SXSW-- has it ruined Austin?

I drove around town yesterday, a Saturday afternoon, with a few classic Austinites as my passengers. Classic Austinites? Those are high IQ people, laidback to the point of self-indulgent, often underemployed and sometimes fully unemployed, and living here for at least two decades. We got stuck in traffic a few times-- on Lamar Boulevard through downtown-- and got stuck in gridlock on our return going north on Mopac. One guy, a philosophical sort with a razor edge, made a comment: "South By Southwest ruined Austin."

The same friend added, voice dripping with disgust, "Broken Spoke with big condo projects on both sides captures the new Austin."

My friend takes a taciturn view of life. I had to wonder if he was right. Even the Austin American-Statesman wondered the same thing. Their headline last week asked if crossing the 2 million population mark was a good thing? What the heck... friends of mine started leaving in 1993 because of increased Austin traffic, high rise development and the disappearance of the slow lane lifestyle.

I got here in 1973 and in a few seconds and detect three key elements making Austin wonderfully weird in the first place:

1) Creativity
2) Freedom
3) Friendliness

The singer Michelle Shocked once referred to Texas "as a loose-limbed kind of place." I thought that really explained the charm of living in Austin.

Willie Nelson, godfather to the peace and love thing bubbling beneath this place, got the whole thing kicked off by melding hippies and redneck culture. Talk about a calming effect. The phrase "Live Music Capital of the World" helped Austin forge an identity. And the playful "Keep Austin Weird," reflected the view from outside Austin as much as anything else. "Keep Round Rock Mildly Unusual"-- hints at the viewpoint of most other places.

But SXSW, beginning as a music festival in 1987, packaged the Austin magic. The festival embodied Austin neater than a GSDM advertising campaign. Those SXSW folks knew Austin, but also sensed a future for Austin-- a bigger, better, more full-throated Austin. Their vision held more power than any previous attempt to capitalize on Austin.

SXSW and its marketing genius made "the Austin thing" more understandable to the masses and eventually a global audience. Now rich girls from Long Island fly their whole bachelorette party to Austin for a weekend of revelry!

You decide.. is SXSW a symptom or a cause of the new, more frenetic, higher-priced Austin? And has SXSW worked to Austin's benefit or detriment?

Rosedale... croissants to cardiac surgery

If memory serves me well.... a 1970s Life magazine photo essay derided America’s eyesore highways and included a photo of Burnet Rd, crisscrossed with power lines and blanketed with billboards and fast food restaurant signs. Much has changed with the rise of the area I like to call LoBu—Lower Burnet—to a happening hotspot in Austin, complete with gourmet sandwich shops, Middle Eastern delis, coffee shops and trendy restaurants, Dollar Tree, Top Notch hamburgers, pizza joints with in-house breweries, hipster bars, fitness centers, second hand stores, bookstores, bakeries, condos and a Bingo parlor.

I planned a meeting with an architect friend--Jim—to figure out how this change occurred. We wanted to look most directly at the Rosedale neighborhood where Jim R has been a resident since 1994. We me at Monkey Nest Coffee and ordered a couple of skim milk--decaf lattes but who’s counting calories? The conversation quickly assumed caffeinated levels of intensity. What makes Rosedale such a thriving amazing neighborhood?  How do you explain the explosive growth of American cities?

Jim, though way too modest to be uppity about it, took me to school with a rapid 10-minute summation of American city planning. Rosedale offers a powerful alternative to living in the ‘burbs. Turns out the seismic shift, a boomerang effect to the original white flight to the suburbs that began in the 1950s, has theoretical underpinnings.

Jim defined the two schools of development. Rosedale, with its walkable streets and grid layout follows #1) the “new urbanism” or urban planning model. And #2)  the “subdivision-cul de sac” model, the suburban development plan, features main road entry to a subdivision leading to a series of cul-de-sac streets lined with homes.

