Speaking as an Oklahoman, Texas is too Texas for its own good.
The Astonishing Transformation of Austin
41–50 of 77 posts
Re: The Astonishing Transformation of Austin
#42Anyone who lives Austin able to provide anecdotes?
I grew up in Austin in the 90s and currently live in SF. My family still lives in Austin, so I visit fairly frequently.
I think this was well-written. The Austin that exists today is unrecognizable from the Austin of my childhood—particularly the downtown areas like South Congress. In one way, it's sad, because the changes are certainly evident of a new professional class in Austin that did not exist before. There's a wealth gap that is much more apparent. Many of my friends I grew up with live farther out than they expected—Leander, Georgetown, Round Rock.
But on the other hand, compared to San Francisco, I'm glad that Austin is encouraging growth in _some_ direction. SF seems to have tried its hardest to repel tech growth, and its downtown is now deservedly emptied out. It's actually exciting to come back to Austin and see a city that is building and changing—it makes SF feel stagnant.
> “There’s this spirit of the Texas frontier—strong people confronting challenges and doing so boldly.”
There is certainly an attitude I miss about the people I knew in Texas. There's a sense of optimism and capability I remember that doesn't seem as pervasive elsewhere.
That said, I don't think I'll return to Austin. I had enough of the hot climate, and all of the changes make me feel like it's no longer my hometown.
Re: The Astonishing Transformation of Austin
#43Anyone who lives Austin able to provide anecdotes?
I lived there for 10 years, around 2007-2017 or so. It was fantastic during this time, and if you rode a bike, just genuinely the best town in Texas. The food was great, there was always something to do, the weather was better than Houston (less humid, less rain), and there's actual hills and lakes.
The traffic has always been terrible, which is why I mention riding a bike. The infrastructure was never intended to handle this many people, so sitting in dead stop traffic is just an everyday occurrence multiple times a day, pretty much anywhere in the city.
All that said, the majority of my favorite bars and restaurants on the East Side are now giant apartment complexes. I also no longer drink, so that's removed a large part of Austin life for me.
The charm of Austin was it's small town nature, offering really unique things and a chill pace of life. Now its a giant town in the foot print of a small town, offering mostly corporate owned things.
It's still probably more fun than any other city in Texas, but at this point in my life I'd never move back.
Re: The Astonishing Transformation of Austin
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Glad you've enjoyed it! I lived in NYC for the past eight years and returned during covid / when all my work went remote. It's sad, but I don't really plan on staying. If anything, I'll take irate left wing politics over low IQ pickup truck road rage any day. Austin used to be something special (maybe it's just the way I remember it) and now most of the charm I remember is gone or has been fully commercialized. Havin…
So will you be going back to NYC? I love to visit NYC whenever I can, but it does seem to "churn" a lot of people out, with folks staying for a few years then leaving. For me, the weather is mainly bad in the peak of summer. 9-10 months of the year or so, it's great. The cedar pollen is pretty bad though, so if you have allergies I can understand.
NYC is currently too expensive to raise a family. That's why people tend to leave.
NYC has less housing stock now than it did 2 decades ago, despite the population having grown by several Austins in that time.
The pandemic seems to have spurred a lot of political will to increase housing fairly significantly. We will need to see if this will translate into actual changes.
Re: The Astonishing Transformation of Austin
#45So, I have lived in Austin since the mid-90's, having come here from the midwest via Silicon Valley (back when it was based on actual silicon, i.e. semiconductor companies). You know you have become a true Austinite when you first say "it's not as cool as it was back when I first moved here". I was hearing it in the mid-90's when I moved here, I have heard it continually in the 25+ years since. Sometime in 2050, Aust…
Look at Boulder for an example of what happens when you institute strict limits on growth.
And what is Boulder like?
Re: The Astonishing Transformation of Austin
#46Maybe just an untimely experience, but I visited Austin once a little over a year ago during the summer, and downtown was basically a ghost town. I assumed it was because UT was on break, but still I couldn't help thinking "where is everybody?" given the Austin hype. That being said, as a remote worker becoming increasingly disillusioned about Bay Area cost of living and politics, Austin is on my radar. Any Austin tr…
Would not recommend. It's a great city if you like paying almost as much as SF for housing and getting:
- High heat and humidity for 8 months out of the year
- Mosquitos that make the few nice days out much less nice
- Surprising ice/snow storms in the middle of the few months of nice weather
- Having to drive everywhere in heavy and hostile traffic
- Risking your life if you want to walk or bike somewhere
- Being surrounded by an expanse of suburban sprawl that's very ugly
- Having surprisingly few cultural institutions / resources close by
- Property taxes are eye-poppingly high so if you plan to buy a place be warned that you can afford less than you think
That said if you love strip malls and want to live in a place where people equate quality of life to quantity of stuff, then you'll love it!
