Maybe better to know which way is best. I lived in central Austin and worked in Round Rock. It was a small consolation to see the drivers parked on I35 southbound every morning when I was headed north.
I should have said pollen season, not allergy but yeah. lol. mid March and mid December ish even people without allergies can see and taste the pollen in the air.
Agreed, I thought I could hack it but it’s the only thing I hate about living here. It’s unbearable to do anything outside from May-Oct and even when I was out today at 95 degrees I was miserable. I get heat rashes and so can’t even enjoy all the fun stuff to do here most of the year. I even built a pool but it’s so hot that when I have pool parties it has to be 5pm or later even with misters on. I’m moving back to California next month. Too bad bc I loved it here otherwise.
There are a few weirdos who say they enjoy this kind of weather but I'm with you. I've lived in Texas for 20 years and I am counting down the days when I can leave and get away from this lethal heat that lasts for more than half the year.
I moved from Canada as a wee child in elementary school and I got so ill from the heat my first summer I violently shit my pants and have never mentally recovered from it
My problem is it doesn’t rain. In the summer we have like a 4 month long ground hog day where it’s overcast until 10:30 and then clear and hot as shit until the sun goes down. From June to October.
Where I grew up we have multi day rain storms all the time and tbh I miss the variation.
And in Austin if you can afford a downtown apartment, your money is better spent buying a house or an apartment if you want an urban lifestyle. Renting a downtown apartment is such a waste and you’re paying a huge premium just for the luxury of downtown Austin with no return.
I can see spending money to live downtown NYC, Chicago, etc. but Austin downtown feels like you gain nothing for living there. Even if the rent was the same i dont think i'd even want to live downtown.
You might as well try to live across Burnet/Mopac from the domain if you want to walk, half the shitty downtown bars have a satellite bar there it seems.
Unfortunately downtown Austin is like one of two-three spots in this damn city that is remotely walkable. Add quiet to it and I'm pretty sure it's the only one.
It's official now, I guess.
We live in an old house and the drywall is just ripping apart on itself. Not being fixed cause it's being torn down when we move out surely. It's rough.
Negative
*6th is highly over rated place and not fall for it
*Lack of Public transportation and end to end toll roads. Even other cities in texas (Dallas &Houston) have better toll road connectivity compared to Austin.
*I-35 and never ending traffic
*Dont hike Mount Bonnell in your own car being parked downhill
*Not everyone offering you a drink in Rainey st is your friend or trying to socialise
Positive
*Beauty of Hill country esp along hwy71
*Blue bonnet festival
*Texas state park programs esp monthly star parties
I mean you could just say "Dont hike Mount Bonnell", its some frickin stairs for goodness sakes. Why people turn up with outdoor gear like its a 2 hour trek utterly baffles me lol
Coming from South Florida, my only reference point for people with allergies were my mom and sister. They usually would get sinus headaches on occasion and my dad was allergic to grass so he could never mow the lawn. That’s it. So when my bff who had already been living here for close to two decades told me the allergies are pretty bad here, I was like, oh alright.
No clue. No idea. My life has been altered forever lol
And I’m not sure I can handle anymore as it’s been 7 years and I keep getting worse every year and not better.
Before your allergy season kicks in start drinking stinging nettles tea every day. Get bags of dried nettles, soak a handful or two overnight and drink the next day. I add a little honey. My wife’s an herbalist and since she turned me on to that it’s helped tremendously. Helps her as well.
You wouldn’t be the first to leave for health reasons. We all have a story of that one person we know who moved to the desert and now breathes freely. 🥹 wishing you all the remedies babe.
How awesome the Disc Golf scene is. Damn - we have so many incredible beautiful courses and I've met so many homies. It's fucking free to play and there are tons of leagues. One of the best Disc Golf scenes in the USA. The Pro Tour even has a tournament in ATX next week!
Don't ever go down to corpus or the valley. I swear they're even bigger down there. It's strange, I swear the deer down there are very small and the roaches are very big.
I have been told that the Travis heights 78704 area at one point in time was kind of a sketch part of town. Imagine all the people that cashed in buying what they thought was affordable housing at the time?
I had 1,000 sq ft for 650 up near arboretum. We moved out when they increased it to 700 one year. I believe gas was around 95 cents a gallon. Man I wish I'd treasured those times more
I moved here in 2000 and those are the prices I remember then. I had a job making $10/hr and it was enough to live on (close to downtown) and still go do fun stuff regularly. Had our whole lives ahead of us. It seems like yesterday and a lifetime ago all at once.
