Re:Austin really doesn't have a lot going for it. (Score 1)

Having read your post, I have to disagree with several of the things you're saying. Having moved from Houston (8 years) to Austin (1 year), I think I have some pretty solid grounds for disagreeing.

(1) You say Austin costs more than Houston.

Some things are more expensive, yes. But as for housing prices in Austing being more expensive than in Houston, that's a big lie. Admittedly, a house on the edge of town in Austin is a bit more expensive than a house on the edge of town in Houston. But you're forgetting that the edge of town in Austin is about 15 minutes from downtown, whereas the edge of town in Houston is about 45. For a home that's comparably far from town, Austin is actually cheaper than Houston. We just bought a 1700-square-foot home in an upscale area of SouthWest Austin, 15 minutes from work, with very good public sdhools, for easily less than $150k. I challenge you to find a comparable inner-loop home in Houston for anywhere close. My family and I did look in Houston, and I can assure you it's not going to happen. We would have had to wait another couple years before we could have afforded to make a reasonable downpayment on a home in Houston. And we would still probably have had to worry about private school. HISD is reasonably good, as far as big-city school districts go, but I'm much happier with the schools to which my children will be going in Austin.

I will agree, however, that restaurant food is a bit more expensive and not quite as good in Austin. Of course, Houston has one of the most diverse and competetive dining scenes I've ever seen. Since Houston is a major international port city, though, this should come as no surprise.

As far as your comments about HL&P, I disagree. I've always found Houston Lighting and Power to be a very good power company with very reasonable prices. Right now, my Austin-area community's electric company is Pedernales Electric Cooperative, and I find their prices to be comparable with HL&P.

(2) You say you can't get a decent-paying job in Austin.

I actually got both a raise and stock options in my start-up for moving to Austin. If I had wanted to go to a startup in Houston, I would have needed to take a pay-cut. During the last down-turn in the oil industry, I looked for jobs in both Austin and Houston, and found that the Austin companies were a LOT more eager to talk to me. In order to get the Houston companies off their butts, I had to pester them, tell them I was getting offers from Austin companies, etc. Now I'm a software developer, not a sysadmin or a dba, so that may make a difference. Austin is definitely more of a developer's town than an admin's town. If you want to do any interesting development in Houston, you need to work at an oil-company research lab (I did). But the rest is a lot of vb, glorified dba, legacy middleware interfacing. Nice-paying work, if you can stand it.

(3) You say Austin is the home of the rip-off.

You try and find a good mechanic anywhere. It wasn't easy in Houston, and it wasn't easy in Austin. As for the power company, I haven't encountered any of the brown-outs that you complain about. Nor have I had any run-ins with druggies or encountered any of the rude service you complain about. My insurance rates actually went down a fair bit when I moved to Austin. Houston has one of the highest car-insurance rates in the country because of all the unlicensed, uninsured drivers, the red-light-running, etc.

As far as cultural events and such, Houston does have more and bigger festivals. But Houston doesn't have a music scene to compare with Austin's. The Houston Symphony may be better, but what's it going to be like after Eschenbach leaves at the end of this season? Without Eschenbach, they'll probably sink back to being just decent competition from the students at Rice's Sheperd School.

(4) You say Austin is racist.

Austin is not as culturally diverse as Houston -- it's not exactly the international port city that Houston is. But as far as racist, I'd pick Austin any day over Atlanta, St. Louis, you name-em. And if you think Houston isn't racist, go visit Kingwood or Southside Place.

(5) Things you forgot.

You forgot to mention that Houston has NO interesting nature nearby and the summers get pretty hellacious and humid. Austin summers are almost as hot, but a LOT less humid. And the nature is beautiful. The hills and cedar, the bluebonnets, all the parks. It's just no competition. In Houston, you either have to drive an hour or two to the beach, or go an hour out of town to see what? Pristine swamp? Save it. Houston has nothing like the hill country.

Also, you have forgotten to mention the problems with working in the oil industry. I got out of the oil industry because I was tired of dealing with the constant cyclical ups-and-downs -- and management's idiotically short-signed reactions to them. Everyone I know who is over 40 and working in the oil industry is just trying to make it past enough layoff cycles that they can retire. They wish they'd gotten out of oil ten years ago while they still had a reasonable shot at starting something new and going somewhere with it. And I'm not knocking the people I worked with -- they were great people. But they were trapped in a lousy industry. I'd much rather be working in an industry like e-commerce where growth is the focus in stead of cost-cutting, and where people are looked at by upper management as valuable contributors rather than expenses. And if you live in Houston and want to do cool development stuff like e-commerce, games, or compiler technologies, you've pretty much got to go to Austin.

In summary, are you sure you're not a troll? The picture you paint looks a little bit like Austin and a little like Houston, but not enough that I'd recognize either of the cities you describe as either Austin or Houston if you hadn't told me up front.