Native Bees and Austin’s Unrelenting Growth
Most of us know by now that Austin is a great place to live. I’ve been here my entire life and watched the city grow up with me. A lot … Continue reading
Goodbye to a River?
In May of 2014 I returned to Austin for one last research trip before finally sitting down and completing my book on Austin’s history. Having been gone from Texas for … Continue reading
Downstream
Without belonging to a particular incident, place, or act, these images are traces of another city where water drips slowly through the cracks, draining away the undesired and disposable. Until … Continue reading
Grackles and Old Cars
Grackles are sleek birds that wear the expression of rapacious fishes. Many years of cohabitation with humans has not loosened the danger on which they seem to insist. Perhaps it … Continue reading
Bloomin’ Cedar Blues
If there is one thing that worries Austin more than losing its cool, it’s the endless allergens that haunt the city’s air. Local singer Joy Luther has been dealing with Austin’s … Continue reading
Finding Loston
Is this the End of Austin? How presumptuous. Endings and Beginnings are always the same process. Austin has been around for a long time; only it wasn’t always called Austin. … Continue reading
Between the Windshield and the Rearview
Driving in Austin suggests a metaphor: this town always has one eye on the windshield and one on the rearview. Everywhere you look things are being built, while others … Continue reading
Interview with Richard Parker, New York Times
Austin-based writer Richard Parker touched a nerve with his New York Times article about how Lance Armstrong’s rise and fall might reflect what could happen to the city where he … Continue reading
The Mapmaker
Nobody was forced to stay in their neighborhoods. There was no police action or citywide internment. We all just started settling in by our own accord and didn’t notice how … Continue reading
A Conversation With Thor
About halfway through Thor Harris’s A Post Apocalyptic Tale of Friendship (2010), a mutilated and deformed figure hauls a shark-filled aquarium through a desert populated by wilted flora and equally … Continue reading
The End of Oz-Town
Just before the Austin housing bubble went POP! and Code Compliance hassled the Cathedral of Junk into becoming a permitted structure, the Cathedral’s creator, Vince Hannemann, brought me by his … Continue reading
The End of Austin 