7 ms·

Native of Austin here, moving to SF. I can only speak to the trends I'm personally seeing, but the flood of tech money into Austin is sweeping my favorite parts

Native of Austin here, moving to SF. I can only speak to the trends I'm personally seeing, but the flood of tech money into Austin is sweeping my favorite parts of the city away. The places that filled the nooks and crannies in the city are getting replaced by fonts. Put up a steel and glass building with a cafe in the bottom, slap on an "indie-western-hipster" font and boom, we're still "keeping Austin weird". My parents moved to Austin after law school to avoid the money-culture in Dallas and the humidity in Houston. But you can't outrun the money culture forever; it's relentless at finding pockets of cool to sell. The tech wealth moving to Austin is a certain type of wealth. It's largely the wealth that is socially liberal, but sure as heck likes the low taxes. For them, Austin is having your cake and eating it too. You get loudly decry everything the state government does while silently enjoying the tax and business environment. It's uniquely Austin seeing how people take comfort knowing if the Austin mayoralty swings too far left that the Capital will crack the whip. It's a win-win all around. People forget that South Congress was grungy for awhile. People forget that Liz Lambert took a big risk when she bought the motel there, that ACL was only one weekend, and that Whole Foods started here. Before all this, Austin was anchored by the Capital and UT, but now we're getting a SoHo House down the street from the Equinox. And Oracle has a new skyscraper, cool. If I had to bet, it's only a matter of time before we start putting up skyscrapers up North near the Domain where the Amazon's and Apple's are setting up. And when y'all move here anyways, try to leave Austin weirder than you found it. This is a great city.

