So I've been in San Antonio for about 6 months now for M.Arch after 3 years in Austin, and all I can do is think about Austin. I know that there is always a homesick feeling for a city you grew up in, but I'm not sure that's it.
There's something about Town Lake,
something about the RV park in the middle of the most expensive dirt in the city,
something about the twang rock,
something about the pretentious trying to hipster it on So Congress, something about the Warehouse District patios at 6:00 in April, something about the kayaking in mid-summer,
something about a drive through the west side of town and a sunset at The Oasis
Anyone have a feeling like this for other cities, or is my relapse of missing Austin just a homesickness?
Isn't San Antonio only about 80 miles from Austin? Around here that's considered commuting distance.
I've never been to Austin, but it sounds like a pretty cool little city... I may be visiting a friend there in March for the South by Southwest music festival.
Nah, LIG, ACL is where its at. Its nothing but 100,000 hippies smoking dope on the ground while your favorite artists play. You can totally walk right past all the hippies and all they'll do is point their joints/pipes/whatever at you and say "NOT COOL, MAN! NOT COOL!" So you can totally get front row seats to just about anything. Given there's a little more turn out for the bigger names, like Coldplay, Black Crowes, or Oasis, but even then I saw all of those and a handful of others front row just by walking past pacifist hippies.
And No Sleep, LIG is right. Austin is totally commutable from SA. Although I will agree that SA BLOWS! I lived in some apartments between the gun club and the Quarry for one summer. That's all the SA I could take.
I wish I was in Austin
In the Chili Parlour Bar
Drinkin' Mad Dog Margaritas
And not carin' where you are
But here I sit in Dublin
Just rollin' cigarettes
Holdin' back and chokin' back
The shakes with every breath
Chorus
Forgive me all my anger
Forgive me all my faults
There's no need to forgive me
For thinkin' what I thought
I loved you from the git go
I'll love you till I die
I loved you on the Spanish steps
The day you said goodbye
I am just a poor boy
Work's my middle name
If money was a reason
I would not be the same
I'll stand up and be counted
I'll face up to the truth
I'll walk away from trouble
But I can't walk away from you
I have been to Fort Worth
I have been to Spain
I have been to proud
To come in out of the rain
I have seen the David
I've seen the Mona Lisa too
I have heard Doc Watson
Play Columbus Stockade Blues
I was born and raised in Austin (yes native Austinites exist) and a lot of the standard things that people always gush about when they discuss the city are totally alien to me-I've never been to the Oasis or Guero's or the Salt Lick or SXSW or ACL. I have been canoeing in Barton Creek though. And I'm from old school Central Austin and remember when the Arboretum was built and people at my school wondering "Who would go all the way out there for anything?"-it was the edge of the metro area at the time. I still almost never go out there. And I remember when there were a ton of movie theaters inside the center city-now, unless you go the Alamo Drafthouse, you have to go out of the city to see a firstrun movie. South Congress was all porn cinemas and was a no-go zone 24/7 and the Warehouse District was...warehouses!
I havent been to San Antonio in years-we used to go there because all the 'high end shopping"=Niemen Marcus was there. Even when I was a kid I found SA boring-but Austin kids get jaded at a young age.
But yeah, I love Austin-everytime I go back there from the East Coast, my blood pressure drops and I get happier and eat better and just relax. I've never lived there as a working adult out of school-should try it soon. I do think that in many ways it has gotten better by getting bigger since I was a child.
okay, i was hoping the answers would include a little:
"nah, man, it's just homesickness. there's other great cities: portland, colorado springs, and lawrence to name a few"
or
"give it some time in SA; you'll learn to like it"
sounds like Austin is as great as I suspected
now, as for the commuting: i tried it for a year and became concerned with the gas prices and the lack of work given to my studies due to 3 hrs/day on the road...
we moved to Southtown in SA, which is what i hoped would be a small Austin community, but it hasn't lived up to expectations as of yet...
i also grew up in Austin. we lived in a house in Rollingwood, which had a septic system at the time. i walked to school a few times (Eanes), and i always enjoyed the traffic free ride through MoPac. Things have changed, but I guess all things do...
