It seems as though every time I log onto Facebook or head
over to Yahoo to read the news, I stumble across the latest list of the top
places to live, and my own little Austin somehow ALWAYS tops the list. Austin is the place to live if you are single
or married, male or female, if you’re raising a family or never want kids,
fresh out of college or about to retire.
Need a haircut? Move to
Austin. Have 2 legs? Move to Austin.
Either there is some secret experiment to see if we can get every single
Californian inside Austin city limits by the year 2016, or Austin really is
just THAT awesome. So, as someone who was
actually born and raised here (crazy right), who left for college and
immediately came back, who has been single, married, not had kids, and now has
kids, here are my 10 reasons everyone should VISIT Austin.
10. The Salt Lick
Is it the best BBQ in town, nope. But if you are here for a
3 day visit, do you really want to spend 2 of those days waiting in line for
Franklin’s BBQ from 7am to 9pm the next day, only to find out they ran out of
brisket, sausage, ribs, and turkey. Enjoy
your half slice of ham and day old beans. The Salt Lick is GOOD food, with a
great atmosphere, and it’s BYOB, so you can party the way you want to. Plus,
let’s not forget, most visitors (at least those from the northeast) have never
even heard of brisket before, so they would probably be impressed if you took
them to Bill Miller (I may have gone too far there)!!! I can’t tell you how many of my friends have
said, “oh so it’s just like steak cooked on a BBQ pit” when I try to describe
brisket to them, so sad, but I digress. Back to the Salt Lick… Should there be
a wait, because you showed up at 6pm on
a Saturday, sit on your cooler, pop open a beer, and listen to the live music
they always have playing. Plus, who can pass up on all you can eat, open pit
BBQ?
9. The Bats
The irony is not lost on me, that should we wake up to one
single bat flapping around our apartment, or find one dead in our backyard, we
all immediately run to update our rabies vaccines and begin to disinfect the
entire neighborhood. Bats are dirty and
gross on their own, but by the millions???
Oh man, what a beautiful sight.
Seriously though, go see the bats, its pretty nuts. According
to Bat Conservation International,[3]
between 750,000 and 1.5 million bats reside underneath the Congress Ave. bridge
(or to the Californians who just moved here last week, the “Lady Bird Johnson
Bridge”) each summer. That’s a lot of guano! The nice thing is the bats go out
in search of food (i.e. mosquitoes), which is really the only reason we let them
hang around (do you like what I did
there?). So wear a hat and take some bug
spray, while you sit and wait for the largest colony of rabid flying rats to disappear
out of site.
8. Live Music
True Story: I
once saw a man playing guitar and singing in a McDonald's in this town, and I
don’t even think he was homeless.
Anywhere you go, on any given day, at any given time, you could run into
some live music. From some of the
biggest names (this past weekend we had Kanye), to your 11 year old neighbor
who plays every Thursday night at the local Ice Cream shop. We have earned our nickname as “The Live
Music Capital of the World”, so if you hate music (and obviously life), or you
are looking to have a serious intimate conversation, stay home! And in case hearing live music at bars and
restaurants wasn’t enough, we have our next topic…
7. Festivals
I went away to
college for 4 years, and upon my return I found Austin became very “Festive”! We have ACL, SXSW, Bat Fest, Marley/Reggae
Fest, Pecan Street Festival, Kite Fest, Chocolate Fest (YES this is real), we
even have a “Keep Austin Weird” Festival!
