Also, if you are into posters do not miss Flatstock...a bi-annual poster convention that will be happening thursday through sunday I believe in the austin convention center.
Just whatever you do, if you don't live there now-please *don't* move there. We have enough people who are turning the city into just another city-just enjoy your time there at 'South by So What' and then get on the plane and go home. Thank you.
There's that Austin arrogance that always makes me sick. I really can't stand you people. How did you manage to get the state capitol to be the least exemplary of our great state of Texas. What a shame.
It's not arrogance-it's realism. And I think it's good that Austin isn't exemplary of the rest of the state-I couldn't live anywhere else but Austin-if you can't stand the rest of the state but don't want to leave, Austin is the refuge.
i grew up there (in austin)...so are you supposed to leave? did you grow up there? I will come to austin anytime I want and leave when I please..it's my home...make yours elsewhere if you don't like what the city is, or is becoming...austin has feared change for more than 50 years, but it has still grown and matured, deal with it...it is a reality that the town needs to embrace if it wants to have any control over what it will become.
That said, I also enjoy Houston ...and will be visitng a day there too...Austin does not come close to Houston when it comes to architecture and art...it is true.
Yeah I was born and raised there-I think some apsects of the growth have been good, but sometimes I get the impression that people moving there are just seeking the next 'cool place' and could just as easily live in Portland, SF, Chicago, Brooklyn, and probably will-it just bothers me that Austin is getting swept up in the whole hip city thing that is IMHO, bleaching every city with an identity in America. It's just another stop on the 'creative class' train-which is obviously better than not being on that list. Yeah the city's unique, but not as much as it used to be. Also it pisses me off that the people that made the city what it is can't really afford to live there anymore. Yeah I could 'deal with it', but that's a serious issue that a lot of decent places are having to face.
And I agree that Houston has a better art scene than Austin-that's sort of a no-brainer.
ausitn is becominng houston and dallas, because most of the developers are from houston and dallas. Heck, a ton of the clubs in austin are from houton, Emo's, the Continental Club...
And when austin has stood up for itself, like the Save our Springs initiative, it gets grandfathered or found illegal by the state supreme court through litigation pushed by those same developers.
I think you will find these days most people in Austin are not from austin...many of the austinites who made it what it was moved on, to San Francisco, New York city, etc...they come back for stints...but not like they used to.
Austin is just growing up...which I think is good...it needs to, it is not going to stay that little 60's hippie college town paradise...so it needs to get past the thought of nostalgia and think pro-actively IMHO.
The hip thing is jus Austin, when wasn't it hip? It was hip when my mother grew up there dragging on speedway in her 442 in the 60's.
It could learn alot from places like San Francisco...and my point about Houston and the Art scene, as well as architecture scene, is that Austin should be competing with Houston...the wealth in Austin needs to step up, support more museums, art, and culture outside of just the music ...the people are there...there is no reason why austin could not compete with Houston, LA, or San Francisco...let it grow up, and be part of it.
Fighting the growth of austin is a long standing habit that the town has to get over...I mean look how bad the traffic is largely due to a lack of planning for growth, even when the growth was known to be happening.
I do think austin getting the Predock building as its new city hall is a good first step to make a new face for itself...much better than the shelled out empty Intel building...although the corner of 6th and Lamar has completely turned into Dallas land, yuch!
oldirty you definitely said one thing that is true: the hip city thing is happening everywhere. Austin is not a special case: everywhere you go the recently cool and affordable places are becoming too expensive for the hipsters that made them that way - see the "artists loft" thread too. Douglas Coupland said it almost 20 years ago: it really doesn't matter (in America) where you live anymore because we all have the same chain stores in the malls.
The truth is no place in the southwest can afford more population growth unless something is done about the water situation. Rather than tell people "Don't Come Here!!!!" try teaching them what it means to live in this place vs. that place and how they can prevent the place you love from becoming "bleached out" to whatever it is they expected to be the same as where they came from (sorry for the tortured sentence structure there).
