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I need help from you TX folk.  I'm considering a move to the Corpus Christi/Padre area of Texas and want to know what the downside of those areas are.  Seems like you can live on the gulf pretty cheap and the weather is great for water sports when not in hurricane season. 

Give me 5 reasons why moving there is a terrible idea given that:
- I know it's the south, it's Texas, and all that.
- I don't have children to put in school.
- I'd have money/work

Thanks.

It is a terrible idea because:

Hurricanes
100 + degrees before the sun comes up for most of the year. 
Hail that can crush your soul.
The other people that live in Texas.

1 - You'd be in the shitty Texas tourist trap akin to Pensacola FL. It turns into idiot central at Spring Break in SPI.
2 - You're soooooooooooooooooooooooo close to Mexico, and not in a good way. The cops there are really aggressive because crime is a problem.
3 - Traffic is a disaster in summer. And the heat is up there. 85+ in the damn dark.
4 - Did I mention tourists? You will hate them. Drunken morons.
5 - It's windy as fuck. Hurricanes and shit.
6 - You like humid? You better like it.
7 - The city governments will sell their souls for more tourist money, so don't expect them to do much for you.

You're moving to the panhandle of Florida, but with the LOVE TEXAS OR GO TO HELL flair. Enjoy.

You missed Tornadoes.

So 3 of the 4 biggest disasters that can hit the US can happen in the area. Your insurance rates will be amazing.  Good thing there's no taxes on top of it, just lots and lots and lots and lots of fees.

I know nothing but googling the place it looks like that University (which may be where you are headed?) is about to be swallowed up by the ocean at any given moment.

I love you guys.  Thanks for the help (and brutal honesty).

The only place in Texas worth moving to is Austin.

- Houston is shitty.
- Corpus is shittier Houston.
- Weather sucks.
- Everyone is a tub of shit.
- Spring Break will make you want to die.
- Traffic
- It's not a dry heat.
- STOP LIVING IN SHITTY PLACES, YOU'RE EDUCATED AND NOT STUPID.

Move to Austin or find another state.

We lived there for a bit while I was growing up, and while my parents hated it for all sorts of reasons, the one that stuck in my mind as a young kid was all the roaches.  Everywhere.  I've lived in places that were nowhere near as nice as the house we were in, that didn't have anywhere near the roach problem that we had in Corpus.  

Let me just say that I wouldn't be doing it for me.  My girlfriend loves it there and has a very good job offer in Corpus in the dental field. 

I didn't want to go for the reasons above, but thought that there may be a positive side to the area.  I guess my instincts were correct...

she

loves it there?

wut

You can live in the nice parts of Dallas and love it. It's a fine town except for the May-August holy shit heat. Other than that and Austin, stay out of Texas.

Denton and San Marcos are nice as well, but yeah, that's sound advice.

Corpus Christi isn't even a shit hole.  To call it such would sully the good name of shit holes.  I know because my family used to drag me there on vacations when I was too young to have a say in the matter.  The sooner it gets swallowed by the sea the better.

So is there a ring in the future here? Because... if it's not on that level this is only going to breed resentment on your part.

Not that I'd ever take that sort of advice from internet assholes.

I do, in fact, question the judgment of anyone that says they love Corpus.

She was raised in LA and went to high school in New Jersey.  I think she's poorly calibrated. 

So she is both a valley-girl and used way too much aqua-net?  :why_so_serious:

Though it's not as shitty as it used to be.

Heh.

I've been to/through Corpus a couple times on the way to Brownsville. I did not like it at all.  It seemed very white in a bad way from what I saw.  Everyone is pretty much right.

That said, find a nice corner of anywhere and you can live happy.  Get yourself a boat and enjoy the choppy side of the Gulf.

Houston at least has good things about it even if I'm not very fond of the city.

Corpus I've never lived in, but it's always struck me as one of the worse metro areas in Texas.  Mind you that bias has no grounding in reality.

Problems endemic to the Texas Gulf Coast:

- Heat and humidity.  Not heat or humidity, which would be bad enough on their own.  Heat and humidity.  Together.  Cats and dogs not living together and you're stuck in the middle.
- Mosquitoes.
- Rednecks.