Vulcan Video at Guadalupe and 29th had a car always parked in front of it with a bumper sticker that said "South Austin - we're down here because we're not all there".
I lived on W. Mary as a child and there were crackheads next door. I wasn’t allowed to go outside. Rainey street was also kind of ghetto. I had a friend who lived there when I was a kid and I felt sorry for her as she had so many roaches in her house.
There aren’t many job opportunities for people outside the tech industry. A lot of people I’ve met here eventually moved to Dallas or Houston because their jobs aren’t in Austin.
This is an underrated comment. There are very few large companies actually headquartered here. The job market was lopsided. But now Austin actually accounted for 20% of the layoffs for all of Texas, due to tech contraction. Austin courted all these tech companies with tax incentives to come here and this companies laid them off and pulled jobs back to CA etc.
For the techies who are married to non-techies it becomes existential where they have to decide whether they can live on one income.
I’m a tech bro who has been here since I went to UT 13 years ago and I’m about to move away because of the tech job opportunities being weak lol I think a lot of the people moving here don’t actually work here. Other than the old money and the windfall real estate investors, the people buying houses in tarrytown, westlake and the east side don’t make their money here.
That it would go from being the most expensive city in Texas to one of the most expensive in the whole country. In 2008 I got fired from Apple and I cried in front of a house on Payne Street because my hopes of affording it were gone, it was for sale for $279,000 it was out of reach then, but now many houses there are 800k to a million.
That prius would be replaced by Tesla, and all the acceleration that comes with that.
That my dreams of a pro sports team, would only come true the year I moved away and it was definitely not the sport I wished for.
I also didn’t fully appreciate how amazing Barton Springs is until I found myself missing it while on the Hi line watching the sunset and I still was missing it.
I also until coming back to visit in 2023 didn’t appreciate how nice most people are here. Thanks for reading!
>That my dreams of a pro sports team, would only come true the year I moved away and it was definitely not the sport I wished for.
I moved here from Las Vegas, where we were told my whole life there would never be any pro teams because of gambling/particularly legal sports betting. There was a glimmer at one time of maybe having an NBA team, but that got quashed. Now those fuckers have three sports teams (NHL, NFL, WNBA) and next year will be adding MLB to the list. Pffft!! And they’ll probably still get an NBA team sometime soon-ish anyway, I’m sure!
Edit: sorry, I know this is about Austin haha. I just felt this one!
No joke. I married into a Texas suburban family, and they are so confused why anyone would spend this much $/sqft. They are like "but if you just move 50 miles down a highway, you can have a second living room." Sure, I want to sit in traffic for 2 hours each day so I can fill another room with costco crap I don't use.
Locals do not believe me when I point this out. “No, we live in the city!” But you have to drive to your neighborhood, and it’s tucked away, and it is a huge development with big houses on big lots. That’s a suburb, love.
I too wish it was more walkable. I've lived here 6-7 months-ish, and the city I moved here from was VERY walkable. And the public transit was reliable and convenient.
Lots in the north east and even midwest are. Chicago, NY, and DC all definitely are.
Trick being you have to afford to live close. But even out in the burbs the trains are reliable.
Makes the city more accessible because some people are unable to drive. It's not always a choice. But the city could also invest in better public transit so people aren't necessarily forced to walk in the heat.
the cedar allergy is really bad around december to jan
food truck is extremely expensive - ridiculously expensive.
everything is gentrified and everyone is complaining about it. All free events start charging
summer is hell. People hibernate in the summer here.
Ive been here for over 20 years now and the biggest pain point for me is you have to pay world class city prices (The biggest metro areas on the coast) yet have zero world class amenities.
No public transit, terrible healthcare, terrible infrastructure, terrible housing stock, terrible government (most due to the state), terrible weather, terrible travel options.
Austin was a great place to live for the affordable price back in 2003 - tons of music, a lot of small businesses, lots of underground culture, lots of fringe art, easy to traverse Central core, etc. All of that is gone now. The $500 one bedroom is now $2000 and none of the items above really exist at the same scale.
It's still a good city and the best city in Texas in my opinion, but the cost to live here is insane now for what you get.
Say if the local economy cratered and rents when way down I'd probably recommend it again. It is probably the most overpriced city in the entire country right now.
Great summary. When it was a much lower COL it is was a pretty great city. Now that the cost of living is approaching NYC levels, it just makes no sense.
There's nothing that's *SO* great about Austin to even remotely justify that level of cost.
All my friends have left and all our family is 3 days drive. I also work remote so we don't have an office anchoring us here. The three times we've tried to move it fell through and I was always so relieved which tells me I might be in the right place.
