Micah's Read of the Week, Vol. 26
California vs. Austin, R.I.P. Hank Aaron, Larry King, and James White. Plus, let's roast a chicken.
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Read of the Week
As promised on Twitter, it’s time to go long on this piece about a Californian who moved his family to Central Texas and regretted it. It’s an absurd masterpiece.
I’ll start with a disclaimer: this has gone semi-viral in the past week, but in reality, this was originally written in 2016. That information doesn’t change anything about the arguments made, but it is worth noting. Also, according to the piece, the author is a sales executive working in the semiconductor industry based out of San Jose, CA.
I moved my family from California to Austin, Texas and regretted it. Here are 10 key points every person should consider before relocating.
A lot of people, including myself, move from California to Austin because of the hype and the perception that California and Austin are reasonably comparable in lifestyle. We found that to be far from the case.
No one says Austin is like California. Austin is the most liberal city in Texas, sure. Former Governor Rick Perry described our city as “a blueberry in the tomato soup.” But California, nah.
Austin, like California, is not affordable.
The thing that California and Austin definitely have in common is that they're both very expensive. Austin is not cheap. Let the words sink in. Austin is not cheap, it's actually quite expensive.
Who could have possibly seen this coming? Anyone capable of googling “cost of living” perhaps?
Back to the piece:
We moved from San Diego in 2015 (owning a 2,000-square-foot house on a 1/3rd acre) looking for a boost in lifestyle. If you're looking for great schools, the southwest and northwest sectors of Austin are the main options.
So we bought a 4,000-square-foot house in Bee Cave (an affluent suburb of Austin) with "great schools." We heard Austin was extremely hot so we got a place with a pool.
Must be nice.
Taxes: We all know property taxes are high in Texas. They actually weren't that bad for us and ranged from 2% to 3% depending on the neighborhood. We bought a home at 2.1% and, with the homestead exception, were paying at 1.79% (vs. 1.25% in California). Don't buy at 3%, you won't be able to sell and your house won't appreciate.
Ok. Yes, property taxes in Texas are high. But, there’s no income tax. Californians pay up to 12.3%. There is no mention of this in this piece.
Power: Energy is incredibly expensive. You want a big house, and they're so cheap, but then it costs a fortune to heat and cool. We were paying $400 per month during the summer and winter and we were uncomfortable (our thermostat was set to 79 degrees F in the summer, and 65 degrees F in the winter). To be comfortable would have cost us $700 to $1,000 per month.
First of all, who in Texas keeps their thermostat at 79 in the summer? The author chose to be uncomfortable. I’m offended by this choice. His family must hate him.
Also, what kind of asshole writes publically that he can buy a 4000 sf house, but that he’s too house poor to cool it properly in the summer or heat it in the winter? It’s almost impossible to paint yourself as a more loathsome character.
Water: Water is also shockingly expensive. In NW Austin they pump water from Lake Travis, which is only a few miles away, but that doesn't stop greedy water collectives from shaking you down. We paid $89 per month just for the privilege of being connected to city water (using 0 gallons). And they just jacked that base rate to $97. We had a well for landscape watering, but otherwise our water bill for a young family, watering about 10,000 square feet of grass would have easily been $300 to $400 per month. New sod? Try $1,200 per month, for water. Our water in San Diego (and now San Jose) was cheaper, during a drought, and we got it from like two states away.
To start, this guy lived in Bee Cave. That is NOT NW Austin. It’s southwest. He also says that he had a well, so he didn’t have to pay the $300-400/month for lawn maintenance. Again, a choice. He’s complaining about something that DIDN’T apply to him.
Weather: Texas weather is hard on houses. Hail storms will ruin your roof, torrential rain and scorpions will get inside. We spent tens of thousands on unexpected home repairs and remediation, and talking to other people, it wasn't uncommon.
I’ll call bullshit here. I just don’t believe this dude spent “tens of thousands” on home repairs in one year. That implies at least $20,000 in one year. Tough scene, guy.
