Overall, San Antonio is a nice place to live. The area you're referring to (north of the airport) is nice. Basically, anything north of 410 is guaranteed to be at least decent. Crime is really only a problem on the southside (primarily) and eastside of town. We get random teenagers occasionally vandalizing stuff but that's about it. My girlfriend works at KENS5 so I get hear all about it.
A couple of things to keep in mind - it's hot (95+F) 9 months out of the year (but not as humid as Houston), the culture is Hispanic dominated (may be good or bad depending on your preference), traffic on 1604 (outer loop) gets pretty damn bad around rush hour, and we're heavy on the restaurant chains (not quite as eclectic as some would like). The inner loop (410) usually flows much better during rush hour.
That said, the traffic is usually quite reasonable (compared to other large cities), the housing is well priced, the people are generally friendly (somewhat small town attitude), lots of good tex-mex to choose from, and we haven't been affected too much by the ongoing recession.
As far as things to do, there are tons of sport leagues (if you're into that), 3 IMAX theatres and one independent movie theater, gaming places like Dave and Busters,
Bexar Brewers , a reasonable mix of good-to-high-end restaurants, and, of course, the downtown scene. My friends and I rarely find ourselves downtown, it's basically a tourist trap. But they do have a couple of good bars (Pat O'Briens, Howl at the Moon, etc.). We normally end up at good beer bars like
Freetail,
Flying Saucer,
Blue Star,
Stonewerks, etc.
Let me know if you have anymore questions...I've only lived here for ~5 years, but I've lived in Texas my whole life...