I Live Here: Austin

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Name any Austin landmark or tourist attraction, I’ve probably been there.

The Stevie Ray Vaughan Statue, bats over Lady Bird Lake, bluebonnets in Spring, Mt Bonnell, Lake Travis, the Texas Capitol, Redbud Isle, Hamilton Pool, Bremond Block, Devil’s Cove, The Broken Spoke, The Continental Club, Zilker Park, St. Mary’s Cathedral, The Drag, Austin Bike Zoo: I’ve photographed them all and many more.

Over a 1.5 year period, I spent part of every weekend taking thousands of photographs of more than 100 locations around Austin for my photo book entitled, “Austin, Texas: A Photographic Portrait.”

During that time, not only did I experience the Austin that I was used to seeing in my everyday life – I also discovered other sides of Austin as I stepped outside of my comfort zone and endeavored to capture a more complete picture of the city in order to produce a book that all Austinites can relate to.

While working on this project, I noticed that Austin today is a city of beautiful contrasts.
Here in one metropolis you can find modern steel and glass high rises down the road from a Cathedral of Junk, world-renown fine dining restaurants next to humble but equally revered food trailers, and beautiful street murals in the same neighborhood as the museum that houses the world’s first photograph and a Gutenberg Bible.

Austin is a place where beautiful greenbelts run beneath futuristic condos and elevated highways, where the word ‘weird’ is used as a positive descriptor and where shorts and sandals are normal attire even at the most posh venues. Austin is a big city that has defied the odds by retaining a small town charm and has somehow avoided many big city problems. At the same time, even though not a mega city like New York or LA, Austin is a place where you find people in tune with the latest ideas – where artistic and creative people flock to and where entrepreneurs and business people thrive.

I haven’t always been a huge fan of Austin – I moved here from Atlanta, Georgia in 2002 to work for Dell, knowing very little about Austin or Texas.

My first impressions of Austin were that it’s an exciting city where people are genuinely happy to live. I also noticed that Austin is a place where people respect each other and nature, take time to smell the roses, and enjoy a very high standard of living. I was taken aback by the amount of pride people had for their home – people here love Austin and want to tell everyone about the city. Coming from Atlanta too, the negatives of heat and traffic were non issues because it’s so much worse back there ☺

I marveled at Austin’s downtown, where people congregate in the historic district during all hours of the day. I was pleasantly surprised that unlike so many other cities, you could walk downtown at 3AM and not only feel perfectly safe, but you could get a decent meal on the street at the same time.

Sure Austin lacks some of the world class museums and national sports teams of other cities. True it doesn’t have world famous landmarks like Big Ben in London, Christ the Redeemer Rio, or the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. I too love visiting places like these – I’ve been to dozens of big cities all over the world, photographing and eating my way through their busy streets – but after a while it’s too much.

After a couple of weeks travelling I long for the relaxing, laid back, and friendly atmosphere without pretense that Austin provides. I’ve come to appreciate too that Austin has most of the benefits (including food and fun things to do) of a huge city anyways, without the hassle of long commutes, high prices, and long lines.

As I have lived here longer and become more integrated into Austin’s various communities – I’ve learned how friendly Austinites are and how easy it is to meet people here. I’ve met so many genuinely nice people through vibrant Austin photo, foodie and tech communities that have taken root in Austin.

To make an increasingly long story short, in my 9 years here I’ve gone from completely clueless about Austin to a full convert to the “I love Austin” camp and I’m now a huge supporter of the city.

In closing, Austin is an amazing city that has an amazing energy to it. You can tell what a good thing we have going here by the praise that out of towners shower upon the city when they come visit. I love this city as much as anyone and it’s my hope that the 175 photos in my recently published Austin photography book (which I consider my ode to the city) do the city justice while showing the world many of the best things about Austin.

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Peter is a Community Technologist for www.DellTechCenter.com, the Austin Photo Book photographer, globetrotter, and thetastingbuds.com food blogger. You can find him on Twitter at @supertsai.

More from Peter’s photo shoot can be found here.

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Ten Reasons Why I Love Austin:

10. Austin is the nexus of a small world. I’m not sure why but everyone seems to have a story of crazy serendipitous meeting. Ironically, I have not run into Elvis. Yet.

9. Rock stars are freaking everywhere in this town. Not just in the obvious rakish Keith Richards way, but under cover too. I know a CEO of a B2B marketing firm that can melt your face off with a guitar.