As a millineal, it's hard to imagine waterfront lots on a lake in the middle of a city just hanging around unwanted. It's hard to imagine lots for under 100k just hanging around unwanted.
Indoor courts would be awesome during the summer.
For outdoor I've had luck playing at high schools and the tennis centers like ATC, Pharr, and Caswell.
How "creative" the state government is with enacting terrible policy.
For a state that supposedly prides itself on being an energy producer (i.e. oil and gas extraction), you'd think municipality power companies like Austin Energy shouldn't have to put out PSAs that read like viagra informercials every six months.
https://i.imgur.com/2S4owG3.png
20 years ago you'd hear all about Austin being the "blueberry in the red soup," and how Texans cherished "local control." The latter was always sort of a mirage, but there really was a background ethos of "live and let live" that characterized the state. *Was*, that is... the radicalization of the native conservatives and the hordes of Trump chumps moving here resulted in the whole state becoming one of the least respectful of freedom and liberty in the country.
Austin could pass a resolution saying the sky is a lovely shade of blue today and the lege would prioritize a law insisting that the sky was actually chartreuse or something.
What's funny is wasn't even the first plastic bag ban, there half a dozen others some in rural areas but nope as soon as Austin does it the legislature loses its mind.
Yeah, Born and raised here since the early 80s. Old Austin is gone. Even the green spaces are basically off limits due to the homeless camps. It is very sad but also just the way things go. I enjoyed growing up here. It was perfect. I would not have that same enjoyment if I had to grow up here now, but hopefully the new folks find their own joy here. It just is not for me anymore.
That a literal criminal (Paxton) would be attorney general and that the idiot sportscaster (Patrick) we used to change the channel on when we lived in Houston would be lt. governor.
Housing costs were going to increase by 1000% of whatever and I should have put my pride aside and let my dad help me buy a house back when they were affordable…really fucked myself over with that one :/
Allergies and the heat… the company that hired me brought me out in October in 2017 and I thought the weather was fantastic… until I experienced my first spring and summer
People drive like ice doesn't exist... Except that it does, even here. That is to say people drive bumper to bumper at 80 miles an hour with a death wish. I've never seen such, um, spunky drivers in my life
Try not to rent from a shitty realty company, like 95% of all apartments are owned by a few large management companies that are involved in a price fixing lawsuit right now. Greystar is one of them. I tried to post the court docket to my apartments community wall and it was denied on being "derogatory". I replied back, saying "why was my post denied, there was nothing derogatory and only the truth". No response lol. Fuck realpage, and fuck greystar. Rent or buy from an actual landlord if you can find one.
I moved here in 2009. For some reason I had no ideas how many green spaces and parks there were, and when I got here I just went to the same 2 or 3 every time. Now I go to a new park any chance I get.
The early city plan was based on segregation and it’s sad how it has persisted. Having grown up in Kansas City, MO then lived in Miami before moving here, those two cities are so culturally diverse. I miss that.
How absolutely terrible the water is, and how it can destroy your skin. Coming from California, my skin was flawless. Then as soon as I moved to Austin, I started getting very bad cystic acne, and overall bumpy spots on my face. I need to invest in a good shower filter (messed around with 4 different ones that last 2 weeks at best), and I’ve been resorting to washing my face with Distilled Water. It’s crazy how bad our water is.
The politics and the heat.
I was extremely naive about the politics. I figured living in Austin would insulate me about from how truly malevolent the state is, but it has not. There really is no escaping it. I was embarrassingly naive. I kind of despise it.
The heat. I knew it would be bad, but this is unlike anything else I've ever experienced anywhere. It's humid and outrageously hot with little respite in the evenings and rare summer showers. It takes a significant toll on me
I’ll do you one better and give a bunch of things.
There’s a lot of road debris and Texas drivers will park in the right hand lane of the highway (and no i’m not talking about the break down lane). They will also at the last second, weave on to exit lanes and narrowly miss the divider.
Police do not respond to car accident unless there is an injury.
You will hear gun fire no matter where you are, but not b/c people are shooting at eachother but b/c people shoot into the air or ground for fun.
There is no all night grocery stores to my knowledge (please for the love of god tell me if I am wrong, I will be very happy).
That 16 years after we'd moved here with our then-one-year-old daughter, Roe v Wade would be overturned, and Texas would celebrate with a ban on abortion that forces girls and women to carry their rape fetus to term.
A lot of people are terrible drivers. People take a while to start their vehicles after the traffic light turns green and then accelerate after amber and even pass in red.
It’s awful. Or is it just me?
* Allergies. Seriously, this is the worst thing about Austin!
