I’ve lived in Austin for nine years or so from Houston. I live down south in a house with my fiancé and our son. We bought our house about a year and a half ago, and I think we ended up with a good deal due to a murder-suicide happening inside of the house.
The worst part about Austin, in my opinion, has to be the traffic. Transportation infrastructure is severely lacking. The highways are too small to accommodate the load, and the surfaces roads back up almost as worse as the highways.
With that being said, the skateboard scene here is awesome, and there are a ton of people who skate. No-Comply is the only shop. House Park is the park that everyone skates, but there is a local skate park in all the major suburbs surrounding Austin. There’s also some cool DIY going on right now with wooden ramps and ledges at a basketball court on the east side and a cement ditch spot in the south.
Food wise: there are ton of restaurants to eat at, but the selection in anything authentic, other than BBQ, is somewhat limited. Some of my favorites are Valentina’s (Tex-Mex BBQ), Matt’s El Rancho (Tex-Mex; get the Bob Armstrong), Ramen Tatsu-Ya (tsukemen on point), Kemuri (Japanese BBQ fusion), Better Half (New American with a bar and great coffee game).
There are a ton of swim spots along the local creek, but the creek is mostly dry now. You can also check out Barton Springs and Deep Eddy for year round swimming. Each hover around the mid to high-60’s in temperature.