Hyde Park

Section of Austin, close to the university, that is full of shabby-chic, happily dilapidated little old homes that are owned by savvy UT faculty members and Austin business leaders, and then rented to college students who either get two roommates per room to make the rent, or whose parents have a spare 2-3K a month so that Schulyer/Dylan/Kaitlin/Caleb/insert trendy-late-eighties-early-nineties kid name here can pretend they didn't grow up in Highland Park in Dallas or hope that nobody finds out they went to Westlake High School in Austin. Hyde Park is perfect for upper middle class kids who want to pretend they're slumming it - but with STYLE! See, because living in a four-room house with a sagging roof seems much cooler if you remember that maybe Elisabet Ney once ate soup under said saggy leaking roof. It's really a sweet neighborhood, but none of the houses are very big, none of them are really kept up very well, and you really have to find creaky floors with missing planks, windows that don't open, chipped lead paint, ancient plumbing, and having one teeny-tiny bathroom in a house with two or three bedrooms "charming". Many do, especially when they first live in Austin. After graduating and getting a job that pays actual money, nobody still lives there. Hyde Park is like Neverland, ha ha. It's a really young neighborhood full of young college kids from all socio-economic backgrounds - the poorer ones have roommates and the wealthier ones have their own place.