Everything Paelos said.  The biggest thing besides humidity & shitty tourists is crime.  Being close to the border means the cops assume everyone driving a nice car or a beater is smuggling drugs.  And illegals/Mexicans WILL jack your shit on a regular basis due to the volume of people moving through the area & the aforementioned shitty tourists making easy targets of their drunk asses.  That's not me being a racist jerk either, I've lived in the area & have friends in the border patrol - just like living in San Diego or Tucson or El Paso.

If you can handle all that... carry on!  But you're smarter than that...  I'd rather live in the hill country/Fredericksburg area & drive 2.5 hours there if I had to.

I lived on Corpus from ages 19-28 or so. It's mostly just boring. Mind you if you love the water/beach/fishing it could be fine, but if you are more into fine arts, food (other than Mexican), live music, or really, any big city stuff, Corpus just doesn't have it. It's a city of 300k, but it is spread out such that there are no interesting nooks to be found like in Austin, just strip malls and identical blocks of houses. No one seems interested in changing any of that. It's a very non-motivated town. There are basically only three jobs in town, tourism, petrochemical, and the service industry. Just not a very cultured place. Everyone leaves when they go to college (me) or finish.

Also, what they said about the University being swallowed by the sea is likely a fact. It's no more than 10-20 feet above sea level and right on the coast. Either a bit of Greenland melting or a nice Cat 4-5 would wipe it off the map. Worth considering.

I never had a problem with traffic, no idea where people got that idea. Except the one week of spring break (just avoid the beach).

The heat is not nearly as bad as Houston. Corpus has a nice breeze most of the time and highs near the coast were usually more in the low 90s rather than the weeks of 100+ you get in other Texas towns. As you go farther from the water it gets hotter obviously, but why would you? The humidity is basically always 100%, but you get used to it, as much as one can.

Edit: I feel like the crime was oversold. Yeah. The city has crime. But everywhere does. IIRC it has a lower rate than basically every big city in Texas bar Austin, and is generally just property crimes. You will never feel unsafe around town unless you go looking for it.

Double Edit: But yeah. If you must live in Texas, Austin is the only place to do it. It is fun and interesting. Just don't drive anywhere if you can help it.

A lot of our moneyed visa applicants LOVE going to South Padre Island, for whatever that counts for.

You couldn't pay me enough to want to do that fucking drive, even once.

No offense, but I thing being raised in LA and going through your main teenage years in Jersey promotes DNA mutation in a bad way.

Wrong! The following are good driving hours:
11:15AM - 12:15PM
1:30PM - 3PM (2:30 if you need to get on I-35 or MOPAC)
7:45PM - 8AM

Our traffic problems exist because awful white people moved to Round Rock because it was cheap but just haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad to work in Austin. Shove 3 tolls on I-35 MOPAC between Austin proper and New New Delhi and you're magically gonna have so much money you can get helicopters for every resident.

Honestly we need a panel to host a discussion on the viability of Nebu's girlfriend. We can have schild and angry.bob chair the session. Nebu, can you make her available weeknights on google chat?

If you want to live on the water, just go to the Atlantic. I'd stay off the gulf. The Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida coastlines are much better.

I will second that stay away from the Gulf thing. I wouldn't live on my own Gulf Coast, as it is a shitty, casino-filled pawn shop with toilet water masquerading as the sea.

This is an incredible idea.

She's half Spanish and half Mexican... and SANE.  What's not to like?

Not trying to be a nosy snogwart, but for girlfriends you do stuff to make them happy like try a new restaurant, see a play you don't like, or maybe a weekend trip. What you're talking about is stuff you do for a wife or maybe a finance (yes, on purpose). Unless your relationship is one of those 10 year long things and neither of you believe in marriage, she better put a ring on your finger to move to Texas. Or maybe if you just really hate where you are now and hate your job. Like you lived in North Little Rock and taught at Little Rock Community College. It might be a fine school for all I know, if it exists. I don't know. But I do know Little Rock was a shithole, and North Little Rock was worse. I wonder if all the groundwater in the area is still bright green from all the chicken feces dumped into the rivers.

