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Guy who lived in Austin for 8 years leaving because Austin ain't what she used to be...


TexArcher

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27 minutes ago, longhornmatt said:

Lulz.  What fucking idiot expects Austin to be like NYC, Paris or London?  “I began to notice” … really?  You began to notice Austin isn’t one of the three largest and most prestigious cities in the world?  I thought for sure the Louvre had an Austin branch!

Is a Louvre some kinda fancy toilet? 

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28 minutes ago, longhornmatt said:

Lulz.  What fucking idiot expects Austin to be like NYC, Paris or London?  “I began to notice” … really?  You began to notice Austin isn’t one of the three largest and most prestigious cities in the world?  I thought for sure the Louvre had an Austin branch!

I go to South Padre and write about how it ain't the Maldives. 

Oh wait. No I don't. I go to South Padre, enjoy it for what it is, eat Ceviche Ceviche and count the days until I get to go back.

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I think he took the breakup of The Scabs a little too personally, and a little too late.  

There's still great music here, it's just got more expensive.  Every other day, literally.  I open an email about another awesome show coming to one of 20 fantastic venues that I'd love to see.  But between kids and the price, I can't do nearly as many as I used to.  Do I miss the days of Steamboat and 311 and Saxon for $5 on a Tuesday for great blues?  Of course.  But towns grow, shit happens, prices get bigger.  In the end, it's the musicians that suffer, not us.  And apparently one of them is taking it out on would-be paddleboarders on Town Lake?  

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We all miss Torchy's.  Am I over their "Macho Grande".  Nah, I'm afraid I'll never get over their "Macho Grande", those wounds run...pretty deep.  

csb/ years ago, Unpaintedhuffhines from TOS picked me up with a co-worker of his, who'd just moved here from Southern California.  And we were going to some SXSW shows on South Congress, the new guy had never been.  Anyway, U/H forgot his phone at home so we had to trek all the way back south and then onto South Congress.  So he's taking Mopac up to 290/71 to South Congress.  And the new guy is going on and on about how Austin isn't as authentic as he'd wished and that Southern California had so much more flavor and rawness, or whatever (that's what she said).  But we're sitting at the light at Brodie and 290.  And he says, "Oh cool, you guys got B.J.s Brewhouse too.  Making a mental note, I love that place."  And U/H and I crack up thinking he's fucking with, but he wasn't.  The guy really loved the place because it reminded him of whatever San Fernando Valley development he lived in prior to Austin.  And that's fine.  Wherever you are, find what you love if it makes you happy.  No judgement.  Just stop incessantly whining about places you know nothing about.  I don't show up to Barcelona once a decade and moan about how much the Jewish Quarter has sold out to the corporations.  I find somewhere I remember and a new place I want to discover and I make it work.  

I would like Nomadic Matt to know something Turk Pipkin told me once, "Only time you worry about old Austinites is when they quit bitching about how there's no more old Austin" (something to that effect anywyay, you get the idea).  

Town is fine.  We're just older, crankier, it's more expensive, and if we're honest-we could do with a little less aggressive homeless.  

And oh yeah---the mass murderer on Rainey.  Put me down as, "I'll take one serial issue I have with new Austin  for $800, Alex."  

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40 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

I think he took the breakup of The Scabs a little too personally, and a little too late.

I'm 100% sure that this guy has heard of Bob Schneider, but not The Scabs or Ugly Americans.  

Ask him if he's familiar with Storyville and he probably says something like, "Isn't that near the SoLa District?"

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2 hours ago, Your Mom said:

Austin begins sucking when you turn 35 and it’s a gradual slide to nearly unbearable by the time you turn 45.  It doesn’t matter what decade this occurs in.  If you were here in the 1970s it began sucking in the 80s.  If you grew up in the 90’s it sucked by ‘08.  All of our kids will be reminiscing about when Austin was great back in the 2020’s before it changed.  The crowd that cried over Liberty Lunch being gone sounded just as ridiculous to the previous generation as these fucksticks whining about Rainey St losing its character sound to us.

Rinse and repeat for every generation.

I mean, I don't know about that.  I'm past 45 and we still have a blast and go hit up breweries, restaurants, live music (edit: Yeah YGIFS the amount of live music here is pretty absurd and you can still find good live/cheap shows but dang the Moody Center tix prices are a beating), breweries, outdoor stuff, etc. etc.  Yeah, it sucks that some of our favorite places are gone but there's new places we like.  But, absolutely, whining about Austin changing goes back to the 19th century.

Edited by texasdago
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2 hours ago, Your Mom said:

Austin begins sucking when you turn 35 and it’s a gradual slide to nearly unbearable by the time you turn 45.  It doesn’t matter what decade this occurs in.  If you were here in the 1970s it began sucking in the 80s.  If you grew up in the 90’s it sucked by ‘08.  All of our kids will be reminiscing about when Austin was great back in the 2020’s before it changed.  The crowd that cried over Liberty Lunch being gone sounded just as ridiculous to the previous generation as these fucksticks whining about Rainey St losing its character sound to us.

Rinse and repeat for every generation.

This was my experience but I chalked it up to being a grouchy old.  I think Austin is and will be fine.

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2 hours ago, GoPokes83 said:

He’s lamenting the lack of jazz clubs. JAZZ clubs! Who TF is actively looking to listen to that bullshit?

Who knows, but I bet Aaron Franklin will be looking to open one on the east side, now. 

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35 minutes ago, Deej said:

Who knows, but I bet Aaron Franklin will be looking to open one on the east side, now. 

That's not how you spell his name, okay!  It's Aaron Franklin's.  And his music sauce is the most important thing!  

22 minutes ago, utee94 said:

I like Austin jazz clubs. Both of them.

