Random Early Lunch Post

[urbpan]

1. I'm pleased to see that after the Atheist Apocalypse there are still pigeons. It wouldn't have killed the cartoonist to change it to an American robin, but hey, I haven't given up the room in my heart for pigeons.

2. On account of the exciting mortgage crisis (Low income people out on the street! Bailouts for Wall Street Usury firms!) our options for where to move have temporarily expanded. Here's a question I asked on thequestionclub with predictably binary results (considering the binary nature of the question): You have two choices about where to buy a house. You have a 300k budget. Do you a) Buy a tiny house with no yard in Oakland California or b) buy a nice house with a gigantic yard 30 miles outside of Austin Texas?

Comments

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Just to warn you, houses outside of Austin tend to fluctuate in value whenever the Texas economy goes sour all out of proportion to the rest of the state. If you need room and you need culture, go to Fort Worth, if only because the property is even cheaper. (Having lived all over Texas, I'll be the first to state that Austin is one of the most overrated cities I've ever visited, and I'd sooner live in Houston these days than have to drive through Austin. I'd even move back to Portland before I'd move to Austin, and lower than that I cannot get. Austin combines the worst of Portland's entitlement brats and dopy vegetarians with Phoenix's weather.)

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

You do like to swim upstream, doncha?

I like places where I don't feel like I'm going to get beat up for being dressed funny. I don't intentionally dress funny anymore, but it's the principle of the thing.

But I like your perspective as someone who has lived all around. You remain the only person I've heard say that they don't like Portland.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Strangely enough, that worry about being beaten up is one of the reasons why I recommend Fort Worth. Fort Worth's artist community is one of the area's best-kept secrets, the downtown Sundance Square area is one of the most vibrant downtown areas I've ever seen this side of Seattle, and there's a lot going on out there. Admittedly, a lot of this is financed by the current natural gas boom in the area, but Fort Worth has a lot of people whose attitude is "we've got another oil boom, so let's not piss it all away this time."

As far as general attitudes, while Dallas resembles a midnight screening of Dawn of the Dead, Fort Worth is incredibly mellow about the odd: Robert E. Howard looked at it as the gateway to civilization when he lived in Cross Plains in the Thirties, and it's only gotten more interesting. A lot of this is because that a lot of the movers and shakers in the city started from very humble roots: an old co-worker of mine used to work for Neiman Marcus, and she related that NM would send its snottiest and most pretentious sales reps to Fort Worth for a few weekends to learn humility. When literal billionaires come out to the store wearing boots with holes in the bottom and well-worn blue jeans, you learn not to trust surface impressions.

As for Portland, I think you'll find a lot of people who can't stand the place: they just aren't vocal about it. Most just got tired of the pretentiousness and arrogance and moved somewhere else so they didn't have to listen to their neighbors attempting to boycott bike path expansion projects solely because the road crew wasn't being offered vegan lunches. (True story.) If the city's arts community boosters lost their trust funds, Portland's rep for the arts would fall apart faster than Bush Administration testimony, and I know quite a few serious bicycling-as-commuting advocates who want to go to Portland and slap the shit out of just about every biking advocate in the city. However, I'd best stop while I'm ahead: any time I bring up the incredible rudeness of Portlanders, where they freak out if someone holds open a door for them, I'll get at least one local doing a perfect Creed impersonation by whining "I've lived here ALL MY LIFE, and I've NEVER heard about all of the problems you're describing!"