PS I say this as someone who grew up in Arizona and knows quite a bit about what makes the SW amazing - much of which is long gone by now.
Oh and while we're in Austin I should disclose that I was PM for the masterplanning process for the city block on which is sited St. David's Episcopal Church - I think it's on 7th, right across from the Omni. Didn't get to work on the implementation of that masterplan, sadly, as I had been shifted to other projects by the time it started. - which resulted in the creation of a new parish and inner and streetside courtyards. The original church structure is the oldest Episcopal Church building west of the Mississippi. The parking garage was already there when I started work.
There actually is a decent indigenous art scene happening in Austin-but it's in East Austin-there is a great studio tour every year that will take you to all the studios out there-and there are a ton.
I have literally told people in Austin that I was born there and they look at me like I'm a Martian-I am the first native they have ever met.
And God forbid Austin become like SF too much-that city is tired-pretty as all get out, but the people are unfriendly and the architecture and art scene is ossified. And there's a good reason that Austin can't compete with Houston or LA or SF-*it's not as big*
And I guess I should come clean-I moved to New York. I would love to come back to Austin ASAP. Everything interesting in New York is commodified in record time and it would be nice to live somewhere where you have time and space to just be in your own head.
What bothers me about the growth is that these people move to Austin and they really have no stake in the city-hence the sprawl, dumb growth(as opposed to smart growth) and the dying of some traditions-the 38th Street lights sucked this year-a lot of the people moving in now are just Californians and New Yorkers who want to get a bunch of houses cheap and flip them, they don't care where. Or who want to move from where they are, but want to pretend that they didn't.
Actually, while I am at it-are good firms hiring there? I have heard of Bercy/Chen and Alterstudio-are there other names? And if I didn't go to UT, do I have a chance of being considered? Should I play up the fact that I am an actual, living, breathing native Austinite?
I'm on the same page with everyone ... I lived in Austin from 1997-1999. I also went to my first SXSW in 1996 (I was involved in the music end of things). It is quite shocking how huge and unmanageable this festival has become.
Although I never, ever thought I would say this, I think I prefer Houston to Austin.
lb -- my wife and i go to st david's! it's a small world! next time you are in town you should see the labyrinth they put in down there in the space between the garage and the (new) extension. pretty interesting. they have this suspended wire above it where they're trying to train vines to grow. tis not working so far.
anyhoo, there's nothing more "austintatious" (excuse me while i puke) than to move here and then six months later bitch about how things just aren't the way they used to be. yet this is a "progressive" city?
that's why the city council decided to unanimously and very hurriedly pass a half-baked, likely-illegal restriction on residential development that only the heads of three or four central-city neighborhood associations wanted. restrictions that could eventually mean the end of modern residential design in austin unless they are overturned by the state legislature.
that's why light rail--a REAL light-rail system--was defeated back in 2000. (there aren't enough anti-tax republicans in austin to single-handedly defeat rail and there weren't in 2000.) the rationale being, if it was easier to get around, more people might want to come. these are the same people who coined the phrase, "growth: costs too much, does too little."
that's why austin is the only major city in texas with an at-large city council...one where "gentleman's agreements" guarantee one hispanic and one black council member. the other members, of course, being white (until last year when jennifer kim was elected). dallas and fort worth, on the other hand, have single-member geographically-defined districts. of course the fear here in austin is that the 35% or so of central-city white liberals who "run" things would lose their power.
but then again, the place is so damn beautiful, the people (at least the ones from the south or from texas) are so nice, the barbeque and mexican food are so good, and the money so easy to make...god, i can handle all the flaws. on earth as it is in austin. everyone enjoy sxsw, we will know you by the trail of black. (austinites don't wear black, not even the architects...)