gdubs 6y ago
I feel like people discount how much the “weird” contributed to the success of SV. You had The Grateful Dead in Palo Alto, Clifford Stoll types in Berkeley, etc. [1] Monocultures aren’t very conducive to creativity. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said
- ipnon 6y ago
  I would argue the opposite: SV is a monoculture of nerds obsessed with computers, science, and grand ideas of changing the world through tiny companies. Everyone around the world knows it. So all of these kinds of people flock to the Bay in droves, and drive all of the locals mad in the process, but eventually unicorns and impossible fortunes start oozing out of the cracks. And how can we be sure SV is a monoculture? Because in San Francisco, and now Austin, residents are complaining loudly about the blight of uniform techies with nothing to offer the community at large but glass skyscrapers and hunched backs. Case closed!
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    The thing about this is that there are mops and geeks. The geeks just do the thing that they think is cool. The mops are there because the geeks are there. Since the geeks just do cool things, they have no trouble finding each other and doing cool things. It's the mops who have trouble. They're always like "X place used to be cool. There were all these people who did Y here". Well, those people are elsewhere and you don't know it because you were never one of them. You were a groupie. So the mops always get annoyed at some point not because some lower class of mop arrived but because there is only so many of them that can exist without ruining their thing. So, usually it's earlier groupies complaining about later groupies. "Man, Oakland used to be full of artists" "Oh yeah? What kind of art did you make?" "Oh not me. I studied chemical engineering. But there were all these artists back then." Riiiiight
    - throw0101a 6y ago
      MOP = member of public. See essay "Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution": > The new scene draws fanatics. Fanatics don’t create, but they contribute energy (time, money, adulation, organization, analysis) to support the creators. > Creators and fanatics are both geeks.2 They totally love the New Thing, they’re fascinated with all its esoteric ins and outs, and they spend all available time either doing it or talking about it. > If the scene is sufficiently geeky, it remains a strictly geek thing; a weird hobby, not a subculture. > If the scene is unusually exciting, and the New Thing can be appreciated without having to get utterly geeky about details, it draws mops.3 Mops are fans, but not rabid fans like the fanatics. They show up to have a good time, and contribute as little as they reasonably can in exchange. * https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths * 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21963626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21963626 * 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17433487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17433487 * 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9632751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9632751
    - asdffdsa 6y ago
      I'd argue that there's culture and there's vultures. In any place, a community of people create a unique culture. Geeks create most of the artifacts & traditions of that culture, but the entire community (either passively or actively) contributes, supports, and adds to it. When that culture blows up, the vultures move there because they find value to exploit in that culture, while simultaneously supplanting/destroying/building over that culture. In your example, maybe the local ("earlier groupie") who studied chemical engineering knows the artists, supports their shows, smokes with them, shares his or her life with them, and has the culture ingrained in them even if that person isn't directly an artist or geek. Continuing the example, contrast this with a "later groupie" who would move to said location. This person might move into a new highrise development that used to be the warehouse where aforementioned artist & chemical engineer would kick it on weekends. The vulture will also support noise ordinance laws that would kill the informal events/performances of the culture that said chemical engineer used to attend, and where said artist would perform his or her art when that person was still 'underground'.
clavalle 6y ago
>People forget that South Congress was grungy for awhile. When the porn theatre was renovated into office space...who knew that was the turning point.
- goodmattg 6y ago
  My parents still remember when this happened! For me it was losing Magnolia Cafe at the Lake
  - kemitchell 6y ago
    What???
  - dfee 6y ago
    I’ve been gone too long. When did that happen?
    - goodmattg 6y ago
      COVID. they closed the Lake Austin location. There's still one on Soco
- ghaff 6y ago
  This is true of a lot of cities of course. You have 42nd Street in NYC, the Combat Zone in Boston... Through really, people complaining that it's not like the old days either didn't live there then or they're looking back through very rose colored glasses.
  - yao420 6y ago
    Case in point, the old adult theatre the parent is talking about was flush with pimps, prostitutes, and drugs along with the rest of south Congress street. It was not somewhere you would walk during the day, much less at night. Yet people are remembering it fondly.
    - 6y ago
bassman9000 6y ago
You get loudly decry everything the state government does while silently enjoying the tax and business environment. Worry not. In 20 years they'll be fleeing for the next Texas, after flipping it blue and raising taxes, among other things.
tdcjifcv 6y ago
Sounds like a repeat of what happened to SF. Be ready for the tech money and tech sis/bros to descend like a swarm of locusts, displace all the locals, extinguish everything cool, and then start complaining about how nobody appreciates them. Imo, these are the worst type of people. I look forward to the day they all leave the Bay Area and go somewhere else.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- FreedomToCreate 6y ago
  You are going to be waiting forever
  - hndnbbe83 6y ago