8. A homeless cross dresser with great legs named Leslie can run for mayor. I voted for him. Twice.

7. We love start-ups, whether they are bands, tech companies, or food trailers- we can’t get enough. Throw a rock anywhere downtown and you’ll hit a start-up CEO who plays weekend gigs with his band, waiting in line for coffee at a food trailer.

6. People here can argue about BBQ with a passion usually reserved for politics elsewhere. I saw two hipster girls arguing about brisket once and my heart almost exploded.

5. Twice a year we become the center of the world for music-obsessed folks who do not currently reside in Austin. I would be lying if I said we don’t have a smug sense of self-satisfaction about it.

4. People here love the outdoors. We love to get outside even in the oppressive heat of summer to play, exercise, meet friends, eat, listen to music, and drink. Mostly just drink, though.

3. Austin is the home of the rebirth of roller derby. We can’t support a professional sport in a town of a million but we have 2 roller derby leagues. Suck it New York.

2. Speaking of towns that can suck it… Hey San Francisco, Austin is also the social media capital of the world. You may claim the tech crown, but the social brainpower here is staggering. For one second Aaron Stout, Natanya Anderson, Peter Kim, Kate Niederhoffer, Susan Scrupski worked at the same company. The world nearly imploded under the sheer magnitude of all the knowledge amassed in one place.

1. This town made up our own holiday. Seriously, who does that? Austinites do, just for a reason to eat pot brownies and cake in a public park. We are that weird and I love it.

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You can find Sam on Twitter at @sameder.

More from Sam’s photo shoot can be found here.

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The most concise, creative and easy answer to give about living in ATX for me: Austin provides me a place: to explore my locavore philosophy, follow my passions, create my artistic and aesthetic dreams and most importantly; build and maintain a relationship with my brother.

The more long-winded and exploratory answer.

I was born in Texas and had all the wonderful Texan characteristics and traits bred into me. These traveled with me everywhere I have been. After traveling, working and living in 9 other countries, the lower 48 states, tackling two languages and seeking out stories from everyone I met, I have returned. While I was living and working abroad and stateside, everyone always commented on the same three traits: my passion, my easy-going spirit, and my ability to say exactly what was needed to say.

I would say that those three traits encompass Austin and its residents. Just one of the many appealing factors about this place.

Flashback to September 2010: I just returned to San Francisco (where I had been living for 4 years) from Panama (where I had been for 6 months, working)
Phone: Charles (my brother): “So, what are you going to do now?”
Me: “Find a place that I can produce media, follow my passions, and be productive.”
Charles: “I support that. We are both adults now, why don’t you move to Austin and let’s live in the same city for the first time and develop a relationship? You can live with me for 30 days, then, you have to get out of my house!”
Me: “Touching. I’ll be there in two weeks.”

Seven months into living in Austin and I have found/created the four required things I wanted.
Austin provides a wonderful locavore scene. Urban farms abound here with Springdale Farm, Rain Lily, Boggy Creek and Tecolote are some of my favorites. The Saturday and Wednesday farmers’ markets are great social and culinary adventures. Several restaurants practice local sourcing such as East Side Showroom, Odd Duck, East Side Cafe, La Condesa, and more are practicing this everyday.

Austin’s personality and flow allow people to get their work done, with time for friends, family and personal achievements. Food, photography, video, being outdoors doing any activity that ends in ‘ing’ that I can do with a camera in my hand, are all passions of mine. One can easily do this in Austin. There is a receptive crowd to art, expression, story-telling/sharing. ATX’s convenient location to a river, several lakes and the Hill Country allow one to escape a bit and explore the outdoors.

Not only am I creating my artistic dreams, but I am partnering up in a new business, Applebox Imaging. We are exploring the artistic collaborative efforts of photographers, video artists, illustrators and more. We hope to explore our passions and share them with you.

Finally, and most importantly, the relationship with my brother has never been better. We cook, kayak, explore and socialize together. It’s not a relationship that you have to have, it’s one that you want to have.

That is what Austin is about to me and why I live here: One doesn’t NEED it, you WANT it because of all its appealing nature.

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David supports these locavorian farms and restaurants: Springdale Farm, East Side Showroom, Countryside Family Farm, and Roberto San Miquel Seafood . You can find David on Twitter at @anchorhd.

More from David’s photo shoot can be found here.

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It took living in Spain when I was in college to learn an important lesson in geography: Here is no better than there, and there is no better than here.

Growing up in a rural town in Southwest Missouri, I couldn’t wait to get out. When I boarded a plane with everything I needed for a year abroad in a pack on my back, I felt like I was finally on my way to a better place where I’d find culturally advanced people who would stimulate my mind and challenge me to be a better person.

