Memories of Watergate (1973)-- my favorite year

The year 1973 was a big one for me. I moved from New York to this little-known city of Austin, Texas. Willie Nelson helped set the positive tone for the city on his mission to bring Cowboys and Hippies together in a spirit of peace and friendship.

The term for cowboys was actually Rednecks. As for hippies, I'm sure we had our share of insults from more traditional Texans but we found our place in Austin, a town know for liberalism and open mindedness. The University of Texas brought intellectual fervor and the State Capitol was the other big game in town. Jobs were scarce and salaries were low. But you could live in central Austin on a waiter's wages.

Before I became a waiter I worked briefly as a carpenter's helper on a construction site called Timbercreek Apartments. The project still exists on South 1st Street across from the Texas School for the Deaf.

Several notable details about the spring of 1973. We actually had a fair number of white guys working on the job--  hippie carpenters and assorted locals. Home building now dominated by Hispanic guys-- was more integrated in those days. At lunch break we would listen to the radio for Watergate reports and eat homemade sandwiches with bean sprouts and whole wheat bread. No cellphones, no GrubHub.

Watergate caused some consternation but hysteria levels were not at the fever pitch of today's battles between Left and Right. I don't even recall the political opinions being expressed during lunch break. Being a New York liberal made me slightly wary of expressing radical viewpoints except with my close friends.

Austin, Texas had a laid back friendliness that holds more memories any opinions being expressed. Democrats actually held elective office in the state. The Hispanic influence on Texas added a feeling of diversity. Border crossing happened relatively easily. The laissez-faire and relative ease for going back and forth to Mexico impressed me. "How cool to border another country," I thought.

At day's end the hippie carpenters descended on nearby Armadillo World Headquarters. Jim Franklin created the Armadillo concept, the well-armored little beasts were a symbol of the counter culture. I marveled at Texas carpenters' talent for working hard and then consuming massive amounts of beer along with marijuana-- in quantities unrivaled on the East Coast.

Texas was a new world. After stepping on some nails and busting some knuckles and fingernails I quickly surmised my lack of talent for carpentry.

Watergate discussions on MSNBC reminded me of that very important year.

Austin vs Texas (What the Right Wing Despises)

I live in Austin, Texas. We just got chosen as the best place to live in America for the second year in a row. Interesting that a city built most recently by hippies, artists, musicians, liberals and free-thinkers, has been consistently valued as wonderful place to live.

Austin emerged as a burgeoning city of creatives-- based on the proximity of the University of Texas at Austin. The town attracted IBM and that set the tone for our eventual status as a center for high tech. Technology and creativity make a strong combination.

Austin has problems-- traffic congestion, high cost of living, de facto segregation based on income disparity, and long, hot summers. Almost takes a millionaire to buy a house in Central Austin but people keep flocking here and adding to the population.

Employment is good in Austin, Texas. People can get jobs. There are enough jobs in Austin that you can actually quit your job and feel confident of finding another. Just like all of America from about 1950-1990, before the world turned global and industries and jobs moved to the places with the cheapest labor-- (i.e. China). We have it pretty good in this central Texas city.

Austin collides with rest of Texas when it comes to belief systems.

We are right in the middle of the state, but Texas thinks differently than Austin once you get beyond the city boundaries.

I studied a right wing Texas newspaper from just down the road in Abilene to find out what the rest of Texas thinks. The red votes in Texas are conservative and feel strongly about the conservative roots of cowboy culture. The frontiersman carried a gun on his hip. He needed it for survival in the 1880s. Now a gun seems more like a hobby, a talisman, a symbol.

What do the blue voters despise?

1) The "Democratic" media.
2) The United Nations
3) California-- too liberal, too expensive, proliferation of minorities
4) Gun control
5) Critics of Donald Trump
6) Sanctuary cities-- Austin is one
7) Leftism-- calling the left "a hate cult"
8) Barack Obama
9) Hillary Clinton
10) Sharia Law-- viewed as a real threat to the American system of laws.

Strange how Austin has thrived and prospered in the middle of. The Peoples Republic of Austin attracts young, creative types like a magnet pulls iron filings.

The one thing we all agree on-- the Houston Astros are great!

Holiday Thoughts (Weird Science the Winner)

The holidays always put me in a weird state of mind. As a kid I had morose tendencies. I grew up in New York. The weather would get cold. The days would get shorter and darker. The relatives would visit. I liked reading and the New York Times kept me entertained with stories of sports heroes past and present. I always had lots of friends and valued their support, encouragement and laughter. So, what got me so depressed yesterday?