    Not necessarily. The people who were there for money / work are leaving in droves. I can only hope that a crash similar to the tech bust in the late 90s / early 00s accelerates the process. Those who are staying tend to genuinely like and appreciate the area, and they tend to be better citizens who contribute to a sense of community.
- woah 6y ago
  Nobody would have been displaced if SF home building wasn’t at an all-time low. The propensity for the left in this city to stick up for homeowners and their intentional housing crisis is incredible.
  - hndnbbe83 6y ago
    I think it has more to do with preserving the character and vibe of the city -- the things that make it uniquely San Francisco. A lot of animosity toward the new arrivals stems from the lack of respect and appreciation for these. The valley itself (i.e. the peninsula and Fremont down to San Jose) has always been a cultural wasteland. I miss the days when the techie scum used to confine itself to those environs.
jhowell 6y ago
You can use taxes as a sword, but Texas has no personal income tax. A higher minimum wage would also help, but that has to go through the same people who don't want a personal income tax.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  As more and more people move to Austin they will grow in political influence until they can vote out those people, institute a personal income tax, etc.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    Why? No income tax and high property taxes is a good idea IMO. Property taxes in Austin are outrageous.
  - dctoedt 6y ago
    > As more and more people move to Austin they will grow in political influence until they can vote out those people, institute a personal income tax, etc. Houstonian and UT grad here. We libtards have been saying that for as long as I can remember, and it never seems to come to pass. It's much like the old saying, [X] is five years in the future, and has been for the last 50 years.
    - phibz 6y ago
      Owned a home in Galveston only to have the property tax triple, but when I finally challenged it using a local realtor family friend's help it turned in to "okay how much do you want to pay". Its a game with rules that aren't exactly clear.
  - xibalba 6y ago
    Texas amended the state constitution in 2019 to prohibit a personal income tax. Also, the legislature of TX isn't structured in such a way that a large increase in Austin's population would enable sufficient political power to alter the constitution. Finally, why would you want to move from California to Texas and then try to transform Texas into California? Just stay in California if that's what you want.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>For them, Austin is having your cake and eating it too. You get loudly decry everything the state government does while silently enjoying the tax and business environment. Give them a decade and they'll forget they actually enjoy the environment and light the cake on fire by putting their money where their mouth is, act like nobody could have foreseen the resulting tragedy and move on to do it again somewhere else.
systemvoltage 6y ago
Lol I enjoyed your rant. I think this is true for most new stuff in any city. From Stockholm to Milan, from Melbourne to Tokyo. It’s the general money culture you’re addressing, not necessarily from SV. I wish we would have uniqueness to the city. It’s becoming all a monoculture of Eames fake bar stools and Edison bulbs illuminating your exceptionally well crafted macchiato. This started in late 2000s actually. I was just in Kyoto before the pandemic and a lot of traditional old cafes are being replaced by the most hipster japanese shit I've ever. You know the old cafes that served 10cm thick toast, I specifically remember one by the Tajima (sic?) market when I used to travel there back in early 2000s. Honestly, I want to preserve culture, but that's "too conservative" and you get attacked for saying these things.
- ore0s 6y ago
  exceptionally well crafted macchiato. This phrase is just insanely well-crafted for making me crave coffee.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    That'll be $7, Apple pay?
kjksf 6y ago
It's a nice rant but you clearly don't care about most of the things you complain about. You're moving to SF. Everything you complain about is worse in SF and there are even more problems like (still) insane real estate prices, out of control homelessness, city government against everything new (e.g. it took SF months to approve bird etc. scooters). Your actions speak louder than your words. There are, of course, plenty of good reasons to move to SF from Austin (weather, ocean, mountains, more tech jobs) but those are not what you claim are your reasons.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
dmode 6y ago
I am a tech “bro” myself, but my move to SF predates the recent tech boom. I was also annoyed at the local government for not fixing quality of life issues. But off late, I am increasingly disillusioned by the tech industry and the loudmouth tech execs and VCs on Twitter. They complaint all day about SF. They are constantly looking for validation and affirmation of their self importance from local leaders. They probably believe that everyone owes them something. And I started to realize that people forget why they moved to SF to begin with. It was because it wasn’t a wasteland of mono culture of office parks and white collar workers. And now every day they decry what they moved into.
Dracophoenix 6y ago
Given how much you've waxed poetic about Austin, what's pushing you to move to SV? Money, school, a startup idea?
- goodmattg 6y ago
  waxing poetic is one of my favorite hobbies. combination of climate, closer to hiking, and jobs
xibalba 6y ago
Another Austinite here. It's not so much the wealth that is a negative, IMO, but certain elements of the SV culture that feel like they are corrosive. In particular, the attitudes of "I earn high comp and know stuff in my industry so surely I must be smart on all topics" and "I must inject my lefty politics into everything always" are antithetical to Austin's (and Texas's) culture.
- gumby 6y ago
  You’re describing the people who came here for the money, found SV boring, and colonized SF instead. Those parasitical shits are the ones assailing you like two-legged tree roaches (yes I lived in Austin...in the early 80s)