We don't wear black in the beach towns in southern California, either. That's how you always know an LA hollywood type. It was a big shock to my wardrobe to move to the East Coast!
k. i saw the talib kweli set at la zona. it rocked. i saw the eternal show last night featuring the flaming lips and clap your hands say yeah. was badass. im lookin at the schedule for tonight and nothing is jumping out at me yet. any recommendations from the fellow archinect hipsters attending?
also, there are some good firms hiring. check the aiaaustin.org website. and im not even gonna weigh in on the austin vs. houston vs. evil developers issue...its time to party!
most of those evil developers' hipster kids are walking down south congress now as we speak
as for hiring: yes, people are hiring here. if you're in from out of town drive around and see all the construction that is going on...and about to go on. our hopes are that maybe we can actually sustain a building boom for longer than a couple of years this time. and being native will certainly not be a bad thing although none of us at my firm (for instance) grew up here and it won't really make much difference at most places
speaking of, we had an (unsuccessful) interviewee a couple of months back who wanted to move from ny to austin. he was talking about how "slow" the pace is and how much he liked that. i guess he figured it was ok to be 30 minutes late to his own interview (turns out he was down the street drinking a latte). austin doesn't have as many people wearing watches as other places, but for god's sake, don't be late to your own job interview. my boss probably called every architect in austin that he knew about this guy. because it is a small town, at least architecturally. small towns often have few rivers to cross, but also few bridges, and once you burn one...
wow, i didnt know there was a network here for blacklisting interviewees. i guess my firm isnt on it b/c we didnt get the call. my worst story is interviewing someone who presented their thesis on a 8x5 layout on only one page. it was impossible to see any detail...and it was a "THESIS" project....
Mar 17, 06 5:48 pm ·
·
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.
Greetings From Austin
I am SXSW as we speak. Austin is great. I just wanted to share.
Smokety are you staying at the Hotel San jose?!?
Austin is indeed great. Enjoy the concerts.
I had a drink at the San Jose on Friday night. I will probably be going there tonight as well.
I got wind of two super-secret shows: The Flaming Lips at the Fox and Hound, as well as Echo and The Bunnymen/Spoon on E. 6th street. Funy stuff.
i will be there tomorrow evening.
Go grab a bite of mole enchiladas at Polvos, you won't be sorry.
Also, if you are into posters do not miss Flatstock...a bi-annual poster convention that will be happening thursday through sunday I believe in the austin convention center.
enjoy.
Just whatever you do, if you don't live there now-please *don't* move there. We have enough people who are turning the city into just another city-just enjoy your time there at 'South by So What' and then get on the plane and go home. Thank you.
There's that Austin arrogance that always makes me sick. I really can't stand you people. How did you manage to get the state capitol to be the least exemplary of our great state of Texas. What a shame.
It's not arrogance-it's realism. And I think it's good that Austin isn't exemplary of the rest of the state-I couldn't live anywhere else but Austin-if you can't stand the rest of the state but don't want to leave, Austin is the refuge.
i grew up there (in austin)...so are you supposed to leave? did you grow up there? I will come to austin anytime I want and leave when I please..it's my home...make yours elsewhere if you don't like what the city is, or is becoming...austin has feared change for more than 50 years, but it has still grown and matured, deal with it...it is a reality that the town needs to embrace if it wants to have any control over what it will become.
That said, I also enjoy Houston ...and will be visitng a day there too...Austin does not come close to Houston when it comes to architecture and art...it is true.
Yeah I was born and raised there-I think some apsects of the growth have been good, but sometimes I get the impression that people moving there are just seeking the next 'cool place' and could just as easily live in Portland, SF, Chicago, Brooklyn, and probably will-it just bothers me that Austin is getting swept up in the whole hip city thing that is IMHO, bleaching every city with an identity in America. It's just another stop on the 'creative class' train-which is obviously better than not being on that list. Yeah the city's unique, but not as much as it used to be. Also it pisses me off that the people that made the city what it is can't really afford to live there anymore. Yeah I could 'deal with it', but that's a serious issue that a lot of decent places are having to face.