1. The weather
Sure, you've heard it's hot and humid, but how bad could it be? It's just weather, right?
Humidity is great for your skin, but causes food to spoil fast, towels to get mildewy and drastically limits the temperature range where you feel comfortable.
Again, this guy lives in a 4000 sf house with a pool and he’s complaining about food spoiling. Also, mildewy towels? Bruh.
And Austin is hot. It's not California hot, it's Texas hot. California heat is weak by comparison.
Wow. Who knew?
Although we had a huge yard and our own half basketball court, we really only felt like going outside about 3 to 4 months of the year. The rest of the time it was too windy, too hot/cold, too mosquito/horse fly/fire ant ridden or pouring.
Nice flex on the sport court. Sorry, it’s so windy here.
2. No public land
On the west coast, we take public land for granted. Yes, there is a lot of land in Texas, but it all has barbed wire fences and no trespassing signs on it. Even creeks are parceled up as private property.
So even though Austin is supposed to be outdoorsy, there are very few places to go, and because there is a very limited number of public spaces serving such a large population, good luck getting in.
What? As I type, there are thousands of people stand-up paddleboarding and kayaking across Austin. We have miles of hike & bike and greenbelt trails. We have legendary swimming holes and pools like Barton Springs, and huge urban parks like Zilker. Sure, Texas doesn’t have as much public land as California, but claiming that there are “very few places to go” outside is insanity.
3. Nowhere to go
Aside from the fact that everything is private, where are you going to go, anyway? There are no snowy mountains, no raging rivers, and no soaring arches. If you live in Austin things don't change much in a huge 7-hour-drive radius. Since we love the outdoors — exploring, climbing, rafting — Austin was not our cup of tea.
This is the most outrageous talking point in the entire piece. There’s no geographical diversity within 7 hours of Austin? GTFO. You could be at the beach in 4 hours. You can be in the West Texas desert in the same amount of time. Hell, Bee Cave sits squarely in the famous Texas Hill Country. Austin was originally known as Waterloo because of its access to multiple lakes and rivers. Drive less than an hour and you can toob down multiple rivers. What is this dude talking about?
4. Dishonesty
Think about integrity much? I didn't. I've worked with hundreds of companies and thousands of people in California. Sure, there are bad apples, but by-and-large integrity is a default way to treat people here. It's not even something we talk about. Not so in Austin.
The author goes on to list a few personal incidents where he felt misled. I am sorry to hear about this experience. But to say that Austin is known for the dishonesty of its residents seems like a big leap.
5. Yelp
Yes, there is good food in Austin, but you can't trust Yelp to find it because it doesn't work in Austin.
Yelp? Really buddy? Austin’s Yelp isn’t good enough for this guy. What an asshole.
6. Rudeness
I'll probably take the most heat for this one, but Austinites are rude. We met some amazing people in Austin (like my work colleagues and church congregation) and even bumped into Matthew McConaughey at our kid's flag football game. There are some very wonderful, friendly people, but we also met more than our share of the others.
Strong McConaughey flex, pal.
Exhibit A was the dad (also at a kids flag football league) wearing the "Don't move to Austin" t-shirt, a play on "Don't mess with Texas." Let me get this straight, I uprooted my family, moved across four states, and that's the welcome I get? And the worst part of it all is that it's not even funny.
I’m sorry the mayor didn’t tell Football Dad to roll out the kindness red carpet for the Cali transplant. Also, that T shirt isn’t meant to be funny. It’s a statement that hopefully keeps assholes like you from moving here.
Our friends from Tennessee also confirmed that Austin does not conform to the notion of Southern hospitality, but I will say that most younger Texans were really cool.
Texas isn’t the South, but I’m glad the young people were cool. Also, great sourcing: our friends from Tennessee must be experts on Austin hospitality.