gdubs 6y ago

I feel like people discount how much the “weird” contributed to the success of SV. You had The Grateful Dead in Palo Alto, Clifford Stoll types in Berkeley, etc. [1] Monocultures aren’t very conducive to creativity. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said

ipnon 6y ago
I would argue the opposite: SV is a monoculture of nerds obsessed with computers, science, and grand ideas of changing the world through tiny companies. Everyone around the world knows it. So all of these kinds of people flock to the Bay in droves, and drive all of the locals mad in the process, but eventually unicorns and impossible fortunes start oozing out of the cracks. And how can we be sure SV is a monoculture? Because in San Francisco, and now Austin, residents are complaining loudly about the blight of uniform techies with nothing to offer the community at large but glass skyscrapers and hunched backs. Case closed!
- renewiltord 6y ago
  The thing about this is that there are mops and geeks. The geeks just do the thing that they think is cool. The mops are there because the geeks are there. Since the geeks just do cool things, they have no trouble finding each other and doing cool things. It's the mops who have trouble. They're always like "X place used to be cool. There were all these people who did Y here". Well, those people are elsewhere and you don't know it because you were never one of them. You were a groupie. So the mops always get annoyed at some point not because some lower class of mop arrived but because there is only so many of them that can exist without ruining their thing. So, usually it's earlier groupies complaining about later groupies. "Man, Oakland used to be full of artists" "Oh yeah? What kind of art did you make?" "Oh not me. I studied chemical engineering. But there were all these artists back then." Riiiiight
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    MOP = member of public. See essay "Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution": > The new scene draws fanatics. Fanatics don’t create, but they contribute energy (time, money, adulation, organization, analysis) to support the creators. > Creators and fanatics are both geeks.2 They totally love the New Thing, they’re fascinated with all its esoteric ins and outs, and they spend all available time either doing it or talking about it. > If the scene is sufficiently geeky, it remains a strictly geek thing; a weird hobby, not a subculture. > If the scene is unusually exciting, and the New Thing can be appreciated without having to get utterly geeky about details, it draws mops.3 Mops are fans, but not rabid fans like the fanatics. They show up to have a good time, and contribute as little as they reasonably can in exchange. * https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths * 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21963626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21963626 * 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17433487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17433487 * 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9632751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9632751
  - asdffdsa 6y ago
    I'd argue that there's culture and there's vultures. In any place, a community of people create a unique culture. Geeks create most of the artifacts & traditions of that culture, but the entire community (either passively or actively) contributes, supports, and adds to it. When that culture blows up, the vultures move there because they find value to exploit in that culture, while simultaneously supplanting/destroying/building over that culture. In your example, maybe the local ("earlier groupie") who studied chemical engineering knows the artists, supports their shows, smokes with them, shares his or her life with them, and has the culture ingrained in them even if that person isn't directly an artist or geek. Continuing the example, contrast this with a "later groupie" who would move to said location. This person might move into a new highrise development that used to be the warehouse where aforementioned artist & chemical engineer would kick it on weekends. The vulture will also support noise ordinance laws that would kill the informal events/performances of the culture that said chemical engineer used to attend, and where said artist would perform his or her art when that person was still 'underground'.

clavalle 6y ago

>People forget that South Congress was grungy for awhile. When the porn theatre was renovated into office space...who knew that was the turning point.

goodmattg 6y ago
My parents still remember when this happened! For me it was losing Magnolia Cafe at the Lake
- kemitchell 6y ago
  What???
- dfee 6y ago
  I’ve been gone too long. When did that happen?
  - goodmattg 6y ago
    COVID. they closed the Lake Austin location. There's still one on Soco
ghaff 6y ago
This is true of a lot of cities of course. You have 42nd Street in NYC, the Combat Zone in Boston... Through really, people complaining that it's not like the old days either didn't live there then or they're looking back through very rose colored glasses.
- yao420 6y ago
  Case in point, the old adult theatre the parent is talking about was flush with pimps, prostitutes, and drugs along with the rest of south Congress street. It was not somewhere you would walk during the day, much less at night. Yet people are remembering it fondly.
  - 6y ago

bassman9000 6y ago

You get loudly decry everything the state government does while silently enjoying the tax and business environment. Worry not. In 20 years they'll be fleeing for the next Texas, after flipping it blue and raising taxes, among other things.

tdcjifcv 6y ago

Sounds like a repeat of what happened to SF. Be ready for the tech money and tech sis/bros to descend like a swarm of locusts, displace all the locals, extinguish everything cool, and then start complaining about how nobody appreciates them. Imo, these are the worst type of people. I look forward to the day they all leave the Bay Area and go somewhere else.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
FreedomToCreate 6y ago
You are going to be waiting forever
- hndnbbe83 6y ago
  Not necessarily. The people who were there for money / work are leaving in droves. I can only hope that a crash similar to the tech bust in the late 90s / early 00s accelerates the process. Those who are staying tend to genuinely like and appreciate the area, and they tend to be better citizens who contribute to a sense of community.
woah 6y ago
Nobody would have been displaced if SF home building wasn’t at an all-time low. The propensity for the left in this city to stick up for homeowners and their intentional housing crisis is incredible.
- hndnbbe83 6y ago
  I think it has more to do with preserving the character and vibe of the city -- the things that make it uniquely San Francisco. A lot of animosity toward the new arrivals stems from the lack of respect and appreciation for these. The valley itself (i.e. the peninsula and Fremont down to San Jose) has always been a cultural wasteland. I miss the days when the techie scum used to confine itself to those environs.

