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Like Locusts, Hollywood Stars and the Tech Elite Are Swarming on Austin, Texas
Red State ^ | 08/08/2021 | Jennifer Oliver O'Connell

Posted on 08/08/2021 8:51:39 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

It was inevitable. Hollywood types and the tech crowd, after advocating and voting in their idea of what a progressive utopia should look like, realize that they are not going to be exempt from its effects. So, what do they do? They move on to greener pastures, leaving the regular folks to live with the consequences.

Look out, Austin: Hollywood and tech are converging on you like locusts.

Should read Hollywood “stars” ascend upon Austin #Texas to ruin it like they did to #California https://t.co/M7qSOP0YWq

— Will (@warr1979) August 8, 2021

From the Hollywood Reporter:

The Texas capital has undergone a pandemic influx unlike anywhere else in the country thanks to a flood of invading tech companies (Samsung, Oracle) along with quarantine-exhausted, remote-working transplants from major cities seeking a lifestyle upgrade — including some notable actors who, like Padalecki (an Austin resident since 2010), suddenly decided that the Texas Hill Country was more alluring than the Hollywood Hills.

Elon Musk might have called it. The mogul — who is opening a Tesla gigafactory the size of 138 football fields just outside the Austin city limits — declared in February that the city is going “to be the biggest boomtown America has seen in 50 years.”

Musk is probably one of the biggest beneficiaries of the progressive largesse of California, with his tax incentives and coddling by California’s Governor Hair Gel, because electric cars are the “progressive future.” We see how well that turned out. After Musk battled to open up his Alameda, CA, plant in the midst of the lockdowns, he decided Austin was the new mecca in which to build his kingdom; California is just so yesterday.

Thanks for all the tax breaks! Now, onto my next meal ticket.

Yet even those accustomed to Austin’s growing pains have been stunned by the pandemic’s fallout, which rocketed housing prices by 43 percent in one year — the steepest climb of any major metro area in the country. Tales abound of home sellers being bombarded with all-cash offers the moment a property hits the market. During the first half of the year, 1,440 Austin-area houses sold for more than $100,000 over asking (versus 22 houses in the same period the previous year). “The market is so crazy — our house we bought in the fall is already worth so much more than we purchased it for,” says actor and L.A.-to-Austin transplant Becca Tobin (who wrote a guest column for this week’s THR titled “Why I left Hollywood for Austin”). “It’s like, ‘Do we turn around and sell this house again?’ ”

The Hollywood glitterati seem to make an art form of this. Back in the ’90s, they did the same thing to certain regions of Idaho and Montana; scooped up Summer and Winter homes for a song, and drove up the prices so high that the local folks who had lived there for generations, and weren’t planning on going anywhere else, were now priced out of the market. This is essentially what Tobin said she’d do in the companion op-ed mentioned above:
L.A. is a wonderful place. It’s still going to be the mecca for what we do for a living and it probably will be for the rest of time. I’d never say never to going back. I have a hard time sitting still. I don’t get attached to houses. I don’t get attached to cities. So if I need to return, I won’t go kicking and screaming.

Must be nice to be that cavalier about the destruction one leaves in one’s wake. But, hurray for Hollywood!

Apparently, actor Matthew McConaughey has been a one-man welcome wagon:

“I’ve been just waiting for the secret to get out,” drawls Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey, who’s evolved into an unofficial Austin brand ambassador (and, many hope, a Texas gubernatorial candidate challenging Republican incumbent Greg Abbott in 2022). “I’m excited for the growth. We’re not going back. We don’t have a landmark like Niagara Falls or Disney World or the Eiffel Tower. They’re all coming for the vibe — we’ve got people.”

Along with the people, you also have the crime. Austin has been seeing rising crime like every other progressive city. Like all good liberal bastions, the Austin City Council voted to defund the police, and now they are suffering the consequences.

I reported on a shooting during the Republic of Texas (ROT) Biker Rally back in June. While Mayor Steve Adler tried to jump on the gun control train, Governor Greg Abbott keeps slapping the progressive posturer down—it’s still Texas, after all. But like any pestilence, if left unchecked, it will ultimately eat away at what makes Texas great — and Austin is ground zero.

You were warned.

Austin also has a growing homeless problem, although the residents are trying to push back. These Hollywood and tech snowflakes were tired of stepping over homeless on Hollywood Boulevard and the Embarcadero? Now, they get to do it in Downtown Austin.

Austin residents voted overwhelmingly to reinstitute Prop B, an anti-camping ban that restricts encampments on public and restricted property. But, the better angels of the Austin City Council are choosing not to enforce it.

This is after today’s attempted clear-out of tents:

The campers:
– Brazenly setup in front of City Hall
– Knew it was 100% illegal
– Each offered multiple services but refused.

Crazy that @MayorAdler and @GregCasar caused this, now can’t fix it. pic.twitter.com/ZpNk0E63uB

— Manna (@Moozle6) June 15, 2021

Among the Hollywood set that now domiciles in the Lone Star State:

[…] newcomers are Zachary Levi (who plans to build a studio on his property in nearby Bastrop), Scott Eastwood, Adrianne Palicki, Adrian Grenier and James Van Der Beek. “At the park in Beverly Hills near the house we just moved away from, you were not allowed to fly a KITE,” The Beek groused on Instagram as he moved his family to Texas in November. “Also not allowed at any park in Beverly Hills: Riding a bicycle, climbing a tree, learning anything from an instructor, using weights … when people ask why we’re moving our kids out of L.A., these are just some of the reasons.”

Well, James, try not to mess it up, mmmkay? Don’t bring along the voting habits that created the political climate and the restrictions that caused you to flee California. Because if you do, you’ll be looking to domicile elsewhere in 10-15 years.

