Part 1 (Austin, TX): notes on Austin and the ACL

This city kicks ass.

Think the sprawl of Phoenix meets the eccentricity of Tucson, with a bit of "Don't mess with Texas" in between. Subtract the guy in the taxi, and there you have Austin.

The state capital of Texas is also the self-proclaimed "weirdest city" in Texas. Weird is right. Driving around the other day, I saw a bunch of human-sized fruit sitting on top of a parking garage and a two-story replica of the Eiffel Tower right off a busy thoroughfare. I met a former UT-Austin professor with a goatee, ginormous fake breasts and pink bikini bottom at the ACL Music Festival. I tried mushrooms here for my first time. Okay, I lied about the last one.

Austin is an old hippy community that has gradually become gentrified by invaders from satellite cities--not entirely unlike my former home of Tempe, Arizona. Once upon a time, Tempe too had a vibrant local life and culture, only to have both squashed by the likes of the Brickyard and whatever corporations that plowed through Changing Hands and Cookies from Home. In Austin, however, the long-since obliterated organic ethos of Tempe lives on in an extensive system of in-city bike routes, organic-medicine pharmacies and people who will actually drive a few miles to drop off their recyclables. Non-coformism and "green living" strike on in place of "image reversal" and "culture overhaul". "Keep Austin Weird" has become the unofficial but popular motto of Austin, while weirdness has offically become code for hippy-safe and accessible.

I came across an article in a local alternative magazine the other day, and reporters quoted a pastor as saying something to the effect that "Keep Austin Weird" was a self-contradicting paradox--that preservation is a conservative effort to keep alive a liberal consciousness. How does one preserve the unorthodox without making it normal or routine? The answer, he said, is Austin. I'm inclined to agree.

I guess that it's no so outrightly weird as people say. On the University of Texas at Austin campus, lady students around campus wear flat-soled shoes and athletic short that actually do not, and you might not believe this if you attended Arizona State within the last five years, ride up their asses and flash buttcheeks as if they were blinking, half-obscured headlights. I'm amazed. Male students look like any others, I guess, although I notice a severe lack of collar-upturned, sunglass-wearing Aber-Fitchers. It's almost like people can think for themselves around here--except for the taxi driver.

I don't mean to bash Tempe folk. Lord knows I'm a card-carrying member and a product of 23 years in the East Valley. My athletic shorts ride up my ass all the time. I mean to say that there's something alive here--a culture. Something more than nights spent out at the Cue Club and/or binge drinking with buddies. Take the music scene: the Austin City Limits music festival is one of the biggest in the nation. For three days, people rocked out to the Arcade Fire (every bit as good as Chris Martin says they are), Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand and Coldplay (well, that's when they weren't spewing up their lungs in the kicked-up dust that doubled as "breathable" air). After those three days, Austinites went back to their cool bars for great music year round. Cheryl Crow performed the other day in park on the Austin River for free, headlining soon-to-be hubbies' "Lance Thanks Austin". I don't care if you like Cheryl Crow or not. That's just cool.

The best yet is that people are just plain nice here. Call it good fortune or dumb luck, but I've been able to work off a week's worth off of hostle rooms by cleaning out fridges, putting up bulletin boards and breaking down bedframes. It also stands to reason that one considerate individual (whom I'm probably actively screwing over right now by saying this much) pitched a freebe to an aspiring young man with a good project. The point is, however, she's one of many who've been really generous here. So has the lady at the bike co-op. So have many of the faculty at UT-Austin. Without their help, I wouldn't know shit about bike repair or have half as many connections and conversations set up as I do now. The people of Austin have good life--vibes, aura or whatever you want to call it. Other than the guy who almost flattened me with his taxi (you sonofabitch bastard, watch out for cyclists when pulling out of your fucking parking lot. It doesn't matter that it was dark.), you have my thanks.

At this point, some of you might be saying "then stay in Austin, hippy." I can't though. I've got work to do. This is a good place to start from. This city kicks ass.