Texan transplants love the Big Apple

Exerpted from an article
By Gene Trainor
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Sunday, January 26, 2003-- I have wondered for a while why Texans have such bad feelings toward New York City, aside from the support that followed the 9-11 attacks. I'm told that a popular bumper sticker in 1980s was: "Love NY? Take I-30 East."

Naturally, Hank Hill of King of the Hill, the Texas satirical cartoon on the Fox network, was stunned to learn during an episode that he was born in New York. It wouldn't have been as funny if Hill, who has more pride in his Texas roots than a cactus has prickers, was born anywhere else.

To me, a person who has lived in both areas but is native to neither, New Yorkers and Texans have much in common. They both think they live in the center of the universe. And don't waste your breath telling them otherwise.

Rather than talk to New Yorkers about Texas, something that's been done so often that the topic could put a jack rabbit to sleep, I figured I'd talk to Texans who moved to New York.

And for newcomers from New York, it might provide a trip down memory lane.

Believe it or not, many Texans call the Big Apple home. Although several said they love and miss Texas, they would not live anywhere but in Hank Hill's birthplace.

"I have found my place in the world," said Scott Ramsey, 33, who has lived in New York for almost six years. "There's so much going on here all the time, literally 24 hours a day."



Nowhere else could she and a friend walk down a street -- in this case in Times Square -- and be asked by an audience recruiter from CBS to see the Late Show with David Letterman.

Kambri Crews, 31, said she can decide what to wear for her paralegal job by turning on the television. Her office building is a backdrop for NBC's The Today Show outdoor shots. If people are wearing coats, she knows to bundle up.

But David Gaschen, 33, of Lubbock plans to return to Texas some day. He said he moved to the New York area in August 1999 for his singing and acting career. He is an understudy for the phantom in the Broadway production of Phantom of the Opera.

"If I wanted to make it on Broadway, I knew I had to move where Broadway was," he said.


Crews, a 2 1/2-year resident, realized that she was in another universe when she was the only Anglo in a subway car.

"This is so cool," she recalled thinking. "I loved it. Wow, there's nobody on this car like me."

Ramsey, a marketing manager, said the rapid pace and the crowds surprised him.

"It really amazes me how many people can be at one location at one time, how many people can cram themselves on a subway," he said.

Gaschen, a self-described conservative, said New Yorkers' liberalism was a big change.

"In Lubbock, you could get shot if you said some of the things that I heard around here," he said.

Another shocker is the cost of living there. Gregory Gorman, 30, who plans to go to graduate school in the fall, pays $1,850 a month for a two-bedroom apartment, which has views of midtown Manhattan. Crews said she pays $1,200 a month for a two-bedroom apartment in the Astoria section of Queens, and "people are jealous of me."

Gaschen said he pays $2,000 a month to rent a roughly 1,300-square-foot house in the New York suburb of Darien, Conn. He estimates that the house would sell for $650,000.

By far, the hardest adjustment occurred after 9-11.

"It was really scary to be here for a while," said Crews, holding back tears. "It took the wind out of my sails. It's still been hard to have lived here when something so bad happens."

Gaschen was living in Brooklyn at the time and could see the twin towers of the World Trade Center from his apartment. Then 9-11 happened. Dust was everywhere.

"I never had an instant change my life more than that," he said. "It was devastating. I will never forget it."

They draw comfort from Texas. Crews said she misses Sonic Drive-Ins, Whataburgers, barbecue, good chili and fairs. Gorman, a basketball and football fan, said he misses the state's fanaticism about sports, and he misses people waving at you even if they don't know you. Ramsey misses great Mexican food and living in a house with a yard. Gaschen misses the open sky, bass fishing in the winter and the friendliness of Texans.

They all miss their families. But they say they still have their Texas values. Lucio said that when she arrived she vowed she would remain polite and amiable.

"New York needs a little Texas, if you ask me," she said.

In fact, Crews, Gorman and Ramsey, all graduates of Richland High School in North Richland Hills, have capitalized on their Texas roots by forming Tex in the City, a theater troupe featured Dec. 8 in an article by my colleague Terry Lee Goodrich. Their November cabaret-style show, which featured an all-Texan cast, was a sellout. Their interest in the arts helped draw them to New York.

To the natives who worry that the migration of Yankees to North Texas is changing the cultural landscape, take heart. Texans are changing New York City. The cross-cultural migration that is America continues.