10 Reasons San Antonio is better than Austin.

In no particular order:

It's NOT Austin.
If Austin is 1/10th as cool as people who live in (or just moved to) Austin think it is, it would be Istanbul... or Vancouver. or some other actually cool city.

Tacos.
We have more taco shops than we do churches. 'Nuff said.

Danger.
Regardless of it's Disney like qualities, The Riverwalk harbors the real possibility that a drunken tourist will actually fall IN the river. What's going to happen on 6th street? You might step in a puddle of bum-vomit? You can do that in any real city, like San Francisco, or New York.

 Culture.
In San Antonio if your a white, middle class hipster with a tech job your a minority - hell, if your a non Hispanic of any kind in San Antonio, your a minority. We have a long and deep Hispanic culture in this city & we like it. Hell, this City is built around an old Fort where 1200 Mexicans killed a handful of Texans, that's what were known for! Orale! Remember the Alamo gringo!


Music.
Being the "live music capitol of the world" is nothing to brag about when the live music you hear walking down 6th street is the same half-assed cover of "Texas Flood" blaring at ear-splitting decibels out of every open doorway. I'll take a jukebox or a mariachi band over that shit any day.

Affordability.
You can still rent an apartment in a cool neighborhood for under a grand a month, and even buy a house if you have a normal job. Austin's real estate market is more like Southern California than South Texas. (is Austin South Texas? or is it Central Texas? Who cares, you get the point.)

We don't try and convince people we're weird.

"Keep Austin Weird" is the dumbest slogan for a city since my hometown of Riverside, CA adopted "Riverside- it's the happy side" back when I was a kid in the 70's. How weird could Austin be? It's the seat of state government and has a big ol' lake in the middle of it named after Lady Bird Johnson! Over-hyped BBQ joints, a proliferation of gauged ears and hip beards, bad music blaring in the streets... if this is the criteria for being weird, than Williamsburg, Brooklyn is the weirdest place on earth!

We're close enough to Austin to come home.
Social Distortion doesn't play the Korova any more... But if they are at ACL Live or Stubb's, we can go to the show, and then come HOME. We're not above coming to Austin, we're just really glad we don't live there.

Traffic.
San Antonio has an actual freeway system that allows you to circumnavigate the entire city and get from one side of town to the other somewhat reasonably. Austin traffic seemingly aspires to be the 405 in L.A. or the 5 in Seattle... Keep trying little sister, soon enough, soon enough. Maybe "weird" is hipster code for gridlocked?

People are NICE here.
There is none of the jaded "I'm so cool" vibe that seems to pervade Austin. We know we're not cool & we are just fine with it. I bought a bottle of Wild Turkey at the Twin Liquors on Red River and 7th this summer, and when I went to the counter to pay for it, the clerk, instead of ringing me up and sending me on my way, started trying to up-sell me "oh hey man have you heard of Tennessee Hippy brand bourbon? it's aged in hemp infused oak barrels for 32 years and prayed over by an Amazonian shaman..." or some other such nonsense. In my neighborhood, I walk up to the counter, plunk down my bottle of Turkey, the lady charges me $26 and tells me to "have a blessed day" on the way out the door. Of course I'm going to have to have a blessed day! Or at least an interesting evening.