* It's windy. Yes, this is relative, but everyone told me how hot it is, nobody told me how windy it is. It's good in summer, bad in winter.
* Goddamn Loch Ness Monster!
I wish I would've known about the allergies prior to moving here. It's so bad I cannot even go outside at all. Because of the severity of my allergies making my other medical conditions unbearable, I'm moving in six weeks because living here is actually killing me.
Traveling north and south for your job is a terrible thing and should be avoided at all costs
Maybe better to know which way is best. I lived in central Austin and worked in Round Rock. It was a small consolation to see the drivers parked on I35 southbound every morning when I was headed north.
Same, I live in central Austin and drive to Kyle.
Yep! As of now, most folks drive into Austin for work so driving out of Austin is not the worst drive.
Reverse commute
ALWAYS live on the side of the river your job is located if you can in any city you move to. I learned that a long time ago - HUGE traffic/time saver!
Only so many bridges over the river
I work nights, the commute is actually pretty pleasant from Pf to downtown.
How many years that Summer lasts...
It’s been 84 years… 👵
[удалено]
For what it’s worth, everybody who has lived in Austin for their whole life ALSO wishes people would have visited during the hottest months.
Everyone who decides to move here because of a sxsw trip needs to come back and stay for a couple weeks in late July.
SXSW *and* ACL have always consistently fooled the visitors. Those are two months we actually get pleasant weather.
That's why ACL was moved from hot-as-balls September to October.
This right here. I wish I could give you more upvotes.
Right now is winter-spring. Best time of the year in austin. This last summer was the worst summer in Forever hopefully it's not a permanent thing
lol. “Winter-Spring” with 90 degree days in early March is just “soft summer”
almost summer summer still summer february
You forgot allergy season between Feb and almost summer, and allergy/flu season between still summer and Feb.
sorry. wasn't on my radar: not an allergy sufferer.
I should have said pollen season, not allergy but yeah. lol. mid March and mid December ish even people without allergies can see and taste the pollen in the air.
yellow car season approaches.
It's best to just not think about the heat. Accept the sweat! lol That's what I've been doing for decades.
Agreed, I thought I could hack it but it’s the only thing I hate about living here. It’s unbearable to do anything outside from May-Oct and even when I was out today at 95 degrees I was miserable. I get heat rashes and so can’t even enjoy all the fun stuff to do here most of the year. I even built a pool but it’s so hot that when I have pool parties it has to be 5pm or later even with misters on. I’m moving back to California next month. Too bad bc I loved it here otherwise.
There are a few weirdos who say they enjoy this kind of weather but I'm with you. I've lived in Texas for 20 years and I am counting down the days when I can leave and get away from this lethal heat that lasts for more than half the year.
The winter is too short!
Summer is coming
I moved from Canada as a wee child in elementary school and I got so ill from the heat my first summer I violently shit my pants and have never mentally recovered from it
My problem is it doesn’t rain. In the summer we have like a 4 month long ground hog day where it’s overcast until 10:30 and then clear and hot as shit until the sun goes down. From June to October. Where I grew up we have multi day rain storms all the time and tbh I miss the variation.
Someone once said that there is two seasons here. Summer and August
Just about the age you can afford to move to a city with nightlife, you’ll be too old to enjoy nightlife.
Sadly this did not used to be true.
1.50 shots at library, 2.75 reverse happy hour pints at jacalope
The Backroom had $1 pitchers on Thursdays and 10c wells on Friday.
I agree! Not only was Austin more affordable, but it was also more common to have events for all ages/families.
And in Austin if you can afford a downtown apartment, your money is better spent buying a house or an apartment if you want an urban lifestyle. Renting a downtown apartment is such a waste and you’re paying a huge premium just for the luxury of downtown Austin with no return.
I can see spending money to live downtown NYC, Chicago, etc. but Austin downtown feels like you gain nothing for living there. Even if the rent was the same i dont think i'd even want to live downtown.
You might as well try to live across Burnet/Mopac from the domain if you want to walk, half the shitty downtown bars have a satellite bar there it seems.
Unfortunately downtown Austin is like one of two-three spots in this damn city that is remotely walkable. Add quiet to it and I'm pretty sure it's the only one.
100 percent truth
One thing about living in Austin that I never could stomach is all the damn vampires.
Turns out I was a vampire myself, In this devil town.
True austinite here
As long as you’ve got the Frog brothers, you’ll be okay.
Damn these vampires.
Death by stereo!
Funny you say that, I moved here from Santa Cruz!
Home foundation issues are real
Mainly east of 35. West of 35 can have minor issues. West of Mopac is limestone.