I guess I'll have to consider a move back when I'm done with M.Arch
1) 80 miles is totally not commuting distance. that's crazy.
2) i hear san antonio's supposed to be cool too... riverwalk, right?
3) austin is great but it's certainly not without its problems. the way the city sprawls is unbelievable. it's got its nice little urban core but then everything outside of that is sprawl. even all of the yuppies i know who live in austin live in sprawling 3-story apartment complexes with huge surface parking lots to and from which the car is the only reasonable means of transit. and everyone with money lives in a gated community, which it totally foreign to me as a midwesterner - seems very fearful and exclusionary. also, it's way too hot in the summer and just cold enough to be unpleasant in the winter. and it's still texas - half of everyone drives a pickup and outside of the cool parts of town it's low-class blah sprawl targets walmarts HEB freeways etc like you would find anywhere else.
there does that make you feel better???
4) then again, it is the only place in texas i would want to live. the core of the city is amazingly vibrant - impressive nightlife. all of the young people make it a really fun place. and i like that burrito place, what's it called, freebirds?
get over it. is this only the 2nd place you've lived? every town has its good points and bad points -- some more than others, granted -- but no perfect town exists.
a lot of places seem better in retrospect...
SA might not be doin' it for you, but that doesn't mean that only Austin ever will. Not every person is right for every place but no place is perfect, either.
get out of san antonio...but go to tacoland before you do.
As a native austinite I always find it interesting that people still think of it the way I used to...but it has changed dramatically in the last ten years. There are still fragments of old austin left that I love....Lake Austin and Barton Creek probably being the best...its long green belt park trails a second...and I hope they continue to have a face before austin has been stripped of every part of its individuality and it has become dallas with a river that cuts through it. It has no power as a town to fight the big city developer...they will just take any attempt to make them sway to austins intentions of development and turn it into a lawsuit to get what they want...part of being a littlw capital in a land of outside influence..i.e. see washington d.c.
Put me in the ranks of those that don't understand the love affair with austin (portland too for that matter).
Growing up in Houston we went to Austin to see the capitol, govenors mansion and that's it. Olddirty is right, at that time there wasn't much to love about that town and many places to just plain avoid. We thought of Austin as this small town where the politicians and college students went. Heck, they didn't even have pro sports teams or a Six Flags amusement park.
Since college I've known a few people that moved to Austin to work. Lured by high paying jobs during the tech boom of the 90's. None of them TX natives. All of them have since left and moved on, echoing much of what Chase said. Their advise would be to move out of TX all together and you'll soon forget about Austin all together.
shoot i went to SA once a few years back... i believe i was 14? Even then i remember it feeling overhyped and the riverwalk eerily sterile... and i was from Kansas City at the time.
Perhaps i was there on a down couple of days...
as for austin, i too have heard good things but they all stem from the music scene. But the truth of the matter is that while Austin does have good venues and good bands, it by no means has a monopoly on it. Plus its bound to fade anyway... Remember when all the best bands came from Seattle? Omaha? New York? Canada?
i've noticed that while louisville doesn't have the same national rep as austin, it has the same way of staying with those who have lived here. and people generally come back.
but then i moved here 'temporarily' in '94 and never left...
On the note of music...Austin's scene will always be strong as it is roots based...meaning it is not based on a fad...parts get swept up in some hype, but at its core, its heart, music will always be the pulse of that town.
austin is not chicago and will never be chicago...but we could argue this indefinitely...I am just letting you know as a guy who grew up in central texas...music aint going nowhere...austin is just a hub of tons of small towns who will always have music as part of their soul...gruene would be just one example: http://www.gruenetexas.com/
so, what I am talking about is central texas as a whole which austin is basically the center of in relation to music...now art...austin will never be a big art center...but when everyone grows up playing music you will find that even your average busboy or girl can strum a tune a pound out a beat.
Plus, many musicians survive in Texas, Austin as their home, because you can make a living at it within the state...you never have to leave...I don't think Illinois has that type of support, though I could be wrong...But Texas is growing, not shrinking.
Keep in mind that NoSleep grew up in Austin, which makes a difference in one's perceptions. It's his hometown, regardless of how hip the music scene may be at any given moment. Every corner of the city is probably loaded with memories, good and bad.
