In Lubbock it is hot and dry and windy. The city is so windy that sometimes our stoplights bounce (something that seems to be unique to Lubbock).
The land is flat and we have restrictions on the height of our advertising signs to protect the view of our expansive sky. When there are clouds, the sunset is amazing.
The city is small enough that your almost guaranteed to run into someone you know anywhere you go, but we're big enough to have three universities and our own mall.
Music is big here but not in the same way it is in Austin. It's a private matter. Almost everyone has an instrument in their house, and most of them play. If it ever comes up in conversation, they just might play for you.
Lubbock was the largest dry city in the country until 2009 when we finally got a petition passed allowing alcohol to be sold in the city limits. There's a long history of bootlegging here, even today. Time Magazine reported that Lubbock had over 4000 bootleggers in 1957. When my husband and I bought our house, we found a bootleggers dugout basement hidden under a closet.
The city is very close to the farming community. So close in fact that some nights you can actually smell the cows from the stock yards and after cotton harvesting, the high winds combine with the dust from the empty cotton fields and we get dust storms. On the rare occasion when it rains, if it happens to rain during a dust storm, it will rain mud.
The unofficial city mascot is Cornelius (a man who we suspect is homeless but no one knows for sure) who rides an upside-down bike and wears a Texas Tech vest with flashing lights. If you search for "Cornelius Lubbock" you will find YouTube videos and a fan's page on Myspace.
Lost of people try to judge Lubbock against Austin and Dallas, but they are comparing apples to oranges. Lubbock isn't a big city, and doesn't try to be. It maintains some of that small town Texas feel while hosting a diverse culture infused by the universities.
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