Jim smiled at me. Maybe he knew my brain was racing to recall Massapequa, New York – a Long Island suburban town—and the layout of my neighborhood where everybody entered via Merrick Road. “The subdivision model puts 5 miles between residents and the grocery store,” said Jim. Oh my God, that’s exactly right and I bet 90% of the Long Island residents, now pushing 8 million, have to drive 5 miles to the grocery store!

Jim contrasted the 5-mile grocery drive to his situation in Rosedale where Central Market “one of the best grocery stores in the world is a 15 minute walk.” Of course, not every town has a Central Market, or anything close to that, but we are talking Rosedale—a neighborhood Jim characterizes as “one of the great neighborhoods of America.”

Hey we need a new Statue of Liberty and this one goes just a few hundred yards downstream from Stevie Ray Vaughn—but in the middle of the Colorado River. We construct an iron and copper statue of Janis Joplin, holding a microphone aloft and put it on a little island beneath the Lamar Pedestrian Bridge. A plaque at the base goes something like this... Give me your young, your digital, your bearded hipsters yearning to breath... er. Uh?... ACL air.... And maybe have an LED display of the Austin population, a flickering number constantly on the uptick.

Rosedale has several of the other key qualifications according to the new urbanist outline for an ideal living environment—definable boundaries and friendly public spaces.  Jim said the geographical boundaries of Rosedale are clear— 38^th St for the southern line; 45^th St. is northern boundary; Lamar Blvd makes the east side line; and Shoal Creek Blvd defines a western boundary. Comprised within these boundaries—you get Seton Hospital and Upper Crust bakery, two amenities accessible by foot and valued greatly by Jim, for reasons you will soon learn.

Years ago, Jim noted Rosedale had some rundown properties and a couple of those memorable Austin shady characters of yesteryear... barely paying their rent. That sounds like me. Jim admitted financial struggles forced him to leave Austin in the mid-1980s, taking his architect’s toolbag to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Nowadays, architects probably just need one toolbag—a 3-D, CAD software on their computer. But Jim says he still likes to sketch when designing schools and hospitals. He certainly sketched the Rosedale picture for me beautifully.

Ramsey Park is the important public space at the center of Rosedale—an open space to relax and exhale, spend time with children, a place to walk the dog, swim, play tennis, basketball, softball or just hangout.

Jim explained the subdivision model does provide advantages for human interaction. The main road to the neighborhood means fewer entry points and protection from unwanted visitors. The cul-de-sac streets encourage drivers to proceed more slowly. Residents get to know each other more readily on the smaller streets. You might know every neighbor within the bounds of a single street and the quieter, less trafficked streets provide more safety for children out playing.

Jim recalled the early days when the Draught Horse and Common Interest on Medical Parkway stood almost alone as a beer drinking, socializing options for Rosedale residents.  Burnet Road was “mainly scruffy car lots and places like the Poodle Dog Lounge.” Now there are a multitude of options, including Flying Saucer at the Triangle, Woodrow’s, Hopfields, further afield on Guadalupe, Black Star Coop, on Airport Blvd, and Billy’s on Burnet. There is a downside, of course. Rosedale has become so darn attractive, and expensive, nobody can afford a house there anymore... except the lucky few.

The constant flow of trucks hauling lumber into Rosedale for remodel projects are testament to the many people living there, and the massive gentrification of the area. McMansions once ruled the day, until laws were modified to respect the original scale of the neighborhood.  Homes are now limited to cover a specified percentage of the lot space, usually limiting them to about 2,800 square feet. Jim said the new law has deterred people were building 6 or 7 bedroom mini-dorms designed for rental to college kids.

Even with Rosedale’s stabilization the air of mystery never completely abandons any place fit for human habitation. Jim marvels at the human entropy. “Sometimes I’ll see a person every week for two years or so, and then they’ll disappear from sight, seem to be completely gone. Then 7 years later I’ll bump into them again, like this guy I saw the other day at the Ramsey tennis courts.”