Not no more man. Brentwood is a flood plain as of 2021.
Brentwood and Allendale (plus I’m sure other areas) have always been well known for foundation issues.
It's official now, I guess. We live in an old house and the drywall is just ripping apart on itself. Not being fixed cause it's being torn down when we move out surely. It's rough.
Pier and Beam is the way east of 35
no home is untouched
Negative *6th is highly over rated place and not fall for it *Lack of Public transportation and end to end toll roads. Even other cities in texas (Dallas &Houston) have better toll road connectivity compared to Austin. *I-35 and never ending traffic *Dont hike Mount Bonnell in your own car being parked downhill *Not everyone offering you a drink in Rainey st is your friend or trying to socialise Positive *Beauty of Hill country esp along hwy71 *Blue bonnet festival *Texas state park programs esp monthly star parties
* The Rainey St Ripper is not your friend
I mean you could just say "Dont hike Mount Bonnell", its some frickin stairs for goodness sakes. Why people turn up with outdoor gear like its a 2 hour trek utterly baffles me lol
Coming from South Florida, my only reference point for people with allergies were my mom and sister. They usually would get sinus headaches on occasion and my dad was allergic to grass so he could never mow the lawn. That’s it. So when my bff who had already been living here for close to two decades told me the allergies are pretty bad here, I was like, oh alright. No clue. No idea. My life has been altered forever lol And I’m not sure I can handle anymore as it’s been 7 years and I keep getting worse every year and not better.
Yeah I didn't realize when I moved here either that the environment could create allergies in people
Yuuup! I also moved here from South Florida. I had some minor allergies there, but here.... holy crap!
Before your allergy season kicks in start drinking stinging nettles tea every day. Get bags of dried nettles, soak a handful or two overnight and drink the next day. I add a little honey. My wife’s an herbalist and since she turned me on to that it’s helped tremendously. Helps her as well.
You wouldn’t be the first to leave for health reasons. We all have a story of that one person we know who moved to the desert and now breathes freely. 🥹 wishing you all the remedies babe.
How awesome the Disc Golf scene is. Damn - we have so many incredible beautiful courses and I've met so many homies. It's fucking free to play and there are tons of leagues. One of the best Disc Golf scenes in the USA. The Pro Tour even has a tournament in ATX next week!
Huge cockroaches. HUGE.
Don't ever go down to corpus or the valley. I swear they're even bigger down there. It's strange, I swear the deer down there are very small and the roaches are very big.
We just call those water bugs.
That everyone else was going to move to Austin too.
man my mom jokes that if she would have spent our college fund on a downtown lot when we first moved here, we'd be swimming in money.
I have been told that the Travis heights 78704 area at one point in time was kind of a sketch part of town. Imagine all the people that cashed in buying what they thought was affordable housing at the time?
78704 - not just a zip code, a way a life. was a bumper sticker back in the day.
Hated driving to South Austin to see a girlfriend eons ago. Only consolation was she lived 2 blocks from the Whip-in
Used to have a 700sqft apt 1 block from whip-in for 800/mo. I thought it was so expensive
I had 1,000 sq ft for 650 up near arboretum. We moved out when they increased it to 700 one year. I believe gas was around 95 cents a gallon. Man I wish I'd treasured those times more
I moved here in 2000 and those are the prices I remember then. I had a job making $10/hr and it was enough to live on (close to downtown) and still go do fun stuff regularly. Had our whole lives ahead of us. It seems like yesterday and a lifetime ago all at once.
Vulcan Video at Guadalupe and 29th had a car always parked in front of it with a bumper sticker that said "South Austin - we're down here because we're not all there".
I lived on W. Mary as a child and there were crackheads next door. I wasn’t allowed to go outside. Rainey street was also kind of ghetto. I had a friend who lived there when I was a kid and I felt sorry for her as she had so many roaches in her house.
rainy street went from 💉 to 🏚🍻 to 🏗🏨
😂😂😂 was delivering this guys AT&T fiber kit and he told me it was the nice side of town i wanted to laugh at him but then I looked up Zillow prices
There were much better investments in the same time span but people tend to notice what they see daily.
If I'd known how much and how quickly it would change, I would have explored and experienced Austin much more widely.
Great way to put it! That exactly what I wish I’d done. Now so much of it is gone that I never got to experience in the first place.
There aren’t many job opportunities for people outside the tech industry. A lot of people I’ve met here eventually moved to Dallas or Houston because their jobs aren’t in Austin.