I definitely found that in Alicante, Spain, but I also found frustration in what seemed like an archaic society where everyone was always late and few of my peers believed that if they worked hard enough, they could be or achieve anything they wanted. (They don’t call it the “American dream” for nothing.)

Spain taught me more than I could have ever expected about the country’s language, cuisine and history, but the most surprising lesson was a personal one: To find joy wherever you happen to be.

I feel like to be able to choose to live in a place like Austin, where I don’t have to try very hard to find joy, but what a privilege it is to have a choice in the first place.

Every place has its ups and downs, and Austin is no different. Sure, we have a creative community that supports artists and local entrepreneurs, which is what enticed me to move here in the first place. We have the world’s best barbecue and breakfast tacos and iconic spaces like Barton Springs and the Cathedral of Junk that you won’t find anywhere else in America. I’m especially proud of the uber-supportive food community, which allows food bloggers, writers, chefs, artisans and farmers to take risks and find new ways of doing things. (See: Food trailers, Austin Food Blogger Alliance, Meaty Monday Madness, et al.)

But no place is perfect. We can hold ourselves and our cities to high standards, but it’s important to embrace the flaws or else you’ll spend your life picking them apart or, in the other extreme, pretending they don’t exist. After all, we’re just a few weeks into what will be at least three full months of an excruciating heat and drought that will make 92 degrees as a high in September feel like fall.

As more people who have a choice choose to move to our fine city, traffic, housing, schools and just about everything else is going to get tight, and we’ll all have to adjust our livelihoods around it, whether we like it or not.

Who knows if I’ll get finally get fed up with the heat and housing prices and move somewhere else. Who knows if we decide to move closer to my parents so my kids can grow up around their grandparents. Who knows if I’ll fulfill my dream of moving my family back to my beloved Spain for a few years.

I do know that I’m going to squeeze every drop of enjoyment out of wherever I find myself, no matter if it’s Austin or Anchorage.

On tattoos on my wrist and ankle, I have two reminders to help me keep this all in perspective: “aquí” and “ahora.”

I live in Austin, but more importantly, I live here and I live now

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Hailing from the Missouri Ozarks, Addie Broyles expanded her cooking (and eating) skills on the West Coast and Spain before settling in Austin, where she is the food writer for the Austin American-Statesman.

Addie is a leader in the Central Texas food blogging community, which has more than 200 food blogs by her last count, and has been named one of the top food writers on Twitter.

In Relish Austin, a column and food blog for the Austin American-Statesman, she writes about everything from farmers to food tattoos, blackberry pie to barbecues.

In her spare time, when she’s not chasing after her two young sons or fiddling around in the garden or on a sewing machine, she blogs about women and food on The Feminist Kitchen.

The University of Missouri graduate was recently named by Tribeza magazine as one of the top 10 people in Austin to watch in 2011, and the Austin Chronicle picked her as thetop food celebrity in the city.

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See more of Addie’s photo shoot here.

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People who live in any city other than Austin, do so because they don’t know any better.

I learned this the hard way.

My story goes something like this: at age 18, I moved from Miami to Austin to attend the University of Texas. After four years, I put Austin behind me and headed to New Jersey seeking fame and fortune in the glamorous world of software development tools.

Spoiler alert. I found neither. Instead, I suffered through long winters, even shorter summers and a daily routine of looking out the window wishing that I was back living in Austin.

I had to find my way back to Austin.

In 2000, after a lot of hard work (and even more luck), I was able to move back here and in 2005 I purchased a condo. I’ve been complaining about escalating property taxes ever since.

The Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (ABIA)
The airport? Really?

Yes. Really.

If you’re from out of state and/or if you travel for business, the chances are you’re going to spend a lot of time in the airport. The good news is that ABIA feels like Austin.

Pop quiz: find the Starbucks in the airport. I’ll give you a hint. There isn’t one. Nothing against Starbucks, but Austin keeps it local as much as possible; including in our airport.

You won’t find Starbucks, Hudson News, or Chili’s or any of those chains in ABIA. Instead, you’ll find local restaurants and shops as well as the music you hear is from Texas musicians.

In fact, there are two live music venues behind the security checkpoint. Perfect for when you’re waiting on a delayed flight and/or waiting out rush hour traffic on a return trip.

Outside The Airport – The City Of Austin
One of the reasons that Austin residents are so nice is that most of them are originally from Texas, and Texans are generally kind and nice people.

