Time Square

Last night I went to see Time Square at the Alamo downtown for "Music Monday." It was definitely fun, and the movie is as good as I remembered it being. Unfortunately, next week's "Music Monday" showing of Time Square will be the last, possibly ever, in 35 mm, as the Universal Studios fire last year destroyed all but one copy of the film. So Universal Studios let the Alamo use the film for a set number of dates, and after that, it goes back into storage will it will likely remain forever. So, if you're a fan of the movie, and you're in the Austin area, I definitely recommend checking it out next Monday. And if you've never seen the movie, you're missing out, because it's awesome, and it has one of the best soundtracks of any movie in the 80s.

Austin Coffee Houses

One of the things I like about Austin (there aren't many, to be sure) is the large number of non-Starbucks coffee shops and coffee bars throughout the city. The coffee's rarely all that good, but again, it's not Starbucks coffee, so you could do worse. I spent way too much time at four different coffee shops: JP's Java, because it's right on campus, Music Cafe, because it's near my apartment, Halcyon, because it's good for people watching and open late, and Hideout (pictured above), for reasons that I can't entirely explain.

I have a terrible habit of showing up at coffee houses when there's an event of some sort. Last week, there was a gallery opening when I decided to do some work at Music Cafe, so there I was dressed like, well, me, typing away on my laptop while everyone else was in their hyper-trendy best listening to an equally hyper-trendy guy do ironic renditions of 60s country songs. I also frequently forget that Mondays are open-mic poetry nights at Hideout, and end up half-listening to (mostly bad) poetry for an hour because I'm too lazy to get up and leave, and I'm afraid that if I leave during someone's poem they'll take it as a rejection, as though my obviously not paying attention isn't one.

There's no real point to this, other than to say that I obviously have a problem with coffee, and that for some reason, I like the atmosphere of coffee houses, even though there's no one coffee house atmosphere. Anyone in Austin who's been to the four coffee houses I listed above will know that they couldn't be more different from each other: JP's is intellectual to the point of being snobby, filled with faculty and grad students often having heady discussions about whatever it is they're studying; Music Cafe is South Austin chic; Halcyon is all about the Warehouse District nightlife, and being across from several trendy gay clubs, it's all about a very well-dressed nightlife at that; and Hideout is pseudo-Bohemian with its open-mic nights, its underground (though above the shop) improv theater in the back, and it's dirty couches. So I'm not really sure what I mean when I say that I like the "atmosphere" of coffee houses. I just can't think of any better way to explain it.

Retail Graveyard and the Road From Nowhere

At least twice a month, I take a bus from downtown Austin to Kyle, about 20 miles south of downtown. The bus drops me off at a taqueria with some of the best breakfast tacos I've ever had. I then have to walk about 2 miles to my ultimate destination. I could walk along the frontage road of IH35, but I'm not suicidal, so I cross the interstate and then walk down a hill next to a Dairy Queen and then walk through what can only be described as a retail graveyard. It was once a large shopping center, but all of the stores closed at least a decade ago, and the buildings were torn down. The area is now completely overgrown, except for the streets that went through the shopping center, and is home to all manner of wildlife. In the last three months, I've spotted at least 10 different species of song birds, buzzards, red tailed hawks and another raptor that I don't recognize, mice, feral cats, a rat snake, and one fat western diamondback rattle snake. Here's a picture of a part of the retail graveyard (looking southeast):

In the spring, that entire area was filled with small bushes, each with dozens of little yellow flowers. It was striking.

There's one feature of the graveyard that strikes me as downright surreal. At the south end is a road that appears, seemingly ex nihilo, out of the woods. It is a road from nowhere:


Here is an aerial view, so that you can see that the street really does come from nowhere (the building just south of the bridge is the Dairy Queen). My favorite part is the left turn only lane, which will be useful to the cars that materialize out of the woods and drive down this street. If you can't tell, this second picture (taken looking east) was taken in winter. The woods at the far end are now quite green. I like to walk back there, down a small hill at the end of the road, and sit under the trees while reading. I just have to remember to brush the ants, rollie pollies, and wolf spiders off my legs now and then.

Austin's Other Bats

Austin is famous for its "Bat Bridge," the Congress Street Bridge over Lady Bird Lake that houses the largest urban bat colony in the world. On any given evening in the summer, you can find hundreds, even thousands of people standing on and around the bridge to watch the nearly 1 million Mexican free-tailed bats leave their roost in a great bat cloud. It's an impressive sight.

