Oh Hey, from Austin! Technically I’ve been “down here” since Tuesday, but Tuesday through Friday AM I was staying in a suburb of Austin called Lakeway and I was busy doing one of the following: rental car driving, filming with patients, sleeping, emailing, breaking out in cold nauseated sweats or barfing in random toilets (I also had horrible food poisoning although I did a great show of hiding it during work hours). As such, we’ll just count yesterday evening as the beginning of my stay in the Big City. Below is a recap of what I did with myself for a solo 24 hours in Austin.
Austin is sweaty, humid, and I’m sorry but completely guilty of try-harding to be weirder than it actually is. While I understand and respect the “Keep Austin Weird” marketing slogan’s initial intent to help protect the growth and prosperity of the city’s independent businesses, everyone that has moved here in the last 10 years as taken it too far and I’m irritated. Cool, man, you have funky overalls on and you eat donuts covered with froot loops and drink moonshine and you have movie theaters that serve beer – get over it. My strong feelings on this are either because I live in Colorado, where people also looove to pretend they are super funky and weird (to underscore my point, I topically reference the recent Bachelorette “Hometowns” preview of Dean’s Dad ) or because I am very aware of the fact that I, myself, am genetically weird (you can’t teach it) and so you’re not going to impress me and get into my sad club with your dumb ass crap that you made up to just to be post-meta-ironic.
That being said: the music here is fantastic, 6th Street is the shit and I don’t care what you say, and I really enjoy pawing through funky Congress Street antiques I can’t afford. I would seriously consider paying for a day-of flight on a random Saturday just to eat some BBQ and Moonshine comfort food.
Liz Carefully Plans Her Day
Once my 5:30AM – 1PM “work shift” wound down today, I had a lot of dreams of being all hip – you know, finding some free time to do yoga and then sexily drink coffee and work on my laptop in a chill local spot after a cold shower, but alas I spent my afternoon sweating in my rental car, trying to find a hotel on HotelTonight (Intercontinental for a badass $111, SCORE!), having an awkward FaceTime call with a vendor with a very sweaty upper lip (dangling participle here – MY upper lip was sweaty, not hers) and deciding that changing into my yoga clothes, going into a room that was just as hot as it was outside, and then trying to be sexy while drinking coffee was going to be awful.
So, I navigated to my newly negotiated hotel, worked for a few more hours on my new bed in stretch pants (same as yoga, right?) and then took a self-guided eating and drinking tour around the hood. Here are a few of the adventures I had on said tour:
Liz Goes To a Bar on Rainey Street and Watches Her Worst Nightmare Ever Lived Out Right Beside Her.
I’ve gotten pretty comfy with Rainey Street, seeing as I’ve been on it all of 4 times, so I decided to start there. This brings me to the main story of my Austin Adventures. And to preface this, yes, you’ll probably be a bit disappointed in what constitutes my worst nightmare but I’m sticking to it.
To set the stage, I’m just chilling at a bar on Rainey Street that I decide to check out because it’s called Javelina’s and I spent all weekend in Phoenix reading a book called “Javelina Christmas” to my little nephew so I’ve got these little skunk pigs on the brain. I am enjoying a nice Corona draft beer for $2 and sampling a free shot of Strawberry-Watermelon Moonshine from the friendly bartender.
Then this poor adorable fool, just about my age and a Texas-forever-type guy who sure looks like he can hold his whiskey, sweetly posts up at the bar next to me and waits for the bartender. When the bartender glances over his shoulder and asks him if he wants a drink, this guy says “actually, I left my credit card at the bar last night and I just want to pick it up.” Cool, right? I do that pretty often. I actually forgot my rental car keys three times earlier today, including one brilliant bout where I left the keys on the hood of my car, in a public park, for 3 hours. Back to the main point which is whatever, it happens. You forget shit.
THEN, EVIL BARTENDER MAN HAS A LIGHTNING BURST OF RECOGNITION AND ACTUALLY SAYS TO POOR FOOL, IN FRONT OF ME, IN CONDESCENDING TONE THAT OTHERS CAN HEAR, “Oh, yeah. Wow you were pretty drunk last night. Haha, totally toasted. How are you feeling?”
