Well, I’m glad you’re going to Austin, because I can’t think of another place in Texas that would more thoroughly prove the stereotype wrong.
There’s truth in that. Rural Appalachian here. The real problems stem from people who want to have their city culture, but with a pretty view in a cheap house. You have cultures here that have developed to survive with low resources and geographic isolation. Immigrants from urban enclaves show up and want to impose structures that work when you’re a community where everyone is making 6 figures and has essentially unlimited resources and it causes severe strains on existing residents. It’s a complete failure to understand the culture of the place in which they wish to reside and it ends up breaking down structures that are essential to communities and obviously causes a great deal of problems.
That said, I love Appalachia (the West Virginia part anyway.) I often joke that my umbilical cord only stretches to the state border. My wife is from Maryland and doesn’t get it, but I think she has learned to love it (although she would prefer nicer weather, but what can one do?) I like cornbread dinners and people sharing their garden veggies and neighbors mowing your lawn and kids and dogs running free and the smell of woodstoves and ramps and people stopping when driving in opposite directions just to chat and the cars behind them getting out and talking too. I like walking on the road and ten cars stop and offer you a ride and then offer to cook you dinner when you take them up on it. I like church socials and gospel sings. I like walking 10 miles into the woods and falling asleep with my head on a log. I like fishing and hiking and rafting and skiing and biking and swimming in a clear river or floating down it on an old inner tube. I like lightning bugs and sun brewed tea and ramps and venison and trout and squirrel gravy and morels. I love story-telling on a front porch and old men whittling and old women quilting and both gossiping about Jess Carr’s new son-in-law. I like families that have lived on the same plot of land for 150 years on a road named after them and everyone knows their grandma and grandpa and all of their cousins and when they all get together, you know there’s gonna be a good time and they’ll probably invite you too because your daddy and their uncle knew each other since both were knee high to a grasshopper, so you’re practically kin anyway and your daddy was a good man who never had a bad word to say about anybody and your mama might have had a few bad words, but she meant them well and her blackberry cobbler is too delicious not to invite her. Anyway, it’s a nice place. Things are harder than they used to be and drugs have ravished a lot of our structures, but we’ve survived worse and we figure we’ll survive this too.
Thankfully, the birthday celebrations are just ordering lunch for the group. And, I was preparing to compromise and not pick my favorite Thai place because I know one of the team members is a picky toddler and doesn’t like anything ‘exotic’
We do get two personal days that we can use for a birthday day off if we want. Since mine always falls close to MLK day, I just use that as a birthday day off. Don’t really want days off in Chicago in January!
I lived in Dallas for a couple of years. Life was fine inside my Oak Lawn bubble. But I got real sick of the conservative politics and the endless referendums to ban same sex marriage for the 5th time. Just this morning, I was reading about an extreme abortion law. Look, Illinois and Chicago politics can be maddening, but at least we don’t have this constant right wing Christian garbage.
I’m just not a person that can be apathetic about politics wherever I live.
And, quite frankly, I don’t want to drive. The area that my company is relocating jobs is completely inaccessible by public transit.
The essence of a cultural difference though is where one culture thinks it’s normal and reasonable and as long as the other people don’t X (unreasonable) thing, everyone will get on fine. But the others side doesn’t see it that way. IOW you’re trying to counter a subjective judgment seen from one side of a culture gap with ‘no, here’s how it really is’. But there is no ‘really is’ in such case… just different views across a culture gap. 
From the NY POV NY is actually a more civil than average place (and one survey some years ago put at ‘most civil world city’ though comparing to other world cities which the survey didn’t think applied to any other US city). It’s mainly that people are a) busy, b) put a high value on other people minding their own business. I find the value put on b) in particular is much lower in the South. But the greater problem is the kind of assumption made in an explanation like yours. I don’t want to be proving how I’m not an obnoxious NY’er (I’m the epitome of pussy cat in real life, though still a very NY kind of guy, real not mythical NY kind of guy); prove how I’m not trying to change my new Southern home into NY, etc. I just don’t want to deal with any of that. Of course the view there is different. Of course most people there think they are welcoming and only demanding an absolute minimum of new comers. That’s typical of a different view across a culture gap. Nobody is right or wrong, I’m just not going.
I’ve spent some time in Nashville where another sibling lived for many years, and liked. And I also liked it, as a place visit (outside the hottest weather). But I would never live there. It’s not a put down of anybody. I wouldn’t retire to most nice to visit foreign countries either.
California is my birth state and the place I grew up. It’s where I moved back to after living over four years in Virginia. It is, in my opinion, the best state environmentally, socially, politically, and culturally, but it is very expensive. And I live in Sacramento, which can get below freezing in the winter and over 100 in the summer. Still, I can only think of three other states I would consider - Oregon, Washington, Hawaii.
Except for blue Sacramento County, practically the entire state east of the coastal counties is a right wing red desert. There are pockets, like Chico, which have blue streaks, but the rest is pretty red.
I just dont get why politics makes so much difference? What good is living in an area where you agree with your neighborhoods politics if its so expensive your income wont afford you the ability to afford a home or go anywhere or raise a family?
If you want to make sure your child gets a solid, science based education, and has friends from a very diverse set of backgrounds, and is welcomed by their community regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc., then politics can make a very significant difference.
Do you have kids?
States teach to national standards. HEREare the ones for Kansas. What is the problem?
Also schools around here are pretty diverse. Most schools, including my sons HS has a gay-straight alliance and a muslim club.
