Greetings! Happy Halloween! And apologies for the long interval between newsletters. Further apologies that this one isn't a very heavy hitter. The reason for all of it is that I was out of town for a week recently -- ever since the pandemic started, traveling is even more vexing and exhausting than it was before, and I'm fighting for my fucking life here trying to get back on some kind of track. So it goes. I went to Austin, TX, because I used to live there and haven't been back since pre-pandemic.
It's wild. Austin is a really interesting place. Here's what I noticed on this trip:
The volume and color contrast on everything are just sort of turned up. More people, more stuff, more kinetic energy...
More franchises. Austin is blessed with an incredible "food scene," and many, many, many of the restaurants that were new and just opening up when I lived there have mushroomed into gigantic franchise operations. We went to a Ramen Tatsu-Ya at South Congress and Slaughter (this is very far south and remote from the original location in north Austin), one of several franchises. There are a couple of Easy Tigers too. Just a few things I noticed.
Ugly box condos everywhere. Even more of them. Austin is, if not the ugly apartment complex capital of the world, a close second or third to Dallas or Houston. Previously quiet and "undeveloped" areas are now covered with big, hideous condo developments.
Everyone and everything I care about/am involved in has spun out to farther and farther reaches of the city -- the center is too molten, nobody can afford to even get close to it anymore. So that when I was there I was renting in Travis Heights and on the east side, but now most people are far south or far north. (North/South is the most important Austin axis, because the city has not invested at all in adapting infrastructure to the feverishly growing population, and traffic on the two major north-south arteries, Mopac and I-35, gets even more unmanageable and disruptive every year).
In spite of this and all the other horrible, intractable problems with the city that I haven't even mentioned... it's still fucking great. The vibes are still good. The food is still amazing. Time moves differently. The "porch culture" is still welcoming and fun. (The downside: it's VERY easy to be an alcoholic, to drink constantly... everyone's always socializing, the weather's always beautiful. Catch me in the morning.)
There are a lot more burners at Barking Springs. (Barton Springs is a huge pool, fed by a spring and unchlorinated, ice cold all the time, a very classic Austin institution... Barking Springs is the portion of the pool that isn't "included" in Barton Springs, separated by just some concrete and a fence, so called because you can do everything you're not allowed to do at Barton Springs -- drink, smoke, sit in an innertube with your dogs and your burner husband all day long, whatever).
Everyone, and I mean everyone, in Austin is a VVITCH these days. But only a brave minority (of which I am proudly a part) are witchy enough to go out and about in a city full of incredibly hot people with unshaven, unsightly stubbly legs.
The sociology stuff is all well and good. I'm no urban studies person. What's important to me is I stayed with my best friend from when I lived there, a woman I haven't spoken much to since I moved. A classic millenial tale, our lives simply knocked us spinning in different directions for awhile. Hard to describe the special feeling of being "back" in an older episode of life, but as a different person -- that's kind of what these long friendships are, at the end of the day, I guess. This friend is blessed with a big, echt-Austin constellation of girlfriends, one of whom was staying at the house with us a mere 12 hours or so after breaking through on DMT. Time moves differently, more leisurely, in Austin ("where adults go to retire," as my dad, an erstwhile but longtime Austin resident, puts it), and she and I had a lot of 1:1 time to talk ("integrate" as they say) and our conversations kept coming back to the same idea. The real thing, the important thing, is connection. Is it ever anything else?