Cincinnati is my hometown, and even though the city doesn't have much going for it from an outsider's point of view, and I would probably never move back there in a million years, it will always have a special place in my heart and every visit brings back lots of memories.
That said, 80 miles isn't a huge distance. Go back to Austin for a weekend visit whenever you can... You probably have friends and/or family you can crash with. You're close enough that you can still enjoy Austin without giving up your life in San Antonio. You want homesickness? Wait until you're living 3000 miles away from your hometown.
yeah, im not arguing with you jasoncross, just stating what is fact... things change, texas wont be rough and tumble forever. austin gets starbucks, dallas builds more mcmansions, houston booms, SA does whatever it does, and texas becomes something new. its normally the vernacular things that die when that happens, music being one of them.
this seems to be the way of the world for many places.
Yeah, forget the water park and just float the river. Sam Marcos has a nice river to float on as well...it also has a nice energetic music scene as does Denton.
Austin, or rather the central texas music scene is anything but hip (I am talking New Braunfels to Wimberly to say Temple over to College Station to Bastrop area).. it is just those not from austin have no idea about its heritage and history who think of it in that way...as a new hip city. Before Nirvana and the indy explosion, before marcia ball, willie nelson, joe king carasco, the butthole surfers, armadillo world headquarters, rocky erickson, daniel johnston, and on and on, they were playing music round them parts...and when the end comes I imagine there will be plenty of folks strumming guitars on porches as they always have.
Places like Shiner texas are not growing or changing at all...the influence will always be there I believe...Texas is unique in its size that there will always be rural areas and there will always be some state regionalism imho (Central and West Texas more specifically).
Coffee does not stop someone from playing a musical instrument.
Anyway, good to be free from school and chat a bit but now I am going to start reading up on rhinoscripting before the next semester hunts me down...enjoy!
times change. music changes. and that's for the best. imagine if all the austin bands sounded like the butthole surfers these days (as much as i like the butthole surfers).
i got a little nostalgic last night when ozzy's band started playing the first few chords of "detroit rock city." a city's music scene is only as good as its current crop of musicians.
of course music changes, that is not my point...my point is merely that music will always (speaking in the context of the next 50 years at least) be a part of austin's soul. The Butthole Surfers and Rock and Roll period are just a very small part of Austin's scene. There is tons of great new music coming out of there as there has been my entire life. There is also tons of great traditional music there as there has been my entire life. I would imagine that during the rest of my life the trend would continue. Catch me in 50 years and we can have a beer while debating the validity of my words.
i know what you mean. detroit's been blessed too. from motown to iggy to kiss to techno to the garage resurgence to most recently hip hop. nonetheless i'm not sure there's such a thing as good music dna. more reason to enjoy it in the present.
You're moving to a new city without knowing if you've been accepted into a grad program there? I hope you have a viable Plan B in case you get a rejection letter.
plan B is actually UT San Antonio, Plan C might be Mickey D's. It ain't the best plan in the world, but my gf got accepted at UT Austin and started her 3 yr info science program down there in August. I'm not really down for paying for another semester at the Boston Architectural College (been there for 3 semesters) when most of my credits will evaporate when I transfer down there anyways. So...yeah. the end of March won't be nerve wracking at all...
well, maybe to help out dear NoSleep i can tell of my current homesickness after moving from my beloved brooklyn to his beloved austin. and i've lived in a quite a few different places throughout the years.....man, it's rough. i forgot how much of a pain it is to start again. making friends, finding out where to cool things are happening, getting a good group of people together that share your likes and dislikes its tough. but i have to say, on my day trip to san antonio a few weeks back...i didn't find much to write home about. a bit bland, more like a shopping mall version of a city. since being here i've also gotten to travel to dallas, which surprisingly was a bit more interesting than i expected. but austin, dear austin is a quaint little city complete with some very nice neighborhoods and a generally funky vibe...but i'm just jonesing for the walkability of my brooklyn. the ability to find amazingly good, cheap food of almost any nationality known to man around every corner... it's a different life down here.
eventually i hope to pull through it all and find that little bit of me here...if not i guess it will be time to move on...but can i move back to brooklyn and find what i'm missing? i've tried that before when i moved back there from LA...didn't work. it's never the same as when you left.
