Concert to Save Town Lake

Luv Doc Writings, The Luv Doc Recommends

JULY 17, 2007

Really, the question is, who wouldn’t want to live in $500,000 condo in a 44-story high rise on the breathtaking shores of Shoal Creek? Imagine leaning over your balcony railing on the 42nd floor and squinting downward at that tiny fissure of green space below and knowing that, just a few miles upstream under a bridge in Pease Park, a homeless man just dropped trow and is squeezing out a three-coiler on the dry creekbed – a pungent pâté of digested pizza rinds and cinnamon sticks from the Mr. Gattis Dumpster. Don’t worry, there’s not enough line in your Pocket Fisherman to get your lure below the 20th floor anyway, much less hit top water, so you don’t have to worry about reeling in a big batch of E. coli. Besides, it’s not like you really want to fish, it’s the idea that you could fish if you wanted to. You like to be close to the water, even if that water is a fetid drainage ditch for Downtown developers. Sign here … and here … and here. After all, you didn’t just spend half a mil on a condo, you bought a lifestyle. You wanted to be able to roll out of bed at 10am, take a quick four minute elevator ride to the ground floor and hire a pedicab to pump you up to Starbuck’s for a Vende Latteccino and a copy of The New York Times. Maybe afterward you could strap on your heavy hands and take your (circle one) Shih Tzu/Pomeranian/Chihuahua/Pekingese for a brisk power walk around Town Lake … but wait … some asshole put a 26-story condo right in the middle of the hike and bike trail. Worse yet, the City Council signed off on the deal. Now, just like the rest of Austin, you’re getting the runaround. Enraged, you shake your fist at the cranes and construction workers and without a trace of irony yell, “Damn you, developers! Damn you!” What kind of livable city is it when you can only enjoy Town Lake from behind the plate glass of an expensive condo? Well sure, it’s livable all right. So is the riverwalk in San Antonio. C’mon, they turned their drainage ditch into a tourism gold mine. With some knee-jerk urban planning and lack of foresight, Austin can turn Town Lake into a similar cement moat – maybe even with flatboats full of fat Midwestern conventioneers. Dare we dream? Maybe. If you want to have a voice in whether Austin will go from River City to Moat Metropolis, show up down at Stubb’s (nestled on the beautiful shores of Waller Creek) for the Concert to Save Town Lake, a fundraiser for Austinites for the Responsible Development of the Town Lake Corridor, an organization with a tough job and even tougher name from which to draw an anagram. Local musicians Bob Schneider, Dale Watson, Stephen Bruton, Jimmy Lafave, and Kinky Friedman will join forces to rock block the potential riverwalk.

Keep Austin Weird Festival

Luv Doc Writings, The Luv Doc Recommends

JUNE 12, 2007

Remember how jacked you were when you could finally buy authentic Seattle grungewear in the Dillards casuals section? You ran over to the mall and picked up a “distressed” flannel vest with t-shirt sleeves sewn into it so it looked like you were layering to fend off the dank, cold, cloudy Austin weather. Good choice. Perfect for watching the salmon fight their way up the icy Colorado to spawn. Now you probably feel just a little bit guilty that you might have been part of the reason St. Kurt chose to martyr himself with a scattergun. Then again, maybe the whole grunge thing missed you entirely. You might have been into old-school punk like the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, and the Misfits – bands whose t-shirts can most easily be found at Hot Topic, the best place to pick up band merch for bands who never had band merch. You have to give them credit, at least Hot Topic figured out how to identify and merchandise a punk “look.” Unlike the unbranded punks of yesteryear, Hot Topic execs aren’t hamstrung by some half-cocked, anti-consumerist, nihilist ideology. They understand that when it comes to rebellion and belligerent individualism, most people like a well-defined road map – ideally one that leads to prime retail space at the local shopping mall. Hot Topic isn’t sweating whether or not they’re perceived as authentic. With $13.6 million in net profits last year, they don’t have to prove their authenticity to anyone (least of all their shareholders). Hot Topic has clearly tapped that punk ass. Not surprisingly, the benefits of appropriation marketing haven’t been lost on the Austin business community. Awhile back local businesses caught on to the fact that Austinites were loosely opposed to the corporate homogenization that turns unique communities into generic, big-box developments. Someone (quite ingeniously) coughed up the phrase “Keep Austin Weird” as an opposition rallying cry. Yes, Austin is weird, but it’s more of a case of contrast. Weirder that what? Plano? Regardless of how you feel about the phrase, “Keep Austin Weird” has already moved a lot of beefy tees, and if businesses decide to use a catchy slogan to vitalize the local economy and celebrate Austin’s unique character, where’s the harm in that? Why not get on the bandwagon this weekend at Republic Square Park, when AT&T and HEB along with a variety of local businesses bring you the Keep Austin Weird Festival, a 5K fun run, costume contest, and concert that benefits the RunTex Foundation. Here’s your chance to do the grunt work of weirdness: Run around dressed up like a weirdo, eat, drink, and watch a great lineup of bands: The Steps, Patricia Vonne, South Austin Jug Band, Alejandro Escovedo, Soulhat, and Bob Schneider.