You said she wants to live in Corpus Christi. I submit that anyone who would choose to live anywhere in TX outside of Austin has some form of mental dysfunction. Yours is love, what's her excuse?

Seriously, choosing to follow an S.O. to another part of the country is a serious, life-altering commitment on the same order as getting married (bigger than merely getting engaged).

--Dave

And believe me, even if you (or she) SAYS she wants to live there, if you end up not liking it while your S.O. does like it, it will cause no end of fucking arguments from now until the end of time. If you have even the slightest hesitation about moving there (and why wouldn't you? I mean, Texas), do not.

I think your relationship is fine Nebu.

Moving to Corpus Christie is dumb.

This is the conclusion I have as well.  I like it when we agree.

I don't think it is "we" you have to worry about in this endeavor.

Lived in Corpus Christi while i was working at the army depot.  Its constantly windy there, like super wind.  The beaches are like clay almost.  Theres no cool hangout spots that i saw.  I agree with the "close to Mexico in a bad way" thing too.  Was pretty miserable there and soon as i moved away i was a much happier person.

I do miss the H.E.B (grocery store) there though oddly enough.

She likes Corpus. That's not sane. But it's easy to hide, just don't move there.

You should visit, see why she likes it. Could be a fun experience. Fun is a weird way to spell dismal, but whatever.

If she's legit-Mexican, this is probably a way to be a lot closer to family, at least in part. Just something to consider - have you met her family? You might be seeing them a lot if you're in South Texas.

Be sure to buy sombrero, maracas and luchador masks to gift them.
They really really really love that kind of stuff.

This is a genuinely funny post.

Also, they don't like watermelons.
Latins don't dig them. Don't make the same mistake as I did.

You can find HEBs almost anywhere in Texas.  Only reason I don't shop there is because I frequent a local store I want to support.

Nebu would probably love Central Market, which is also owned by HEB, but less common.  I know Houston has one.  I'd guess Austin and San Antonio.

We have Central Markets in Dallas and they're great.  No regular HEBs though, which is a shame.  I'd trade all of our Whole Foods for HEBs in a heartbeat.  Fuck Whole Foods.

Disagree. Whole Foods, just for their prepared foods, is vastly superior to the slightly better than absurdly ghetto level of regular HEBs.

HEB is an Austin chain and we're home to many Central Markets. So is Whole Foods for that matter.

Whole Foods continues to amuse me as the cynical manipulation of hippies by a hardcore right-wing conservative that it is. As such I avoid shopping there.

Find her an opportunity in the dental field elsewhere... There are lots of places to land dental jobs.

I subsist on HEB at this point, and they get some of the Country Market stuff as well.

Note: I don't actually know what Whole Foods is like outside of Austin. And the two locations I have easy access to are probably two of the best supermarkets in America (Corporate HQ, and the fucking Whole Foods Disneyland at the Domain).

I've been in Whole Foods on either end of the country, and they were exactly the same, ask I doubt it's much different.  I like whole foods, it's just over priced.  That was especially apparrent when I lived in Berkely where they had the Berkely Bowl, which basically does everything whole foods does times 10, for half the price.

I like Trader Joes better than Whole Foods in Atlanta.

Trader Joes is great everywhere. But it's not really comparable as everything is white labeled weird shit. Some of their stuff is out of control good, and some is just crap. The nature of what they're doing.

Byerly's in Minneapolis is pretty spectacular as a grocery store.  I'm also a huge fan of Pike Place Market... but that's not a traditional supermarket.

Yep, which I like because I enjoy the adventure of finding what is amazing and what is crap.

It depends a lot on the size of the store. The Austin flagship store you mentioned is obviously a behemoth at ~80K-square-feet but there are other stores that are close in size. In the Bay Area the Cupertino store down the street from Apple is the largest at ~75K-square-feet.

The new one in North Austin at the domain is holy fuck ridiculous. It's bright white like a casino and you can get completely lost in it. The selection is out of control. Since it's an Austin chain, the brand just doesn't have the stigma here that it has in places like Seattle or Portland or east coast cities.