there's room enough in texas for the gritty urban dwellers to come create their own gritty urbanity without impinging on your bugs, traffic, and humidity.
i've spent ten (elapsed) years in austin -- five in school, five after school, interrupted by two years in chicago. and damnit, this place...gets under your skin and into your heart. as all places can do. i love this city, even as it's changing, and couldn't live anywhere else (in the US, that is). so i know where you're at, nosleep, even though southtown is kinda ok.
that being said, i sometimes find myself thinking wistfully about fort worth. i grew up there, i'd never move back, it's just not me anymore, but i love it all the same. i miss practical things like low traffic, low levels of pretension, and low housing prices.
but i also miss things like the grain elevators in saginaw at night, seeing the skyline for the first time when i used to drive back into town from dallas on i-30 at 3 am, the "real" chuy's on north main (not the austin-based chain), the friendliest people in america, going to the stock show and then crossing the street and going to the kimbell, the old post office on lancaster, and...shit, i'm making myself sad.
suffice it to say, there's no logic to when you love a place.
Dec 21, 07 1:00 pm ·
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What is it about this city?
So I've been in San Antonio for about 6 months now for M.Arch after 3 years in Austin, and all I can do is think about Austin. I know that there is always a homesick feeling for a city you grew up in, but I'm not sure that's it.
There's something about Town Lake,
something about the RV park in the middle of the most expensive dirt in the city,
something about the twang rock,
something about the pretentious trying to hipster it on So Congress, something about the Warehouse District patios at 6:00 in April, something about the kayaking in mid-summer,
something about a drive through the west side of town and a sunset at The Oasis
Anyone have a feeling like this for other cities, or is my relapse of missing Austin just a homesickness?
Everyone loves Austin more than everywhere else in Texas...
Isn't San Antonio only about 80 miles from Austin? Around here that's considered commuting distance.
I've never been to Austin, but it sounds like a pretty cool little city... I may be visiting a friend there in March for the South by Southwest music festival.
Nah, LIG, ACL is where its at. Its nothing but 100,000 hippies smoking dope on the ground while your favorite artists play. You can totally walk right past all the hippies and all they'll do is point their joints/pipes/whatever at you and say "NOT COOL, MAN! NOT COOL!" So you can totally get front row seats to just about anything. Given there's a little more turn out for the bigger names, like Coldplay, Black Crowes, or Oasis, but even then I saw all of those and a handful of others front row just by walking past pacifist hippies.
And No Sleep, LIG is right. Austin is totally commutable from SA. Although I will agree that SA BLOWS! I lived in some apartments between the gun club and the Quarry for one summer. That's all the SA I could take.
I wish I was in Austin
In the Chili Parlour Bar
Drinkin' Mad Dog Margaritas
And not carin' where you are
But here I sit in Dublin
Just rollin' cigarettes
Holdin' back and chokin' back
The shakes with every breath
Chorus
Forgive me all my anger
Forgive me all my faults
There's no need to forgive me
For thinkin' what I thought
I loved you from the git go
I'll love you till I die
I loved you on the Spanish steps
The day you said goodbye
I am just a poor boy
Work's my middle name
If money was a reason
I would not be the same
I'll stand up and be counted
I'll face up to the truth
I'll walk away from trouble
But I can't walk away from you
I have been to Fort Worth
I have been to Spain
I have been to proud
To come in out of the rain
I have seen the David
I've seen the Mona Lisa too
I have heard Doc Watson
Play Columbus Stockade Blues
Chorus
I was born and raised in Austin (yes native Austinites exist) and a lot of the standard things that people always gush about when they discuss the city are totally alien to me-I've never been to the Oasis or Guero's or the Salt Lick or SXSW or ACL. I have been canoeing in Barton Creek though. And I'm from old school Central Austin and remember when the Arboretum was built and people at my school wondering "Who would go all the way out there for anything?"-it was the edge of the metro area at the time. I still almost never go out there. And I remember when there were a ton of movie theaters inside the center city-now, unless you go the Alamo Drafthouse, you have to go out of the city to see a firstrun movie. South Congress was all porn cinemas and was a no-go zone 24/7 and the Warehouse District was...warehouses!
