Keep Austin Surreal

If Philadelphia has as its recreational counterpoint in the Jersey Shore, and New York has always had its run of New England for its good times—from the Poconos northward, and east—Texas deserves to always hold Austin at its heart. Surrounded by semi-greenish hill country and otherwise very little, the city of Austin hangs its hat on a far different hook than the rest of the big-oil-rich/piss-poor-migrant state. Don’t dare assume it’s all about the music, either: it takes much more to Keep Austin Weird (unofficial motto; variations include “Keep South Austin Weirder” and “Keep Austin Thirsty”). It is the home of South By Southwest, the gaggle of post-pop punks and outa town bands who invade the city for two weeks in the spring: and if that’s a “festival” in central Texas, then I can assure you, there’s a festival happening right now on West 6^th St., one that comes replete with all the rights, privileges, recklessness, art, music and bombast therein.

Austin—downtown, but also out across the range of the tasteful-to-almost decrepit communities—has a distinct and personal vibe: like Boston in its transitory (or not) collegiate populations, and there’s smart people doing techy things most anywhere you look. But Austin is also like some artistic communities farther backwoods in New England: one may promote themselves as a musician, artist, seer, knower and do-er, however appropriately on the sidewalk, and, because there's such a populace of these types, there's a sense of critique unique to that hot central Texas town. The Austin Motel, a wonderfully chintzy treasure on South Congress Street, is a good example of this: take a vintage motel, complete with 1950s-green-and-pink bathroom fixtures, and extend the artsy, thrift-store décor farther than any contemporary may expect, including a wealth of ornamental lawn sculpture to discover around the pool, carefully selected wall art to ponder inside, and, importantly, massive venetian blinds to keep out the sun in the morning—because it comes, in Austin, and may be the biggest reason that people change their behaviors (start or stop drinking, for one). And of course, the room air conditioners at the Austin Motel are new, and can run full-blast cold, something the compressors of the 1950s likely couldn’t keep up with (and may not have had to).

One refab’d motel doth not an arts scene make (Breezewood Pennsylvania represent!), however. What’s next door, down the street? The Snackbar: the kind of diner you’d want if you were taking your grandparents to lunch, or auditioning a blind date before plunking down big bucks another time. Across the street: more food, a blues club (I missed Junior Brown, and at least 500 other acts, over my 72-hour, family-wedding-based tear); up the street, a vinyl record store that forgot to open, a shop featuring a fanatical diversity of nifty and reasonably-priced Latin and South American imports, arranged carefully on absolutely overpriced furniture: true antiques, imports, weathered by its travels, expensive charm in its oxidized hinges and hardware. What else? More food, being sold out of Airstreams and Winnebagos (“ah, they’re set up for summer,” you may saw, if it wasn’t always summer): small-batch ice cream, fried pickles, all manner of barbecue, and selected brave vegans discovering new ways to involve setain and rice noodles into their on-the-go fare. What else? A cleverly-disguised antique cooperative, where many booths featured deer, goat, and cat skulls, bleached by the Texas sun; I bought a scrapbook containing someone else’s religious fanaticism, a collection of newspaper clippings about tent revivals from Kansas to Texas, a pair of copper ashtrays shaped like natives’ canoes, and a Turbo Iced at Jo’s, a lovely little establishment built with the expressed purpose of sitting around and getting wired, beneath the quaint and colorful corrugated metal roofing of the shop’s sitting area. South Congress Street—on the other side of the river—may be one of the few places on the earth where the domesticated meets the non-local, and those lines of identity come to not matter at all: someone had spray-painted “I Love You So Much” on the side of Jo’s, in big, red cursive letters. I was stopped by some locals—he was from somewhere rural in Texas, and she was a Massachusetts transplant—and asked if I’d snap their photo in front of the newly painted message.

Where else are the locals, the college students, and the visitors alike? Floating in Barton Springs, the sixty-eight degree spring-fed body of water that beckons relief from the heat: slipping down an embankment over paying the two bucks to use the public access area, plunging into the cool water fully, and standing up refreshed, as the flow is mostly only waist deep. The natives sought refuge in Barton Springs, believing the water to have healing powers; after a record number of days of temperatures over 100, the magic still feels alive. On Sunday afternoons, the “Electric Circus” is a reasonable drum circle, as if there wasn’t reason enough to lie in the shade and keep cool after splashing around—the sound of the drums was haunting, so don’t forget to bring yours.

I had more than one resident of Austin describe how their economy has so far appeared “recession-proof”—there has been no bubble, no implosions of foreclosure or fallout from others’ bad economic decisions. Without having much knowledge of Texas’ unique tax structures and small business incentives, nothing seems too pricey in Austin: from the coffee cups at St. Vincent De Paul thrift shop on South Congress, to the fried mac-and-cheese sold out of an Airstream two blocks away. On 6^th Street, a host of bars—not unlike Beale Street in Memphis, or Burlington’s Church Street—offered a reason to keep moving while one drinks. Because there’s a band in each front window, and they’re all trying hard for your attention (easily transferred, after only a few Shiner Bock or Blond beers, or something made of Tito’s, an extravagantly good vodka—both made in Austin). Each bar has its characteristics and décor; the best way for a band to get to play in any bar is to spend time there, making friends with the bartenders and staff. Band merch was always present, in some corner of the drinking parlor; one guy passed out Camel Lights to the dozen or so left in the Red River Street club. I’m sure there is a restaurant that averages $100 per entrée in Austin, but I didn’t find it: not that I was looking, but even downtown’s fanciest joint, The Driskill Hotel, had a sidewalk sandwich board advertising their drink specials, where the opulence was free, but shut down early. The city-wide 2 AM closing time brought a team of Austin Police on horseback wandering down the pedestrian streets; sitting on the sidewalk leaning on a tree, some guy in a Hawaiian shirt strummed his acoustic and made up a song about The Police, as if it was Sting’s band patrolling the after-hours grid of downtown. Five minutes later, over the ownership and possession of a backpack that had been abandoned on the floor of the bar hours earlier, a yelling match nearly got physical, but enough drunk people stumbled around and between the pair.

So it’s worth asking: is Austin really for real? I mean, is this live music mecca actually where it ALL happens, from a hip art scene to a barbecue-based city-wide culinary fascination, to as many drum/bass/guitar-or-keyboard combos as one can stomach. Late one night at Headhunters (720 Red River Street), an acoustic guitar player and percussionist were making a racket—the finest racket one might desire from the unusual and fascinating pairing. Hoards of bats emerge nightly from the biggest bridge in town; why they took up residence there may or may not be obvious, but one can assume they’re keen on helping keep Austin weird. Many folks told me the wristbands visitors purchase during SXSW aren’t hardly necessary; others suggested I hit some of the alternative-to-the-Alternative scenes, or to come any other time of the year. Or, to catch the Film Festival that precedes SXSW by one week, and see the city gearing up. But perhaps they always are, geared up and motivated, if only for another cold beer or a one-dollar Irish Car Bomb. There's a lot of neon in that town, and it's still lit. What keeps Austin weird—and as real as it’ll ever be-- has as much to do with the Locals Knowing How to Party as much as the Party Staying Local: there’s miles of hot, vacant Texas surrounding the streets and bars and buildings. Those who hang together in the southern heat do not hang separately, but gather in shade and with celebration, across many degrees of revelry, not limited to poetry, music and tattoos.