And I agree that Houston has a better art scene than Austin-that's sort of a no-brainer.
ausitn is becominng houston and dallas, because most of the developers are from houston and dallas. Heck, a ton of the clubs in austin are from houton, Emo's, the Continental Club...
And when austin has stood up for itself, like the Save our Springs initiative, it gets grandfathered or found illegal by the state supreme court through litigation pushed by those same developers.
I think you will find these days most people in Austin are not from austin...many of the austinites who made it what it was moved on, to San Francisco, New York city, etc...they come back for stints...but not like they used to.
Austin is just growing up...which I think is good...it needs to, it is not going to stay that little 60's hippie college town paradise...so it needs to get past the thought of nostalgia and think pro-actively IMHO.
The hip thing is jus Austin, when wasn't it hip? It was hip when my mother grew up there dragging on speedway in her 442 in the 60's.
It could learn alot from places like San Francisco...and my point about Houston and the Art scene, as well as architecture scene, is that Austin should be competing with Houston...the wealth in Austin needs to step up, support more museums, art, and culture outside of just the music ...the people are there...there is no reason why austin could not compete with Houston, LA, or San Francisco...let it grow up, and be part of it.
Fighting the growth of austin is a long standing habit that the town has to get over...I mean look how bad the traffic is largely due to a lack of planning for growth, even when the growth was known to be happening.
I do think austin getting the Predock building as its new city hall is a good first step to make a new face for itself...much better than the shelled out empty Intel building...although the corner of 6th and Lamar has completely turned into Dallas land, yuch!
oldirty you definitely said one thing that is true: the hip city thing is happening everywhere. Austin is not a special case: everywhere you go the recently cool and affordable places are becoming too expensive for the hipsters that made them that way - see the "artists loft" thread too. Douglas Coupland said it almost 20 years ago: it really doesn't matter (in America) where you live anymore because we all have the same chain stores in the malls.
The truth is no place in the southwest can afford more population growth unless something is done about the water situation. Rather than tell people "Don't Come Here!!!!" try teaching them what it means to live in this place vs. that place and how they can prevent the place you love from becoming "bleached out" to whatever it is they expected to be the same as where they came from (sorry for the tortured sentence structure there).
PS I say this as someone who grew up in Arizona and knows quite a bit about what makes the SW amazing - much of which is long gone by now.
Oh and while we're in Austin I should disclose that I was PM for the masterplanning process for the city block on which is sited St. David's Episcopal Church - I think it's on 7th, right across from the Omni. Didn't get to work on the implementation of that masterplan, sadly, as I had been shifted to other projects by the time it started. - which resulted in the creation of a new parish and inner and streetside courtyards. The original church structure is the oldest Episcopal Church building west of the Mississippi. The parking garage was already there when I started work.
There actually is a decent indigenous art scene happening in Austin-but it's in East Austin-there is a great studio tour every year that will take you to all the studios out there-and there are a ton.
I have literally told people in Austin that I was born there and they look at me like I'm a Martian-I am the first native they have ever met.
And God forbid Austin become like SF too much-that city is tired-pretty as all get out, but the people are unfriendly and the architecture and art scene is ossified. And there's a good reason that Austin can't compete with Houston or LA or SF-*it's not as big*
And I guess I should come clean-I moved to New York. I would love to come back to Austin ASAP. Everything interesting in New York is commodified in record time and it would be nice to live somewhere where you have time and space to just be in your own head.
What bothers me about the growth is that these people move to Austin and they really have no stake in the city-hence the sprawl, dumb growth(as opposed to smart growth) and the dying of some traditions-the 38th Street lights sucked this year-a lot of the people moving in now are just Californians and New Yorkers who want to get a bunch of houses cheap and flip them, they don't care where. Or who want to move from where they are, but want to pretend that they didn't.
Actually, while I am at it-are good firms hiring there? I have heard of Bercy/Chen and Alterstudio-are there other names? And if I didn't go to UT, do I have a chance of being considered? Should I play up the fact that I am an actual, living, breathing native Austinite?