I havent been to San Antonio in years-we used to go there because all the 'high end shopping"=Niemen Marcus was there. Even when I was a kid I found SA boring-but Austin kids get jaded at a young age.
But yeah, I love Austin-everytime I go back there from the East Coast, my blood pressure drops and I get happier and eat better and just relax. I've never lived there as a working adult out of school-should try it soon. I do think that in many ways it has gotten better by getting bigger since I was a child.
okay, i was hoping the answers would include a little:
"nah, man, it's just homesickness. there's other great cities: portland, colorado springs, and lawrence to name a few"
or
"give it some time in SA; you'll learn to like it"
sounds like Austin is as great as I suspected
now, as for the commuting: i tried it for a year and became concerned with the gas prices and the lack of work given to my studies due to 3 hrs/day on the road...
we moved to Southtown in SA, which is what i hoped would be a small Austin community, but it hasn't lived up to expectations as of yet...
i also grew up in Austin. we lived in a house in Rollingwood, which had a septic system at the time. i walked to school a few times (Eanes), and i always enjoyed the traffic free ride through MoPac. Things have changed, but I guess all things do...
I guess I'll have to consider a move back when I'm done with M.Arch
some points
1) 80 miles is totally not commuting distance. that's crazy.
2) i hear san antonio's supposed to be cool too... riverwalk, right?
3) austin is great but it's certainly not without its problems. the way the city sprawls is unbelievable. it's got its nice little urban core but then everything outside of that is sprawl. even all of the yuppies i know who live in austin live in sprawling 3-story apartment complexes with huge surface parking lots to and from which the car is the only reasonable means of transit. and everyone with money lives in a gated community, which it totally foreign to me as a midwesterner - seems very fearful and exclusionary. also, it's way too hot in the summer and just cold enough to be unpleasant in the winter. and it's still texas - half of everyone drives a pickup and outside of the cool parts of town it's low-class blah sprawl targets walmarts HEB freeways etc like you would find anywhere else.
there does that make you feel better???
4) then again, it is the only place in texas i would want to live. the core of the city is amazingly vibrant - impressive nightlife. all of the young people make it a really fun place. and i like that burrito place, what's it called, freebirds?
get over it. is this only the 2nd place you've lived? every town has its good points and bad points -- some more than others, granted -- but no perfect town exists.
a lot of places seem better in retrospect...
SA might not be doin' it for you, but that doesn't mean that only Austin ever will. Not every person is right for every place but no place is perfect, either.
chase dammtor, where do you live, i wonder?
i live everywhere.
I would say "there's something about ______" about the following cities:
-Edinburgh
-Barcelona
-Prague
-Paris
-New York
-London
-San Francisco
-and of course, LA, but because it's crazy more than anything
And those are just the ones that I've been to so far....
Remember what Jim Jarmusch said: He thinks of every city he's ever lived in as a former lover, one he remembers either fondly or with regret.
Austin *is* cool, but so are lots of places, in different ways.
get out of san antonio...but go to tacoland before you do.
As a native austinite I always find it interesting that people still think of it the way I used to...but it has changed dramatically in the last ten years. There are still fragments of old austin left that I love....Lake Austin and Barton Creek probably being the best...its long green belt park trails a second...and I hope they continue to have a face before austin has been stripped of every part of its individuality and it has become dallas with a river that cuts through it. It has no power as a town to fight the big city developer...they will just take any attempt to make them sway to austins intentions of development and turn it into a lawsuit to get what they want...part of being a littlw capital in a land of outside influence..i.e. see washington d.c.
I now love Albuquerque, NM just as much or more than Austin...I even have an affinity for, gasp, Houston.
Put me in the ranks of those that don't understand the love affair with austin (portland too for that matter).
Growing up in Houston we went to Austin to see the capitol, govenors mansion and that's it. Olddirty is right, at that time there wasn't much to love about that town and many places to just plain avoid. We thought of Austin as this small town where the politicians and college students went. Heck, they didn't even have pro sports teams or a Six Flags amusement park.