Rosedale has been desirable for many years, even before Austin’s boom took on juggernaut proportions, and the perfect storm of great services and community spirit, serve as a role model. Austin, and other cities across the country, can learn much from the magic of Rosedale.

Oh, and the part about Seton Hospital and Upper Crust bakery... Jim said you “can walk to anything you want, from croissants to cardiac surgery.” And he means it. He goes easily from his house to Upper Crust for the yummy pastries or a cup of strong coffee and actually did walk to Seton Hospital one morning in 2005 for treatment of a heart arrhythmia, all in a day’s work, or walk, within the Rosedale grid.

But the strangest coincidence was the day back in the late ‘90s when a runner in the Capital 10,000 keeled over with heart attack and had the very same first and last name as Jim. The runner even came from Ohio, just like Jim. He got calls for days from people checking to make sure he was not the same Jim who died tragically in the middle of the race.

“One day, a week later, I was walking on 43^rd and Lamar and a car screeches to a halt. David, the wildhaired unofficial mayor of Rosedale, jumps out of the car and screams, “You’re alive!”

Jim notes “notice of my demise, like Mark Twain’s, had been greatly exaggerated. David just hadn’t gotten the word yet.” You may be wondering... how did David get unofficial mayor status? He helped lead the group that fought valiantly to keep the Triangle from becoming just another strip mall, home to a supermarket, asphalt parking spaces and nondescript apartments. They knew their neighborhood deserved better and refused to give ground to the real estate moguls.

People like Jim and David help make Austin the great place it is, a magnet for the Young and the Digital from the world over. I thanked Jim for his time and perspective and we moved on down Burnet Road.

Hunter Thompson, Bob Dylan and the Jingle Jangle Morning (1967)

Walking around my Austin neighborhood... and I came across a "Free Books" box standing tall in a neighbor's yard. There were 5-7 books in there and some were not bad. I saw a John LeCarre novel but I cannot keep track of plot twists. Then I spied Fear and Loathing in America (volume II), a collection of Hunter Thompson's letters from 1968-1976. I took it home. The very first letter got to me-- and it starts... "1967 was the year of the hippy."

That was the year I graduated high school-- what kind of chance did  I have? It's okay, Ma, I'm only bleeding... Just kidding, but that was a hell of a time to be 18 years old and trying to make sense of the world.

Hunter said "the word 'hipppy' coined by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen-- who also came up with 'beatnik.' " 

Damn, talk about a man with a talent for branding!

Thompson mentioned that "Bob Dylan was the original hippy" and "Mr. Tambourine Man is both an epitaph and a swan-song for the lifestyle and the instincts that led, eventually, to the hugely-advertised 'hippy phenomenon.' "

Hard to recall a time where things changed so dramatically, based upon things like rock music and a new ideology-- the hippie lifestyle and culture. Where would we be without that revolution...? Still dressing like Mad Men and sipping martinis?

So glad that Hunter mentioned Surrealistic Pillow! I listened to the LP up in my Long Island bedroom on the night before I headed off for college-- wondering what awaited me. That was a powerful album and, as Hunter Thompson said "The Jefferson Airplane is another key sound from that era..." and he goes on to praise the talent of Grace Slick, their lead singer.

Remember this refrain from Mr. Tambourine Man? 
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

That comes from a proto--hipster named Lord Buckley... Don't believe me, Google it--

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Buckley

Lord Buckley died in 1960, just before the big hippie change had a chance to get rolling. He even predated the Beats. And I quote the wiki piece on Lord Buckley: 
"Bob Dylan in his book Chronicles, said 'Buckley was the hipster bebop preacher who defied all labels.' " 

And here's a footnote from the end of the Wikipedia piece on Lord Buckley:
"The jingle-jangle morning" in "Mr. Tambourine Man" is a phrase Bob Dylan claims to have taken from Lord Buckley.^[18] It appears in Buckley's performance of Scrooge.^[19]