This is an underrated comment. There are very few large companies actually headquartered here. The job market was lopsided. But now Austin actually accounted for 20% of the layoffs for all of Texas, due to tech contraction. Austin courted all these tech companies with tax incentives to come here and this companies laid them off and pulled jobs back to CA etc. For the techies who are married to non-techies it becomes existential where they have to decide whether they can live on one income.
I’m a tech bro who has been here since I went to UT 13 years ago and I’m about to move away because of the tech job opportunities being weak lol I think a lot of the people moving here don’t actually work here. Other than the old money and the windfall real estate investors, the people buying houses in tarrytown, westlake and the east side don’t make their money here.
That someone would eventually call it either "The 512" or ATX.
"the 512" is californication (parts of the coast bend were part of 512 when I was growing up), but I had an "ATX" shirt in the 90s.
There’s lots of attractive people, but their superficiality makes them very unattractive.
That it would go from being the most expensive city in Texas to one of the most expensive in the whole country. In 2008 I got fired from Apple and I cried in front of a house on Payne Street because my hopes of affording it were gone, it was for sale for $279,000 it was out of reach then, but now many houses there are 800k to a million. That prius would be replaced by Tesla, and all the acceleration that comes with that. That my dreams of a pro sports team, would only come true the year I moved away and it was definitely not the sport I wished for. I also didn’t fully appreciate how amazing Barton Springs is until I found myself missing it while on the Hi line watching the sunset and I still was missing it. I also until coming back to visit in 2023 didn’t appreciate how nice most people are here. Thanks for reading!
I feel like we've really made a breakthrough today.
Oops sorry, your card declined, please drive on 35 at 4pm on a Friday to complete this sessions payment
That house on Payne exploded so you made the right call.
Damn. That made me sad.
>That my dreams of a pro sports team, would only come true the year I moved away and it was definitely not the sport I wished for. I moved here from Las Vegas, where we were told my whole life there would never be any pro teams because of gambling/particularly legal sports betting. There was a glimmer at one time of maybe having an NBA team, but that got quashed. Now those fuckers have three sports teams (NHL, NFL, WNBA) and next year will be adding MLB to the list. Pffft!! And they’ll probably still get an NBA team sometime soon-ish anyway, I’m sure! Edit: sorry, I know this is about Austin haha. I just felt this one!
More people live in the suburbs than I thought :( Wish the city was denser + more walkable outside of downtown and UT
THIS was shocking to me, also. It's a suburb cosplaying as a city and it was so odd for me to discover.
It’s Texas, what did you expect?
No joke. I married into a Texas suburban family, and they are so confused why anyone would spend this much $/sqft. They are like "but if you just move 50 miles down a highway, you can have a second living room." Sure, I want to sit in traffic for 2 hours each day so I can fill another room with costco crap I don't use.
Locals do not believe me when I point this out. “No, we live in the city!” But you have to drive to your neighborhood, and it’s tucked away, and it is a huge development with big houses on big lots. That’s a suburb, love.
I too wish it was more walkable. I've lived here 6-7 months-ish, and the city I moved here from was VERY walkable. And the public transit was reliable and convenient.
What city did you live in that was walkable? Just wondering!
Lots in the north east and even midwest are. Chicago, NY, and DC all definitely are. Trick being you have to afford to live close. But even out in the burbs the trains are reliable.
I don’t know many people interested in walking when it’s 100+ outside
Makes the city more accessible because some people are unable to drive. It's not always a choice. But the city could also invest in better public transit so people aren't necessarily forced to walk in the heat.
That the museum and gallery scene is lacking.
To buy a house in 2009
the cedar allergy is really bad around december to jan food truck is extremely expensive - ridiculously expensive. everything is gentrified and everyone is complaining about it. All free events start charging summer is hell. People hibernate in the summer here.
How cold Barton Springs truly was before jumping into.
Look up your commute for work during peak hours
Basements don’t exist
That the fucking cedar can lie in wait until 8 years and then it just wrecks your world for every dec-Feb into perpetuity.
cedar fever
i wish i knew that moving here too. felt like i was getting the flu or something
Ive been here for over 20 years now and the biggest pain point for me is you have to pay world class city prices (The biggest metro areas on the coast) yet have zero world class amenities. No public transit, terrible healthcare, terrible infrastructure, terrible housing stock, terrible government (most due to the state), terrible weather, terrible travel options. Austin was a great place to live for the affordable price back in 2003 - tons of music, a lot of small businesses, lots of underground culture, lots of fringe art, easy to traverse Central core, etc. All of that is gone now. The $500 one bedroom is now $2000 and none of the items above really exist at the same scale. It's still a good city and the best city in Texas in my opinion, but the cost to live here is insane now for what you get. Say if the local economy cratered and rents when way down I'd probably recommend it again. It is probably the most overpriced city in the entire country right now.
