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I left Austin so I’d like to share a counter perspective. I still think it’s one of the best big cities in the country but that’s the problem, it’s a big city n

I left Austin so I’d like to share a counter perspective. I still think it’s one of the best big cities in the country but that’s the problem, it’s a big city now. Austin went from 500k people to well over a million now during my time there. It’s impossible for a place not to change with that many people moving. Everything the author likes used to be even nicer before. Used to be more casual, more affordable, better music scene, less traffic, etc. I also don’t believe it’s a great place to raise kids anymore: epidemic of homelessness, more crime, crowded streets, too hot for extended outdoor play during the summer, etc. I used to meet a lot more people with “normal” jobs in Austin, e.g. mailman, teachers, nurses, etc. but over time they couldn’t afford to live close by and everyone I met had tech/finance/startup jobs. The establishments definitely got gentrified and cater to no-kid professionals now. Parks are now full of beautifully sculpted people playing frisbee where it used to be tie-dye wearing teenie boppeers or big Mexican families grilling. Ultimately, Austin grew to be a mono-culture of socioeconomic status in my opinion. No hate, Austin is a great city but just grew up into something that didn’t suit me anymore. It’s a weird thing when the place you live changes so quickly around you that you don’t feel you belong there anymore.

biggieshellz 4y ago
I feel you. I drove my old pickup truck to the Domain last year to pick up some Christmas gifts, wearing jeans and a button-down flannel shirt, and I felt completely out of place. So much ostentatious wealth here now.
- pm90 4y ago
  With all due respect: you drove up to the an area that was mostly built up from nothing in the past 2 decades, is being developed as a “second downtown” and you feel sad to be out of place? Have you been downtown of any major american city?
  - biggieshellz 4y ago
    I play jazz, and I go to downtown Austin fairly frequently, and never felt that way there. The Domain is just... weird, and not in an Austin way.
    - qorrect 4y ago
      Did you ever get to play The Elephant Room ? One of my favorite Austin spots.
      - biggieshellz 4y ago
        Only at the Monday night jam sessions. But I have played at Parker, which is also a wonderful spot.
    - dvtrn 4y ago
      It made me feel like I was walking around on the set of The Truman Show every time I went up there.
    - dkarl 4y ago
      The way the Domain was explained to me is that there's a mobile cosmopolitan upper class that likes to float around the planet without ever feeling a sense of uncomfortable unfamiliarity. Austin attracted their attention partly by being "cool" and more importantly by having a Formula 1 track. The Domain was created to make money by helping those people feel at home. The one person I've met who lived in the Domain was a rich tech guy from another continent who "moved" to Austin but never actually spent much time here. He rented an apartment in the Domain that was mostly vacant because he was always in other countries, acquired a girlfriend in Austin, was rarely here, and eventually stopped coming to Austin altogether. He treated Austin basically the same way I treat a restaurant. He came once, got really excited about his experience, came a few times more and then felt less excited, and then never came back because there was always another city somewhere else that he was a little bit more jazzed about. He was so wealthy that this level of interest in a city involved him renting an apartment for a couple of years and considering purchasing a condo. I wouldn't be surprised if he did purchase a condo, and it's been sitting empty for years because he likes having it and the cost of maintaining it pales next to the effort of finding somebody to manage it as a rental property for him. That's what the Domain is, a world built for those people.
- mrits 4y ago
  Driving an old pickup truck is an ostentatious display of wealth at current petro prices.
  - vehemenz 4y ago
    Starting price for EVs is around $50k. Driving one of those seems more ostentatious to me.
    - multiplegeorges 4y ago
      Anyone buying a car should look at TCO. The average new car price of any type is ~$40,000 in the US, so you're better off long-term with an EV based on fuel costs alone. Add in the really low maintenance needed for an EV and you're even further ahead.
      - vehemenz 4y ago
        A good petrol car can be bought used for $15-20k. Comparing the price of a new one to an EV is a false equivalency because you can't buy used EVs for anywhere near that. TCO only favors EVs if you drive enough to offset fuel, oil changes, and maintenance. All bets are off if you replace the battery.
        vageli 4y ago
        > A good petrol car can be bought used for $15-20k. Comparing the price of a new one to an EV is a false equivalency because you can't buy used EVs for anywhere near that. You can definitely find a used EV for under 20k. https://www.carvana.com/cars/nissan-leaf-under-15k https://www.carvana.com/cars/nissan-leaf-under-15k
        vehemenz 4y ago
        The presence of low-range EVs—many of which need battery or tire replacements—doesn't really change the point. A similarly priced Honda Fit from the same model year is a better value due to its low maintenance costs, fuel economy, and infinite range.
sithadmin 4y ago
Strongly agree with all of your arguments. Watched the city transform radically between ~2007 and ~2014, and not really for the better. Most notably, the city and surrounding suburbs did not prepare for nor manage the tech-driven population boom whatsoever.