jhowell 6y ago

You can use taxes as a sword, but Texas has no personal income tax. A higher minimum wage would also help, but that has to go through the same people who don't want a personal income tax.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
As more and more people move to Austin they will grow in political influence until they can vote out those people, institute a personal income tax, etc.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  Why? No income tax and high property taxes is a good idea IMO. Property taxes in Austin are outrageous.
- dctoedt 6y ago
  > As more and more people move to Austin they will grow in political influence until they can vote out those people, institute a personal income tax, etc. Houstonian and UT grad here. We libtards have been saying that for as long as I can remember, and it never seems to come to pass. It's much like the old saying, [X] is five years in the future, and has been for the last 50 years.
  - phibz 6y ago
    Owned a home in Galveston only to have the property tax triple, but when I finally challenged it using a local realtor family friend's help it turned in to "okay how much do you want to pay". Its a game with rules that aren't exactly clear.
- xibalba 6y ago
  Texas amended the state constitution in 2019 to prohibit a personal income tax. Also, the legislature of TX isn't structured in such a way that a large increase in Austin's population would enable sufficient political power to alter the constitution. Finally, why would you want to move from California to Texas and then try to transform Texas into California? Just stay in California if that's what you want.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

>For them, Austin is having your cake and eating it too. You get loudly decry everything the state government does while silently enjoying the tax and business environment. Give them a decade and they'll forget they actually enjoy the environment and light the cake on fire by putting their money where their mouth is, act like nobody could have foreseen the resulting tragedy and move on to do it again somewhere else.

systemvoltage 6y ago

Lol I enjoyed your rant. I think this is true for most new stuff in any city. From Stockholm to Milan, from Melbourne to Tokyo. It’s the general money culture you’re addressing, not necessarily from SV. I wish we would have uniqueness to the city. It’s becoming all a monoculture of Eames fake bar stools and Edison bulbs illuminating your exceptionally well crafted macchiato. This started in late 2000s actually. I was just in Kyoto before the pandemic and a lot of traditional old cafes are being replaced by the most hipster japanese shit I've ever. You know the old cafes that served 10cm thick toast, I specifically remember one by the Tajima (sic?) market when I used to travel there back in early 2000s. Honestly, I want to preserve culture, but that's "too conservative" and you get attacked for saying these things.

ore0s 6y ago
exceptionally well crafted macchiato. This phrase is just insanely well-crafted for making me crave coffee.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  That'll be $7, Apple pay?

kjksf 6y ago

It's a nice rant but you clearly don't care about most of the things you complain about. You're moving to SF. Everything you complain about is worse in SF and there are even more problems like (still) insane real estate prices, out of control homelessness, city government against everything new (e.g. it took SF months to approve bird etc. scooters). Your actions speak louder than your words. There are, of course, plenty of good reasons to move to SF from Austin (weather, ocean, mountains, more tech jobs) but those are not what you claim are your reasons.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

dmode 6y ago

I am a tech “bro” myself, but my move to SF predates the recent tech boom. I was also annoyed at the local government for not fixing quality of life issues. But off late, I am increasingly disillusioned by the tech industry and the loudmouth tech execs and VCs on Twitter. They complaint all day about SF. They are constantly looking for validation and affirmation of their self importance from local leaders. They probably believe that everyone owes them something. And I started to realize that people forget why they moved to SF to begin with. It was because it wasn’t a wasteland of mono culture of office parks and white collar workers. And now every day they decry what they moved into.

Dracophoenix 6y ago

Given how much you've waxed poetic about Austin, what's pushing you to move to SV? Money, school, a startup idea?

goodmattg 6y ago
waxing poetic is one of my favorite hobbies. combination of climate, closer to hiking, and jobs

xibalba 6y ago

Another Austinite here. It's not so much the wealth that is a negative, IMO, but certain elements of the SV culture that feel like they are corrosive. In particular, the attitudes of "I earn high comp and know stuff in my industry so surely I must be smart on all topics" and "I must inject my lefty politics into everything always" are antithetical to Austin's (and Texas's) culture.

gumby 6y ago
You’re describing the people who came here for the money, found SV boring, and colonized SF instead. Those parasitical shits are the ones assailing you like two-legged tree roaches (yes I lived in Austin...in the early 80s)