The One-Millionth Blog Post about South by Southwest

Hey everyone. I got this weird thing called a "day job", which changed my schedule around and gave me an excuse not to post in this blog as much as I promised I would. I hope somewhere out there, someone was actually upset by that, because it's been a while since I've had a stalker and I'm getting nostalgic.

I attended South by Southwest! Great! Awesome for me! I did so because I basically live in SXSW, I like music and it's more fun than complaining about it. Well, I did complain some, but tried to limit it to things that are particularly disheartening about the crowds that were here last week compared with previous South-by years. I still haven't been able to process everything, it was a week that felt like a month and I found myself socially tested in a number of unusual situations, such as what could have easily turned into an altercation between me on my bike on the Lance Armstrong Bikeway and a pedicab that blocked me (she had an elderly couple as her passengers, it was awkward). The huge free events have brought more people than ever to this city, and for the first time I don't think we are able to properly handle it (by the way, if anyone from SXSW reads this, leave small free events at regular venues and house shows alone). It was a great week though, seriously. The best of my life? Almost.

Highlights:

-- Being one of 50 people to see Aziz Ansari, Michael Ian Black and Eugene Mirman, three of my favorite comedians, at the Comedy Death Ray show at the IFC Crossroads House* (not sure how I pulled that off)

-- Seeing one of my all time favorite bands, Paint it Black, for the first time.

-- Attending the premiere of Conan O'Brien Can't Stop (which was hilarious, Conan was there!)

-- Not getting trampled at the Strokes show.

-- Not getting punched by Ben Weasel.

-- Not getting tased or maced at Beauty Bar.

-- Getting tipped off about the Mars Volta secret show at Emo's. So glad I could make that.

-- Trash Talk, Off and Bad Brains at Emo's (Main Stage). Wow. Bad Brains played mostly faster hardcore stuff!

-- Supporting my friends in Zlam Dunk and Tactics whenever possible.

-- Getting in at the last minute to see Eugene Mirman and several other hilarious comedians at Esther's Follies with one of my best friends.

-- Hanging out with my best friends, riding my bike finally and amazing weather.

-- Occasionally feeling smug about being a local.**

Things that I hope are better next year:

-- Almost anything to do with infrastructure.

-- Almost anything to do with the tone and mood of the crowd. I miss the vibe from around 2006-2007.

-- Please don't trash my city.

-- Please don't make snide comments about my city if you've moved here and are disappointed because you did so after only visiting here during SXSW.

-- Please don't attempt to drive Downtown between Cesar Chavez and 10th Street unless you absolutely have to.

I bought a local wristband because I was unsure if I could get the time off during the day to attend free shows as usual, but it ended up saving me a lot of headaches for shows I wanted to see at night. It's not nearly as expensive as an ACL Pass. Speaking of, despite all of the new drawbacks to SXSW this year, it's still an infinitely better time to be a local than during ACL.*** Anyone can find something to do that appeals to then, and spending a lot of money is certainly not a requirement. If you're bitter about SXSW, and don't want to deal with the crowds, just hang out in South Austin and enjoy yourself anyway.

Thanks,

- Jordan

*If you're going to attend a free promotional place for the week, I highly recommend getting in at IFC. Also, free pretzels.

**This is also a negative, because I don't like being smug if I can help it, and usually feel bad after I catch myself doing so. I don't like when people are smug so I shouldn't be so myself, ever. Sometimes though I don't realize it when I am coming off as such.