Austin drivers are also terrible, I mean, reptilian brain terrible. They don't yield to pedestrians on crosswalks unless forced, will inexplicably tail gate and illegally pass you on a double yellow just to drive 30 feet in front of you for the next 10 minutes on open roads, and they may be conservative, but not with their horns. I drive all over the country and hands down Austin has the worst and most inexplicable driving I've experienced.
This is true.
The service is also generally awful. I mean, you're at the Austin airport with two pieces of luggage and you just ordered 6 items. They don't even ask if you want a bag, you have to initiate the request, and even then they just hand you the bag.
Oh no, you had to ask for a bag one time at the airport? Man, that’s tough.
7. A conservative dystopia
There's also little public school choice. In California there are charter schools, two day schools, public schools, cash/combo charter school/homeschooling, you name it. In west Austin, just public schools. Don't know why, but I heard that the high school football industrial complex opposed charter schools.
And then there's water, again. Austin will literally have water restrictions in place while it's flooding. "Can't you just take some of the water from here and…never mind." And your Texan neighbors will call you out for having a green lawn, even if you water from a well, which is a possibility they can't quite seem to imagine.
Is Texas more conservative than California? Uh-huh. Do we fund our schools differently, of course. This argument doesn’t even make sense as charter schools are generally a conservative priority in Texas.
Dystopia is defined as an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic. Not exactly.
8. Monoculture
In parts of Texas it's not just a monoculture, but a monoculture that doesn't seem to be aware of it's own blandness. Think about it, are you ready to have your son judged based on his suitability for a future career in football? Are you ready to network by attending the local high school football game with the guys? Because that's a thing in Texas.
Who knew football was important to the people of Texas?
And it's not just that. The lack of openness to diverse ideas leaves you with the feeling that you traveled 15 years back in time technologically moving there. They voted out Uber and Lyft.
Don’t get me started on this. Austin did not vote out Uber and Lyft. Austin wanted to write rules for ridesharing. Uber and Lyft left town after they didn’t like the rules. It’s a dishonest, ignorant, and simplistic view on the issue.
They also don't have a lot of the options we enjoyed in San Diego like "game-only soccer leagues" for kids. The car washes were lame. You just couldn't trust things to be as well thought out and executed as in California.
Sorry, your kids have to practice. The car washes were lame? Huh? God, this dude is an asshole.
9. Punitive, militaristic schools and sports
We had three kids in the local elementary school, rated 9 out of 10. For sure some of the teachers were excellent and very caring, but the school was run like a micro-managed military academy. And it seemed the more ignorant the coach or teacher, the more he insisted on being addressed as "Y'Sir" — which is still the norm, even in Austin.
There was a massive emphasis on conformity that was good for teachers, bad for kids. I went to read to my kindergartner's class and felt like I'd landed in a dictatorship. They had aides making sure all of the kindergartners faced forward while marching in line to the cafeteria. Kindergartners.
We withdrew our children. Our school may have been particularly bad, but it's something to look out for.
Let me get this straight, the school was too organized for you and your children? And the school thought students to refer to adults in a respectful manner? Wow, better homeschool ‘em.
10. Cedar allergies
Guilty as charged.
11. (I couldn't stop at 10) Big, luxury home obsession
And there's pressure to keep your house immaculate. You can buy a home that is really nice by California standards (updated kitchen, crown moldings) only to find that everyone else's house is much nicer than yours, which we didn't care about until we found that no one wanted to buy our less-than-luxurious home.
Sorry, your less-than-luxurious big-ass house wasn’t easy to sell.
Moral of the story
It was an expensive mistake, but my family and I now see California in a completely new light. We feel very fortunate to be living in the Bay Area.
You're welcome.
Thank you so much!
Remembrance Corner
It seems as though every week in this pandemic we’ve lost a notable American or two in addition to the thousands of non-notables taken by COVID. This week was no exception.
