Why everyone should love my hometown of San Antonio, Texas

I’ll be honest, I was pretty excited to get out of San Antonio when I went to college. No offense, I loved it there, but much like most everyone I knew, we wanted to go and see something different. I’ve been gone for two years, and what’s crazy now in retrospect is how many people never leave and how many people want to go back. I’ll never argue that we’re perfect, but much like everyone else, here’s why I love San Antonio, Texas, and you should too.

San Antonio is a city on the Rise

Basically every city would probably argue this, but San Antonio in particular has had, according to Forbes, the BIGGEST growth in millenials in any U.S City, and there’s plenty of reasons why. UTSA (go Roadrunners!) is a place you can actually tell your parents you want to go college now and not just the place you went to because it was convenient. They made a football team in the last five years, and recently were declared college football’s best startup. The club and bar scene is fun (good enough to satisfy a star QB’s designs on a night out). In general, thousands of young people seem to want to move here, and it’s not hard to see why.

The food

You can get a BBQ sandwich literally anywhere

We’re three hours from the border so we have some of the best Mexican food on the planet, and we’re in Texas, so the BBQ is unbelievable. We have the Food network coming to the city for all sorts of delicacies, whether it be a three pound cinnamon roll, a 62 inch pizza, or just local favorites like breakfast tacos (which I miss the most out of anything since I left to be honest). This almost certainly is a reason behind our 31.1 percent obesity rate, which isn’t good, but just in case you needed proof the food was.

Culture

Did I mention we’re three hours from the border? When the Spurs in 2014 (whom we’ll get to) won the championship there were more Mexican flags than American flags at the parade. We have traditional “Texan” (yee-haw) traditions such as the Rodeo, which is important enough to move our Spurs to the road for two-three full weeks a year every season. Yet we also celebrate Fiesta, Cinco De Mayo, the Tejano Music Awards to honor the large Mexican population in our city. We also have the Riverwalk which is cool, and the Alamo, (which we remember for some reason even though hundreds of people died) which we should always remember.

The Spurs

I always find my way to a Spurs game whenever I’m in town

Seriously, everyone likes the Spurs. It’s not like other cities where people will only go to the games if the team is good. They show the games at bars, schools, nightclubs, or you can just go to the games, where we rank 12th (with 99.2 percent capacity filled) attendance, and usually tickets are pretty cheap. Also, we’re really good and win a lot of championships, so there’s that too.

So, we’re not LA, we’re not New York, and having lived there for two years, we’re certainly not Boston. Yet, we’re still a big city with a lot to do, with people that treat you like family wherever you go. If you don’t like us, that’s fine. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.