Honky tonk and vegan food: People who left the Bay Area for Austin tell us what it's really like

Neil Kohl 41, tech

How long did you live in the Bay Area? 5 years

Are you better off now than when you were living in the Bay Area? Mas o menos (more or less). We have a nice home where we're not cramped with two kids and there are great public schools. I have a rocking job, but it took a couple of years to find the right opportunity. On the downside, there seems to be lower career mobility, I miss being in a walking city, and the summer heat is brutal.

What do you like most about Austin? Queso. The Texas 20 is the real deal. Seriously, its easy to live in Austin. People are friendly and everyday stresses are low.

Do you have plans of ever moving back to the Bay Area? We considered moving back about 1.5 yrs ago for a new job with a better title and more money. We didn't for a couple of reasons but mostly due to the high cost of living for housing, taxes, and schools.

What do you miss the most about the Bay Area? Our friends, fruit trees, and nearby adventures in the wine country, mountains, and beaches. less Neil Kohl 41, tech

How long did you live in the Bay Area? 5 years

Are you better off now than when you were living in the Bay Area? Mas o menos (more or less). We have a nice home where we're not cramped with two ... more Photo: Gavin Hellier/Getty Images/Robert Harding World Imagery Photo: Gavin Hellier/Getty Images/Robert Harding World Imagery Image 1 of / 33 Caption Close Honky tonk and vegan food: People who left the Bay Area for Austin tell us what it's really like 1 / 33 Back to Gallery

SFGATE is exploring how people's lives change after leaving the Bay Area, for better or for worse, in a new series. Click through the slides above to hear from those who have relocated to Austin, Texas. We'll explore other relocation areas in future articles, so follow SFGATE for more.

Sam Whittington often catches himself daydreaming about Austin, Texas. The affordable housing, the laid-back lifestyle, the Tex Mex – all the stereotypes of Southern living have captured his imagination, he says.

The 28-year-old product designer has lived in the Bay Area for 10 years now, and he’s ready for life away from tech and taxes.

“There are few cities as weird and wild as San Francisco used to be,” Whittington said. “Austin, I think, has retained its individual spirit, while SF has been slowly selling its spirit to high bidders.”

Like a true millennial, Whittington’s Austin inclinations have inspired some philosophical soul-searching. Is it “the growing mediocrity of the city” that inspires him to leave, he wonders, or is it a general discontent with “the world”?

Whichever it is, “I won’t know unless I leave the bubble,” he said.

There’s certainly an air of romanticism inherent to Whittington’s vision of the liberal capital of Texas, but is there truth in it? Can one truly drown his homesickness in queso? SFGATE spoke to folks who left the Bay Area for Austin to find out (see all of their responses in the above gallery).

Curb appeal

After an ill-fated Austin vacation 12 years ago, Emma Massingill said she “swore up and down” that she’d never move to Texas. Things changed after college, when she found herself struggling to save money, even while working long hours at a Santa Cruz newspaper and living with her parents.

“I didn’t really have a choice,” Massingill said of leaving the Bay Area. “Who wants to be 23 and living at home?”

Six months after moving to Austin, Massingill confidently confided that she does “3/4 the amount of work for almost double the pay.” And recently she signed a lease on a three-bedroom house – with no roommates.

“You’d have to pay me to move back to the Bay,” she said.

VIDEO: The cost of living in Austin vs. San Francisco (story continues below)

The next Silicon Valley? Not so much.

Paul O’Brien, 41, has lived in Austin for seven years now, and he’s careful not to idealize the city. Life in Austin, like most cities, involves some concessions.

There’s affordable housing, but property taxes are high. There’s less traffic, but also limited public transportation. And coming from San Francisco, you better be ready for a pay cut (although the cost of living is exceptionally lower; Bankrate’s cost-of-living calculator claims a $100,000 salary in San Francisco metro is the equivalent of $183,750 in Austin metro).

Analysts have been quick to pin Austin as the “next Silicon Valley,” and with reason. It’s a hub for startups, with 105.2 startups per 1,000 residents, according to the Kauffman Index of Startup Activity, compared to San Francisco’s 82.7 per 1,000 residents. It’s home to major Google, Apple and Facebook outposts. In 2016, Austin businesses garnered $590.4 million in venture capital. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s still affordable for young tech-minded folks to live (Zillow says the median home value is $321,600).

Media reports back up such sentiments. Realtor.com listed Austin No. 1 on its list of the next big tech hubs, as did CNBC and the Kauffman Foundation (two years in a row). The New York Times was ahead of the trend, asking “Is Austin the Next Silicon Valley?” back in 1988.

O’Brien, an Austin-based “serial start up executive, CMO, scale architect,” isn’t buying it.

“We’re not the next Silicon Valley,” he says. “We’re where traditional industries are being disrupted and innovated.”

Although there’s just as much capital and investment in Texas, O’Brien says business works differently.

“We don’t do search engines; we don’t do social networks. Investors aren’t familiar with those kinds of things,” he explained. Rather, investors and entrepreneurs are identifying ways to apply technology to industries “with which Texas is familiar,” such as education, politics, real estate and agriculture.

O’Brien admits that venture capitalists are sometimes more hesitant to invest in Texan tech than they are in California, but not because of a “discomfort with risk.” He says the “wild Texan sense of independence” means Texans are “encouraged and expected to do something on their own.”

That lone ranger mentality spills into the office space. Those looking for the traditional stability of a 9-to-5 job might be in for a shock upon arriving in Austin, O'Brien noted, where a culture of freelancing and co-working thrives.

“It’s just not as easy to follow a corporate career path in Austin,” he said, “which is a blessing in disguise for some people.”

Get down with the honky tonk debate

Though the city has seen a 16.9 percentage point population increase since 2010, Austin retains its Texan flair.

Many of the Bay Area ex-pats interviewed for this story admitted to holding certain stereotypes about Austin before moving, some of which were proven true upon arrival.

Massingill, for example, wishes dates would stop taking her out to the local honky tonk. As a vegan and animal lover, she’s also sick of hearing about their guns, and seeing them pop up in profile pictures on Tinder.

“And I wish they’d stop calling me ‘Man,’” she said.

On the flip side, Massingill has found herself surprisingly pleased with the chivalrous attitude: “Since moving here, I’ve hardly had to open a door for myself.”

Austin’s vegan community was a major plus – and shock – for Natalie Dubovitskaya, 34, who landed there from San Jose four years ago.

“Everyone told me Austin was all about barbecue,” she recalled. Upon moving, however, she discovered a thriving vegan community in a city that hosts an annual VegFest.

Mexican cuisine, however, is controversial among those who left the Bay Area.

“It's garbage,” said San Jose native Josh Symons, 36, who moved to Austin a year ago. "Seriously, TexMex doesn't cut it."

For Symons, the TexMex versus CaliMex debate is serious. Although he says has no intention to return to California — even for a visit — he gets sentimental when discussing its Mexican food.

"I miss burritos," he says, before launching into a rant about Texans' queso obsession.

"Cheese is the greatest thing ever," he said, "but it just doesn't belong on everything!"

'Golden handcuffs'

Whittington, the Oakland resident with his eye on Austin, isn't worried about drowning in queso or craving a Mission-style burrito.

For him, that nagging desire to move to Austin transcends such trivialities. Even for a twentysomething single, picking up and moving isn't so simple.

"San Francisco has those golden handcuffs," he said. "Moving to Texas — and taking that Texas-sized pay cut — could be like exiling myself from this place."