Cupcakes
Selling cupcakes on South congress out of an Airstream trailer – 100% wade approval.
The Ritz
Alamo Drafthouse, the fine people who made the brilliant connection of serving beers and real food with movies instead of crap popcorn and high-fructose-corn-syrup, are moving into their new digs at the Ritz in downtown Austin this week.
The Ritz was never a ‘nice’ theatre, per se. It was never very opulent; it was kind of a working-class theatre, never very high on design. But back in the Thirties, when Sixth Street was a crazy, wild place, it was known as the ‘Western’ theatre and actual cowboys would come in, a lot of whom had never seen a movie before. They’d get freaked out, liquored up and loving it, and end up pulling out their six-shooters and shooting at the screen! The Ritz screen was riddled with holes from drunk cowboys.”
More about the history and the future of this space over on The Chronicle.
The Afterlife
In Austin, when you die, they say you go to Willie Nelson’s house.”
– Kinky Friedman – The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic: A “Walk” in Austin
One can only hope.
Moon Tower
Party at the moon tower. Everyone’s invited.
Austin, Texas is the only city in the world known to still operate a system. The towers are 150 feet tall and have a fifteen foot foundation. This type of tower was manufactured in Indiana and assembled onsite. In 1894, the City of Austin purchased 31 used lighting towers from Detroit. A single tower cast light from six carbon arc lamps, illuminating a 1500 foot (460 metres) radius circle brightly enough to read a watch. In 1993 the city of Austin dismantled the towers and restored every bolt, turnbuckle and guy wire. The 17 remaining towers were listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and are therefore protected from demolition. (read more…)
Rowing
I’m not trying to brag or anything but I’ve been around more than a few of the various out-doorsy scenes around this town. The mountain bikers, road biker, rope climbers, boulderers, gym-rats, running people, tri-people, stoner-backpackers, kayakers – the list goes on. The rowing dock people though, are probably the most interesting (from a people perspective), the most diverse for sure. Old, young, fat, skinny, tall, short – take your pick. The old guys that run the dock are what imagine myself being like as an older cyclist – as knowledgeable as they are cranky. A fine example is Sommers. I don’t know if this is the guy’s first or last name, but he seems really cool until you screw something up (which no matter what you do, you will screw something up around this dude) after which his handlebar mustache just exudes dismay-for-the youth-of tomorrow. Once you get ‘the look’ you’re pretty much left with the options of running away, or drowning yourself in the lake in the hope that your death will at least give him hope for the world, as there will now be one less asshat screwing up his day.
Take yesterday. After spending the entire day recovering from Saturday night, I decide to go for a row. As I’m getting setup I glance up to see what looks like half the 15 to 17-year-old population of Austin, in sit-on-top kayaks heading my way. A part of some ill-conceived youth outing. I imagine it was a similar feeling to the Japanese at Guadalcanal, looking out over the pacific and seeing nothing but American ships and slowly contemplating how monumentally screwed they were. Thus, in my haste to get the hell out of dodge, I didn’t push off from the dock hard enough, while simultaneously some freak gale decided to fire down the lake at precisely the wrong moment.
The result was chaos: I got pushed into two other rowing shells, and passel of giggling high school girls who had less of a clue as to what to do than I did. Finally the trip leader for the kayak excursion essentially tugboated me out of the traffic snarl. Quite humiliating. As I’m getting pushed to freedom, there’s Sommers standing on the dock, staring directly at me – the cause of the wretched clusterfuck . He stands there perfectly still for a moment, while his mustache imperceptibly twitches. Then his mouth flattens into an underscore and he shakes his head ever so slightly, walking away, leaving me to pursue option one of the Sommers-scorn-avoidance plan.
Like I said. It’s an interesting scene.
Rain
For those of you that don’t live here, there’s dog park somewhere under all that water. Downstream thousands of lost tennis balls are on a grand new adventure as they are swept out into the Gulf of Mexico. Apparently this if going to keep at it for a while, if you believe the world’s worst newspaper.
Saffron Shaded Submersibles
I recently decided that I didn’t have enough hobbies and as I live pretty close to the lake now, rowing would make a nice compliment to the other stuff I do. I’ve thought it looked like a good time especially in the summer when running gets pretty awful and bike rides are curtailed to after dark madness to dodge the heat.
We had the second of four lessons today, which basically consisted of a bitchin-80’s-style safety video and a recap of what we learned before (don’t drown, don’t run into things, try to go straight – I got two out of three right). Anyhow mechanics of rowing aside, this is quite a zen thing. It’s a pretty cool thing to strike out on the lake at sunset and crank out few miles, soaking up the relative coolness of the lake.
You also run into a lot of lake-people, some hard core (you know who you are), some not so hard core (stoned hippies, who couldn’t put the J they were smoking down long enough to turn their freakin canoe out of my way) and some just damn funny, very Austin types. I was coming back to the dock today and this big guy in a sit on top Kayak kind of meandered into my path. In these rowing shells, they got fast and straight really well, but they don’t exactly corner on a dime. On Town Lake it’s kind of like driving a super tanker in a bathtub.
So I drop the oars in and slow myself down in order to figure out where he’s going so we don’t reenact the Exxon Valdez disaster. With the boat stopped I can hear singing. It takes few seconds but coming form a 300lb dude, in a lil-bitty kayak is the Beatles Yellow Submarine in damn-near perfect pitch. And not softly either, he was going for it with gusto, as they say. I reset my aim on the dock and cruise by the guy, singing along with him. I can only hope that somewhere George Harrison was watching.
On sixth…
This why I hate seeing shows at Emo’s. Doors at 8PM really means the band you paid to see goes on at 11:30, so when you show up to get your tickets at will call, you’re stuck with an hour and a half to burn.
Read more →
186. See A Large Building Demolished
Not quite as cool as #27 (go to outer space) on the list of things to do in this existence, but still a nice way to spend a Sunday morning. Only Austin could turn this into a civic event – there haven’t been this many people downtown, this early, since the 30’s.
Read more →
Austin Ice
Give me 95 and sunny any day over this.
The entire city is shutdown for a bit of ice and snow. The weathermen are all having aneurysms, they’re so excited and the statesman is, of course, calling this the end times.
People in the northeast are laughing at us similar to the way we laugh at their ‘heat waves.’ An amusing anecdote to Texas is that nobody can drive in ice, snow or really anything slippery. We do many things well here, but not that. Hence the metropolitan lockdown.
A bike ride would be pretty cool though…