***Stay tuned for my usual disgruntled post about the Austin City Limits Music Festival coming in September.

OMG, this Place is, Like, So Weird and Funky

Lots of people like to visit Austin during holidays and festivals. That's fine with me because I would visit here too. However, and I hope I'm wrong about this, but there seems to be a gradually developing sense of annoying entitlement among visitors here (especially during ACL) that was once limited to New Yorkers flooding New England (or so the legend goes) with their presence during the peak of fall foliage (whatever that is). It's not really hard to tell who is probably from out of town. Here are the signs:

• Taking a group picture, with the State Capitol and Congress Avenue in the background, from the middle of Congress Ave. as cars swerve around them.
• Marveling at someone playing guitar on a sidewalk, as if that's unusual.
• Waiting in the middle of an active traffic lane for a parking spot to open up directly in front of their destination (anyone that's been in the Austin area more than a year knows this is not something that should ever be expected or deserved). 
• Driving under 30 miles per hour on any stretch of Lamar Blvd. (speed limit is usually 35-40, in reality it's actually 50 for most people that live here).
• Wearing what can vaguely be described as a "cowboy hat" (especially common among SXSW tourists).
• Attempting to take pictures of the Congress Ave. Bridge bat flight well after sunset. This is a futile exercise because the bats are dark, the sky is dark and the bats, while numerous, are really small. Save that room on your memory cards for the Stevie Ray Vaughn statue, pictures of you and your friends in front of Chuy's or one of those guitar sculptures on Congress.
• Expressing genuine surprise when the temperature surpasses 100F degrees between May and September and stating something like "I didn't realize it would get this hot here", apparently having never before having looked at where Austin is on a globe.
• Turning east on Sixth Street downtown*.
• Left turns from the right lane** (for some reason a lot of visitors seem to think this is legal here)

I love the fact that people want to come and hang out in my city. And a lot of people do so in a way that is beneficial to themselves as well as the people who actually live here. But please, don't be lame and we'll resent you less (if at all). 

Also, while I realize that Austinites aren't the best drivers in the world, they're far from the worst. Please don't judge us by your terrifying experiences on I-35, as most drivers on there are from other regions and haven't discovered how awesome (and worth it) the SH-130 toll road bypass is yet. Most people who actually live here use I-35 as little as possible. If anything, judge our driving by what happens on MoPac***.

Have a good afternoon, enjoy your time here, help us to be able to put up with your time here and keep Austin whatever.

- Jordan

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*A few months ago I observed a car with Georgia plates blow past me on Lavaca downtown, two lanes from the right lane and then rapidly turn right from that lane (the wrong way, from the very wrong lane) onto Sixth, probably thinking about how awesome they were while me and every other car behind them blared our horns in exasperated horror. I've got to hand it to the Californians for at least being much more  competent drivers (I really have nothing against people from California, love the state and its people, I just wish they'd pick some other cities besides ours to move to as well).

**As well as right turns from the left lane.

***MoPac is used almost exclusively by people who live here, does not have 100,000 semi-trucks per mile and is not being used by a sizable percentage of people from Dallas to get to San Antonio (or vice-versa).

Taco Vampires

I just stopped by the El Primo taco trailer* at 1st and Live Oak, one of my favorite places to get breakfast tacos for lunch in Austin. Today I went with bean, egg and cheese as well as migas, ham, egg and cheese with a ton of hot sauce...well, not literally 2,000 pounds of hot sauce, but, you know, a lot of it...because it is really good.

One of the great things about El Primo, besides its friendly owner, low prices and delicious authentic taco goodness, is that it sits in front of Once Over, which is one of my favorite (and one of the best) coffee shops in south Austin or anywhere. The 78704 area of south Austin is particularly blessed with an abundance of pretty good-to-good local coffee joints (which will be the subject of another post later on in 2011).

Prior to my stop at El Primo I went into Once Over to score some of their epic** coffee. While standing in line in front of me, a couple*** was ordering coffee and having an entertaining conversation with the usual afternoon barista dude, who's name escapes me at the moment because I'm kind of a jerk about remembering the names of people that I've talked to more than a dozen times.

While I was standing there, the cool barista dude**** mentioned that he was on his sixth shot of espresso for the day, which prompted the person filling the guy in front of me to remark that on the seventh shot of espresso, half of a person's blood stream turns into coffee*****. To which, the barista replied that he'd had some tacos that morning, which likely evening things out. He then continued this purely rational thought by stating that the same thing probably happens upon consuming three tacos in one sitting, that half of your blood stream turns into tacos. I laughed, but then my mood sobered when I realized a frightening ramification of this: What if there are taco vampires, who would wait around a tex-mex restaurant or taco truck trailer until they see them eat three or more tacos, then ambush them and consume their delicious taco blood.

