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Gene Todaro was ready for something different—a city with a pulse, vibrant and alive, a humming arts scene and a larger view, in general, of what a city could be.

But where to go? He and his wife, Rebecca, considered some of the places they loved to visit: New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles. The cost of real estate was a deterrent, however, as was the soul-killing traffic.

Relying more on gut instinct than anything else, the couple opted for Austin, Texas—the Third Coast, the capital of Texas, a poster child of successful cities often held up as a role model for late bloomers like Baton Rouge. It was sufficiently exotic without being so far from the South that the Todaros felt out of their element.

They departed Baton Rouge in fall 2006. Now they’re back, with a new appreciation of the downside of success—soaring property values are among the factors driving Austin’s celebrated funkiness to the brink of extinction. Also, there really is no place like home—even if home has issues.

“Austin is a fine town,” Gene says. “It’s a very well organized. It’s full of educated people.”

It’s also full of strangers, he says. Metro Austin’s population in 1980 was 585,051—a little less than Baton Rouge’s today. During the 1990s, Austin experienced a 48% surge, with growth averaging 3% annually since the 2000 census, according to the Austin Chamber of Commerce. The population surpassed 1.5 million in 2006.

“We’re used to two degrees of separation in South Louisiana,” Gene says. “We get to Austin, where 4,000 people a month are moving there, and it’s 100 degrees of separation. No one you meet knows anyone else. They all just got there. They’re all nice people, but the connectedness was a real barrier for me. I’m used to meeting somebody and us having mutual contacts immediately.”

Thus it was tough getting something as simple as a reference for an attorney or a pediatrician. Conversations with strangers, which the Todaros were used to in Baton Rouge, tended to be one-sided in Austin. Rebecca recounts a visit to the hair salon, where there might as well have been a “No Talking” sign.

“They’re not used to having conversations with their patrons,” she says. “I don’t know if everyone’s so well educated they don’t need to communicate, or they figure they’ll never see you again so they don’t have to talk to you. It took me about a week to notice that.”

The Todaros bought a house at Circle C Ranch, a “planned residential community” in south Austin. There was the market, the Starbucks, the schools and the baseball and soccer fields. Everything but the funk.

“It was so homogenous and so clean and so orderly,” Gene says. “There’s certainly no trash anywhere.”

Even in east Austin, supposedly the “rough” side of town, there were no fast-food wrappers, no beer bottles, no trash on the ground. Anywhere.

“That’s not an exaggeration,” Gene says. “You can ride through the poorest neighborhood. What is it? Civic pride? I don’t know. We were astonished at that. Nor do you really feel like you were going to get shot.”

Austin has other redeeming qualities, including fantastic public schools, extensive (if underused) public transit, relatively inexpensive homeowners and auto insurance, no state income tax, no heavy industry, low crime rate, cultural and artistic diversity, robust economy, good restaurants, outdoor activities everywhere and the Colorado River, which flows through downtown and is clean enough in which to swim.

But the property values are high, even in east Austin, as are property taxes—2.8%, nearly three times what they paid in Baton Rouge. And the traffic. It’s bad in Baton Rouge, Gene says, but it’s worse in Austin. From a business standpoint, rents were eye-popping.

“I couldn’t afford to rent a retail space anywhere,” he says. “The most outdated, out-of-the-way, bad location (with) no parking cost more money than I could afford, because Starbucks or other corporations are going into Austin and paying whatever the asking price. They don’t care.”

Apparently the “Keep Austin Weird” campaign, originally a humble attempt to counter the city’s accelerating slide into rampant commercialism and overdevelopment, didn’t work. The slogan was eventually adopted by the Austin Independent Business Alliance to promote local independent business. The phrase was trademarked by an apparel company in 2003.

But the biggest problem the Todaros had with Austin was that it wasn’t Baton Rouge.

“The biggest issue we ran into was that we missed the people in Louisiana,” Gene says. “Our friends here have a better understanding of the finer things in life than people just about anywhere. We live at a pace that is friendlier than most other places.”

Back in Baton Rouge, Gene has launched a new business, Elio Marcello’s Wine Warehouse, in the old Books-A-Million on Perkins Road, and has struck a deal to reacquire the wine and spirits store just up the street he sold two years ago. It’s called Cork & Bottle now, but will go back to being Marcello’s Wine Market in January. Rebecca, a professional harpist with the Baton Rouge Symphony, is reconnecting with the Baton Rouge music scene and giving lessons again.

The two have decided to nudge Baton Rouge toward being all it can be culture-wise rather than looking elsewhere. That includes supporting Opéra Louisiane, Baton Rouge’s first opera company, which is just now getting on its feet. Despite what Gene describes as Austin’s “sterile” quality, Baton Rouge should take note of the importance that city places on the arts.

“They’ve got a lot of things we want and we should want,” he says. “I think the arts are the key here, in my opinion. I think we discount how much art can inspire people, and I think art’s the key to the tech boom (in Austin). I think that’s what makes Austin work.”

As for Baton Rouge suffering Austin-style negatives to stellar prosperity someday, Gene thinks it’ll be a long time coming.

“I think we’re a long way from having that problem,” he says. “I think south Louisiana is going to be south Louisiana, for better or for worse.”

Stephen Moret, CEO of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, says the city could face similar issues to some degree in 15 or 20 years. As Baton Rouge grows, he says, it’ll feel less “small town” and more mid-size metro. Moret had just returned from Portland, Ore., where a local contingent spent four days, says Baton Rouge needs to control its own destiny, like Portland did.

“We need to work hard to build the distinctiveness of our community as we grow by following the lead of places like Portland that have placed a premium on good transportation and land-use planning, as well as quality of life,” he says.