 

 

Can we go to the nice one then, without all the beige people?  

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3 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

That's not how you spell his name, okay!  It's Aaron Franklin's.  And his music sauce is the most important thing!  

Can we go to the nice one then, without all the beige people?  

You'll get this one and like it:

 

The 'Rawhide' Scene from The Blues Brothers | The '80s Ruled

 

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21 minutes ago, EuroHorn said:

I felt the same way about Rome.  They let the colosseum go to shit when they constructed corporate boxes and raised prices for the peasants 

Then they brought in all their craft cocktail bars and conflict-free concessions.  I mean, who we kidding?  We know where that wine 'n swine came from!

You'll know Austin is truly dead when you don't see an article about Las Manitas for 18 contiguous months.  Until that day, however...you cannot expect to go beyond a certain point.  

To be fair, Austinites do bitch about it more than folks in other cities that have changed/grown/evolved just as much.  We are ahead of the pack in that way, but deep down---I think people from "Old Austin" do that to hide their guilt.  They voted for a bunch of shit over the decades that made it so that only people coming here from other, wealthier cities would be the only ones that could afford to live here.  If some old South Austinite or Hyde Park Hippie had told you 10 years ago we'd be 9-digits and 6 hotels into a homelessness solution with nothing to show for it, you'd have laughed at me and called me a Fascist.  And now?  Those same people are like, "Yeah, that's our bad dude...not the best idea we've had.  We were on a lot of drugs when we thought that would work.  Also, what's this I hear you're having problems with your Rainey Street Crime Reports?"  

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19 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Oh, it's worse than that.

"The food was great.  It came out fast, and hot.  And I truly have never tasted anything that good in my life.  BUT, the cloth napkins were folded in simple triangles instead of origami.  That's just lazy.  One star."

I've always assumed that Yelp/Google restaurant reviews were meant for my entertainment.  Reading medium sized town's Golden Corral reviews aloud in a thick southern accent isn't a bad way to kill ten minutes if you're bored. 

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1 hour ago, dcbc said:

I've always assumed that Yelp/Google restaurant reviews were meant for my entertainment.  Reading medium sized town's Golden Corral reviews aloud in a thick southern accent isn't a bad way to kill ten minutes if you're bored. 

Used to do the same thing with the wedding announcements in the Lafayette Sunday paper - we'd pick one up to read in the car, hungover on our way back from NOLA.  You know how some people who didn't graduate from college will use the word "attended," like "the groom ATTENDED Louisiana Tech?"  We'd amuse ourselves when we got to the wedding announcements where one of the party's educational bio would end with "the groom ATTENDED Buford T. Justice Middle School."  Our favorite was when the announcement told us about the couple's honeymoon plans to spend a long weekend fishing at the family shack on Toledo Bend.

I was actually a bit jealous.  Sounds pretty cool.

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11 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Used to do the same thing with the wedding announcements in the Lafayette Sunday paper - we'd pick one up to read in the car, hungover on our way back from NOLA.  You know how some people who didn't graduate from college will use the word "attended," like "the groom ATTENDED Louisiana Tech?"  We'd amuse ourselves when we got to the wedding announcements where one of the party's educational bio would end with "the groom ATTENDED Buford T. Justice Middle School."  Our favorite was when the announcement told us about the couple's honeymoon plans to spend a long weekend fishing at the family shack on Toledo Bend.

I was actually a bit jealous.  Sounds pretty cool.

My half-brother and his wife had a ranch outside of Bellville and would routinely send me wedding announcements from the local paper.  Most of them are absolute gold and I still have the group favorite sitting in my outbox at the office (on top of the Austin Chronicle's hilariously scathing review of Dude, Where's my Car).  Every last bit of minutia is included---a testament to how inexpensive space was in the Bellville paper during that time.

 

We need a hilarious wedding announcements thread.

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If you are used to not having to get into a car and drive everywhere to do practically anything, then all of Texas can be a beating. It's not an easy to get over.

So this guy is in his 40's and still finding himself? The world is full of unserious people these days....

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On 4/18/2023 at 12:22 PM, Your Mom said:

Austin begins sucking when you turn 35 and it’s a gradual slide to nearly unbearable by the time you turn 45.  It doesn’t matter what decade this occurs in.  If you were here in the 1970s it began sucking in the 80s.  If you grew up in the 90’s it sucked by ‘08.  All of our kids will be reminiscing about when Austin was great back in the 2020’s before it changed.  The crowd that cried over Liberty Lunch being gone sounded just as ridiculous to the previous generation as these fucksticks whining about Rainey St losing its character sound to us.

Rinse and repeat for every generation.

I don't know if that's an Austin problem.  Get a family, a mortgage and a career to pay for it, and you'll be in a suburb surrounded by other poor schlubs who are enslaved to the American dream.  You'r daily life will be commute, work, commute, youth sports on the weekend, occasionally going out to big box chain restaurants and shit.  You'll say you live in Austin, but you don't.  And your life won't be any different there than it would be in any other suburb of any other big city.  Blech.

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Well there’s ‘social media’ (yes I get it’s a blog) in a nutshell…giving everyone a voice and potential audience.  Malcontents will be dissatisfied with wherever they live, and certainly Karen it up on the interwebs.  

I moved here in 02 from Stillwater, taking an entry tech support job at $13/hour.  Three years later I bought a house in Pville.  Got married and built a house in Cedar Park in 2012, when the market was still recovering from ‘08 yet rates were low.  

Point being I’ll certainly acknowledge I was very fortunate to move to this area when I did, because no way I afford a home that way now.  And yes the metro area has changed significantly.  But I wouldn’t whine on social media if I tried to move to San Diego, lived there for three years, then proclaimed it’s changed too much and is too expensive.  

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