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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ian@SI who wrote (137535)	7/23/1999 10:44:00 PM
From: J. D. Main	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176388

Nashville-Austin.....Cities share more than Dell-------> THE DELL DEAL Nashville, Austin share more than Dell By Mike Kilen / Tennessean Staff Writer Austin, Texas, and Nashville are like cousins. They have similar genes but don't always claim each other. The cities are both state capitals of roughly the same size, growing million-person metro areas with a small-town feel. Songwriters around every corner. An 8.25% sales tax. And two favorite sons leading the run for president. "We're kin," said Carlyne Majers, of the Texas chapter of the Recording Academy. "We put our heads together. "I consider Austin the raw talent. And once we have groomed the talent, we have to look to Nashville." The noted country music connections between the cities have led to numerous other comparisons, both trivial and parochial, since Dell Computer Corp. announced its expansion to Nashville. Other similarities: • The two are ranked roughly the same in the most recent Places Rated Almanac for most livable cities of 351 metro areas -- Nashville, 37th, and Austin, 45th. • Both cities are big tourist draws in their regions -- Nashville with 9.5 million annual visitors and Austin with 14 million. • Nashville is the 23rd largest city in the United States and Austin is the 27th largest. • Both cities showcase rolling, green hills with a large river running through them. • Al Gore Jr., who had lived and worked in Nashville, and George W. Bush, who lives in Austin, are sons of famed politicians. Both are weighing runs for the presidency, and considered frontrunners at this point. It makes sense to compare, say those who have lived both in Austin and Nashville. They're cities, they say, that serve as centers of a vast rural countryside that fuels the heart of their music. "They are the last two songwriter towns," said Barton Herbison, executive director of the Nashville Songwriters Association International. "There are no others in the country, not even New York or L.A." But don't ever say they're sister cities. Nashville is the gentile Southerner, the business-like cousin, dressed and ready to impress. Austin is the rough-and-tumble cowboy kin mixed with equal parts sandal-clad hip. "Austin still has a coating of hippie on it," said Sandy Knox, a longtime Nashville songwriter who moved to Austin eight months ago. "Let me put it this way: I haven't worn high heels in eight months." In Austin, anything goes, said Roland Rust, a Vanderbilt marketing professor who transferred from the University of Texas in Austin in 1989. "Nashville is button-down in that respect. "Business in Austin is a lot of entrepreneurs and wheeler-dealers, and business in Nashville is a club. If you aren't in the club you are nobody." Now, Austin and Nashville are cousins in business together. J.D.