rowe33
2651
You guys are weird. Austin is beautiful, would love to live there if I ever were to move back to Texas. It’s more beautiful here in Socal though so it’s a tough sell for my wife. People are great in Austin, there’s a huge art and music community, and you get the bonus of being in a nice blue area.
For now. Wait until climate change gets worse. It’ll all be Mad Max before you know it!
Austin is the exception to the rest of Texas. Even there, though, too many Texans.
No way I’d move to a red state, even if it has a nice oasis of blue. My only comfort these days is that I live in a place where the state government can act as somewhat of a bulwark against the insanity at the federal level.
Enidigm
2655
Texas cities:
Austin - used to be mildly hot, now swelteringly hot city of traffic jams and tech companies. Deer wander around busy body neighborhoods like pets, and everyone in Austin thinks Austin is the greatest city ever.
Dallas - bizarre conglomerate of a hundred strip mall suburbs merged into one unholy roman empire with massive traffic jams. Like 5x the size of Paris in area with 1/2 the population. Everyone in Dallas thinks Dallas is the greatest city ever.
Houston - sub-southeastern swamp city of refineries, mansions and slums that has the only deliberately engineering road system in the state. Still have traffic jams even on toll roads. Far more humid than other cities, with a strong sense of civic pride, one of the largest cities in the US with no zoning laws. Everyone in Houston thinks Houston is the greatest city ever.
San Antonio - the relief valve city that (to me) is hotter than hell. It feels 10d hotter than Austin even if it’s the same temperature on the dial. Flatter, more palm trees, coastal rains and kill-me-now sunshine. Most people move there because of the still cheaper than everything above cost of living, which gives it a bit of a low rent feel. I’d doubt if everyone in San Antonio thinks San Antonio is the greatest city ever, but they probably like it better than the cities above.
El Paso - Nobody from Texas lives in El Paso. Certainly nobody from Texas visits El Paso. We are told it exists; but much like China, nobody has been there and this is believed only by repute. El Paso might be Fake News.
Enidigm
2656
I really liked Colorado Springs when i visited, although the edges of the community feel frayed and dour for some reason.
Banzai
2657
There are definitely oil fields and scrub land in Texas. They aren’t where I spend my time, cause they are exactly as you say: hot dry, dusty, scrubland, full of rural Texans who work there:
If that was Texas, I wouldn’t live here either.
But there’s also all of this:
And one that is from west texas scrubland (and National Park)for good measure:
I’m not trying to change your mind, just letting you know that the majority of Texas isn’t oil fields and scrubland. I don’t know if Texas or California has more ecological niches, but it’d be a close thing either way.
Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and Austin are also all among the most ethnically diverse cities in the US and hold 1/3 of the people in the state. So, if you live in one of the big cities, it’s a big city, not a rural oilfield in the desert.
Just making sure we all know the facts, so we can be better informed than Fox News viewers.
Ex-SWoo
2658
Looks like Mexico to me!!! :P
Yeah, but those pictures are chock full of Texans. So there’s that.
When I went to Texas in the 90s and my brother drove me around the State (between Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio), I was really surprised at how green the State was. I’d always imagined a desert when I heard Texas. I’m sure it has desert somewhere as well, but not in between those four cities. And lots of hills and beautiful areas near Austin, including a river valley that really sticks out in my mind.
But my biggest memory of Texas is walking around the NASA campus on a hot summer day in August to tour the Ground Control area that talked to the Astronauts. It was so unbearably hot that day, so humid, that’s what sticks out to me the most. It was just unbelievably uncomfortable. I’ve never experienced days like that in Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Colorado, Virginia, Kentucky, California, Oregon, Washington, Alabama or Georgia.
Menzo
2663
Everyone knows Trump just means it’s full for dark-skinned and poor folks. We’ll take anyone who wants to come here from Sweden. Too bad they look at us like Trump looks at Puerto Rico.
ShivaX
2664
Funny how not a lot of people want to come over from Sweden.
I used to have to visit Johnson Space Center occasionally for my job, and all those visits seemed to be in August. You hear stories of people becoming “drenched with sweat” between leaving their cars and entering the front doors of store or building or whatever, and you assume that it’s just hyperbole. Houston was the place that proved to me that it was not.
Scuzz
2666
Aren’t most of today’s “Texans” from somewhere else?
If you go back far enough, we’re all from somewhere else.
Therefore we are all Texans.
Scuzz
2670
Every conservative in California talks of moving to Texas or Idaho. Crazy talk.
