zlacker

>>kenton+(OP)
This is super freaking cool. I'm curious how you feel about Austin vs Bay Area in terms of general quality of life, culture, things like that?

>>srbloo+av
It feels pretty similar, but more chill. Distances are shorter. The sky doesn't fill with smoke for a week every year. The weather is much more interesting -- honestly I got really bored with Bay Area weather after 15 years. I even like the heat in the summer, in short intervals. There are enough tech people here to be interesting, but not enough that a random person you meet on the street is likely to be in tech.

One thing I appreciate is that there is tons of building happening. Housing prices went up during the pandemic, but there is new housing being built everywhere you look, and as a result the prices are now going down quite a bit! (Which I'm fine with, even as a homeowner, because I wasn't planning to sell anytime soon anyway and I like to see problems getting solved.) The downtown skyline keeps changing -- the tallest tower when I arrived is now hardly notable!

All that said I'm not sure I personally am very affected by where I live. When I moved from Minneapolis to the Bay Area, people asked me if it was a culture shock, but all I really noticed was less snow and more left turn lanes...

>>kenton+7y
Having lived in the Midwest, Texas and Bay Area I can soundly say there is no comparison which can be made about the natural splendor. Bay Area, even with smoke in the air for a week, is orders of magnitude more comfortable and interesting. In Texas people cloister into giant houses and say goodbye to enjoying nature, it’s really sad that people prefer such a reality. It lets them forget just how grand a world there is worth saving and fighting for instead of letting it all become privatized and exploited unsustainably.

>>iwontb+TC
I do a lot of biking, and TBH I've had an easier time finding enjoyable bike routes near my house in Austin than I did in Palo Alto. During the summer I go biking at dawn and it's great, and during the winter there are usually 70-degree days regularly enough.

Of course, on that measure, Minneapolis blows both of them out of the water -- at least during the half of the year when biking is enjoyable.

>>kenton+IF
I’ve never biked in Texas, but the routes even a short distance west from Palo Alto are excellent. You need to be willing to go uphill, though :). LAN party house v1 would have been maybe 15 minutes from where Page Mill starts to get spectacular, not to mention spectacularly steep.

In the modern e-bike era, the hills are more accessible, too.