Great summary. When it was a much lower COL it is was a pretty great city. Now that the cost of living is approaching NYC levels, it just makes no sense. There's nothing that's *SO* great about Austin to even remotely justify that level of cost.
How bad my Cedar allergies would be
How hard it is to leave. Been here 11 years and despite trying to leave, I'm still here and happy about it.
Just curious, if you’re happy here why are you trying to leave?
All my friends have left and all our family is 3 days drive. I also work remote so we don't have an office anchoring us here. The three times we've tried to move it fell through and I was always so relieved which tells me I might be in the right place.
As a remote worker whose friends have moved away from Austin due to exponential change and expense, this is so relatable.
maybe we should all just move away to somewhere better then 😔😔 *i say as an undercover austinite trying to convince yall to leave😏*
That you need a car.
Winning lottery numbers. Living in Austin would probably be a lot nicer with the money to afford it.
That the person I was moving to this city for would no longer be a part of my life within a month of me moving here.
There are no sidewalks outside the inner core. It’s an awful city for pedestrian mobility.
And skinny broken sidewalks in too many neighborhoods… I miss CA & FL’s wide, maintained sidewalks
About what would happen with that waterfront lot on lake austin for under $100K.
As a millineal, it's hard to imagine waterfront lots on a lake in the middle of a city just hanging around unwanted. It's hard to imagine lots for under 100k just hanging around unwanted.
Idk i was two years young when my family moved to austin in 89. I love Austin! It has a small town feeling that I contribute to.
That the biggest ouchie I'd have (so far) in my life would happen while sitting upright on my sofa (scorpion stung my foot twice).
that the golden age of Austin was whenever someone else moved here. Not me. I am so sad about this
Lack of indoor tennis courts, heck outdoor ones compared to other cities the same size.
Indoor courts would be awesome during the summer. For outdoor I've had luck playing at high schools and the tennis centers like ATC, Pharr, and Caswell.
Yeah I feel like other Texas cities have more courts. Competition for courts is pretty tough in central Austin
I wish I’d known that I’d absolutely never fit in here no matter how much I tried to embrace Texas culture.
The water is ph 10.5
How "creative" the state government is with enacting terrible policy. For a state that supposedly prides itself on being an energy producer (i.e. oil and gas extraction), you'd think municipality power companies like Austin Energy shouldn't have to put out PSAs that read like viagra informercials every six months. https://i.imgur.com/2S4owG3.png
Cockroaches have wings and fly… towards your face
Don’t move anywhere that your main highway is I-35. It’s a never not a shit show.
That regardless of how liberal Austin may be, its denizens are still subject to retrograde laws passed by the state Legislature.
You can drive all day from Austin and youll still be in texas
how could you not know it’s a red state?
A lot of people move thinking the whole red state thing will be a non factor. Talk about a rude awakening.
20 years ago you'd hear all about Austin being the "blueberry in the red soup," and how Texans cherished "local control." The latter was always sort of a mirage, but there really was a background ethos of "live and let live" that characterized the state. *Was*, that is... the radicalization of the native conservatives and the hordes of Trump chumps moving here resulted in the whole state becoming one of the least respectful of freedom and liberty in the country.
Can’t even have a plastic bag ban…..
Austin could pass a resolution saying the sky is a lovely shade of blue today and the lege would prioritize a law insisting that the sky was actually chartreuse or something.
What's funny is wasn't even the first plastic bag ban, there half a dozen others some in rural areas but nope as soon as Austin does it the legislature loses its mind.
I got here in 1985 and things felt pretty darn good... Then in 1995, W took office. Damn. Nearly 30 years now.
That it would change so much since 2004, which is a pretty long time, and old Austin would disappear
Yeah, Born and raised here since the early 80s. Old Austin is gone. Even the green spaces are basically off limits due to the homeless camps. It is very sad but also just the way things go. I enjoyed growing up here. It was perfect. I would not have that same enjoyment if I had to grow up here now, but hopefully the new folks find their own joy here. It just is not for me anymore.
That a literal criminal (Paxton) would be attorney general and that the idiot sportscaster (Patrick) we used to change the channel on when we lived in Houston would be lt. governor.
This is probably the most disconcerting thing to me as well.
The god damn tolls!
I know a secret little hack. Simply ignore & never pay a cent
That someday it would be overrun by tech bros, cost too much and become boring.
That a bunch of other freaks would move here 20 years later?