I'm on the same page with everyone ... I lived in Austin from 1997-1999. I also went to my first SXSW in 1996 (I was involved in the music end of things). It is quite shocking how huge and unmanageable this festival has become.
Although I never, ever thought I would say this, I think I prefer Houston to Austin.
lb -- my wife and i go to st david's! it's a small world! next time you are in town you should see the labyrinth they put in down there in the space between the garage and the (new) extension. pretty interesting. they have this suspended wire above it where they're trying to train vines to grow. tis not working so far.
anyhoo, there's nothing more "austintatious" (excuse me while i puke) than to move here and then six months later bitch about how things just aren't the way they used to be. yet this is a "progressive" city?
that's why the city council decided to unanimously and very hurriedly pass a half-baked, likely-illegal restriction on residential development that only the heads of three or four central-city neighborhood associations wanted. restrictions that could eventually mean the end of modern residential design in austin unless they are overturned by the state legislature.
that's why light rail--a REAL light-rail system--was defeated back in 2000. (there aren't enough anti-tax republicans in austin to single-handedly defeat rail and there weren't in 2000.) the rationale being, if it was easier to get around, more people might want to come. these are the same people who coined the phrase, "growth: costs too much, does too little."
that's why austin is the only major city in texas with an at-large city council...one where "gentleman's agreements" guarantee one hispanic and one black council member. the other members, of course, being white (until last year when jennifer kim was elected). dallas and fort worth, on the other hand, have single-member geographically-defined districts. of course the fear here in austin is that the 35% or so of central-city white liberals who "run" things would lose their power.
but then again, the place is so damn beautiful, the people (at least the ones from the south or from texas) are so nice, the barbeque and mexican food are so good, and the money so easy to make...god, i can handle all the flaws. on earth as it is in austin. everyone enjoy sxsw, we will know you by the trail of black. (austinites don't wear black, not even the architects...)
ochona's back!
We don't wear black in the beach towns in southern California, either. That's how you always know an LA hollywood type. It was a big shock to my wardrobe to move to the East Coast!
been out of the office a lot these days...ah yes, the simple joy of that white screen when i should be doing a form-z model.
anyone from out of town: see spoon tonight.
"we will know you by the trail of black"
HAHAHA!!! I love it!
k. i saw the talib kweli set at la zona. it rocked. i saw the eternal show last night featuring the flaming lips and clap your hands say yeah. was badass. im lookin at the schedule for tonight and nothing is jumping out at me yet. any recommendations from the fellow archinect hipsters attending?
also, there are some good firms hiring. check the aiaaustin.org website. and im not even gonna weigh in on the austin vs. houston vs. evil developers issue...its time to party!
most of those evil developers' hipster kids are walking down south congress now as we speak
as for hiring: yes, people are hiring here. if you're in from out of town drive around and see all the construction that is going on...and about to go on. our hopes are that maybe we can actually sustain a building boom for longer than a couple of years this time. and being native will certainly not be a bad thing although none of us at my firm (for instance) grew up here and it won't really make much difference at most places
speaking of, we had an (unsuccessful) interviewee a couple of months back who wanted to move from ny to austin. he was talking about how "slow" the pace is and how much he liked that. i guess he figured it was ok to be 30 minutes late to his own interview (turns out he was down the street drinking a latte). austin doesn't have as many people wearing watches as other places, but for god's sake, don't be late to your own job interview. my boss probably called every architect in austin that he knew about this guy. because it is a small town, at least architecturally. small towns often have few rivers to cross, but also few bridges, and once you burn one...
wow, i didnt know there was a network here for blacklisting interviewees. i guess my firm isnt on it b/c we didnt get the call. my worst story is interviewing someone who presented their thesis on a 8x5 layout on only one page. it was impossible to see any detail...and it was a "THESIS" project....
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.