talking shit about austin

It's a beautiful day here in New York, reminding me that it is probably over 100 degrees in Austin right now, and also that I probably have been out of Austin long enough to talk shit on it from a proper perspective.

Now, Austinites will say, "It's not fair to compare Austin to NYC." And they are right. It's not fair. But perhaps the most irritating thing about Austin is that it admits this, and then instantly takes it back, because it has such a love affair with itself. Unbelievably obsessed with South by Southwest, Slacker, the University of Texas, the local music scene, Lance Armstrong, residue hippie-ism, and with keeping itself weird, Austin is more of a piece than any place I've ever lived. Leaving aside "the punks" (about whom more later) and probably the members of the Texas legislature, almost every single person I met in Austin was INTO all the above things. Every weekend the city would almost shut down to participate in a UT game, or some Lance Armstrong parade, or some hippie craft-fair bullshit, or the ubiquitous "live music" outdoors.

Seriously, it was like living in a cult, because to me the defining aspect of a cult is a lack of irony. Like, even Catholics can make jokes about themselves. Ditto, Jews. But like any cult, Austin's self-love was so pervasive that talking about "the outside world" always occasioned this weird blend of ignorance and animosity. To hear Austin talk about Dallas or Houston or San Antonio was so completely defensive; as if people living in these other cities were being scammed. To me, any place in the south or midwest trying to call out some other city on being culturally impoverished, backward, etc, is just the pot calling the kettle black. It's like Austin took the very slight "oh hey this place is better than Alabama" kudos it received, ran with it, and then started blocking its ears from then on.

Here's a rundown:
-real art museum? no.
-real airport? no.
-hippies? yes.
-two-years-behind hipsters? yes.
-fairly small and scenester-oriented punk scene? yes.
-a bunch of emos hopelessly involved with keyboards? yes.
-art-house cinema? no.
-literary or academic culture? no.
-bike lanes? no.
-horrible highway and mall traffic? yes.
-unspoken and uncomfortable racial tensions? yes.
-cool bars? no.
-dozens of lame, vaguely themed bars? yes.

The worst part is that there are all of ten cool things to do in town, and these things are all anyone talks about, as if forgetting that after you've lived there for two weeks, you are completely sick of what there is to do.

I dunno, maybe it's hard to get around nyc, everything is expensive, and the people are ridiculous, but people care about their own lives, whereas much of Austin lives vicariously through the city's life as a whole, which being extremely dull, makes it on a whole feel like a fischer price "My First City" instead of an interesting place to live. Also, fuck being laid-back.