Since college I've known a few people that moved to Austin to work. Lured by high paying jobs during the tech boom of the 90's. None of them TX natives. All of them have since left and moved on, echoing much of what Chase said. Their advise would be to move out of TX all together and you'll soon forget about Austin all together.
shoot i went to SA once a few years back... i believe i was 14? Even then i remember it feeling overhyped and the riverwalk eerily sterile... and i was from Kansas City at the time.
Perhaps i was there on a down couple of days...
as for austin, i too have heard good things but they all stem from the music scene. But the truth of the matter is that while Austin does have good venues and good bands, it by no means has a monopoly on it. Plus its bound to fade anyway... Remember when all the best bands came from Seattle? Omaha? New York? Canada?
i've noticed that while louisville doesn't have the same national rep as austin, it has the same way of staying with those who have lived here. and people generally come back.
but then i moved here 'temporarily' in '94 and never left...
On the note of music...Austin's scene will always be strong as it is roots based...meaning it is not based on a fad...parts get swept up in some hype, but at its core, its heart, music will always be the pulse of that town.
they used to say that about chicago
austin is not chicago and will never be chicago...but we could argue this indefinitely...I am just letting you know as a guy who grew up in central texas...music aint going nowhere...austin is just a hub of tons of small towns who will always have music as part of their soul...gruene would be just one example:
http://www.gruenetexas.com/
so, what I am talking about is central texas as a whole which austin is basically the center of in relation to music...now art...austin will never be a big art center...but when everyone grows up playing music you will find that even your average busboy or girl can strum a tune a pound out a beat.
I love Austin for this place's Los Angeles hamburger:
Casino El Camino
I actually wouldn't be suprised if I uprooted myself in the next few years to move to Austin. It's a great city.
Plus, many musicians survive in Texas, Austin as their home, because you can make a living at it within the state...you never have to leave...I don't think Illinois has that type of support, though I could be wrong...But Texas is growing, not shrinking.
Keep in mind that NoSleep grew up in Austin, which makes a difference in one's perceptions. It's his hometown, regardless of how hip the music scene may be at any given moment. Every corner of the city is probably loaded with memories, good and bad.
Cincinnati is my hometown, and even though the city doesn't have much going for it from an outsider's point of view, and I would probably never move back there in a million years, it will always have a special place in my heart and every visit brings back lots of memories.
That said, 80 miles isn't a huge distance. Go back to Austin for a weekend visit whenever you can... You probably have friends and/or family you can crash with. You're close enough that you can still enjoy Austin without giving up your life in San Antonio. You want homesickness? Wait until you're living 3000 miles away from your hometown.
nah, just move back to austin...then visit New Braunfels when you want a break and some good polka
http://www.newbraunfels.com/
yeah, im not arguing with you jasoncross, just stating what is fact... things change, texas wont be rough and tumble forever. austin gets starbucks, dallas builds more mcmansions, houston booms, SA does whatever it does, and texas becomes something new. its normally the vernacular things that die when that happens, music being one of them.
this seems to be the way of the world for many places.
just don't got to that nasty overhyped water park that's by new braunfels
Yeah, forget the water park and just float the river. Sam Marcos has a nice river to float on as well...it also has a nice energetic music scene as does Denton.
Austin, or rather the central texas music scene is anything but hip (I am talking New Braunfels to Wimberly to say Temple over to College Station to Bastrop area).. it is just those not from austin have no idea about its heritage and history who think of it in that way...as a new hip city. Before Nirvana and the indy explosion, before marcia ball, willie nelson, joe king carasco, the butthole surfers, armadillo world headquarters, rocky erickson, daniel johnston, and on and on, they were playing music round them parts...and when the end comes I imagine there will be plenty of folks strumming guitars on porches as they always have.
Places like Shiner texas are not growing or changing at all...the influence will always be there I believe...Texas is unique in its size that there will always be rural areas and there will always be some state regionalism imho (Central and West Texas more specifically).
Coffee does not stop someone from playing a musical instrument.
