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We almost moved to Austin during the pandemic. Luckily my wife's potential job offer fell through so we stayed in the Bay Area. We've heard of friends of friend
by blindriver 3y ago
We almost moved to Austin during the pandemic. Luckily my wife's potential job offer fell through so we stayed in the Bay Area. We've heard of friends of friends who sold their Bay Area house during the pandemic, moved to Austin, but now can't move back because they can't afford to sell their house and take a loss, and then come back and get a 7% mortgage on double the house price.
I think we would have been okay in Austin, but the things I've heard from close friends from Texas are:
1) Austin is not like SF Bay Area at all. People around here seemed convinced by the myths that Austin was like a liberal oasis in a Republican desert but it's not like that at all. It's more liberal than rural Texas but it's still Texas.
2) There's only desert and rolling hills for 3+ hours around. No water, no mountains, etc unless you make a long road trip. It's not like the SF Bay Area where you have water, desert, mountains, etc all very close by.
- piotrkaminski 3y ago> It's not like the SF Bay Area where you have water, desert, mountains, etc all very close by. Wait, desert?!
- floren 3y agoI would say that e.g. Panoche Hills could be considered a desert environment and it's just a bit down I-5.
- gojomo 3y agoSF's not too far from some famous deserts - within 8h drive you can get to Death Valley, Mojave, or the home of Burning Man, Black Rock Desert. (From Austin, Big Bend's part of the Chihuahuan Desert is about 8h away, plus of course many other dry & dusty west Texas locales.)
- kibibu 3y agoI would definitely classify an 8hr drive as "far"
- gojomo 3y agoFar closer than for most of the US population, east of the Mississippi! And, less than a day's drive. People should get out more.
- dredmorbius 3y agoFun fact: Death Valley Junction is due east of Monterey. (Los Angeles is east of Reno.)
- fuzzfactor 3y ago>(Los Angeles is east of Reno.) Very far to the east as it seems . . . ;)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 3y agoLA: 34.086159 N, 118.375984 W Reno: 39.527110 N, 119.821812 W About 1.45 degrees east.
- mvdtnz 3y agoThis must be an American thing but I have never in my whole life even remotely considered the political opinions of my neighbours when choosing somewhere to live. I really, really just do not care even one bit.
- rayiner 3y agoDo you have kids?
- tibbydudeza 3y agoGetting taught creationism at school would be a big turnoff for me and that slavery had its upsides and To Kill A Mocking Bird is verboten. Fortunately where I live there is no political meddling in the school syllabus - standards are set nationally by the Education Dept and schools boards don't get voted in on political lines.
- trilbyglens 3y agoIf you don't like the good ole boys running things don't come to Texas. It's basically an authoritarian state run by a cabal of car dealers and preachers.
- check89 3y ago[dead]
- rayiner 3y agoThe biggest trick elite professionals played in America is creating the impression that their point of view is neutral and that everything else is political. They are trying to optimize for some value function just like everyone else.
- check89 3y ago> there is no political meddling in the school syllabus > standards are set nationally by the Education Dept
- trilbyglens 3y agoHah there are no deserts for more than 10h driving from Austin. It's rolling hills and scrubby prairie, which is far from a desert.
- notacoward 3y agoIt might not technically be a desert, but saying it's "far from" is incorrect too. Semi-arid climate zones are as close to deserts as you can be without actually being a desert. For recreational purposes in particular, people tend to look mostly for open water or mountains, sometimes forests or canyons. Miles and miles of "scrubby prairie" lacking any of those might as well be a desert.
- RichardCA 3y agoOnce you get past Abilene or San Angelo you're getting into the eastern reach of the Chihuahuan Desert, so around 4 hours. Some maps put it west of the Pecos but that's not the official line, to be fair different maps seem to put it in different places.
- bastard47 3y ago[flagged]