Now, I have to preface this by saying that I have only a limited interest in the paranormal and virtually no interest in the vampire/werewolf/whatever genre of novels and films based on said novels that are so popular with a large percentage of the younger female population (and the guys who feign interest in order to make-out with them, etc.). I'm not in any way what you could describe as "goth" and my interest in Robert Smith is limited to "the three-or-so Cure songs that aren't depressing". As far as Twilight goes (I can't believe I'm writing about this) I usually refer to my friend Justin Dent, who once summed up his reservations with: "You know what happened the last time a Mormon wrote a book about a dream they had". However, the greater question remains. How can we be so sure that we're not vulnerable to this? Can taco werewolves vampires be detected by those new TSA body scanners? These are the questions that need to be answered.

If taco vampires are real, is eating more than two tacos at Torchy's, Tacodeli, Maria's Taco Xpress or another Austin purveyor of tacos worth risking a potential taco-vampircal assault? There is only one possible answer: of course it is. Tacos are delicious.

Thanks for reading, and keep Austin whatever,

- Jordan

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Notes:

*Food trucks in Austin are typically called "trailers", which represents an irony-based level of affinity for the redneck culture that most people move to Austin to get away from. See also: Uncle Billy's

**The word "epic" has apparently been banned by (probably) the same people who led to the cancellation of Arrested Development because they didn't get it, or refused to watch it.

***I assumed they were a couple because they were one male human and one female human of roughly the same age standing next to each other, which is about as close to dating someone as I tend to get much of the time

****No sarcasm here, this dude really is an epic cool person.

*****It's science

El Blog Nuevo

I've decided to start this site to provide a better focus for my writing and observations concerning the great State Capital of Texas that so many people know and love. My Old Blog has been around for a long time, and was updated so infrequently, that it no longer reflects what I wish to write about. This new blog will be full of entries giving my (hopefully sometimes funny) take on Austin, the surrounding metro area (mainly San Marcos, I guess) and the Hill Country as well as a very Austin-centered take on Texas as a whole.

Topics will be groundbreaking for this area and will include (but are not limited to) things that have never been covered in an Austin blog before, such as:

• The local music scene, venues and festivals
• Transportation and urban planning issues
• Young people 
• Culture, whatever that means
• Point-counterpoint arguments over the definition of "hipster"
• Wondering where the old hippies have gone, 
• Where to find the best breakfast tacos to be eaten for lunch
• Leslie
• Complaining about how Austin has "changed" and "used to be better", 
• California transplants and their alleged money
• Why Gary Bradley sucks
• Blaming everything on Tom Delay
• Noise complaint issues in Central Austin
• Talking about how San Marcos is starting to resemble the way Austin used to be, but not in a way that encourages too many people to move there and turn it into the Austin of today
• Desperate attempts to get people in Austin to notice my nearby alma mater, Texas State
• Gentrification on the East Side
• No mention of the fact that I spent most of my childhood in Belton
• Complaining about people who complain about cyclists on public streets
• Vague discussions of topics such as "new urbanism", "smart growth" and "sense of place" (whatever they mean)
• Trying to think up new reasons to have more 5K runs and festivals (might ask Leslie for ideas the next time I see him* walking down my street).

Perhaps all of these conflicts and problems related to the aforementioned topics will be solved now that someone is finally mentioning them in a local blog. I am hopeful that people who know me and other people who just think I'm another self-important opinionated person with internet opinions will bookmark this page and check it hourly on their fancy smart phones**.

Have a good evening and keep Austin whatever,

- Jordan Stewart

*While determinations of his gender are, understandably, the subject of considerable debate, Leslie has made it known that he still wishes to be considered a man.

**If you have an iphone, I'll understand if AT&T makes it difficult to read this on a consistent basis