And, laid back. The dress code is “come as you are.” Here’s a fashion tip: whatever you are wearing right now – chances are it’s fine for about 99% of the places you’d want to go in Austin. I’d struggle to think of any place in town that has a strictly enforced dress code outside of shoes and a shirt.

The weather is great. There’s a lot to do outdoors and the weather is usually just right most of the year for doing things like running on Town Lake, bicycle riding or just sitting outside.

More important, people can afford to live here. As much as I complain about my property taxes, Austin is affordable. Go online and compare buying (or even renting) prices between Austin and Silicon Valley Or Miami. Or New York. Nuff said.

And with as many people that are living here, the traffic is not bad. As Heather pointed out, it does only take 20 minutes to get from point A to point B in Austin. Traffic, in my mind, is defined as the Holland Tunnel at 8:15 am. Anything else is just a slight inconvenience.

The more you live in Austin, the better you learn the streets and the traffic patterns and can usually get around the bottlenecks. I do recommend investing in a navigation system since a number of streets have two names. Why? I have no idea, but I can tell you that “Airport Boulevard” is not the best way to get the the airport.

Brief history lesson: ABIA, the “new” airport, was build on the outskirts of town on what was the Bergstrom Air Force Base. The old Mueller airport, which is on Airport Boulevard, has since been converted into a planned community and the airport hangers are where Austin Studios now sits.

Anyhow. All of these things contribute to a laid back culture and the character of the city that hosts a number of communities that make Austin…well, Austin.

The Austin Communities
The people who inhabit Austin, and the communities we have built, are what keep Austin so weird and so awesome.

There are a number of communities, some I only casually participate in (like the museum and fine art communities), some I just know about through friends (like the cycling community) and others that are a complete mystery to me.

These are the top three that I associate with and they’re what make up my Austin.

The Nerd Culture
Two of the most amazing places that nerds congregate in Austin are Austin Books And Comics and The Alamo Drafthouse.

I’ve been reading comic books since…well, since I could read. I’ve been to plenty of comic book stores across the country and Austin Books is the gold standard. They stock as many DC and Marvel titles as they do Oni Press or Fantagraphics. It’s one of the reasons why Austin has such an active comic book readership.

As for movies, the Alamo Drafthouse does two things that are a lot of fun. First, they do fun events like quote-a-longs, sing-a-longs, theme nights (like girlie night) and they make going to the movies an experience. Next, they do great pre-movie clip packages where they cut together all sorts of odd film and TV clips and trailers that run prior to the regular trailers (I usually get to a movie 30 minutes early just to watch their pre-movie clip package). And, they serve food!

But, actually. I have a correction. You don’t even need to go that far. You could just go to the local yarn store. True story, and one of my favorite anecdotes to understand the nerd culture of Austin:

When the Joss Whedon show Firefly was on the air, there was an episode where Jayne gets a knitted hat from his mother. I recall talking to a woman who went to the yarn store and as she nervously tried to explain what she was looking for, the woman behind the counter cut her off mid-sentence, with a matter-of-fact response, stating, “Oh. The Jayne hat. Yeah, we’ve had other people come in to do that.”

The Tech Community
Because the quality of life here is so high, Austin is the home for some of the top talent in the world. In addition to the large number of startups and Fortune 500 companies in town we have other companies moving here every month. It’s a combination of tax incentives and our talent pool. That said, we are not an “industry town.” It’s not like Silicon Valley where you can’t go 5 minutes without someone mentioning venture capital. The people in the tech community in Austin are interesting and have lives outside of their jobs. Again, quality of life and our laid back culture.

The Food Culture
After “live music capital of the world,” it should read, “nom nom nom.” The thriving food culture in Austin is not just limited to BBQ and tacos (though, we do have the best of both).

From the food carts, to the hole-in-the-walls to the high-end restaurants, it’s understandable that I struggle when friends ask me to create a “short list” of places to visit in town. And even then, I have friends introducing me to new places all the time (hello, Hopdoddy! Thank you, Michelle).

But what I can tell you is as follows:

For BBQ, if you’re going with a bunch of people and you want something casual, go Rudy’s and don’t let the fact that it’s inside a gas station throw you. For the best in Austin, stand in line at Franklin. They have secured my spot for the best brisket I’ve had; ever. It’s a great place run by a very nice couple and I can’t say enough about how amazing the food is.

For tacos, my heart belongs to Tacodeli. Use Doňa sauce for everything and order the potato breakfast taco and fall in love with the Happy taco. When they’re not open (sadly, they don’t do dinner) I “cheat” on them with Torchy’s.

