I was in your town this weekend staying with my wife's brother.
Houston is really a great city even though it is weird for me as an east coaster (eveything is designed around cars). But I love how affordable the city is. This is the 4th largest city in the county and they paid half what I did for my house. That's pretty cool and I am envious. They had some bougie ass shit that my wife liked too. Super diverse city too.
Galvaston is shit though. Even Jersey has better beaches.
The best thing was they had one of those Japanese toilets in their house. Damn that wasn't some service yo!
It's affordable but your commute would be murder.
The food is amazing and the night life is decent for sure.
For living, I actually like the newer style large homes that are common in the suburbs there and in Texas and frankly most of the south. St Louis doesn't have anything like that and even new homes are built more functional and conservative with fewer angles and curves on the inside.
If you despise winter, it's got that going for it too. It's perfect for owning a year round sports car to drive to work.
If you can somehow land a job in oil and gas, you'll make at least 20% and up to 50% more just based on the industry. Although the extra pay is really partially designed for employees to save for the next energy crash so they can remain local until things rebound again.
The shopping is first rate if you still buy things offline and you can find a store for just about anything. Malls are regularly packed so obviously retail isn't hurting too terribly.
All that said, much of the city is one big ugly strip mall or dilapidated suburb. Most of the massive space between the loop and the beltway is where the crime happens. Gentrification will never reach those parts of town since even the size of the more trendy inner loop is too large to fully gentrify. There's also a racial factor with the bad neighborhoods and the good ones in the outer cities and suburbs. So Houston is far more diverse than somewhere like Milwaukee or St Louis but predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods face the same issues as any other city. Sugarland is the exception and seems to be a literal diversity utopia where well to do white folks live in the same areas as well to do minorities. That's where you'd want to live if you moved to Houston probably.
Downtown is also just "okay" too compared to somewhere like Chicago or NYC. It's mostly for people that work there but I can't recommend it as a tourist spot unless you're seeing a show at the Hobby Center or going to a basketball game.
I think it's a great city though. It's just a matter of looking past the sprawl, heat, traffic, and lately it's sluggish economy!
