Sunday, 2009-08-09, Austin, Texas

Miles: 2,191

I always think it funny when I meet Europeans who exclaim “oh, I love San Francisco! It feels almost like a European city” I’ve heard this or equivalent many times and I like San Francisco too, for many of the same reasons. But the irony cannot be ignored.

As a Northern Californian, a Berkeleyite, even, I feel a little guilty of the very same sort of offense in coming to Austin and, not surprisingly, liking it. Why even come to Texas, if I’m pretty much just going to its liberal, college town capital? Well. While the Texas countryside offers plenty of good countryside type things, I’ve never once in my life heard anyone recommend another Texan city as a place worth visiting. No one’s ever spoken to me of a lovely weekend in Houston, or a nice time in Dallas (Debbie, perhaps, excepted). My impression of Texan cities is one of suburban sprawl, and man have I seen that before.

::fuzzpic-right(“Orientation/thumbnails/IMG_8009.jpg”,”Austin.”)::A day and a half here and I’m happy to say that Austin is anyway no Berkeley whatsoever. It is certainly liberal, but it is a state capital of 700,000 unto itself. Berkeley is a 100,000 strong fairly homogeneous section of a much larger metropolis. In Austin the conspicuous liberalness is more tempered and the weirdness, as I’ve so briefly seen it, much less conceited.

Austin also has its own suburban sprawl; I’ve stayed my two nights here actually about 15 miles North of the city center. I’ve been staying with an awesome Couchsurfing host named Ben. I first met up with him and a decent gaggle of the local Couchsurfing community at a little swimming hole west of Austin called Krause Springs. I spent the previous night in the town of Kerrville with my brother-in-law Erick’s parents, so the springs were more or less on the way to Austin. We all spent the entire afternoon swimming there and it was lovely. The springs are privately owned, but they charge only five dollars and just make everyone sign a waiver before letting them jump off of just about anything into the water. I’d learned my lesson about jumping, back on the Kern River, but had to give the rope swing a go. This was not too physically damaging, but my ego suffered slightly when my performance came nowhere near the grace of the various six and seven year olds swinging away. There’s a lot of force on that upswing and my left arm just couldn’t quite manage.

::fuzzpic-left(“Orientation/thumbnails/IMG_7994.jpg”,”Sixth Street on Saturday night, keeping Austin weird.”)::We witnessed a bit of Austin’s deservedly famous nightlife then turned in. The following day Ben took me around to see some sites. The highlight was without question the Catherdral of Junk. Down a quiet residential street South of downtown in a large backyard stands this monumental structure of concrete tiled with such unlikely things as action figures and long-distance calling rate placards reinforced with the most impressive latticework of welded together junk. The structure is composed of no less then 800 bicycles, the pieces of several cars and trucks, a number of refrigerators and bed-frames, and ever so much more. It is decorated with a polychromatic explosion of post-consumer treasure in every shape and size.

::fuzzpic-left(“Orientation/thumbnails/IMG_8029.jpg”,”In the cathdral.”)::This unlikely feat of artsy, pack-rat engineering contains passage ways between several towers, the highest of which climbs nearly three stories – well above the artist’s modest (but brightly painted) home. The artist/sculptor/architect of the Cathedral, Vince Hannemann, told us he had no training in engineering when we engaged him in conversation (after catching him chasing an unruly dog out the side-door). Nevertheless, the structure is surprisingly stable. But, then again, not quite stable enough that, at the moment Ben and his friend Mike decided to start jumping in unison at the Cathedral’s pinnacle, all I could really think about was how it was probably a very good thing that the Texas Hill Counry isn’t prone to earthquakes.
::fuzzpic-right(“Orientation/thumbnails/IMG_8049.jpg”,”One of the stable-enough towers.”)::

After the Cathedral of Junk we proceeded to the State Capitol building which, refreshingly, is just open. I don’t quite know if it’s a Lone Star pride thing, or just a peculiar kind of easy-goingness, but the doors are just unlocked. There is a small sign about being subject to search, but the are no metal detectors or x-ray machines. The only guards I could see were two state troopers in fitted cowboy hats chatting idly next to the elevators. ::fuzzpic-left(“Orientation/thumbnails/IMG_8055.jpg”,”Taller in Texas.”)::Of course the offices were generally closed – it was a Sunday – and the actual desks of the legislature roped off, but aside from that I, and the other late-afternoon tourists, could roam free through the halls. Notable, the cupola of the capitol is shaped like the White House, but very purposefully 14 feet taller. ::fuzzpic-right(“Orientation/thumbnails/IMG_8061.jpg”,”Austin.”)::In a similar vein, the state flag flies at the same height as the Stars and Stripes – the only state in the Union where this is the case, to my knowledge.

While we were in the capitol a sizable thunder shower unleashed itself on the city, and when we left the building the humidity had notched up just about all the way. This was striking because, just two hours west in Kerrville, it was very arid and, reportedly, hadn’t rained in months. ::fuzzpic-left(“Orientation/thumbnails/IMG_8103.jpg”,”Austin cools off and the bats fly into the night.”)::On top of this, they had reached triple digit temperatures everyday for nearly sixty days, or so I was told. On a New Mexico station, somewhere near the state line, a jewelry company was promising that your wedding ring would be free if it rains two inches or more on your wedding day.

2 Responses to “Sunday, 2009-08-09, Austin, Texas”

  1. MT Says:

    I missed the Cathedral of Junk, but I did visit the Capitol. And watched the bats come out from under the Congress Ave bridge. Either the bats or the junk are more interesting than the interminable boring meetings with IBM and Dell that were my official reason for being in Austin.

  2. lee Says:

    Was playing with your evolutune tool. I think the MIDI can be captured with MidiYoke / MidiOx.

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