- dvtrn 4y ago
  They did it to themselves. It’s one of the leading reasons I left the region after grad school for the ancestral planes of my parents: Suburban Illinois, heh. https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/boomtown-yesterday-dont-build-it-and-they-wont-come-mentality-pricing-austinites-out/269-492526666 https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/boomtown-yesterday-d...
- drchopchop 4y ago
  Same, lived there in the early 2000's, and coming back recently it's almost unrecognizable. The music scene is largely gone, tech bros everywhere, the traffic is even worse than it was before, housing is ridiculous. The "Keep Austin Weird" charm, which used to be real, is now a faded memory that's packaged up to sell at the airport gift shop.
- enraged_camel 4y ago
  A lot of people tried, but got blocked by NIMBYs.
cs137 4y ago
Austin is in danger of following California's path. The reason Silicon Valley sucks is that Wall Street started sending its failures into tech to boss nerds around, and they drove out the real people, the ones who actually cared about technology and steering its role in society to the good. Now, tech is full of FAANG bros who don't mind open-plan offices and daily interviews for their own job, because they're all going to be CEOs in three years (in their minds). The Paradox of Tolerance is how Burning Man got infested by networking billionaires. California's death is the Paradox of Tolerance in action, and Austin is in the same danger.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
> Everything the author likes used to be even nicer before. Such a universal sentiment, everywhere. I've never heard anyone who lived anywhere for more than a few years say "it's become so much better". I would suspect age effects rather than actually reality. Or maybe everything just does get worse over time, in which case the same thing is happening in Austin as is happening everywhere else.
- usrn 4y ago
  The US has legitimately gotten worse for the past 50 years. If you talk about why you'll get flagged/banned though. People don't like reality.
  - cs137 4y ago
    That's true, but when people complain about their cities getting worse because of transplants, they're usually talking about something different: the newcomers "killed the vibe." This is based on a 1960s-era presupposition that people move due to lifestyle considerations (as opposed to out of economic need, as has been the case since then) and that the newcomers are coming for the "wrong" reasons (people found out that California doesn't get snow!!) They might be related, though. The ruling class has deliberately destroyed local communities and forced people to become an on-demand proletariat that will move (often at personal expense!) "where the jobs are". If you want to have a career in tech, for example, you pretty much to live in one of 5 or 6 highly expensive cities, because you won't be taken seriously if you live anywhere else. It's not necessarily pathological that Americans move so much; what is pathological is that they have to do so, just to survive.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      >If you want to have a career in tech, for example, you pretty much to live in one of 5 or 6 highly expensive cities, because you won't be taken seriously if you live anywhere else. That is complete BS. Certainly it is among the tech people I know. Furthermore, even those tech offices that are in the orbit of certain cities often aren't in those cities and are located in, not cheap, but pretty reasonably priced areas outside.
dkarl 4y ago
> Parks are now full of beautifully sculpted people playing frisbee where it used to be tie-dye wearing teenie boppeers or big Mexican families grilling. There are plenty of neighborhood parks with people grilling and having birthday parties on the weekend? I think this might be a case of your choices creating your experiences, because if you go to Fiesta Gardens or the smaller neighborhood parks it's a much more family-oriented scene. (Zilker is mostly beautiful young people, but some of us are doing our part to inject an older and less sculpted element.) It's true that Austin skews really young, and the later waves of migration have skewed much higher socio-economically. On the bright side, these new rich arrivals are tending to be much more friendly to policies that will allow less-rich people to live in Austin, such as density and affordable housing. Say what you want about the old chill progressive Austin hippies, but those folks helped create the affordability crisis by being and in most cases remaining to this day staunchly opposed to new multifamily housing. And say what you want about the rich young arrivals, but they're helping turn Austin around in that regard.
SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
Uh oh. I loved and lived in Austin from 2012 to 2015, and have recently been considering moving back. I think I’ve even played disc golf at Zilker Park while wearing tie die, though hardly as a teenie-bopper. Over what period did the changes you reference happen? Am I longing for a City that no longer exists as I remember it? Street View + Zillow show that a large two bedroom house I once rented for $1600/month in the heart of 78704 was demolished a few years ago. In its stead is a nice-looking but characterless house that just sold for $4 million. Fortunately, cost of living is not a significant concern at this point in my life, but I don’t want to move to 100 degree days, 100+ days a year, just to find that the city I left is no longer there.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