Anyway, good to be free from school and chat a bit but now I am going to start reading up on rhinoscripting before the next semester hunts me down...enjoy!
times change. music changes. and that's for the best. imagine if all the austin bands sounded like the butthole surfers these days (as much as i like the butthole surfers).
i got a little nostalgic last night when ozzy's band started playing the first few chords of "detroit rock city." a city's music scene is only as good as its current crop of musicians.
dude.
of course music changes, that is not my point...my point is merely that music will always (speaking in the context of the next 50 years at least) be a part of austin's soul. The Butthole Surfers and Rock and Roll period are just a very small part of Austin's scene. There is tons of great new music coming out of there as there has been my entire life. There is also tons of great traditional music there as there has been my entire life. I would imagine that during the rest of my life the trend would continue. Catch me in 50 years and we can have a beer while debating the validity of my words.
i know what you mean. detroit's been blessed too. from motown to iggy to kiss to techno to the garage resurgence to most recently hip hop. nonetheless i'm not sure there's such a thing as good music dna. more reason to enjoy it in the present.
rock on austin.
true that!
Nice - this thread is getting me pumped - I'm moving from Boston to Austin in about 2 weeks.
Now UT graduate SOA just needs to admit me and I'll be all set...
You're moving to a new city without knowing if you've been accepted into a grad program there? I hope you have a viable Plan B in case you get a rejection letter.
Plan B is working at mcdonalds to pay your rent.
get movin if you gotta i say
MCDONALDS gives me the squirts.
who are these ||||||||||||letdown|||||||||||||||| impostors?
just my envious admirers marimba
Shoot me before I ever have to move to Texas.
I wish people would STOP moving to Texas. You're messing with the vibe.
plan B is actually UT San Antonio, Plan C might be Mickey D's. It ain't the best plan in the world, but my gf got accepted at UT Austin and started her 3 yr info science program down there in August. I'm not really down for paying for another semester at the Boston Architectural College (been there for 3 semesters) when most of my credits will evaporate when I transfer down there anyways. So...yeah. the end of March won't be nerve wracking at all...
I dig your Beetlejuice name Nice F*n Model!
well, maybe to help out dear NoSleep i can tell of my current homesickness after moving from my beloved brooklyn to his beloved austin. and i've lived in a quite a few different places throughout the years.....man, it's rough. i forgot how much of a pain it is to start again. making friends, finding out where to cool things are happening, getting a good group of people together that share your likes and dislikes its tough. but i have to say, on my day trip to san antonio a few weeks back...i didn't find much to write home about. a bit bland, more like a shopping mall version of a city. since being here i've also gotten to travel to dallas, which surprisingly was a bit more interesting than i expected. but austin, dear austin is a quaint little city complete with some very nice neighborhoods and a generally funky vibe...but i'm just jonesing for the walkability of my brooklyn. the ability to find amazingly good, cheap food of almost any nationality known to man around every corner... it's a different life down here.
eventually i hope to pull through it all and find that little bit of me here...if not i guess it will be time to move on...but can i move back to brooklyn and find what i'm missing? i've tried that before when i moved back there from LA...didn't work. it's never the same as when you left.
I'm glad I'm from a shitty town, then I don't get homesick!
Austin, home of the pretentious t-bag. Keep San Antonio Lame!
ITA with Sarah. If you're a gritty, urban dweller, don't move here and complain about the traffic, shopping centers, humidity, and bugs.
there's room enough in texas for the gritty urban dwellers to come create their own gritty urbanity without impinging on your bugs, traffic, and humidity.
i've spent ten (elapsed) years in austin -- five in school, five after school, interrupted by two years in chicago. and damnit, this place...gets under your skin and into your heart. as all places can do. i love this city, even as it's changing, and couldn't live anywhere else (in the US, that is). so i know where you're at, nosleep, even though southtown is kinda ok.
that being said, i sometimes find myself thinking wistfully about fort worth. i grew up there, i'd never move back, it's just not me anymore, but i love it all the same. i miss practical things like low traffic, low levels of pretension, and low housing prices.
but i also miss things like the grain elevators in saginaw at night, seeing the skyline for the first time when i used to drive back into town from dallas on i-30 at 3 am, the "real" chuy's on north main (not the austin-based chain), the friendliest people in america, going to the stock show and then crossing the street and going to the kimbell, the old post office on lancaster, and...shit, i'm making myself sad.
suffice it to say, there's no logic to when you love a place.
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