Goodbye to the Beauty Parlor
The Beauty Parlor is a salon that used to operate on the corner of East 12th and Cedar streets, and after six years, on August 22nd, it closed its doors … Continue reading
Breakfast Taco Wars: Race, History, and Food in Austin and San Antonio
When New York-based writer Matthew Sedacca made the claim that Austinites invented the phrase “breakfast taco”, he probably did not expect the level of outrage that he received from … Continue reading
North Lamar: Austin’s Most Cosmopolitan District
Austin’s most cosmopolitan district is growing—not in the heart of downtown—but along a two-mile stretch of North Lamar between Rundberg and Braker Lane at the northern edge of the city. … Continue reading
Ella: Fighting to Save a Few
Any life spanning seven decades is bound to have its share of twists, turns, and dreams deferred–maybe some that are never realized at all. After I had been meeting for … Continue reading
The Curious Case of Clarksville
It’s no secret that Austin, Texas is a growing town. Residents gripe about the weak infrastructure, how the bustling tech industry has made the city less weird, and the pains … Continue reading
Interview with Geographer Eliot Tretter
What inspired you to write Shadows of a Sunbelt City? Two factors inspired me to write Shadows of a Sunbelt City. One was the very practical matter of needing to find … Continue reading
Photographer John Pike on Austin Cantinas
If you look carefully you can still find a few remaining dingy, dark, loud and smokey Cantina type bars catering to a mostly Mexican and Central American crowd. These cantinas … Continue reading
Fighting for Affordable Housing in Austin: A Conversation with Mandy De Mayo, Director of HousingWorks.
Mandy De Mayo is the Executive Director of HousingWorks, a non-profit organization on the front lines of the fight for fair and affordable housing in Austin. We sat down to … 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 Right to the Enchanted City?
It is said that Austin’s “violet crown” comes from the purple glow of the horizon emanating from the western hills at sunset. Its first known reference came from an 1894 … Continue reading
From KLEEN Wash to Launderette: Signposts of Gentrification or…?
At the corner of Robert T. Martinez, Jr. and Holly Streets, on the wall of KLEEN Wash laundromat, Our Lady of Guadalupe graces her visitors with a loving gaze and … Continue reading
Austin’s Plaza Saltillo: Place, Practice, and Growth
TEOA enjoys bringing together well-known writers, academics, grad students, and undergrads under one roof. Here UT undergrad Emily Mixon shares a “reflection on the dichotomies between intended and real function … Continue reading
Austin By Thumb
There’s a synchronicity between thumb’s-up sign as “it’s all good,” and also “I’m all good. Invite me into your car.” I hitchhiked Austin for three days. Most of it spent … Continue reading
Black and White Austin
These photographs were taken in Austin on December 10th and 11th. I met these kids while exploring the neighborhood east of downtown. Anna Kuperberg is a photographer based in San … 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
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
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
The Beginning, the Middle, and Not the End
In the beginning, when Austin was born, it was named Waterloo. Young, little Waterloo had humble beginnings as a small Texas town in the hill country, but Mirabeau B. Lamar … Continue reading
An End Both Slow and Urgent: Blackness in Austin
Like many grad students, I always expected a fairly definitive end to Austin, a time when I was called upon to fulfill my life’s work after years of honing my … Continue reading
The End of Austin 