For high-end, food awesomeness there is Uchi and Uchiko. Worth. Every. Penny.

The Surrounding Culture
Texas is very highway friendly and there are any number of great places to day trip from Austin. San Antonio to the South. Fredricksberg to the West. Any number of small towns in the surrounding hill country. I often go on “BBQ adventures” to neighboring towns as far as an hour or 90 minutes out from Austin and the drives are always beautiful (and the food is always spectacular).

P.S. If you do want a great BBQ adventure, I recommend Snow’s BBQ in Lexington. I first heard about it courtesy of Texas Monthly. They are only open on Saturday. From 8am until they run out of meat. Get their early because, they will run out of meat before noon! And yes, I have eaten brisket at 9:30 am.

I Live Here
For all of the things I did try to talk about in this post, there are any number of things that I either forgot about and/or just ran out of room to include.

I’ll leave you with this: we celebrate Eeyore’s birthday. That should tell you all you need to know about Austin, our communities and why I live here.

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You can find Noah on his blog or on Twitter (@NoahGK)

More from Noah’s photo shoot can be found here.

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At Least Ten Reasons

I’m from New England originally. I moved here to go to business school in 2004 and never left. When I told people I was moving to Austin, I heard two diametrically opposed comments. It was either 1) why would you EVER want to move to Texas? or 2) Austin is an awesome town. 100% of the time, the people in camp #1 had never been to Austin, and those who had been to Austin were in camp #2.

I love many things about Boston and Maine, but there’s something about Austin that makes me feel at home. The second I moved to Austin, I knew: this is home. There’s this feeling about Austin that is not easy to pinpoint. Part of it is this immediate sense of community. Most folks are from other parts of Texas or other parts of the world, and most are here to stay. People are here to create roots, raise their families, and make permanent friends.

There is also a great food culture. The Keep Austin Weird theme is all about buying from and supporting local businesses and that includes eating local. I am not a big fan of large food chains. I like places where the person preparing the food loves what he or she does. When people love to cook, you can taste it. There are some great high-end restaurants in Austin, and I’ve eaten at a few (like Parkside & Wink.) What I crave, though, is the real Mexican food like at Taqueria Aranda’s on Stassney, the crazy tacos at places like Torchy’sand Taco Deli, the food trucks that have the wacky and the international, and that amazing pizza from The Backspace and my favorite, Home Slice.

But, with a husband who’s a former chef, and my own passion for food, baking and cooking, the core of my love for Austin is the availability of food. With several competing high-end grocery stores, (my favorite being Central Market), and so many farmers markets around town, you can’t swing a stick without hitting one. In addition, there are two growing seasons, and best of all, Farmhouse Delivery. There are people passionate about fresh, whole food everywhere in Austin.

Other reasons I love Austin:

• Smart, fun people live here – with great entrepreneurial spirit. This translates into people doing interesting things and helping others in the process.
• Town Lake and the Greenbelt. Austin cares about parks and outdoor activities, and the nature trails are just one more thing to love about Austin.
• You can still get to the other side of town quickly. Ok, rush hour aside, it takes about 20 minutes to get just about anywhere else in Austin and the surrounding towns.
• Composting and recycling is the norm. Ok, maybe not composting as much, but people don’t look at you sideways when you mention the composter in your back yard.
• Yard art isn’t odd. People with yard art live next to people with traditionally manicured lawns and they all accept that as the weird, Austin, norm.
• People are nice. People in Austin are friendly. They genuinely care and want to help you in your endeavors.

Austin is an amazing town with some awesome people. I love this town and I’m sure this post doesn’t begin to express all of the great things about it. What I do know is that I am one of lots and lots of people who love this town for many of the same reasons I love it as well as many of their own reasons.

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Read Heather’s blog Just Food and find her on Twitter @heatherjstrout.

See more of Heather’s photo shoot here.

It only took a week folks – I Live Here: Austin is up, running, and ready to go. Now all I need are volunteers!

I Live Here: Austin is part photography project, part story project, and part exploration of this great city. Inspired by Julie Michelle’s fantastic I Live Here: SF project, I Live Here: Austin is an open invitation to Austin residents to share why you love Austin. As someone who has chosen twice to relocate to Austin I know how this city, unlike any other, can get under your skin.

You can see my earlier work and get an idea of what this project will become from my previous blog,  I Live Here: Seattle.  (Don’t worry Seattle, you will soon have amazing new people working to continue your project – stay tuned!)

To participate please visit the How To Participate page or email me, Annie, at ilivehereaustin at gmail dot com.

Best!  Annie