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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I've lived in San Antonio for 17 years, having grown up in Houston and later living in DC, Tampa and Corpus Christi before settling here. Anyone who thinks the city is booming only for low-wage workers is just ignorant. The reality is that several high-wage sectors are doing extremely well -- life sciences and biotech, financial services, manufacturing, aviation and others, to name a few. AT&T is now headquartered here, Toyota and Washington Mutual have recently set down roots, our military medicine center is growing explosively, and major players like USAA, Valero and HEB call this city home. Our highways are brimming with license plates from California, Michigan, New York and elsewhere as good, plentiful jobs and affordable housing beckon. We welcome our new neighbors. And the bitching from the guy in Austin is just laughable. Let me make this clear: No one, absolutely no one with roots in San Antonio wants to be Austin with its too-sexy-for-Texas attitude and absurdly bad traffic planning. Real people live in San Antonio. West Coast wannabes prefer Austin.
Do us Austinites a favor and stay there.
My roots in SA are deep, and I couldn't get out of that shitty, conservative little conformist city fast enough, and everytime I visit I have an immediate and overwhelming desire to leave.
I find it interesting that an article on immigration, a serious topic that effects millions, in particular a vast population of underprivileged human beings striving for a better life, quickly veers into a frivolous discussion of the relative merits and disadvantages of San Antonio according to the apparently entitled desires of a particular class of educated elite. San Antonio is populated by Mexican Catholics, you say? Horrors! There are people there who actually voted for Dubya? Hide your children and lock your doors! People there work hard and earn low wages but enjoy a low cost of living? The fools!
Oye, people...I invite all the naysayers and critics, from Austin and beyond, to come down to my 'hood in SA's inner city and spend some time hanging out on our porches, in our streets, at our icehouses, in our taquerias and fruterias, at our backyard barbeques, at our art openings, at our conjunto parties, with your eyes, ears, hearts and minds wide open. You'll witness right wingers and left wingers, artists and lawyers, professors and clergy, hipsters and abuelitas, Mexican welders and musicians, politicos and drunks, all rubbing elbows and having one helluva time doing it. You'll be safe. You'll be well fed. You'll be among friendly, warm, vibrant, and eccentric people of different backgrounds and beliefs who somehow manage to live together and who care passionately about their home. Steve Murdock's numbers may be somewhat dry, but they don't lie. San Antonio is the future. What it, and the immigration issue can teach us if we're willing to learn is that if we're going to make it down the road we're on, we-the economic and the intellectual elite alike-are going to have to learn to live with the unwashed and unskilled and unenlightened and uncool...without considering it to be an affront to our lofty ambitions.
I'm sure many of us here in SA share the inarticulate Swanson's desire for him to get the hell out of here as fast as possible! See...we DO agree on something!
The more recent letter was right on target. One of many things that makes San Antonio great is the willingness by all sides to embrace our many differences -- ethnicity, politics, religion. Sure, every place claims the same appreciation for diversity, but in SA it really is a way of life. I've never lived in a city where white, brown, black and every other color mix together so easily. Hey, I'm white and in the minority here but that's not an issue in San Antonio. In fact we revel in a good, loud argument about Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, Mexicans and Gringos, Tejano, rock and country, Cowboys and Texans. And we pity our unfortunate friends and relatives who are relegated to living in megalopolises like DFW and Houston. And Austin? Whatever.
We know we've got it good here and we're starting to realize that our city is the future of America. Anyone who doesn't get it, well, just doesn't get it. Viva San Antonio!
We're obviously not talking about the same SA. The SA I know (and lived in for quite a few years) is staunchly conservative, creatively stifling, uber-conformist, boring , bland and stale. The restaurant's are good, I'll give you that.
Austin seems 'too cool for texas' (or whatever somebody here posted) because Austin IS, in many ways, too cool for texas. For anyone who thinks, or differs from the norm too much in appearance, lifestyle or ideas, most of Texas is a wasteland.
Despite my disdain for most all things San Antonio, and in the interest of putting to bed this silly 'SA/Austin rivalry', I will extend the olive branch of peace to my brethren in good 'ol SA and say to you....shall we meet halfway?
San Marcos?
I spent my HS years in San Antonio and I couldn’t wait to get out. While the downtown area is interesting most of what’s outside that small circle is the same old strip-mall-urban-sprawl in every direction. The same check cashing place, cell phone shop, gas station, fast food outlets and pawn shops exist over and over in every direction. It’s depressing and it’s poor and it’s very conservative. The available jobs are, for the most part, not good. I worked as a telephone sales person in HS (lots of telephone bank jobs in that town) and it was demeaning, difficult and the most sought after job in town at the time. It sure beat the old fast food job I had before that.
I couldn’t wait to get to Austin and just about all my friends were right next to me in the exit. San Antonio has some charm, and there are aspects about the culture I enjoy, but taken all together it’s no model city and it’s not a place I would want to live in again.
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