Even though I have nothing to do with this I am purple with vicarious humiliation for poor fool at this point. In the words of my live tweeting text recap of this horrific scene to my friend Elissa, “Like, OMG PLEASE DO NOT REMIND ME HOW BADLY I EMBARRASSED MYSELF LAST NIGHT I CLEARLY KNOW BECAUSE I AM NEAR MIDDLE-AGED AND I AM HERE AT 3PM THE NEXT DAY ASKING FOR MY CREDIT CARD!”
Honestly, this is why I spent all of my 20s just calling up my credit card company every weekend and telling them that The Damn Sasquatch stole my card again and to please send me another one – like hell I’m going to waltz back into the bar and politely ask for my credit card when the last time these people saw me I was wearing my evil leather jacket and angrily kicking over a vat of peanuts or stealing forks from the wait station because “I can’t afford my own.” We all know how this works, I just don’t show my face again until I’m quite certain that 100% staff turnover has been achieved or until I’ve had so many drinks that I’m certain I am wearing my invisibility cloak and no one recognizes me.
Back to the bar scene. Now all I can do is picture this poor dude next to me at Javelina’s the night before, 360-degree exorcist vomiting everywhere, shaking pee out of his leg, and screaming something incomprehensible about Chad From The Bachelor before getting physically tossed out of the bar.
It was just painful, and while a small part of me felt relief for having my worst nightmare squeak past me literally 14 inches to my left, the larger part just took in pounds of horror and shame through osmosis in that thick, judgement-filled air. I didn’t make eye contact, but I envisioned him slinking out of the bar, walking 15 feet to the next closest Rainey Street house-bar, and drinking away his troubles with whatever grain alcohol got cranked out that day. Tonight, I pour one out for him.
Hmm, so what else? Other highlights included eating a glorious off menu order of Steak & Eggs at Moonshine and washing down with a Sunday Suzy, wandering through a park without using my phone at all and feeling really nature-y, and then stumbling upon a behemouth bike sculpture that made me feel like I was temporarily losing my vision and also made me take my phone back out again after 15 minutes. Damn you, cool, instagrammable art. So I suppose this experience gets it’s own section too.
Austin Introduces Ai WeiWei’s Forever Bicycles
Forever Bicycles is a pretty mind-bending outdoor sculptural installation that travels, in many different forms, to cities around the word. It just recently was installed in Austin off of the Waller Creek trail on June 6th, and I was lucky enough to happen across it all by my lonesome. Ai WeiWei, the artist, fascinates many writers who discuss him in many prominent publications, pontificating on whether or not WeiWei may in fact be “China’s most dangerous man,” “the art world’s most influential figure,” or “the modern day Andy Warhol.” I suggest checking him out with the links above but at any rate this guy’s work is cool as shit. And if you yourself are spending 24 hours in Austin in the next few months, add this to your list or else.
When I walked by it, at first I truly thought I had gotten something in my eyes because I couldn’t make out whatever it was I was looking at and the edges of the structure not only were fuzzy but also seemed to change every time I took a step in any direction. “Oh, of course!” I sighed as I realized my obvious mistake. “It’s just because this is a three-dimensional sculpture made of 1,300 to-scale metal bicycles!”
When it comes to art in general, I’m very much in the camp of “if you like it, you like it.” Regarding this piece, “I like it.” I enjoy The Bean in Chicago because you can stand under it, touch it, see the sky through it, and just experience a piece of artwork outside that doesn’t “feel” like it’s playing by the rules by being outside. For the same reasons, plus the fact that it’s all mind-warp-y, I liked this piece very much. It felt neat to stand under an arch of 1,300 bicycles all put together specifically to make you react to and (I hope) interact with it. Here’s me gettin’ all up in the sculpture…
I realize now that it was borderline shitty of me not to read the plaque for specific rules before I wandered up, stepped inside of, curiously touched, and spun some of the wheels on this thing. In my defense, the plaque was far away. And judging from both the medium and the subject, I am pretty sure that minimal interaction with this thing is the point as long as you are respectful and not this girl:
Also, when no one was looking I took a selfie on a trail around the lake. Here it is.
And that’s really it, folks! 24 hours in Austin, basically accounted for except for the time I spent drinking crappy wine in the hotel bar (WTF, Intercontinental, get it together with your glass wine selection). This morning, I am working in a coffee shop, drinking locally brewed coffee and eating an Acai Bowl – life comes around full circle, folks! Mission accomplished, peace out Austin, you’ve been a delight.