A reflection of my Austin visit, 3-11 April 2024

Downtown Austin skyline, 4 April 2024. Olympus XA/Kodak ColorPlus 200

From April 3 through 11th, Emee and I were in Texas, with the majority of that time spent in Austin. This is the third time I’ve visited the state’s capital. The first was in 2005, right after spending part of the winter in Tucson. The second was in 2018, when Emee, her kids, and I visited during Thanksgiving. I’ve been interested in Austin since the first time I heard about it back in the nineties when it came on the radar as a “cool” city. This “90s Austin” was portrayed in movies like Richard Linklater’s Slacker.¹ On top of that, my first Portland roommate Chris lived in Austin for a bit in the 90s and Emee lived there before moving to Portland. So I’ve heard a lot of Austin stories. I enjoyed my previous visits, but this time was the most I spent here, so I got to explore it more.

Austin has definitely changed in the almost 20 years I’ve experienced it. It felt a lot more Portland-like on my first visit. As someone about to turn 30, it would have been the only time I would have considered moving there, but I definitely did not harbor any notions of doing so, especially after being burnt after the not-so-great Tucson tarriance. Nowadays it’s a bit too “much” in the new development department. Many popular American cities have gentrified over the past couple of decades, Portland included. But my distaste with modern Austin has a lot to do with all the new stuff. It’s more apparent here because there’s a lot less older city to be gentrified, at least of the pre-war development that leads to adaptive reuse. (For example, Austin’s 1950 population was about 130,000 whereas Portland’s was about 370,000, and now Austin is bigger than Portland.) There’s a lot more shiny, new things in Austin because of it. And more money too–it’s cliche to say there are a lot of “tech bros” in Austin, but go to any brewpub and you know it’s true.

Despite my hesitations, I do enjoy visiting. There is still bits and pieces of that old Slacker era Austin to be found if you look hard enough. And there’s a different feel here and I try to appreciate it. I ate my fair share of Tex-Mex, including the ubiquitous breakfast taco. I also discovered a few local food products that I enjoyed, like Rambler sparkling water (which I promptly found on returning to Portland, thankfully.) This was also the first time I biked around town. I really hoped to do this on my first visit in 2005, as I did have my bike in Tucson, but logistics meant I was on foot or bus.² I found cycling in Austin to be OK. There are a decent amount of bike lanes, paths, and cycle tracks that made getting around pretty easy. I didn’t have any real incidents with drivers, though there were a few stupid ones, to be expected in any city. I was a bit more cautious around signalized intersections, though, as past experience in Texas taught me there’s always one driver running a red if not two. I saw an okay amount of fellow cyclists, but outside of the riverside greenways, they were never great in numbers.

And it’s not like the weather was an excuse for the lack of cyclists. Summer can be very hot here, and it was already plenty warm in April. (There’s a reason why South by Southwest happens in March.) The first few days it was pushing 90, and when we returned from our sojourn in the Hill Country for the eclipse, it was a bit cooler but the humidity made up for it. Ah, humidity–living on the West Coast for nearly a quarter-century, I forget about that feeling of sticky clamminess and air you feel you can drink. Muggy weather was default “summer” growing up in Connecticut. From time to time I actually miss it, but never enough to move back to it. And humidity often leads to thunderstorms, which happened later that day. Pretty good ones too, a pair that set off severe thunderstorm warnings. We thankfully did not get caught in the downpours but were on Bromptons before the second one hit. The constant “wall of thunder” told me it was going to be a good storm, and I worried a little about tornadoes. Thankfully none hit Austin, though I heard the storm system moved east and spawned some.

It was a good trip to Austin, and I’m glad that I got to explore it more than I had in the past. But I don’t feel a burning desire to go back anytime soon. There are other places in the world I want to explore.

1. OK, technically the movie was filmed in 1989 and released in 1990, but the vibe still remained. I will note that no one tried to sell me a pap smear when I was in Austin, though someone tried to sell me an obviously hot bike for $20. ↩︎
2. It’s because I was taking Amtrak between cities. At that time all bikes had to be boxed, and there was no baggage service in Austin, so I sent my bike to my next stop on the trip, St. Louis. My Austin host initially promised I could borrow a bike from a roommate when I arrived, but that didn’t happen, apparently because no roommate wanted to loan me a bike. It’s probably for the better, as the house was populated with punk rock hipsters, and I’m sure the borrowed bike would be a fixed gear. ↩︎