R.I.P. Henry Aaron
Tom Verducci writes in SI:
Among the nearly 20,000 Major League Baseball players, Hank Aaron was one of the very few who transcended the game. He was bigger than baseball. He was a beacon for civil rights, of humility and of honest work ethic, all qualities we associate with America at its best, not just in some sporting venture. The Braves announced his death at age 86 on Friday.
Americans, not just baseball fans, owe a debt of gratitude to Hank Aaron. Yes, he was one of the best to ever play this game. Aaron died as the all-time home run leader, at least among all players who played the game fairly, which happens to be the very bedrock of sports.
He is the most important baseball player in the 74 years since Jackie Robinson stepped on the diamond at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn in 1947.
Aaron conducted himself with hard work, class and humility, which is to say, he never stopped being himself, though racist America was there at his side trying to deter him.
Aaron was unequivocally the most consistently great player of all-time. From 538:
How do you get to 755 home runs without ever cracking 50 in a season? Unrelenting consistency. Aaron hit 20 or more home runs in a season 20 times (!!), the most of any player in MLB history. He also hit at least 24 home runs every single season from 1955 (age 21) to 1973 (age 39) — a streak of 19 consecutive years. No other player in history has done that for more than 15 straight years. (Ruth and Barry Bonds, who eventually broke Aaron’s all-time record, both did it exactly that many times in a row.)
But Aaron was consistently great at more than just power hitting. He won two batting titles, in 1956 and 1959, and finished his career with a .305 batting average — second only to Ruth among players with at least 600 home runs.1 Aaron also won three Gold Glove awards for his defense in right field; advanced metrics generally consider him to have been an excellent fielder until he reached his mid-30s, at which point he still held his own upon shifting to first base and left field. Aaron had a record 21 All-Star seasons (missing out only twice during his entire career) for a reason.2
The all-around nature of Aaron’s greatness was also — you guessed it — historically consistent. If we use wins above replacement3 to get a holistic view of Aaron’s overall contributions, we see that he eclipsed 4 WAR (the mark of a very good player) in 19 straight seasons, from 1955 to 1973; 5 WAR (the mark of an All-Star-level season) in 17 straight seasons, from 1955 to 1971; and 6 WAR (verging on the MVP conversation) in 15 straight seasons, from 1955 to 1969. Nobody else — either batter or pitcher — has ever broken any of those thresholds so many times in a row as Aaron did.
Aaron was 86.
R.I.P. Larry King
There are several excellent obits on King, but I really enjoyed this story written by his longtime friend, restaurant server Gloria Leon. Every morning in LA started the same for King:
Larry King walked into Nate ‘n Al’s every morning, seven days a week, always between 7:45-8:15 a.m. If we didn’t see him by 8:20, we knew something was wrong and we had to look for him.
On weekends, he would come in a little later but he always ate the same thing. I would have two bowls waiting on the table, filled with plain blueberries. He took coffee with heaps of ice — a lotta, lotta ice and always more ice than coffee — and 20 packets of Splenda with nonfat milk. He would even put Splenda on the blueberries.
For Larry, Nate ‘n Al’s was like walking into his mother’s house. We weren’t servers, we were friends there to make sure he got what he liked. He had the same sentiment for the busboys; he loved the busboys. I met Larry 41 years ago. There was no Larry King Show on TV yet, just a radio show in Miami, Florida. I had just started working at Nate ‘n Al’s, and back in those days, we had a smoking section. Larry was a heavy, heavy smoker — he used to keep an ashtray in the shower — so he would sit against the wall in the smoking section, looking at the newspaper with his betting sheets to pick what horses he was going to bet on that day.
I met so many people through Larry, and I was lucky enough to travel with him, too. Every summer for a while, he used to host a baseball game for charity in Utah, and we would go for the weekend. He knew Terry McAuliffe, the head honcho at the DNC, and we went to the convention the year with Bill Clinton and Al Gore. We had VIP seats. Every day was an adventure with Larry.
