How Austin Became Weird: The Story of a Slogan
Everyday, thousands of Austinites roam our city’s sidewalk-less streets, creep along its concrete highways, and ramble through the corridors of its universities and start-ups with one question burning in their … Continue reading
Austin Old-Timer and Newcomer
I. Austin is the capital of the American Renaissance of the beginning of the twenty-first century. The explosive construction of bridges, ramps, roads, buildings; the flow of creative, inventive, and … Continue reading
Never the Same Again: A Story of SXSW 2010
The year is 2010, a time when Austin isn’t completely overrun with condos, cranes, and “hipsters” just yet, even during the infamous SXSW music festival. My favorite shows are lovingly … Continue reading
Alright Alright Alright: We Get Older, Dazed Stays the Same Age
Dazed and Confused (1993) turned 21 last year. Yes, the film that follows a longhaired teenager and his friends as they attempt to avoid being hazed, the film in which … Continue reading
Atomic Austin
Although our editorial board has mostly been concerned with changes confronting the Austin of the 21st century, a most violent end to Austin was anticipated half a century ago. During the height of the … Continue reading
A Well Attended Disappointment
In this transient metropolis, some traditions won’t die gracefully. Through hearsay and unaccountable publicity in local holiday event guides, the 37th St. Christmas light display has been eking out a … Continue reading
Boomerang Days: Drag King
The University of Texas’s alumni publication, The Alcalde Magazine, has recently featured some incredible and poignant essays exploring how the city has changed since many of our alumni were students here. We reprint this … Continue reading
Noteworthy
A fellow graduate student recently found a handwritten note on her car, which has a California license plate and was parked in Austin’s Hyde Park neighborhood. It reads (spelling errors … Continue reading
Austin in Available Light
British historian Derek Sayer, author of an important new book on Prague, spent the past year in Austin. At the end of his time here, TEOA asked him for his … Continue reading
Slacker Geography, 25 Years Later
Filmed for a reputed $23,000 in summer 1989, Slacker is a film that had the odds stacked against it. Writer-director Richard Linklater had exhausted family members from which to borrow … Continue reading
The End of Manor Downs
On the way back from Manor Downs, on Route 290, down 35, and then to the Statesman building just across the river, I used to think of my lead, the … Continue reading
The Most Beautiful City in the World
I do not want to write about leaving Austin. I don’t want to write about it because it feels like generalizing. Because, as someone noted, African Americans are the most … Continue reading
An Emotional Map of Austin
TEOA sat down with Austin artist Jennifer Chenoweth to talk about creatively mapping the emotional highs and lows of the city in a project called the “Hedonic Map of Austin.” How … Continue reading
Familiarity in (Sub)Urban Form: The Death of Highland Mall?
Where do malls go when they die? They go to deadmalls.com, or, alternatively, Facebook. In 2009, deadmalls.com visitor “Susan” warned that Austin’s Highland Mall was one foot in the grave: … Continue reading
Austin is a Graffiti Wall
The aerosol boom of the 1980s gave rise to a new wave of street artists who commandeered the popular image of graffiti as an illicit and subversive medium and breathed … Continue reading
Hip to the Future
I flew into Austin in 1991 for a musical vacation and spent the rest of the decade there getting a doctorate at UT-Austin in American Studies. The city was strange, … Continue reading
Spirits of the Weird
Clean and sober and 66. That’s Eddy Franklin today. He was out of the office for a short errand, heading back to his state job as a paperwork wrangler. He … Continue reading
Hashtag Why Austin
In the popular imagination, Austin exists somehow separate from large scale geopolitical conflicts and historical trends. Despite our understandings of this increasingly linked world, things happening on the other side … Continue reading
Filed Away, Forgotten For Now
Some of the other End of Austin pieces will undoubtedly focus on how the city has changed, how it is no longer what it once was, how and when it … Continue reading
The End of Austin 