It’s finally time to say goodbye. Born and raised here, and lived here all my life. Well, San Antonio and Austin, to be exact. Been to Dallas many times, and Houston when occasion required it of me. Obviously I’m choosing to move elsewhere because I think I’ll like elsewhere more, but there are still many redeeming qualities to Texas, San Antonio, and Austin. Dallas and Houston, well… not so much.

Austin is great because it is a hotbed of free thought, if such a thing truly exists. It’s a college city, through and through. And not just any college, but the University of Texas at Austin, which is truly unique among public universities. Not so much in its various attributes but moreso in the degree with which it exhibits all of the characteristics of big university life. Everything is bigger in Texas, they say. Austin is a city where you simply cannot be surprised by anything strange or unusual occurring. The city is infinitely forgiving for any quirks you have, and actually encourages being weird. The main reasons I couldn’t live there are the traffic, which is hell on Earth, and the immaturity of the populace. Free thought is great. Immature free thought is great, to a point, but it gets old. I prefer intelligent, productive free thought, Seattle style.

San Antonio, in a way, is just as unique as Austin. Just not so blatantly and loudly. One of my favorite rappers, Slug, says of his state Minnesota, “Minnesota is dope, if only simply for not what we have, but what we don’t.” That’s kind of how I feel about San Antonio. It’s a huge city, population-wise, yet it never quite feels like a big city. A lot of people like to complain that the job opportunities here aren’t that great, since we don’t have a lot of big corporations. This is true, to an extent, but it also allows the culture to express itself in society without being so saturated with big business. San Antonio, while it lacks all the big corporations that inhabit the other major cities in Texas, also lacks the negative aspects of all those cities. San Antonio lacks much of the suffocating pollution you find in other big cities. The citizens here aren’t pretentious, exceptionally stupid or immature, or especially mainstream. It’s like people from Austin and Dallas made a compromise and moved to San Antonio, replacing mainstream corporate culture and mindless self indulgence with down to Earth local family-centric culture. San Antonio citizens are nice without being loud and obnoxious. They’re friendly without being social leeches. They’re mostly quiet, but possessive of the ability to have a good time all the same. Moreso than any other big city here, San Antonio is permeated by Mexican culture, and that’s oftentimes a refreshing change from super-charged capitalistic consumerism. Not that I don’t enjoy super-charged capitalistic consumerism, but once in awhile it’s nice to be reminded there is another way.

Texas as a whole is pretty unique because it has such a wide variety of cultures and ways of life contained within its borders. The four major cities are all very different from one another, including the average type of person you’d find at each. And in general, Texans are friendly, polite people. If I wasn’t moving to Washington, I could think of very few places where I’d rather live than Texas.

I leave tomorrow morning, although I won’t technically be out of Texas until Friday. Adios Tejas, hasta luego.