Corpus Christi

I am from Corpus Christi, TX.  It is a beautiful city that is surounded by water,  with the bay of Corpus Christi on the east side, the Laguna Madre in the middle and of course there is the beach.  It has an older population, though times are changing with the growth Corpus Christi A&M has brought it.  The population is some 300,000 and has grown about 10% since 2000.  The two prominent racial demographics are (60%) hispanic and (33.3%) anglo.  There are many different sub-cultures around Corpus, the military and defense base workers, the hispanic community, the oil field and its workers, the cowboys, and the surfers and beachgoers.  It is a day time city, there is an abundance of things to do during the day, yet the night life is nonexistant.  Corpus has the 5^th largest port in the United States and the economy is largely made up of service jobs, government jobs, oilfield jobs, wholesale and retail jobs (tourism is a big driver).  It was certainly a fun city to grow up in, yet I am not planning to head back immediately.  There is a low unemployment rate there, yet it is far from the economy and booming job market in Houston.

There are two main areas in Corpus that get mistaken for separate municipalities, Flour Bluff and Calallen.  I am from Flour Bluff and the running joke is Flour Bluff, America.  There is also Padre Island were all of the fun happens, at least in my opinion.  On one side of the island you have the Laguna Madre where boating and fishing are big and in the last 10 years Packery Channel has opened up.  It has made the Laguna a far more pleasant place (more water flow, less stagnent) and that leads us to the beach.  The beach is Corpus’s main draw in my opinion.  It is 100x better than Galveston (not quite the party scene of South Padre though).  Schliterbahn has recently announced that they are moving to town and that will be on the island as well.  Our claim to fame is Selena.  In my opinion Corpus Christi is the most beautiful city in Texas, it is just so far from everything that it is forgotten