So I'm 80% sure I'm moving..
 

to Austin, TX this coming May. I'm moving there with one other buddy I went to college with in Nebraska. Anyone live there or been there? Any other suggestions other than Austin? Only 80% sure, but I did do a lot of research the last couple days. Both myself and the other person are open to move literally anywhere as long as it's a bigger city. The other cities I was highly considering were Portland, Seattle and San Diego. With the field I'm going to be likely working in (Actuarial), I'd probably be better off on the East Coast which is where I originally wanted to move but a lot of what I've heard about it since make me not want to go there. I'm not too concerned with finding a job right away and sure something will work out regardless of where I move, although I do want to decide on somewhere 100% for sure by the end of January to give me more time to get everything ready.

We are planning on visiting Austin sometime later this month to visit the city and look at different neighborhoods. I grew up in SoCal/AZ and went to Nebraska for college and have been here for 5 years and just want to go back to a bigger city ASAP. My friends situation is he's lived in Nebraska his entire life and wants to go somewhere new.

So any pro's/con's to Austin? Any other suggestions? We're both literally open to moving just about anywhere, although somewhere without shit weather would be nice. That is mainly winter, I don't mind the hot summers though, I lived in AZ most my life growing up and the summers really weren't all that bad.

I will help on the con list:

Cons: 12 hr drive to Arrowhead

http://www.shaggybevo.com/board/index.php

A lot of them live there. Have fun.

Great city, wonderful music scene, progressive culture, horrendous traffic.

Never been there, but I've heard Austin is a pretty cool town, very non-Texas-like (full of hippies and leftists and other such people). They'll probably be accepting of you and your male roommate. ;)

Im 20% sure your not

I love it. Been living 25 minutes from downtown since 2006.

It is supposed to be the #1 city for bachelors in the US.. just fyi

I'm missing seeing all my friends and buddies in KC but I'm making more money that I ever dreamed just a few years ago. My family went swimming on Christmas day. We are looking at houses with a pool, jacuzzi, a private dock with a boat next to ocean.

Life ain't no dress rehearsal. You only get one chance. Don't settle. Your dreams will never be fulfilled by taking the safe route.

Austin is the only place in Texas I would even consider moving to. It's still Texas, but it has a very different feel than Dallas or Houston. I think they go overboard with the "Keep Austin Weird" thing, but meh. Traffic is no worse than any other decent-sized metro. And, the downtown is great (and I hate urban areas). I presume that housing is still relatively cheap.

QFT

I have a lot of friends that just graduated living in Austin right now.

Austin is full of college students and Dell employees. If that's your thing you'll enjoy it.

I think this is customary.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_PmxExJ1vXt...00/wellbye.jpg

I lived there about 20 years ago and liked it.

Pros:

No winter
Barbecue chicken enchiladas
College towns are always good to live in

Cons:

No seasons
No good barbecue back then other than barbecue chicken enchiladas
Biggest roaches I've ever seen in my life - they scared my cat

This place is actually pretty good.

http://www.countyline.com/comeseeus....0the%20Hill%29

Do you know which neighborhoods this type of people live in?

I am trying to move there as well, I am having a bitch of a time finding employment from here in KC.

My hang up is that I don't have enough in savings to float me until I find a job that will cover the bills.

I am trying my hardest.... God I love that city.

They were probably the best out there, but I'm embarrassed about that since they're a chain restaurant.

There was some place that was supposedly legendary that was way outside town, as in an hour or more. I made a field trip out there with some friends once and our scores were:

Judge 1: Meh.
Judge 2: (Shrug) Okay, I guess.
Judge 3: Meh.
Judge 4: Fantastic.
Judge 5: I wasted half a day on this?
Judge 6: Pretty decent.

We threw out the Romanian and Japanese judges' scores since they were the high and low.

I've got friends that live north of downtown and south of downtown. Optimally, you want to live on the west side of I-35 (it gets progressively sketchier on the east side). It is generally accepted that south/west Austin is the best part of town. There are a lot of apartments in the area that are relatively cheap, too.

I can send a text to my friends in Austin and see what they think...

Are you talking about The Salt Lick in Driftwood, TX?

I know people disagree, but it's the best BBQ I've ever had. Oh and Austin is a nice city, but the traffic is a bitch....like every other big city.

I sent away for an Austin relocation guide in the mail, its pretty helpful. The trade off is they spam the shit out of your email, which stops coming once I send it to the spam box.

www.austinrelocationguide.com

Re: All traffic comments.

Yeah I grew up in Phoenix and traffic really sucked out there, definitely compared to Lincoln, NE where I've been since, but probably not as bad as some other places. I never really got too fed up with it, though.

Had them in Tampa FL when I lived there. It was one of the worst parts of living there. They aren't your typical big-city/northern cockroach ("German"), but are called "palmetto bugs" (which means "giant ****ing roach that flies").

Are you Romanian? Maybe it's a Romanian thing.

