http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAFD6x4JWsw
About rap in Houston. The white reporter is hysterical making it into a mockumentary. LMAO.
^ NJ is by no means the most beautiful state in the nation, but it certainly has some really nice parts. Some examples: Stone Harbor, Haddonfield, Moorestown, Alpine Boro (the wealthiest town in the US), Princeton, most of the northwestern portion of the state.
There are plenty of areas of NJ where I am also afraid drive my car, let alone get out. The same goes for just about every part of the country I’ve ever visited or lived in though, including Austin.
Gonna watch that tonight, I went through a short phase, I think maybe 1-2 months where I listened to nothing but houston rap… it’s pretty mediocre looking back. Everyone raps about run down places in Houston, cough syrup, weed, and ugly modified cars. And then “screw and chop” it to make it sound even worse.
I’m certainly no Jersey expert. I only go by what I hear secondhand, mainly from NYC residents. But the good-to-bad ratio in Austin definitely seems to be more favorable tham Jersey. I don’t recall there being too many bad parts of Austin. (But I never lived there, and wouldn’t have much reason to visit the ghetto while attending a Broadway show at Bass Hall.)
I would reconsider San Diego. It has 4 out of the 6 factors you are looking for, albeit not the first 2 if you put that list in order of importance.
SoCal has the best weather on the continent. You know what to expect everyday and can plan accordingly. No rain and no humidity and you’re close to beaches everywhere. SD is also clean, has attractive people, a decent nightlife, many outdoor activities not related to water if it’s not your thing, and sports franchises. It gets better everytime I go there.
SoCal is great and I think San Diego is the best city in the country. It has attractive people, a laid back attitude, and great weather. However, it’s stupidly expensive and is part of the socialist experiment that is California, which I refuse to support any longer.
Just model it out assuming you are making $1 million a year and look at how much of that would go to increased taxes and higher cost of living for the same thing basically. A comparable house in SD would be 3-4x what it would cost in many other parts of the country. Is that worth it? I don’t think so.
It’s like the Bay Area. The median price of a home in SF is a million dollars. A MILLION AFTER TAX DOLLARS, HOLY S–T. For that you get a run down house in a mediocre neighborhood. Not worth it to live here unless you make absurd sums of money or have to because of a job or personal situation. Not sure if you’ve looked, but a million dollars in most other cities will buy you an absurd setup.
Here in Houston, you could drop $300k and have a sick 2000 sq ft townhouse in a young, bustling part of town, or if you have kids, that $1M will buy you a nice size house in the best urban school district, or it’ll buy a McMansion in the burbs and leave you with $500k.
My holy s-t moment is that after NYC prices it doesn’t seem like a lot.
$1 million to have the honor to live in a sausage fest. No thanks.
It’s not the cost of the home, it’s the cost of the dirt. SF and NYC are very crowded with limited dirt. Texas is nothing but dirt. If you analyze the economics of a home building company it becomes clear very quickly that the land is the most expensive part. The sticks and sheets for an average house cost well less than $50K.
This. I’d pay some xtra tax to live in San Diego over Houston or wherever. It’s only money. I’d rather live in an awesome place than have some extra dollars sitting there doing nothing.
And hey, if you want to retire to San Diego, you’ll already be in the housing market there and you’ll be able to downsize for a tidy profit if needed. Selling your place in Houston (or wherever) to move to San Diego will be a huge pain later in life.
Just some thoughts.
^ I was there a few weeks ago though for the first time and it’s a nice city to visit. To live is another story.
LOL yeah, the ongoing sausagefest known as the Bay Area. I’ve been to most of the major cities in the US and this is one of the worst by far.
NYC residents know basically nothing about NJ except what they see on the way to Newark Airport, what they watch on the Sopranos or Jersey Shore, or what they experience on the northern NJ beaches (which are full of fellow NYC’ers, not folks from NJ). Shitty places like that obviously exist, but they are far from being representative of NJ.
Austin is fantastic city, and admittedly there is no place in NJ like it, but venture east of I-35 in the downtown area and you are taking your life in your hands. It has been a long time now since I lived in Austin, but traffic was getting horrible then and I hear it has only gotten worse as developers continue to make all the same mistakes that were made in the NE over the past 25 years.
Haha. East Austin is mostly white people with beards and plaid now. We’re talking 2 kids, a minivan and a golden retriever white. 12th and Chicon got bulldozed and is turning into condos. Now the run down homes in the ghetto are restored and “historical.” You have to go east of 183 to see anything questionable. Its true the infrastructure here is years behind the growth, but so long as you live/work close to downtown or are ok paying $10 a day for toll roads, no biggie.
People’s disdain for NJ is crazy. I’m not as familiar with South Jersey, but I grew up on the NJ/NY border. The areas along the hudson are very nice and from NYC up to Bergen.
That I did not know. When I lived there, that area was scary. Even the HEB west of 35 near Hancock golf course was questionable.
Yeah, don’t really understand the NJ/Delaware hate. They both have tons of ugly shopping centers due to population density, but no more so than any other sh!thold suburbia in the US. Delaware has no cities. NJ has crappy cities (mostly extentions of crappy neighborhoods in NYC and Philly, to be fair) and really nice towns and suburbs.
People in NYC or Philly dissing Jersey is all in good sport. There is no malice behind it. The problem is when some Ohioan moves to NYC and starts dissing Jersey…
It sounds like Jersey is to NYC like Odessa is to Midland.
People from Midland think Odessa is a nasty, grungy, crime-ridden town full of smelly blue-collar workers. Some Midlanders refuse to go to Odessa unless they absolutely have to, then they leave as fast as they can.
Odessans see Midlanders as stuck-up, snobby assholes who think they’re too good to put in an honest day’s labor, or even venture near Odessa. And they’ll come to Midland for the amenities and nicer restaurants, but they’ll do it begrudgingly, then claim that Odessa’s just as good.
Bro should move to Midland and Greenie can cook him up some mean brisket.