I find myself asking why it matters that the Weaver residents were originally not from…

I think one important part of Gentrification means there are people with more money moving into a neighbourhood. The real estate agents just showed the building to them on the quiet day and they bought their piece of it, believing it's like this all day every day. And when they move in, they realise the quietness was rather the exception than the rule. If they were from the area before, they would have known. But because they payed this amount of money, they think they bought the right to a have the quietness they were sold on.

I've seen similar things in Berlin in the 90s and early 2000s when West-Germans, mostly from Swabia moved in. They were sold apartments next to Youth clubs and the new neighbours didn't like that they had loud music on Friday and Saturday nights. But this was Berlin, this was what it was famous for. But whatever, a lot of the clubs had to shut down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knaack_club

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#126

Post by chrisco255 »

fortran77 wrote: post #39
gowld wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more likely that author doesn't even understand what they are writing, and is just grasping at factoids to mock up an argument.

Facts don't matter for certain people. That being said, I'm sympathetic to the people who like to parade and show off their custom cars. I used to see that in California when I first moved here. No drag racing, or dangerous stunts, just people driving cars slowly down the street.

I'm sympathetic as well, but cool cars with no drag race is a bit like sex with no climax. When I was a teen, we would gather in a shopping center to show off our cars and talk shit, and then drive out to a rural area to run quarter miles for fun. Good times!

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#128

Post by thaumaturgy »

ziftface wrote: post #115
thaumaturgy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, this again. This law was written to give code enforcement a cudgel against unlicensed repair shops. All the auto enthusiast blogs and forums immediately lost their minds, but there hasn't been a sweep of the neighborhoods with officers asking to look inside of your garage for uncommon tools. The one complaint I could find online [1] was from a dude whose handle was "nimblemotorsports" and he said he had a car lif…

I'm sorry but this is difficult to believe. The site says that it's unlawful to do "minor vehicle repair [...] Using tools not normally found in a residence". If it was just a zoning law, why does it have to include that stipulation? I've seen plenty of people who own tools "not normally found in a residence". It's hard to guess exactly what the authors' intentions were, but it wouldn't be unreasonable for someone to…

Well, the law will be two years old soon. There's one local news article about it where the county's PIO clarified the county's intention [1]. Aside from that, alllllll of these homeowners innocently working on their cars in their own garages and yards around the county and getting hit with hundreds and hundreds of dollars in fines have resulted in... exactly zero other local news coverage that I can find.

Every other search result about this thing is some motoring site where the internet commenters are absolutely certain that this is yet another example of draconian liberal legislative overreach and just nobody can really do anything on their own property anymore and it's all just so unfair...

Again, I'm expressly not defending the law as it's written, but if the letter of every bad law was to be applied equally to everyone in the same instant, there would not be a single free person anywhere in the country. Like all the others, this one is being applied selectively.

[1]: Warning: really obnoxious autoplay videos, because every local news site is on a headlong rush to the bottom of the pit of asshole design. https://www.abc10.com/article/entertainment/television/progr...

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#130

Post by whatanattitude »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #59
wutbrodo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not surprised. The article struck me as particularly amateurish, which is unfortunate because the situation is an unusually nuanced and interesting one on a topic that's constantly talked about.

I'm interested in the nuanced version. I'm not familiar with the event. The article painted a pretty clear and unsympathetic story: "these folks have been gathering in this spot to do this thing weekly for 25 years, an expensive apartment building went up, and some of the residents who moved in don't like the event and want it canceled, citing a variety of flimsy pretexts." So what's the interesting and unusual nuanc…

That a short haired Karen doesn’t want the smoke killing the trees.
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