Here’s an essay I wrote about why living in Austin sucks. My first line: Austin is a beautiful mistress who laughs in your face when you run out of money.
Austin is a beautiful mistress…
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3 responses to “Austin is a beautiful mistress…”
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Beautiful essay. I sympathized with so much of what you wrote, moving here to Houston from San Francisco after years as a computer programmer there. You really hit the nail on the head – just as much for San Francisco as for Austin.
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I’ve had the experience of moving to Houston for lack of work
in Austin, and moved back here when a new job opened up for me.
Sometimes I do wonder why I came back, given the cost/value equation
this city presents… I really enjoyed your writing, especially
the part describing that last bit of waiting before moving; for me
that was three months. -
I think Houston needs to be given a lot more credit than is offered up by your otherwise wonderful story. You might find it surprising that there are many people who do shed a tear when leaving that massive city 3 hours east of Austin. Houston is its own universe with its very own gravitational pull, and trying to compare it to Austin simply misses the point. How can you compare Austin, a relatively small city with much natural scenery, to a massive urban and industrial giant with 5 million people? You can?t. Houston can be more comparable with Los Angeles, in all the bad ways and the good ways. There is a beauty to industrial Goth and the enormous beat of a city as big as Houston. There is such a large quantity of quality existences in the Space City that you can spend your entire life and not experience all of them: From the more than 13,000 restaurants, its high-brow theater district, the rich museum district, the countless smaller art galleries, the countless shopping centers, and its international elements including the many ethnic areas, which account for about 70% of the population. In a way, the lack of regard Houston seems to always receive is probably a good thing. It weeds out those who deserve to live in Houston from the others.
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