Maybe mortality? Time creeps forward. I get older and family members, some older than me. Friends get sicker, find themselves fighting disease... Where do I fit in within this cosmic organization? I've hit the sixth decade! I always heard time flies faster with each passing decade. It's true. I feel like science and technology has dwarfed our frail human forms and modest psychological tools for absorbing change.

We are overwhelmed with change at the speed of light. Too much information from every direction.  Syria, Paris, YouTube, Twitter, Fitbit, Texas floods, water level rise, Ariana Grande licking donuts. Yes, I'm at least six months behind on the Youtube revelation. Make that six years behind... or maybe 16 years!

Johnny Manziel dropped to third string. Tried to cover up video of his partying in Austin. It's not the crime-- it's the cover-up!

Science dwarfs sports. Weird science! NFL football players too strong for the game. Not enough time for a quarterback to launch a pass. The bionic, science-built defenders race in and devour the passer like so many merciless robots. The announcers drone on. Tony Romo bites the dust. No, make that bites the scientifically created artificial turf.

Weird Science 1- Humanity 0

Are things getting better or worse? I see lots of optimism in my grandchild, so things get better from his youthful perspective. He delights in everything, from books to video games.

Ah, I sound like a cranky old man... trying to make sense of this spinning globe!

70 degrees on Nov 6 in NYC at 10 PM!

"What's it gonna take?" The talking heads said that and marveled at the "unseasonably warm" New York City temperatures. November 6 at 10:00 PM --and it is 70 degrees in New York City.

Historically speaking, 56 degrees is an average high in NYC for November 6.

One of the Weather Channel experts smiled and wondered aloud "What if an 80 degree day came along in the middle of December in New York City. Would that shock people enough?"

Enough to do what-- get scared maybe...?

The weather guy smiled the whole time, but a nervous smile-- reminiscent of a gallows humor response. (Gallows humor--see Wikipedia below)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallows_humor
Gallows humor is humor about very unpleasant, serious, or painful circumstances. Any humor that treats serious matters, such as death, war and crime, in a light, silly or satirical fashion is considered gallows humor.Gallows humor has been described as a witticism in response to a hopeless situation. It arises from stressful, traumatic, or life-threatening situations, often in circumstances such that death is perceived as impending and unavoidable.

The increasing temperatures are too foreboding to consider. We use denial and rationalization. Push the problems out of mind. Crops? Warmer ocean waters? What will happen to us? We take the easy way out. We deny the facts, rationalize them, or better yet, ignore them completely.

More fun to think about Donald Trump hosting Saturday Night Live tomorrow night.

The young people of today never experienced the "old normal." My growing up years in New York had a rhythm to the seasons, a consistent pattern. September meant needing a sweater and a jacket. November and December arrived and a warm coat was needed for winter.

We have upset those rhythms of nature-- and nobody knows the price to be paid.

Instead we smile nervously about the fun of wearing short sleeves on a November night in New York City. We know better. And keep our fingers crossed.

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.

Dollar Tree on Burnet Road (Austin, TX)

Just on a whim... decided to stop at Dollar Tree discount store about a mile from my house. Normally I look down my nose at such establishments. But what the hell, why not go to a store I can actually afford!

So I start cruising the aisles. I wanted some Lifesaver type breath mints. Found Certs, 3 packs for $1.00. That's a great thing, everything costs one dollar. It's kind of like you died and went to heaven where you can afford items, and the store manager doesn't want you to feel bad. Great for people who can't do math. It's all the same price-- one dollar! And even if you don't need or want most of the items, nice that somebody has priced things to take the pain out of shopping.

I checked the store thoroughly. You could paint your house with the paintbrushes, tape, buckets and brooms, rollers, etc available there. But I'm not painting my house. Food, tupperware, toys, organize a party. Impressive inventory and really the stuff is not that inferior-- maybe just a little out of step. Kind of like you're shopping in 1973.

But on the way out I found kids' trading cards-- NFL football, NBA basketball and Major League Baseball. And the basketball even had an album with every team and their player personnel. Okay, so the album was 2014-15 and most of the stickers for sale were 2013-14. I went ahead and got it. I'm gonna learn who is playing in the NBA and this album and stickers are going be my visual aid.

Checked out and got some AAA batteries so my grandson can complete this model car kit. Good time shopping and I'll probably go back.