biggieshellz 4y ago

I feel you. I drove my old pickup truck to the Domain last year to pick up some Christmas gifts, wearing jeans and a button-down flannel shirt, and I felt completely out of place. So much ostentatious wealth here now.

pm90 4y ago
With all due respect: you drove up to the an area that was mostly built up from nothing in the past 2 decades, is being developed as a “second downtown” and you feel sad to be out of place? Have you been downtown of any major american city?
- biggieshellz 4y ago
  I play jazz, and I go to downtown Austin fairly frequently, and never felt that way there. The Domain is just... weird, and not in an Austin way.
  - qorrect 4y ago
    Did you ever get to play The Elephant Room ? One of my favorite Austin spots.
    - biggieshellz 4y ago
      Only at the Monday night jam sessions. But I have played at Parker, which is also a wonderful spot.
  - dvtrn 4y ago
    It made me feel like I was walking around on the set of The Truman Show every time I went up there.
  - dkarl 4y ago
    The way the Domain was explained to me is that there's a mobile cosmopolitan upper class that likes to float around the planet without ever feeling a sense of uncomfortable unfamiliarity. Austin attracted their attention partly by being "cool" and more importantly by having a Formula 1 track. The Domain was created to make money by helping those people feel at home. The one person I've met who lived in the Domain was a rich tech guy from another continent who "moved" to Austin but never actually spent much time here. He rented an apartment in the Domain that was mostly vacant because he was always in other countries, acquired a girlfriend in Austin, was rarely here, and eventually stopped coming to Austin altogether. He treated Austin basically the same way I treat a restaurant. He came once, got really excited about his experience, came a few times more and then felt less excited, and then never came back because there was always another city somewhere else that he was a little bit more jazzed about. He was so wealthy that this level of interest in a city involved him renting an apartment for a couple of years and considering purchasing a condo. I wouldn't be surprised if he did purchase a condo, and it's been sitting empty for years because he likes having it and the cost of maintaining it pales next to the effort of finding somebody to manage it as a rental property for him. That's what the Domain is, a world built for those people.
mrits 4y ago
Driving an old pickup truck is an ostentatious display of wealth at current petro prices.
- vehemenz 4y ago
  Starting price for EVs is around $50k. Driving one of those seems more ostentatious to me.
  - multiplegeorges 4y ago
    Anyone buying a car should look at TCO. The average new car price of any type is ~$40,000 in the US, so you're better off long-term with an EV based on fuel costs alone. Add in the really low maintenance needed for an EV and you're even further ahead.
    - vehemenz 4y ago
      A good petrol car can be bought used for $15-20k. Comparing the price of a new one to an EV is a false equivalency because you can't buy used EVs for anywhere near that. TCO only favors EVs if you drive enough to offset fuel, oil changes, and maintenance. All bets are off if you replace the battery.
      - vageli 4y ago
        > A good petrol car can be bought used for $15-20k. Comparing the price of a new one to an EV is a false equivalency because you can't buy used EVs for anywhere near that. You can definitely find a used EV for under 20k. https://www.carvana.com/cars/nissan-leaf-under-15k https://www.carvana.com/cars/nissan-leaf-under-15k
        vehemenz 4y ago
        The presence of low-range EVs—many of which need battery or tire replacements—doesn't really change the point. A similarly priced Honda Fit from the same model year is a better value due to its low maintenance costs, fuel economy, and infinite range.

sithadmin 4y ago

Strongly agree with all of your arguments. Watched the city transform radically between ~2007 and ~2014, and not really for the better. Most notably, the city and surrounding suburbs did not prepare for nor manage the tech-driven population boom whatsoever.