Larry was generous with everybody. He was a very generous tipper and always generous with his friends. He’d bring a group of 20 people, and nobody offered to pick up the check. He always paid, and I would tell him, "Larry, you don’t have to do that." But he didn’t care. He had a house account and would sign the check and tell me how much of a tip to add.
If I could talk to him now, I would want to say so many things. Larry, thank you for all these wonderful years of seeing your face every day. A day without you was not a good day at Nate ‘n Al’s. I’m so proud that I got to see all the great sides of you and experience a great friendship. There will never be another Larry King, I will tell you that. He was a true mensch.
King was 87.
R.I.P. James White
James White only wanted to do one thing: run a honky-tonk. And that he did for more than 50 years. The Broken Spoke is a relic- a classic Texas dance hall located in South Austin just a quarter mile from my home. It’s a landmark and it’s one of Austin’s most famous music venues. There were always a few things you could count on at the Spoke, cheap pitchers of Lone Star, live country music, and James White in full western regalia.
White said in a 2018 interview:
“I did feel like the Alamo,” he concurs. “You go down to San Antone to the Alamo, and you’ve got all those buildings all around it. But once you go inside the Alamo, you don’t see those buildings. It’s kind of like a step back in time: You can imagine Crockett and Travis and Bowie and everybody right in there. Just like here: When you walk in the Broken Spoke, you get the vibes of people who were here 30, 40, 50 years ago.”
"Every major country star in the last half-century played at the Broken Spoke," Warden said. Those stars included Bob Wills, Ernest Tubb, Garth Brooks and the Dixie Chicks, Warden said.
White was talkative, gregarious and "never knew a stranger," Warden said.
In 1967, White booked a songwriter out of Nashville named Willie Nelson to play at the Broken Spoke, paying him $800. Future country legend George Strait and his crew were also a fixture at the Broken Spoke for a number of years in the 1970s and 1980s.
Long live the Spoke. White was 81.
Let’s all roast a chicken this week
Look at that bird. Let’s do it. This recipe uses some peak-season citrus and a special ingredient: MSG. I bought some on Amazon last week for this application. Let’s go!!
Ingredients
One (3 1/2- to 4-pound) whole chicken
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons kosher salt, or more as needed (see note)
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 1/2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon MSG, to taste (optional, see headnote)
1 large yellow onion (about 10 ounces), halved and thinly sliced
1/2 cup no-salt chicken stock, white wine or water
Juice of 1 orange
Juice of 1 lime
Cooked white rice, for serving (optional)
Lime wedges, for serving (optional)
Spatchcock the bird. Combine the spices and olive oil. Then rub that mixture under the skin and marinate the bird overnight. About 1 hour before you plan to roast the chicken, remove it from the refrigerator.
When ready to roast, position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 425 degrees. In a 12-inch cast-iron skillet, or other oven-safe pan, add the sliced onion, spreading it on the bottom. Place the chicken, breast side up, on top of the onions with the legs facing the rear of the oven. Roast for 30 minutes.
In a small bowl, combine the chicken stock, wine or water with the orange and lime juices. Remove the chicken from the oven and pour the liquid into the skillet, avoiding direct contact with the chicken. Roast for an additional 15 to 20 minutes, or until the thickest part of the breast registers 155 degrees on an instant-read thermometer.
Transfer the chicken to a carving board and let it rest for 5 minutes. Test the temperature again — it should read 165 degrees. Carve the chicken and plate, spooning pan juices on top. Serve with the rice and lime wedges on the side.
Send me photos of your bird: micahwiener@me.com. I’ll share the best ones next week.
Where else can I find Micah content?
Podcasts: Mind of Micah, Back Door Cover, Too Much Dip
Twitter: @micahwiener & @producermicah (Why two twitters? It’s a long story)
Instagram: @micahwiener
LinkedIn: @micahwiener
Peloton: #badboysofpelly@micahwiener
Email: micahwiener@me.com
I mean, the guy's got a point. Car washes are lame here. Solid week you rude Austinite.