100% Austin is cool for like two days at a time. I'm doing the marathon there in Feb. I'll go up Saturday morning, run on Sunday, drive back Monday. I'll book a hotel within walking distance of the start/finish line and I won't go anywhere I cannot get to on foot. Houston traffic is hell, but Austin is damn near close. Plus the people are fucking insufferable -- at least Houstonians know their city sucks. Austinites are like "oh that weird homeless dude shitting on the sidewalk in front of where everyone is eating? That's a feature not a bug." I love San Antonio and the Hill Country area -- NB, Fredericksburg, Boerne, Wimberley etc. I'm also more of a fan of Dallas and Ft Worth than most people.
I visited Austin twice about 12 years ago. I cannot separate my opinion of the city from the girl I was visiting there at the time. So maybe it's awesome, maybe it sucks and will break your heart; my brain insists it's both.
Yeah, that's what everyone always says: "Austin was really cool in the '80s/'90s, man!" That's the same shit I hear all the time. Guess what? San Francisco was really cool in the '60s and '70s. It's not cool anymore, and neither is Austin.
I spent freshman year of undergrad there in the early 2000s -- oh man it pains me to type that -- and it was amazing as well. Imo it Austin doesn't deserve the level of hate it gets now, which has become kind of a meme in itself, but the reality is that it just isn't the same. What's crazy to me is that the reactions are either "oh man Austin is amazing!!" or "Austin is a shithole third world country" and there is literally zero in between, which I believe is where the reality resides. You can go there and have a good time, or you can go there and it'll suck. Depends on what you do and your attitude.