Again, people prioritize certain things. If you want mountains, beaches, access to lots of high tech (cutting edge, I’m not talking Nortel in Dallas), you are better off in California. If you want cheaper housing, more yard, industry based on oil and gas, go to Texas.

I grew up in Houston, went to school in Austin, and bought homes in Dallas and Austin (and DC).

Austin is a great little city but there’s no biotech (so out for me). San Antonio-nice to visit but that’s it.

Houston–sprawl, flat, with tar in the water in Galveston (and the beach is at least an hour plus away). Comparing Galveston to Santa Monica or Redondo Beach? Can’t do it. You have awesome mountain biking in Malibu all the way down to San Diego, Can’t match that in Texas. You have peaks that break 10,000 ft an hour from the beach in LA. You need to trek 8 hours through west texas to get any sort of altitude hiking in. No mountain biking, crappy road biking

Dallas, as pretentious as LA without any of the outdoor advantages.

Add in a healthy does of heat, humidity, mosquitoes and toss in an ice storm in the winter and you won’t be surprised why most of the college friends from UT-Austin are now in California.

That being said, Austin is nice and is the only place I would choose to live if I went back to Texas. But it is the only semi-liberal county in Texas, which is painful to someone who works with stem cells.

Plus one year during Spring Break, I got pulled over by some troopers 30 minutes outside of San Antonio. I was asked if I “had crossed the river”. I had to think about it a few seconds about which river in Texas and then ventured a “are you talking about the Rio Grande” (which was a very very fair distance away). But I guess Asians and Latinos all look alike……