*Travel Tips>>>San Antonio Travel Tips

What do you think of San Antonio?

Travel Info
My husband and I are considering the move from southern cali to san antonio, the main motivation being the price of living out here.My in-laws recently purchased a home and we are looking at the NW area / Bexar county / around the 78258 zip. We have a daughter who just turned 5 and I'm just wondering what the neghborhoods , schools and family life is like. Will it be a welcomed chage from LA like my husband claims or a step down like others have told me?

Travel Tips

I've lived here 53 of the last 57 years (Uncle Sam got 4 years in there.) I remember exactly one tornado and the mosquito comment was not my experience. Hot and humid in the summer--yes. My wife the tour guide says, "Welcome to San Antonio, the Home of Habitat for Humidity."

I can't really answer your question about it being a step down without knowing what interests you. We have a very good (not yet world class) symphony, a pro basketball team that is darn good, world class art museums, some great eateries from hole-in-the wall Mexican food places to one of the top ten restaurants in the country (La Reve...no I haven't eaten there)

San Antonio is world headquarters for AT&T (formerly SW Bell) Valero Energy and Clear Channel Communications. We have a branch of the UT system (UT-San Antonio) with about 30,000 or so students on two campuses. One of the current projects for the city is landing a campus under the Texas A&M system for the southside....near the new Toyota plant that will turn out its first truck ever on the 17th. We also have four private colleges and an extensive junior college system.

Traffic, housing and living costs are still very reasonable. It is a city of 1.2 million, so it isn't what it was 15 years ago, but then you can still get from one side of town to the other most any hour of the day in under 45 minutes. Sometimes much less.

I'm sure we don't have the social scene that is LA. Although Eva Longoria and Tony Parker seem to make some headlines here.

The school district in NW Bexar County is the Northside ISD. It has been struggling to keep up with exploding growth. The estimate is there will be more than 50,000 new homes built in western Bexar County in the next ten years. No, the homebuilding slowdown hasn't hit here very hard. That said, it is a very good school district. (I graduated from Northside schools many years ago....) There are some outstanding private schools if that is more to your liking. Again, I think you'll find the tuition rates very reasonable.

Hope this helps. If you have more questions, let me know.

Bill

I hope that helps.

Others
Visited several times,great weather,and I love the Riverwalk!
San Antonio is a very wonderful place to live and raise you kids, eventhough I dont stay there I have visited plently of times and it is beautiful!
Lived in Dallas 30 years. Been to SA many times, Great little town. Be prepared for mosquito's the size of your dog and some Hot, Humid weather, Hail Storms, Tornado's, I could keep going. Now in Temecula CA

But yes, Price of living is a lot cheaper
How funny, my husband and I were considering the exact same move! From SoCal to San Antonio! I spent 4 months out there and fell in love with it and have always wanted to move there. Maybe someday we will get to. (My husbands job put us in NorCal for now) Good Luck! I say go for the move!
(sometimes you get what you pay for.)

CONS:
monolithic mexican culture.

automobile based urban planning.

crime.

heat.

high teenage preg and uninsured infant rates.

little to no variety in the music scene.

12 hour drive just to get to Oklahoma, or NM.

PROS:
good place to raise a family, if you've got money.

voted one of the meanest cities to homeless, so we don't have very many compared to LA or (gasp!) San Francisco.

super library, no one really uses it either!

if you can afford to live in one of the great walled subdivisions in the NW side, you can almost forget about the tar paper shacks of the south side.

It's Texas, we treat out wealthy verry, verry nice here.
I'm a native San Antonian who inhabits...

VirtualTourist,
City Data,
Sperlings (don't believe everything you read on this site, though),
and countless other sites in my
endless attempt to escape the Alamo city.