Been here for over 6 months and never saw one of those. Starting to think they are an urban myth.

The ones in Austin didn't fly, but they were these enormous armored bugs that were segmented so that they moved like semi trucks with double trailers. I think they called them wood roaches or something. They came inside only on accident so they weren't that bad, but man oh man you hated to walk into a room and see one of them standing there looking at you face to face.

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I think there's a guy who posts here occasionally from that general area.

What's his username again?
Posted via Mobile Device

I bet you're thinking of generalvicinityofaustinchief.

Şurub tu :)

Highly recommend it. I lived just off of Town Lake, on the south side of the water. We were about a half block from the Hike and Bike trail and the water. I highly recommend the area. South Lamar and Barton Springs was the area.

Gorgeous weather. Great food. Fun, nice people. Definitely a laid back town.

Know anyone hiring? :)

Heh really? The salt lick isn't bad and it's pretty good compared to a lot of TX BBQ places but the best? Have you been to KC for good BBQ? My knock on Texas is BBQ is that while you have a bunch of good cooks, they have shit materials to work with. Both the wood and the beef, the killer about TX beef is that it's bread too much for the size of the damn horns and not enough for the quality of the beef.

I'm not even 80% sure when I have an erection. At least you know what you're doing.

I'd be interested in hearing more about the barbecue chicken enchiladas. Does "barbecue" mean smoked chicken or grilled chicken? Was there a barbecue sauce involved? What type of cheese?

I'm intrigued.

To be fair I'm not a huge BBQ fan and no I haven't been to KC, but compared to Memphis and Carolina style it's hands down better to me. I really liked the habanero sauce too, which I'm not sure is even still available.

Intense city. Best of times and worst of times I've ever had was when I was living in Austin. Mostly though, all my memories from there are good ones.

Honestly, I'm not sure. I suspect that it was baked or grilled, and then had a bunch of barbecue sauce on it. This far our I can't remember if it was chunks of chicken or shredded chicken, but I think it was chunks. And beyond the chicken it was your run of the mill enchilada with cheese and a tortilla and stuff. It was really quite good.

I've been to KC probably 70-80 times and I've never once had any sort of KC BBQ anything.

Austin is great.

* 1 million

Just out of curiosity, what is it you've heard about the East Coast that makes you think it's so bad? Just the regular rude people kind of stuff, or something else?

No. I used to want to move to NYC more than anywhere else. And really, really wanted to move to the East Coast. I was open to moving pretty much anywhere though. My girlfriend at the time didn't want to move there, and she only wanted to move to one of two places. Neither place bothered me at all so I just said okay. The plan was to move after grad school. Those plans changed like a week ago and now I'm moving somewhere with a friend of mine from college but when I brought up NYC to him he said it was way too expensive and that's fine with me so never talked about NYC again. I would much rather move somewhere else (that I'll like anyways) with a friend than move to NYC by myself.

This past week is the first time I've ever really looked up information on all these various parts of the country. I've looked at Portland, Seattle, SF, SD, Texas, and a couple east coast cities in Boston and DC. It was mainly the fact that when I looked up random lists of 'best cities to live in' the east coast ones didn't nearly as much as I thought they would. I literally probably looked at a hundred lists though, it wasn't like 4 or 5. The last 3 cities we were looking at were Austin, Portland and SD. I'm gonna look a little into Charleston, SC because a good friend of mine suggested it to me today but after talking to him I don't think it's going to beat out Austin.

So I guess I was just jumping to assumptions. If I talk to anyone who lives there I feel they'll be biased towards it, and it's not like I can go visit 10 different cities to check them out. I just saw all these other cities showing up towards the top of lists more often and figured that meant people enjoyed living there more. I'm sure if I did move to NYC, Boston or DC I'd have a blast and love it and same goes for anywhere else I've mentioned. I just want to be back to a big city.

I have visited Boston NYC and DC all before, and have been to all of them in the past 6 months actually. I didn't have a bad time at all, and I love NYC. I just thing after I looked at everything I did Austin seemed like the best choice for me personally, and it wasn't too hard to see it.

So you are going there without a job? How will you pay for food, rent, gas, etc?

I've never lived in Portland, Seattle or Austin. I did live in DC though and thought it was a great place to be. Fairfax County VA is pretty Johnson County KS -like, if you like the suburbs. I lived in NW DC near the National Cathedral. It was a bit pricey, but city life generally is. And despite a lot of the negative stuff you hear about DC, that part of town is very safe and nice. There was lots of stuff to do, good economy, good climate, lots of young professionals. You could go to city bars, or go to hiking parks, or go to the ocean. You could also get to Philly, Baltimore or NYC pretty easily.

Portland's fun. Do not move there unless you already have a job lined up, though.

I have money in savings and I also have income. But I don't spend much time working, so I'm going to get a job there and will probably start trying to find one towards the end of the summer after I've been there a few months.

http://www.michaelshouse.com/blog/wp...ler_tee_lg.gif:D