What did we do to deserve the Austin we got?
Luckiest ones are the newest, the black pumas of life in the ATX
Four high schools in four years and then released into a world I felt like I had no part in. Tried to find a home in Los Angeles and then upstate New York, but I kept coming back to Honolulu, a city where a tan meant more than ideas. No place else to go.
And then, at age 28, I found Austin, and for many years after had to laugh when someone called Hawaii paradise.
The natural beauty of my home state was nothing compared to the former dry cleaners and pizza parlors and used furniture stores where I saw Lou Ann Barton, Little Joe y la Familia, the Offenders, the Commandos, Butthole Surfers, Albert Collins, Dino Lee, and the LeRoi Brothers in my first couple weeks in town.
Forget the white sand and ocean blue, my favorite Beach was on the north shore of U.T., where Daniel Johnston played between acts for $5 a song- good money for a McDonald’s janitor.
I arrived, as we all did, with the energy of exploration and the determination of making this fresh start count. This is a city that people have moved to since the ‘60s for the quality of stimulation, which is the quality of life. The Austin icebreaker is “what oppressive shithole are you from?”
Gary Clark Jr.’s answer was the far South Austin suburbs, where he grew up unaware of the live music scene. When Eve Monsees, his friend since third grade, showed him the downtown clubs where blues, reggae, rock and jazz pushed out from doorways onto the streets, he snapped at her. “Why did you keep all this from me?” The 14-year-old Clark was reborn.
Then things started changing on the music scene, when the condos went up downtown and the cops started showing up with meters that measure music as noise. It doesn’t matter anymore who was there first.
The ambitious idea behind the 2015 TV docu-series Sonic Highways, was that the Foo Fighters would write and record one song each in eight different American cities for an album also called Sonic Highways. The Austin song (“What Did I Do?/ God Is My Witness”) is about falling in love with something that’s slipping away. “What did I do to deserve you?” Dave Grohl sings at one point, setting up a marrow-melting solo from Clark Jr., who showed up at the session without a guitar and left with a brand new Gibson SG (“Take it,” Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear said. “It’ll never sound that way again.”) Later in the Beatle-like song Grohl asked, “What can I do to preserve you?”
Complain all you want about the traffic, the cost of living, the condo jungle, the ACL Fest lineup, Elon Rogan, and how this once-sleepy college town has gone to hell in a Yeti cooler. But the luckiest residents of Austin are the ones who just moved here.
Huh? “You must also love those assholes who try to squeeze into a full elevator.”
Recent arrivals take a lot of organic crapola, but imagine how cool it is to live in an Austin where everything’s new. You know how you hear somebody talking about starting to watch The Wire and you get a little jealous because that’s something you’ll never get to do again for the first time? It’s kinda like that.
I moved to Austin 39 years ago and it’s hard for me to get excited about, say, going to the world’s most famous cover band bar, the Broken Spoke. But the last time I went there it was a fun place full of glowing newbies. Ain’t got nothing like this in Brooklyn, yeehaw!
Yes, it used to be so much better here, but those days are gone. Living in Austin is like sex in that what happened in the past has only sentimental value, which when it comes to sex is no value. Who would you rather be, the old guy hunched over his cereal who once made out with Farah Fawcett at the Jade Room, or the insufferable hipster in the trucker hat who goes home with that cute barista, the one with only two tattoos?
There’s no sad sense of UBT- Useta Be There- for those who’ve always had to dial 512 for local calls. They can eat at Magnolia Café on South Congress without ever thinking of the AusTex Lounge. There’s not a CVS in town that can make them cry.
The only Austin any of us know is the one we got. Some moved here for jobs. They’re called Round Rock residents. But most of us came because we loved the party, you know, the vibe. It started as a room full of conversations on Goodwill couches and someone pulled out a guitar and everyone sang “Blister in the Sun.” We needed only songs and Tamale House #3 to survive.
But the bash now rages with a D.J. and dayglo wristbands of various access, holding up cellphones like they just don’t care. Who invited all these bubblebutts?
Who invited you? The aggressively uncool have every right to be at the party as you do. Legally, at least. You just got there early. And you’re free to leave. With the million dollars you got for your teardown.
What I did recently, and recommend to all, is look at Austin through new eyes. Pretend you’d just driven a U-Haul through Texarkana or Fort Stockton last week. See all the happy, colorful people hanging out on South First? That’s something you’d never see when Austin was cool.
But you’ll also see signs for $20 parking on street corners where you used to be able to buy a stereo for $20. Things change because paradise can never keep it’s trap shut.
Yellow lights on South Lamar, capital punishment, “Don’t Move Here” t-shirts: these are things that don’t deter. Nearly a million people moved to the Austin metro area in the past 10 years and they couldn’t wait to push “play” on season one of life in the ATX.
When I drive down congress late at night and see the magnolia closed. It always confuses me. I can’t help but thinking, “where are people going to eat at 3:30 in the morning?“ people will starve.
Couldn't agree more. When I hear other long timers complain, all I can think is "how did you not see this coming?". And then I look at my now 21 year old son, who absolutely loves everything about the city now he can truly see and experience it as an "adult"! He is now turning me onto places and experiences I might not see or seek out.