Re: The Astonishing Transformation of Austin
#47Speaking as an Oklahoman, Texas is too Texas for its own good.
Would you recommend Bartlesville/Tulsa?
Re: The Astonishing Transformation of Austin
#48I understand the nostalgia for a youth and place that is gone, but it’s interesting to point out in one sentence — “Austin was beset by racial divisions” and in the next paragraph discuss the hope that the city would institute strict zoning to keep out newcomers or as the writing says “if we won’t build it, they won’t come”. So much of this piece is dedicated to the problem of housing, but ignored is the problem in i…
The vibe from Austin has always been weird to me. "Thanks for visiting, don't move here" or whatever their saying is to that effect. Yet, so few people are from Austin. To me, Austin has always been that poser city trying so hard to be cool and noticed by the other cool cities, but when you try to get to know the city it's just a facade of cool and the rest is just empty and hollow
That vibe is very 2000's.
Austin used to be cool. Austin used to have a bunch of places open until 3AM. Austin used to be a raging live music scene. Austin used to have latin clubs with 12 piece bands and a dance floor the size of a postage stamp that served amazing homemade tamales. Austin used to have cool food places. SXSW used to have a whole bunch of artists you never heard of--and some of them sucked terribly--but that's how cool works. Austin used to have a biker bar that had the best milkshakes in town.
All these things disappeared about the mid 90s (it's no coincidence that Office Space was shot in Austin in 1998-1999). Nothing "cool" has risen to replace any of it.
But people also do forget that unless they were UT students they really didn't like the "cool" people very much back then. For example, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Marcia Ball, and their ilk whom everybody now lionize were considered part of the undesirables. The "hippies" were looked at with a mixture of arms length tolerance and active disgust. And as has been pointed out in the article, race relations have been fraught for a very long time.
Re: The Astonishing Transformation of Austin
#49"Anyone who takes 6 months of paternity leave is a loser" "I had to flee SF, the city literally built in my VC image, because someone said some mean words to me" These people are a parody of themselves. Talent-less rich kids, spending other people's money all day, and so incredibly insecure they have to constantly find ways to belittle anyone who doesn't treat them like a genius. Narcissism run rampant, and spreading…
Especially since Pete's child was in the ICU - it is not like he was on vacation in Hawaii or something.
Re: The Astonishing Transformation of Austin
#50Anyone who lives Austin able to provide anecdotes?
Grew up in Austin and family has been here for several generations. Mr. Wright puts it best:
If you live long enough in a place, it becomes haunted by ghosts: memories of events and friends long gone still inhabit spaces that have been levelled and covered over by the unstoppable newness.
I've moved from Austin as have most of the people I know, or they've passed away. To me it is a city of ghosts, not just those that have left, but the entire groups of people who have been priced out and excluded. Gentrification destroys neighborhoods and destroys cities. Whether this process is beneficial or harmful is a matter of perspective.
Austin as a place, and the American continent as a whole, has been over thousands of years and especially the past few hundred, a land of displacement. Numerous American Indian tribes displaced each other, and the Spanish, the Mexican, French, Anglos, and so forth. To be truly American, in the continental sense, is to be not only a displacer but to eventually be displaced yourself.
To have experienced the displacement in only one to two decades is a concentrated experience, perhaps shared in a fortunately peaceful way, but economically violent, by other groups over time: the Greeks in Anatolia after Turkish independence, the population transfer in Israel and Palestine, or between India and Pakistan at partition. Having a city stolen from you by the monied is preferable to getting forced out by a mob, but if you can't pay rent or property taxes, the sheriff is coming to pay a visit and he's armed.
The old Austin was fun while it lasted, simultaneously boring and exhilarating. But it's dead, and we natives should have a funeral for it, and either in town or out, move on. Meet me down by one of the few remaining moontowers and we'll crack open a Lone Star for one final tribute to Leslie and, with SRV playing in the background, toast to our dearly departed. Ausitn, you had a good run, here's to your memory.