Best college town. Fort Worth #29

[BrewingFrog]

I have lived in Austin for 14 years and it sounds like your friends are a little [ muschi ]

Definitely need to address the homeless situation but it’s far from a crises.

Before we left Houston for good, Mrs. Brewingfrog and I attended an Astros game downtown. Since I have no business there normally, I don't stop in Downtown very much save to take in a game or visit a specific restaurant. Thus, looking at the change from year to year was somewhat shocking: Simply categorizing the denizens of the 59 Overpass shadow as "homeless" is silly. They have a home: You're standing in it. The bathroom, specifically. Streams of piss were meandering down to the street from the "homeless" encampment. Ripe crap was piled by the sidewalk as well. I was shocked at the degree to which the City of Houston had allowed matters to crumble to this level of filth and squalor. But, the Mayor, County Judge, D.A., and all other City and County Officials had solemnly decreed that helping the "homeless" was a prime concern, so, we got to trudge through a miasma of human waste to go see a baseball game.

Progress!

Leaving that City in my rearview was a wonderful feeling. Adios!

 

[Frogenstein]

I am in Austin quite a bit and the homeless problem there is much, much worse than it is in Fort Worth. So much worse that comparing the 2 is silly. Yes, all cities have homeless but some cities have a much bigger problem with the homeless and Austin is one of those cities.

 

[tcumaniac]

I have lived in Austin for 14 years and it sounds like your friends are a little [ muschi ]

Definitely need to address the homeless situation but it’s far from a crises.

Other thing they mentioned was how overcrowded it's gotten.

One example used was that they've always loved taking their dog to zilker park on the weekends and that the last time they went, it took an hour and a half to leave because of how bad the traffic was.

 

[Moose Stuff]

I have lived in Austin for 14 years and it sounds like your friends are a little [ muschi ]

Definitely need to address the homeless situation but it’s far from a crises.

I get why people like Austin. It isn't for me. Now if you head west into the more hill country parts of it then I'm in.

 

[BrewingFrog]

Other thing they mentioned was how overcrowded it's gotten.

One example used was that they've always loved taking their dog to zilker park on the weekends and that the last time they went, it took an hour and a half to leave because of how bad the traffic was.

I miss the Austin of the 70s and 80s, not to mention the surrounding hills and spaces off to the west. Austin has metastasized all over the place, eating up the quaint little towns and discreet little hideaways that used to be there, reducing all to the anodyne common denominator of the strip mall and housing development stretching far out past where one once sped through the empty countryside seen only by livestock.

 

[Dogfrog]

Bingo

It is not a crisis. Have anyone been in downtown Fort Worth by the water gardens? How about downtown Dallas? Homeless people go to the inner city where the homeless shelters are located. Every city is the same.

Of course there are homeless in every city. Hope you arent comparing the current homeless situation in Austin to Fort Worth however. Between faith communities, individual and corporate donations, and Tarrant Area food bank, Fort Worth does a very commendable job of providing food and shelter to the homeless.

I am in downtown Fort Worth almost every day. I have also been to downtown Austin three times recently. Hopefully it's short lived but Austin has problems.

 

[YA]

Of course there are homeless in every city. Hope you arent comparing the current homeless situation in Austin to Fort Worth however. Between faith communities, individual and corporate donations, and Tarrant Area food bank, Fort Worth does a very commendable job of providing food and shelter to the homeless.

I am in downtown Fort Worth almost every day. I have also been to downtown Austin three times in the last two months. Hopefully it's short lived but Austin has problems.

City pride, but FW has a tremendous homeless problem, not like Austin, but it is bad. I volunteer at Union Gospel so I see first hand the issue up close.

 

[Dogfrog]

City pride, but FW has a tremendous homeless problem, not like Austin, but it is bad. I volunteer at Union Gospel so I see first hand the issue up close.

Thanks for volunteering. If you are saying we have large numbers of homeless in Fort Worth I agree. But I think we accommodate their basic needs better than most cities. People walking around panhandling is not a big deal to me, it just illustrates desperation. I see much less of that in FW than Austin right now.

 

[HG73]

USC is in a terrible area. UCLA is right between Beverly Hills and Bel Air. Surprised it's not higher.

USC in Watts.

 

[namollec]

​

Not sure if I'm seeing this right, but did this guy

grow a pair?

 

[Armadillo]

I have lived in Austin for 14 years and it sounds like your friends are a little [ muschi ]

Definitely need to address the homeless situation but it’s far from a crises.

There's no need to call Maniac's friends names.

In all honesty, if you drive up and down Ben White Blvd, both on the access road and the freeway itself, there's no other way to describe it as anything but a crisis. Well, maybe a [ Finebaum ]hole. There are thousands of homeless people lining that street and hundreds of tents under and around the freeway.

And that's just a 5 mile stretch. There many other stretches just like that throughout Austin.

 

[Hoosierfrog]

USC in Watts.

About 8 miles NW and a war zone away from Watts.

 

[Rabidfrog]

Fixed it for ya...

yes Odessa's gentlemen bars are superior to Waco's.