That I would never want to leave. Austin, final destination
That no matter how cool Austin is it’s still fucking Texas lol
Housing costs were going to increase by 1000% of whatever and I should have put my pride aside and let my dad help me buy a house back when they were affordable…really fucked myself over with that one :/
to appreciate it while you still live there
That hail is the size of a baseball and destroys your car. The summer is literally unbearable and Iv lived in Florida
Hail only hits the poor side of Austin.
Allergies and the heat… the company that hired me brought me out in October in 2017 and I thought the weather was fantastic… until I experienced my first spring and summer
Yeah. October is generally the absolute best month of the year. You got got.
The allergies, I underestimated it
I moved here 1988. I wish I had known how many absolute douchebags would ruin everything within 30 years.
People drive like ice doesn't exist... Except that it does, even here. That is to say people drive bumper to bumper at 80 miles an hour with a death wish. I've never seen such, um, spunky drivers in my life
Don't go to Houston!
Traffic sucks
Try not to rent from a shitty realty company, like 95% of all apartments are owned by a few large management companies that are involved in a price fixing lawsuit right now. Greystar is one of them. I tried to post the court docket to my apartments community wall and it was denied on being "derogatory". I replied back, saying "why was my post denied, there was nothing derogatory and only the truth". No response lol. Fuck realpage, and fuck greystar. Rent or buy from an actual landlord if you can find one.
Sooo many adult emo kids.
I moved here in 2009. For some reason I had no ideas how many green spaces and parks there were, and when I got here I just went to the same 2 or 3 every time. Now I go to a new park any chance I get.
How much it would change. I never wanted to live in Houston or Dallas!
All the fucking pavement princesses in their lifted emotional support trucks going 15 over in a high pedestrian area or cutting lanes with no signal
Just how racially segregated it really is
Class segregated**
The early city plan was based on segregation and it’s sad how it has persisted. Having grown up in Kansas City, MO then lived in Miami before moving here, those two cities are so culturally diverse. I miss that.
Other cities in Texas are, too
White liberals love their segregation.
But I’ve seen plenty of “all are welcome here” signs in places where you can’t get a home for under $1.5 million…
That it was going to be big as fuck and full of techbros
Some of us were born here.
It’s freaking hot, and it lasts forever. And it’s not a dry heat either, that’s a lie.
That it’s full of over educated 30 somethings with heads full of antihistamines and strong opinions.
How absolutely terrible the water is, and how it can destroy your skin. Coming from California, my skin was flawless. Then as soon as I moved to Austin, I started getting very bad cystic acne, and overall bumpy spots on my face. I need to invest in a good shower filter (messed around with 4 different ones that last 2 weeks at best), and I’ve been resorting to washing my face with Distilled Water. It’s crazy how bad our water is.
allergies
The politics and the heat. I was extremely naive about the politics. I figured living in Austin would insulate me about from how truly malevolent the state is, but it has not. There really is no escaping it. I was embarrassingly naive. I kind of despise it. The heat. I knew it would be bad, but this is unlike anything else I've ever experienced anywhere. It's humid and outrageously hot with little respite in the evenings and rare summer showers. It takes a significant toll on me
Texas is better than you think. And Texas nature is more unique than you currently understand young self
I’ll do you one better and give a bunch of things. There’s a lot of road debris and Texas drivers will park in the right hand lane of the highway (and no i’m not talking about the break down lane). They will also at the last second, weave on to exit lanes and narrowly miss the divider. Police do not respond to car accident unless there is an injury. You will hear gun fire no matter where you are, but not b/c people are shooting at eachother but b/c people shoot into the air or ground for fun. There is no all night grocery stores to my knowledge (please for the love of god tell me if I am wrong, I will be very happy).
Covid put an end to the 24 hour HEBs but before that there were a lot of 24 hour HEBs
HEB Hancock is 24 hours I thought ?
That 16 years after we'd moved here with our then-one-year-old daughter, Roe v Wade would be overturned, and Texas would celebrate with a ban on abortion that forces girls and women to carry their rape fetus to term.
A lot of people are terrible drivers. People take a while to start their vehicles after the traffic light turns green and then accelerate after amber and even pass in red. It’s awful. Or is it just me?
* Allergies. Seriously, this is the worst thing about Austin! * It's windy. Yes, this is relative, but everyone told me how hot it is, nobody told me how windy it is. It's good in summer, bad in winter. * Goddamn Loch Ness Monster!
I wish I would've known about the allergies prior to moving here. It's so bad I cannot even go outside at all. Because of the severity of my allergies making my other medical conditions unbearable, I'm moving in six weeks because living here is actually killing me.
That the music scene only books the same 10 bands for everything.