dvtrn 4y ago
They did it to themselves. It’s one of the leading reasons I left the region after grad school for the ancestral planes of my parents: Suburban Illinois, heh. https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/boomtown-yesterday-dont-build-it-and-they-wont-come-mentality-pricing-austinites-out/269-492526666 https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/boomtown-yesterday-d...
drchopchop 4y ago
Same, lived there in the early 2000's, and coming back recently it's almost unrecognizable. The music scene is largely gone, tech bros everywhere, the traffic is even worse than it was before, housing is ridiculous. The "Keep Austin Weird" charm, which used to be real, is now a faded memory that's packaged up to sell at the airport gift shop.
enraged_camel 4y ago
A lot of people tried, but got blocked by NIMBYs.

cs137 4y ago

Austin is in danger of following California's path. The reason Silicon Valley sucks is that Wall Street started sending its failures into tech to boss nerds around, and they drove out the real people, the ones who actually cared about technology and steering its role in society to the good. Now, tech is full of FAANG bros who don't mind open-plan offices and daily interviews for their own job, because they're all going to be CEOs in three years (in their minds). The Paradox of Tolerance is how Burning Man got infested by networking billionaires. California's death is the Paradox of Tolerance in action, and Austin is in the same danger.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

> Everything the author likes used to be even nicer before. Such a universal sentiment, everywhere. I've never heard anyone who lived anywhere for more than a few years say "it's become so much better". I would suspect age effects rather than actually reality. Or maybe everything just does get worse over time, in which case the same thing is happening in Austin as is happening everywhere else.

usrn 4y ago
The US has legitimately gotten worse for the past 50 years. If you talk about why you'll get flagged/banned though. People don't like reality.
- cs137 4y ago
  That's true, but when people complain about their cities getting worse because of transplants, they're usually talking about something different: the newcomers "killed the vibe." This is based on a 1960s-era presupposition that people move due to lifestyle considerations (as opposed to out of economic need, as has been the case since then) and that the newcomers are coming for the "wrong" reasons (people found out that California doesn't get snow!!) They might be related, though. The ruling class has deliberately destroyed local communities and forced people to become an on-demand proletariat that will move (often at personal expense!) "where the jobs are". If you want to have a career in tech, for example, you pretty much to live in one of 5 or 6 highly expensive cities, because you won't be taken seriously if you live anywhere else. It's not necessarily pathological that Americans move so much; what is pathological is that they have to do so, just to survive.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    >If you want to have a career in tech, for example, you pretty much to live in one of 5 or 6 highly expensive cities, because you won't be taken seriously if you live anywhere else. That is complete BS. Certainly it is among the tech people I know. Furthermore, even those tech offices that are in the orbit of certain cities often aren't in those cities and are located in, not cheap, but pretty reasonably priced areas outside.

dkarl 4y ago

> Parks are now full of beautifully sculpted people playing frisbee where it used to be tie-dye wearing teenie boppeers or big Mexican families grilling. There are plenty of neighborhood parks with people grilling and having birthday parties on the weekend? I think this might be a case of your choices creating your experiences, because if you go to Fiesta Gardens or the smaller neighborhood parks it's a much more family-oriented scene. (Zilker is mostly beautiful young people, but some of us are doing our part to inject an older and less sculpted element.) It's true that Austin skews really young, and the later waves of migration have skewed much higher socio-economically. On the bright side, these new rich arrivals are tending to be much more friendly to policies that will allow less-rich people to live in Austin, such as density and affordable housing. Say what you want about the old chill progressive Austin hippies, but those folks helped create the affordability crisis by being and in most cases remaining to this day staunchly opposed to new multifamily housing. And say what you want about the rich young arrivals, but they're helping turn Austin around in that regard.

SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago

Uh oh. I loved and lived in Austin from 2012 to 2015, and have recently been considering moving back. I think I’ve even played disc golf at Zilker Park while wearing tie die, though hardly as a teenie-bopper. Over what period did the changes you reference happen? Am I longing for a City that no longer exists as I remember it? Street View + Zillow show that a large two bedroom house I once rented for $1600/month in the heart of 78704 was demolished a few years ago. In its stead is a nice-looking but characterless house that just sold for $4 million. Fortunately, cost of living is not a significant concern at this point in my life, but I don’t want to move to 100 degree days, 100+ days a year, just to find that the city I left is no longer there.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]