This thing is the reason to visit Trader Joe's:

(http://i.imgur.com/kcTiHas.jpg)

There's all sorts of reasons to go to Trader Joe's. Mostly though, I'm just waiting for Instacart to offer it here. I've only been to a supermarket once in the last month.

For the stuff they do right, Trader Joe's can't be beat. Agree with schild on the prepared food at Whole Foods- restaurant quality goodies in a grocery store. Yes, it is spendy. Yes, it is probably worth it. Also, their toffee nut cookies are probably about 75% crack, with some sugar and toffee bits thrown in.

Do some research on Whole Foods. It's spendy because it's deliberate manipulation to keep it 'exclusive'  I wasn't kidding when I said it was a cynical manipulation.

We've got Trader Joes and they're good. There's a local guy, "Jungle Jim" who does it 10x better than both, though.

Unfortunately for me, Whole Foods is the only place that has that kind of stuff - produce and meat that isn't dosed to the eyeballs with pesticides and hormones and god knows what else. Sounds to me like I'd love a Trader Joe's.

You know I read threads and I wonder, how the hell did we go from Corpus Christi to grocery stores? That why I love this site :) I don't have any thing special but an independent chain down here in my town, they really take pride in there products, like actually have a butcher and produce and it is fresh and there deli is awesome for prepared food to go. They partner with a local bakery for some bread products and they bake a lot of there own, so it smells wonderful in the morning, or hell even in the middle of the night. It cost more, but I've been on a healthy kick and it is so worth making my own dishes with fresh ingredients. Whole Foods in Indianapolis and Florida were the same, is the chain across the USA set up to be almost the same?

Nebu I hope you don't attract crazy women like I do, but then crazy ones are the best (until you wake up and she is outside setting your truck on fire because she thought you were talking to other girls). I had a friend from Corpus Christi and he talked about how he worked on a shrimp boat in college and how they have awesome seafood. I don't know if you care for that, but fresh seafood and fishing is pretty good down in that area. Hot, windy, and humid, either you like it or you don't. I spent years in the tropics and loved it. But some might not. I used to go for runs in Florida during the day and you would work up one heckuva sweat. Same with New Orleans.

Go visit it for a week or two in the off season and see how you like it.

Corpus is in Texas. HEB is in Texas. It's really not much of a leap.

I would happily put Corpus on the fucking moon or annex it to Mexico if I could.

I'm interested what towns Schild would live in if it wasn't for Austin. Like what towns in America do you not hate?

Seattle, Portland, and Berkeley are the only remaining options. The first two are basically a no go due to weather, and fuck California. Don't hate the towns though. I'd probably move to Vancouver before any of those three. Florence is high on the list also. London to a degree, as well.

I'd be in Chicago, Denver, Dallas, or Birmingham if i wasn't in Atlanta. Mostly due to either family connections or for job reason.

I can't live a life that's restrained by job or family connections. It's not so much a "free spirit" thing, I just refuse to live somewhere hellish. Those places you just listed would fall behind Hong Kong on places I'm willing to move.

Does not compute.

If you don't like the weather in Seattle, Vancouver and London are not going to be improvements. Although culturally, Vancouver is still like Seattle was in the 80's while I was a teenager there (Seattle has more than doubled in size since). Something awful happens to great cities right around the time they pass 1 million population. Enjoy Austin while it lasts, the clock is ticking.

There are still some medium-sized cities in the upper Midwest that are nice, and I really liked what I saw of Fort Collins when I lived in Cheyenne.  But for the most part, Generica has taken over everywhere.  You can move halfway across the country and find that other than weather, nothing has changed.

--Dave

When I lived in Laramie, I spent all of my free time around Ft Collins.  I'd move back there tomorrow if I could land a job at CSU.  Golden was also quite wonderful.  Colorado School of mines would be a great option as well.

Always weird hearing people talk positively about where I live. Weather really isn't always that bad. Last week was wet, but we had average temps in the mid 50's while everyone else was enjoying their blizzards.