 

[Rabidfrog]

Before we left Houston for good, Mrs. Brewingfrog and I attended an Astros game downtown. Since I have no business there normally, I don't stop in Downtown very much save to take in a game or visit a specific restaurant. Thus, looking at the change from year to year was somewhat shocking: Simply categorizing the denizens of the 59 Overpass shadow as "homeless" is silly. They have a home: You're standing in it. The bathroom, specifically. Streams of piss were meandering down to the street from the "homeless" encampment. Ripe crap was piled by the sidewalk as well. I was shocked at the degree to which the City of Houston had allowed matters to crumble to this level of filth and squalor. But, the Mayor, County Judge, D.A., and all other City and County Officials had solemnly decreed that helping the "homeless" was a prime concern, so, we got to trudge through a miasma of human waste to go see a baseball game.

Progress!

Leaving that City in my rearview was a wonderful feeling. Adios!

Republican.

 

[Big Frog II]

Even the homeless wouldn't live in Waco.

 

[gohornedfrogs]

Not sure if I'm seeing this right, but did this guy

grow a pair?

He’s got two pair.

Not quite a full house, though.

 

[Atom]

It is not a crisis. Have anyone been in downtown Fort Worth by the water gardens?

Way back machine, anybody remember Endzone and the creepy pics he'd post of girls at the water gardens? Guess he finally went to prison.

 

[Pure Purple]

Being lodged in Waco would be tantamount to residing in some horrendous Third World Country.

 

[FrogAbroad]

I miss the Austin of the 70s and 80s, not to mention the surrounding hills and spaces off to the west. Austin has metastasized all over the place, eating up the quaint little towns and discreet little hideaways that used to be there, reducing all to the anodyne common denominator of the strip mall and housing development stretching far out past where one once sped through the empty countryside seen only by livestock.

The spousal unit and I lived in Pflugerville 1968-1970 while I was in grad school at TU. Lovely little town. Attended church in Round Rock, another nice place 'way back then. When we'd head east to visit her family we'd take US 79 and enjoy the scenery and little towns along the way to Shreveport. Once in awhile, if the family finances permitted, we'd return home by Leslie's Chicken Shack in Waco. Austin was, what, 250,000 people back then? Something like that.

John Henry Newman said, "Growth is the only sign of life." That's certainly true of villages, towns and cities. The Pflugerville of our past is...well, passed. It's now a suburb, part of the "Greater Austin Area," or whatever they call it. Whatever became of Thorndale? Gause? Easterly? They were not exactly thriving when we made our last road trip to the in-laws' place the other side of Bossier, I'm pretty sure they're not prospering nowadays. But those are the signs, the side-effects of human progress as we know it. The race moves on, leaving one thing behind in favor of something bigger, newer and therefore ostensibly better. Metropolitan areas draw in virtually all elements of a society and concentrate them geographically so they are more obvious, more visible, more attention-worthy, regardless of their beauty or lack of it. The progress of human civilization accelerated as gatherers became farmers, who became merchants, who became city dwellers.

While a goodly number of us may wish for at least a partial return to bucholism as we selectively remember it, human civilization inexorably moves us towards urbanism. Is it good? bad? desirable? inevitable? Yes, it is all of those, since no advances are ever made without some degree of loss or sacrifice.

 

[Eight]

The spousal unit and I lived in Pflugerville 1968-1970 while I was in grad school at TU. Lovely little town. Attended church in Round Rock, another nice place 'way back then. When we'd head east to visit her family we'd take US 79 and enjoy the scenery and little towns along the way to Shreveport. Once in awhile, if the family finances permitted, we'd return home by Leslie's Chicken Shack in Waco. Austin was, what, 250,000 people back then? Something like that.

John Henry Newman said, "Growth is the only sign of life." That's certainly true of villages, towns and cities. The Pflugerville of our past is...well, passed. It's now a suburb, part of the "Greater Austin Area," or whatever they call it. Whatever became of Thorndale? Gause? Easterly? They were not exactly thriving when we made our last road trip to the in-laws' place the other side of Bossier, I'm pretty sure they're not prospering nowadays. But those are the signs, the side-effects of human progress as we know it. The race moves on, leaving one thing behind in favor of something bigger, newer and therefore ostensibly better. Metropolitan areas draw in virtually all elements of a society and concentrate them geographically so they are more obvious, more visible, more attention-worthy, regardless of their beauty or lack of it. The progress of human civilization accelerated as gatherers became farmers, who became merchants, who became city dwellers.

While a goodly number of us may wish for at least a partial return to bucholism as we selectively remember it, human civilization inexorably moves us towards urbanism. Is it good? bad? desirable? inevitable? Yes, it is all of those, since no advances are ever made without some degree of loss or sacrifice.

daughter has a friend who recently bought a house in pflugerville, familiar wit the area , but haven't been there for 20 years i asked where the house was located

i was told it was by the lake to which i was confused because the only lake i could think of on the east side of austin was with the power plant down by manor.

apparently they have built a lake out there some time the past 20 years and hutto is now a suburb of pflugerville which is a suburb of austin and fairly certain hutto and taylor are getting close to growing together