I visited Austin over the weekend for Brian and Tara’s wedding. We did a few cool things, and while I love Brian and Tara dearly and would visit them many times again no matter where they lived, I can’t say I’m a fan of Texas.
Mind you, my experience with many cities I visit is merely the surface scratching that a week or so provides, and doesn’t nearly encompass the depth of what any place has to offer, but I do get impressions. What impressions I have about Austin are very poorly baked, but here goes anyway.
The people are very socially concerned, but not very socially involved. Compare to what I see going on in our area, where people form groups and go out and do things to improve the community and their life circumstance, in Austin the norm seems to be to rely on politicians to make life better somehow without doing much on one’s own. For example, if you like organic vegetables, you don’t find a way to get farm-fresh vegetables to your house (via CSA or neighborhood gardens or what have you). Instead, you find a politician that agrees with your needs and support him. I get this impression from overhearing various conversations both at the airport (where there were plenty) and among wedding-goers ranging from livestock to foreign policy, all concerned with which politician is going to solve a problem, and not concerned with the actual problem.
The city’s roadways are planned and engineered with some greater purpose in mind. To me, the highways that I witnessed seemed like they were very well planned and constructed, but I couldn’t figure out why they were there. Highways here at home tend to get you through places. If at any point you get off an exit, you are somewhere. In Austin, the highways tend to go to places. If at any point you get off an exit, you can go about a block before the road ends and you have to turn around, because there’s nothing else outside of the dura mater of restaurants and shops that surround the highway.
Austin is not very Texas except when it is. I didn’t see a lot of cowboys, hats, and boots, but there were plenty enough to say, “Yes, this is Texas.” There was country music aplenty, even though it wasn’t pervasive like in some other places I’ve been. They played it on repeat at the mall. The shop across from my gate at the airport played nothing but country music the entire time I waited for my plane. It wasn’t super hot and dusty like you might expect Texas to be, but it was mildly green and warm in the winter, which still leads me to imagine that it can get excessively dusty and hot in the summer.
BBQ? WTF? I have had BBQ in Memphis. I have had BBQ in Texas. My only real comment is “so what?” There’s really nothing spectacular about either. The BBQ sauce in Memphis is better (even though I don’t really care for the “Memphis” flavor style) than the typically honey-sweet BBQ sauce found in Austin BBQ places. The meat used in Austin tends to be of lesser quality but simultaneously and paradoxically greater flavor (as often is with meat - more fat equals lower quality equals greater taste) than that found typically in Memphis. Nonetheless, I don’t get the big deal. It’s no better in Texas than it is anywhere else with a BBQ pit. I’ve had better at the BBQ pit at Linvilla.
Those were just some simple, quick impressions of Austin based on my trip. Hopefully, I can get back there to experience some more of what Keeps Austin Weird and makes the locals so fond of their city.