Not to mention events like The Weenie Dog races in nearby Buda, Crawfish
Festival, Food Trailer Festivals (see 6)… If you took a pretty extraordinary
shit, we would create a festival to honor it every year, just to have one more
reason to get outside, paint our kids faces, sell light up swords, and drink
beer. http://austineventsandfestivals.com
I’m not sure what
genius created the first ever food trailer but bless him. I mean, delicious gourmet food (in most
cases), sold in self regulated quantities (get 1 taco or 24), and park multiple
food options in one area for variety. I
was the person who loved buffets like Golden Corral or Ponderosa, not for the
quality of food, but because I could get steak, stirs fry, turkey and dressing,
and lasagna all in one place. Food
trailer parks are similar, only they won’t leave you popping Imodium for the
next week AND the dessert trailers are WAY better than the ice cream made from
powder served at the AYCE places! Can we say GORDOUGHS?!?!?! http://www.foodtrailersaustin.com
5. Bars
Yup Bars. We have a lot of them. It used to be “6th Street” was the hottest
place to be. Now we have so many bars,
we had to kick poor old people out of their homes to develop areas like Rainey
Street. There are country bars, urban
bars, college bars, 30-something bars, bars on wheels (yes you can pedal and
drink), bars with old playground equipment in back, rooftop bars, want to play
Jenga in a bar? Ski Ball? you can… All the types of bars, we have, and the
majority are laid back with no dress code and live music. However, I have recently come across a bar or
2 where the bouncers are in suits and have ear pieces a la Vegas, and if you
jump in the pool on the roof, they kick you out (why have a pool?)! But they all serve booze, stay open until 2am,
and are ready to serve just about anyone who might be of age. Plus being just a
few blocks from each other, you can stumble from one to the other as you like! PSA: DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE IN MY TOWN
4. Lakes
There is a place
where boats can tie together, people share alcohol, women run topless, and beer bongs
are hung from second story houseboat balconies to swimmers in the water below… No this is not the
movie Inception, and I am not in your
dreams, this place is REAL and you can find it at Lake Travis. Though I just described a very specific
location on Lake Travis, Devil’s Cove, most boaters on Lake Austin will tell
you, their boat parties aren’t too different. Fishing, wake boarding, skiing, tubing, jet
skiing, all can be done on the over 60 miles of lake, as well as the aforementioned
partying. Need to walk your dog, go for
a run, do some Stand Up Paddle Boarding, then head to Town Lake (“Lady Bird Lake”
to the Californians), where fitness and beauty are as abundant as kids riding
bikes and feeding ducks. Plus with 70+ degree temperatures 9 months a year, who
wouldn’t want to be near the water?!
3. The Alamo Drafthouse
You can drink a
beer, eat a pizza, and have the greatest milkshake ever, all while watching the
newest movie to hit the box office or while participating in a Dirty Dancing quote along. “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.” Need I
say more? www.drafthouse.com
2. THE University of Texas
One of the
greatest colleges in the history of ever.
Is it Fall/Autumn? Go tailgate with
hundreds of thousands of your closest friends, while eating BBQ out of a pit
pulled behind a truck, drink beer, watch games in parking lots on 50 inch TV’s
with satellites attached. When someone you have never met yells “TEXAS” you don’t
think twice about putting your horns up and yelling right back “FIGHT”!!! We know
how to tailgate.
In the last 10 years Texas has had National Championships in
Football, Swimming, Baseball, Volleyball, and Golf. Alumni greats include Earl
Campbell, Roger Clemens, Cat Osterman, and Kevin Durant. Golf legends like Ben
Crenshaw and Tom Kite, as well as new blood on the tour, Jordan Spieth. Go
anywhere in town and you will see at least one person at every venue you stop at
wearing some sort of Longhorn garb. We
are Texas, What starts here, changes the world!
And now the number one reason everyone should
VISIT Austin is…
1. THE TRAFFIC!
That’s right. Notice I have never said any of you should
move here, but VISIT. We have something
like 110 people who move here a day, and we have yet to build one road to accommodate.
Our traffic is horrible on a dry sunshiny day, so when it rains, dear Lord help
us. Oh and this past year we experienced
something most of you know as “winter”, where the rain actually FROZE causing
sheer panic and uproar. This frozen rain
was so dangerous, just the thought of it possibly falling, caused us to shut
down the entire city.
So please, don’t move here, there’s no vacancy, and I don’t
mean there aren’t homes (or condos) for you to live in, I mean there is absolutely
no road available for you to drive on.
Visit if you must, and if you could plan your visit for a Friday through
Sunday when school is out, that would be lovely.