But few people are aware that downtown Austin is home to several other, smaller bat colonies. I recently discovered one by complete accident. I was walking at dusk, west on 15th Street between Trinity and San Jacinto (we were coming from Waterloo Park), on the south side of 15th along the 1401 San Jacinto parking garage, when I noticed a bat flying surprisingly low along the side of the garage. Then I saw another bat, and another, both flying really low (I'm 5'10", and they were at about my head level). I took a few more steps, when I suddenly realized that there was a steady stream of bats coming from the parking garage, all flying directly at my head and only swerving away at the last moment. This was initially disorienting, as everywhere I turned I saw another bat or group of bats flying right towards or around my head. So it took me a few seconds to realize that I was standing next to a small bat colony, housed in a one-inch gap between the parking garage's main wall and its façade. The bats had begun leaving for the evening at the very moment I was walking by, and I was just feet away from their exit. After a minute or two I got up the courage to run through the now steady stream of bats, and then watched them flow out for a few more minutes before continuing on.

I've now passed that spot several times just before dusk, and each time I've stopped to listen to the bats chirping. If you look closely, you can even see a few of the bats hanging behind the façade. It's really pretty cool. And in hindsight, I should have known that there were bats living in that spot. I had walked past it dozens of times during the winter (when the bats are in Mexico), and either earlier or later in the day during the summer (when they're sleeping, so I should have noticed the bat guano covering the parking garage's wall, or the smell of guano, familiar to most Austinites, that permeates the entire block.

So if you live in Austin, or are visiting, and you want to see bats up close, head on over to 15th St between Trinity and San Jacinton, on the south side of the street. Below is a picture of the guano covering the wall (you can also see the small gap where the bats exit). If you see this, you'll know you're in the right spot.

We Are Austin Too, Part I

The local CBS affiliate here in Austin, KEYE 42, adopted the slogan "We Are Austin" a few years back, and it's been so successful that they've made weareaustin.com their main website's URL. They frequently air "We are Austin" ads that involve their news anchors and reporters, along with residents of Austin, all saying "We are Austin!" with great verve and enthusiasm. Each of the Austin residents is attractive, well-dressed (and likely well-to-do), most of them are white, and UT students figure prominently in the ads, even though UT students are only Austin part of the year, and only for a few years. This makes certain advertising sense, of course, but it's not really very reflective of the way Austin's population really looks. After all, white people make up less than half of the Austin population. Also, a solid 14% of the population lives below the poverty line, there's a huge (and generally under-counted) homeless population, and panhandlers are everywhere. So I thought I'd make my own ads with the aim that, when combined with KEYE's, they might present a more accurate image of the city. Here's my first:

All Things Go

Here in Austin, there's a bit of controversy brewing, or at this point, fully brewed, over the semi-removal of two programs from the local public radio station, KUT. You can read about the hubbub here. I say semi-removed because, while Paul Ray's Jazz and the Phil Music Program, hosted by Larry Monroe, were removed from the station's lineup, as well as the late night program that Ray and Monroe hosted together, they both still have programs on the station, including Monroe's "Blue Monday" (which I listen to most weeks). The shows that were removed have been replaced with programs that are basically commercial radio programs without commercials.

A group comprised of an ex-mayor of Austin, several local musicians, and KUT listeners, are upset at the change in programming, and have started a Facebook group and a website called Save KUT. They argue that this isn't just about getting rid of Ray's and Monroe's programs, but about the overall change in the programming at KUT. But let's face it, it really is about Ray and Monroe (something the website tacitly admits over and over again).

I don't really have a dog in this race, because the one program other than NPR that I listen to regularly on KUT, "Blue Monday," is still on the air. I occasionally caught Ray's jazz program, and only stopped to listen to Monroe's when I heard Robert Earl Keen ("The road goes on forever, and the party never ends!"). I do hope that, if enough KUT listeners really do want the Phil Music Show and Paul Ray's Jazz back, they get it, either by showing their disapproval through their donations, or lack thereof, or by making enough of a fuss to convince KUT that if it doesn't put them back on the air, it will suffer the consequences come donation time.

However, I honestly don't see the big deal. They were two radio shows, one of which (the Phil Music Show) was uniquely Austin, I'll admit, and the two talented DJs are still on the air every week. But ya know, to me it just feels like, well, what happens with stuff in the media all the time. I mean, most of the radio stations I've liked over the years don't even exist anymore, to say nothing of the programs I liked on those stations. TV shows come and go, radio programs come and go, DJs come and go. All things go. C'est la vie.

The amount of money that's been put into these protests -- at least enough for a website, town meetings, benefit shows to raise more money, and $1200 a week full page ads in the Chronicle -- seems to me, in the midst of an economic crisis, when I can't walk 3 steps from my apartment door without seeing people suffering because they were laid off and can't find work, or walk past a food kitchen without noticing how much longer the lines are now than they were this time last year, to be a bit over the top. How many of those people do you think are sitting around worrying about the current direction of KUT programming? There are better uses for this energy, for this money, and for this time, than protesting because two guys didn't really lose their jobs, when so many others are, and because the programming direction of a station isn't to your liking. I mean, log on to the friggin' internet and listen to some jazz or Texas music, or hell, create your own jazz/Asleep at the Wheel station on Pandora. And give your money to a real cause, where it's really needed.