If the locusts haven’t razed most of the country by that point.



TOPICS: Society; Travel
KEYWORDS: california; exodus; hollywood; texas
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1 posted on 08/08/2021 8:51:39 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

As if Austin isn’t wack already.


2 posted on 08/08/2021 8:54:55 PM PDT by rktman (Destroy America from within? Check! WTH? Enlisted USN 1967 to end up with this? 😕)
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To: SeekAndFind

Won’t they have to continue paying California taxes for the next ten years?


3 posted on 08/08/2021 8:55:44 PM PDT by vigilante2
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To: SeekAndFind

Texas - It was nice while it lasted.


4 posted on 08/08/2021 8:57:10 PM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: SeekAndFind

Same thing in Georgia.

Here our elected representatives are actively pursuing these people. As the Lt Gov has said, they want to turn Georgia into the ‘tech capital of the East’.

Not sure I’m down with that.


5 posted on 08/08/2021 8:58:14 PM PDT by qaz123
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To: rktman

The powers-that-be want it so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_Austin_Weird


6 posted on 08/08/2021 8:58:46 PM PDT by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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To: Jamestown1630

The new improved Panem?


7 posted on 08/08/2021 8:59:56 PM PDT by rktman (Destroy America from within? Check! WTH? Enlisted USN 1967 to end up with this? 😕)
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To: SeekAndFind

Californians are looking to do to Texas what Northeasterners have attempted to do to Florida. They turn their states into HellHoles and then relocate and proceed to vote for the EXACT policies they ran from. Floridian elections are nail biters because of the rampant relocation of Northeast Liberals. We win only because of the fact that we who love our State are far more motivated than the Leftists Libs who have moved here. But, this is getting dicier and dicier as the massive relocation of Baby Boomers Libs continues.


8 posted on 08/08/2021 9:03:32 PM PDT by ocrp1982 ( Bibicly)
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To: ocrp1982
Californians are looking to do to Texas what Northeasterners have attempted to do to Florida.

That also happened to Vermont and New Hampshire--both tail-light-red states until the hordes from Greenwich Village overran Vermont as transplanted Bostonians swamped New Hampshire.

9 posted on 08/08/2021 9:18:50 PM PDT by Fiji Hill
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To: Fiji Hill

The state motto of New Hampshire is “LIVE FREE OR DIE”.

By the way their residents voted the past several elections, it’s looking like they’re choosing “DIE”.


10 posted on 08/08/2021 9:29:51 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

There is a long pattern:
*Republicans make a state rich and prosperous (TX, GA, ID)
*Democrats flee their state and move in (CO, VA, AZ)
*Democrats make the state like the ones they left (CA, MI, OR)
*State becomes a sewage pit and Republicans are elected to clean it up (MO, MS, AR)


11 posted on 08/08/2021 9:29:58 PM PDT by Renfrew
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To: SeekAndFind

Bttt


12 posted on 08/08/2021 9:32:45 PM PDT by Guenevere (When the foundations are being destroyed what can the righteous do)
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To: SeekAndFind

Bttt


13 posted on 08/08/2021 9:32:46 PM PDT by Guenevere (When the foundations are being destroyed what can the righteous do)
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To: Fiji Hill

“Californians are looking to do to Texas what Northeasterners have attempted to do to Florida.” My friends and family have discussed how is this Contamination possible when Libs kill their children in the womb at a rate far higher than Conservatives. We have discussed this in quite some detail. Our mutual conclusion is, the Public School System. Gov’t schools actively undermine the parent’s teachings of their own children. Public school teachers, administrators, etc... are a nationwide subversive network of Socialists/Communists.
We send our children to those people every single day to be indoctrinated into this anti-American philosophy while we go to work. This anti-American Indoctrination of our Children goes on for YEARS!!! From grade school all the way through College/University.


14 posted on 08/08/2021 9:33:24 PM PDT by ocrp1982 ( Bibicly)
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To: Renfrew

Well, the same can be said of the City that closest to where I live.

* New York City used to be rich and prosperous

* Democrats get elected and make the city a debt ridden, dirty, crime ridden place.

* Republicans take over to clean up the mess ( Giuliani and Bloomberg ).

* After some time, the residents get tired of the routine and start voting for Democrats again ( Bill De Blasio ).

* The City goes back to being a debt ridden, dirty, crime ridden place.


15 posted on 08/08/2021 9:33:32 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Texaforniacation - making Austin a bigger sh!thole than it already is.


16 posted on 08/08/2021 10:18:02 PM PDT by The MAGA-Deplorian (Democrats are lawless because Republicans are ball-less!)
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To: SeekAndFind

Not this past election.

NH went Republican in all branches of state government and have passed some good state legislation recently.


17 posted on 08/08/2021 10:49:36 PM PDT by metmom (...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith…. )
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To: dfwgator
Austin has been big time liberal Left for decades now. This is not new.

So Austin will just get worse. The rest of Texas should survive.

18 posted on 08/09/2021 1:09:20 AM PDT by HotHunt
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To: qaz123

Wasn’t it also Georgia that Hollyweird wanted to start shooting movies in because of the lower cost?


19 posted on 08/09/2021 1:34:49 AM PDT by Bikkuri (If you're conservative, you're an "extremist." If you're liberal, you're an "activist.")
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To: SeekAndFind

Fifty years ago the most popular bumper sticker in Colorado was...

“DON’T CALIFORNICATE COLORADO!”

Well, it has been, and now they are moving in on New Mexico and Texas.


20 posted on 08/09/2021 6:20:23 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (30 days! FB jail for mentioning a Monty Python script about tranneys, and the 1936 Olympics.)
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