Depending on how closely you follow my work, you may or may not know that I am a music junkie. I'm named after a Grateful Dead song, my primary social scenes in my teens and early 20s were all music-oriented, I hosted my own music radio show (an hour of alternative/psychedelic rock brought to you live from the WSUM studio in Madison, Wisconsin), and I can curate a mean Spotify playlist.
As the die hard pedestrian that I am, I can often be found pounding the pavement with my chunky Sony headphones on, creating my own world with a backdrop of whatever genre I have in rotation that moment (these days, a surprising amount of Johnny Cash and Marty Robbins infiltrating my resurgent interests in Zero-7 and Alt-J).
It was music that was one of the anchors of my trip to Austin — in the now many year wake of Desert Daze cancellations, I needed to scratch my psych rock itch by attending another mainstay festival in the realm of screeching guitars. But one thing became more and more clear to me as I spent more of my days in Austin: Austin is the type of town where you don't want to wear your headphones. There is too much kindness and warmth in these neighborhoods to feel the same need (or dare I say requirement?) in the modern world to don your noise cancelling Beats to block out the outside noise.
thank you to the kind man who adopted me into his friend group for the night; also sorry to that same kind man for not wanting to start a long distance music-based romance
“I hope you get to live as long as we have and keep enjoying every second of it. We’re 78 and still having a ball!!”
Sometimes in life, you have one of those passing interactions where the stranger does not know an inkling of your life story, but their words are the most powerful thing you could have heard. As I've been struggling personally with family responsibilities brought on by my own (much younger than 78) parents' health, while I did not anticipate it in the slightest, these words were something I needed to hear. This fleeting slice of life wisdom and well wishes came from a kind gentleman cycling beside his wife, enthusiastically shouted to me as we passed each other in the crosswalk on my very first morning stroll to find an answer to my caffeine dependency in the streets of East Austin.
If I had been in any other city, would I have been as open to receiving this wisdom? Or would I have had my typical guards up, closing myself off to the outside world whilst creating a very pleasant walk-dancing experience for myself?
fun fact: i love power lines
"Keep Austin Weird" is a mantra that's been touted and teased over the years, but now having spent some time there (outside of my one previous 2022 trip running around SXSW talking TikTok and Blockchain technology), I see why this is an ethos Austinites hold onto so dearly. Austin is the only place I have ever considered moving that I could actively see how much I would be an active part of the gentrification problem. Don't get me wrong, I've lived in gentrified areas before, but they've all been past the peak of transition and at the point where the majority of locals no longer grumble about the new Whole Foods down the block or bat an eye at the $8.50 iced latte prices. Austin is in the midst of the process, and you can feel it and see it with every corner you turn. All week, I frequented spaces where I looked around and felt this pervasive sense of "Ohhh… I'm the problem here". I'm the least tattoo-ed person in the establishment. My watch is worth 4 months of local rent. I explored the local Member's Only club with intrigue, only to discover that the general sentiment of this type of private, bougie experience is looked on with absolute contempt by born-and-bred locals. "It's exactly these sort of places that are the problem with new Austin," Redditors gripe online. Even as I sat in a coffee shop working on a Sunday, the two hipsters next to me audibly complained "I mean look at these people on their laptops on the weekend — it's hard to compete with all these capitalists" (operative word "capitalists" said with palpable disdain, despite their own admissions earlier in the conversation that they wanted to start their own business).
There I am working and yet — the cyclist didn't shout "I hope you build something great." He shouted "I hope you keep enjoying it." That nugget of passing wisdom encapsulated Austin in a sentence. For all the reasons Austin feels like a poor fit, it may actually be the best type of environment for me.
on the schedule: near-daily walks on the lake
The true air of Austin is that it is the type of town that has nothing to prove to anyone. It's immensely casual and honest and open. The heat alone I believe proves to be a great leveling effect: there can be no purported self-importance reflected by appearance when the second one steps outside your hair frizzes, sweat starts beading down your face to smear any makeup, mosquitos start nibbling your ankles, and a storm cell can pass through at any hour, bursting open to a torrential downpour for about five minutes before quickly moving on.
As someone who admittedly can get caught up in the rat race (I find the ambition invigorating rather than drudgery), I sometimes wonder if it would actually be beneficial for me to force myself into a more mellow way of life. One where everyone ends work at 4pm to either grab a paddle-board and hit the lake or mosey to a $3 beer, $3 chips & salsa Happy Hour on the patio of a local brewery. I'm sitting at that very Happy Hour sipping my lager, but rather than being present with my friends while keeping a loose eye on my toddler roaming freely around the space, I'm sat at my laptop finding yet another thing to work on.
embracing Austin culture: a week spent drinking on patios
I don't know which version of me would show up if I actually moved.
Would I thrive there? Or would I just be the same person with my headphones and a laptop, importing "the grind" into a town that didn't ask for it (and may even actively not want it)? Could I fully embrace and contribute to the weird idiosyncrasies of Austin culture (my neighbor was an accordion-playing Latino cowboy, after all) or would I just be another remote tech worker, scooping up a single-family home at what I read as an extremely reasonable rate but in actuality is functionally pushing another working-class family further out of town?
Would I be changing Austin, or would Austin be changing me? Somewhere out there is a version of me I currently don't know. One who isn't addicted to the grind, who could downshift to the lower frequency and slower pace of a place like Austin. But for now, I think she's the one I'm quietly avoiding meeting.
Curiously,
Kate
The best part of sending this newsletter is what lands in my inbox after.
Reader Curiosities
As I am on my wanders, Anthony asked:
Ever checked out Arcata, CA? It’s a bit rural, but with access to nature and a great community, could be fun!
I have had the good fortune of passing through Arcata a few times! That stretch of coast between Crescent City and Mendocino might be one of the most eerily captivating areas I've explored — intermittent patches of fog rolling in from the Pacific through the giant Redwoods, sometimes so thick you can't even see the waves but you know they're just there. Being next to a body of water so vast has a haunting quality to it.
Part of what makes the strange magic of this area of California is just how cut off it is from any major highway. Whether you said "goodbye" to the 5 in Grants Pass or Redding (three hours to the north or east, respectively), or watched the 101 transition from a many-lane freeway to a winding single lane road at the northern edge of Sonoma County, whoever finds themselves along the "lost coast" has had to go through some distinct trouble to get there. But once you arrive, every curve through the lush forest-lined hills takes your breath away. Of course, in Arcata itself you can still find your local coffeeshop, or drive to neighboring Eureka to grab your In-N-Out Double-Double Protein style (it is still California car culture, after all). While I don’t see myself there, I have so much respect for the residents of these smaller towns along the Northern California coast.
Have any of you been to this part of the country? Any other recommendations for me? Hit reply — I’d love to hear from you and I read every one.