Kansas is not some radical right wing area you think it is.
Nah, politics are about social posturing. They are simply signalers that are the newest form of segregation. Just a new way to classify ourselves and form in-groups and out-groups. In many ways, it’s simply the newest form of secular religion where we imbue political disagreement with universal themes of good and evil. “Obviously, I could never live in a red/blue state because those people are evil and backward.” “I would disown a child that married a Democrat/Republican, those people can’t be trusted and will raise my grandchildren to be immoral.” Such things are ridiculous once we get past our prejudices to think such things, but at the same time they are natural and part of human nature. Grouping into tribes is what humans do, so while it would be nice if we weren’t inherently flawed, unfortunately an inherent part of the human condition is that we are.
https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/yael-t-abouhalkah/article328331.html
By my reading, there have been efforts to fight the teaching of good science in Kansas many, many times (this is just one example). These anti science efforts are certainly much more likely to succeed in Kansas than in New York, or Arlington VA (my town), or many other progressive cities.
Further, by my reading and interactions with folks from small towns, gay kids, or Muslim kids, or many other groups, are more likely to face bigotry in their communities in places like Kansas than progressive cities.
Do you want to live in a state whose laws violate your personal views?
Every state’s laws violate my personal views. Do I want to live in utopia? Sure. Utopia sounds great. Until then, I live with what we have. If you believe that your state code completely encapsulates your personal views, then I have a rude awakening for you.
What you’re really saying is that you are picking and choosing two or three viewpoints that you can use as social identifiers and then basing your opinion about an entire region on these two or three signifiers of social identity.
And what’s wrong with that?
Not very, at least in the large cities. But even there, people will acknowledge others with a “Good Morning” or the like, and not just ignore you completely like CA. Certain upwardly mobile suburbs play into the, “And where do you worship?”, more than others. I’ve never found the appeal of a megachurches, even if, like Bill Burr, I admire the hustle that goes into a successful arena act.
I can’t speak for dale’s experience, but I didn’t experience the intolerance he did. I will say that even CA managed to get an anti SSM referendum on the ballot, where it passed, so it’s not like TX is alone in that achievement. And my future in laws from Massachusetts couldn’t stop bitching about the Christian right or the Tealiban the entire time they visited family with us in Dallas, though they were light on specific complaints, and they were the ones who felt it necessary to discuss politics at every turn. Shrug?
Despite mass transit trains making larger intrusions into major cities, TX is still, IMHO, someplace you need a car to get around.
Really needs it’s own paragraph. The weather is shit for more than half the year. Hot and humid 7-8 months out of the year. Enough to make it a serious pain in the ass to do anything outside. Mold can be a problem. Gazillion bugs, many of which carry exotic diseases. Next to no snow, though Dallas will get a bit. Just oppressively hot and humid and nasty for a good chunk of the year. It floods a bit: heavy development and high rain rates, plus flat ground, equal flooding. We’ll never see another Harvey, but the bayou will probably flood again. Soon.
The crime can be quite dangerous, though prudence will keep you safe from the vast majority of it. Judgmental maps help with the rest. Mostly, people don’t care about who you are or what you do, provided you aren’t frightening the animals in the street.
I will say that, though I spent little time there, I do think the stereotypes of Texans evinced by this board are alive and well in the Red River Valley / Panhandle region. Everyone seemed really pissed off all of the time, wherever we stopped. I still don’t understand why. Serious hardon against pornography, judging by the billboards everywhere. I liked having a local cop sit literally two feet off my bumper while driving down the main drag (which was the highway), in Childress Texas. In the right lane, natch. I did 3-5 under the speed limit, not being a complete idiot. Upon hitting the city limits, he did an immediate 180 across all lanes and went back to town. Also, the giant model/mannequin of a stereotypical African-American from 1910 advertising, sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of an antiques store, outside Amarillo, was a nice touch. Double shrug?
Fuck that place: I’d drive up to OKC on 35 and cut over to 40, to visit ABQ, before I drove the Red River Valley again.
As a native born Californian who has lived most of his life here, I have never encountered any such straw man Californian.
And I lived there for 25 years, including college and high school there, and did. Frequently. Compared to Texans, be they in Austin, Houston, Dallas, the Thicket, or the Hill Country, Californians are cold and indifferent. Pushing rude, though I’d save that for Bostonians and transplanted NY’ers. This was true whether said Californian was from the Central Coast, the Bay Area, the Valley, the Sierras, or the redwoods in Arcata. I didn’t get to San Diego.
I think it’s because so many Californians act in public like they’re still in their cars. As you don’t usually greet people in CA behind the wheel unless you know them (cf, the two finger wave from the top of the steering wheel I’ve seen and reciprocated while driving in rural Texas), so it is when you get them out of their cars. Smartphones make it worse.
“Straw man” LOL.
I pay $1780 a month for a studio apartment and I’m aware that’s more than many people pay for a mortgage on a house. I’m glad I have the income to afford it.
I pay 650 a month for a 2400 square foot American Foursquare on a quarter acre and that’s on a 15 year mortgage. It’s an older house, but it’s roomy and suits me. I did have a significant down payment though because I had bought a cheap starter home in 2004 and paid it off before selling it to move up to this one in a better school district.
Nothing at all wrong with it, other than it seems to be at odds with your previous contention. You challenged me about living in a state whose laws don’t meet my personal views. You admit though that your states laws don’t meet your personal views and really, you’re just looking for social signifiers. That blunts the force of your original proposition.