Austin: Not Just for Hippies?

As though you needed another reason to adore this city of ours, Forbes magazine last week ranked Austin the #3 Best City for Business and Careers among metros*. The metrics used to rank cities included business and living costs, education levels, job opportunities and income growth, quality-of-life issues, and most importantly, a vague "culture-and-leisure" index. No doubt our scads of gentlemen's clubs helped sway the judges.

Coming in at first and second were Boise, Idaho and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. We're thrilled for them, of course, but can they also offer a vibrant music & arts scene and awesome breakfast tacos to boot?

Yeah, we thought not.

Rouding out the rest of Texas: Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth came in at 13, 19 and 20, respectively. This makes our state one of the hottest places for business, as well as one of the nerdiest: fully eleven percent of the workforce in Austin are engineers.

Also of interest, computer übergeek Michael Dell is the second richest Texan and 18th wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth upwards of 16 billion dollars. Seriously, throw us a friggin' party already.

*as in: cities with populations greater than 345,000, not Diesel-jeaned hipsters