Rude Awakening

I’ve been fighting the urge to admit to myself that the Austin I loved and adored is all but lost to new high-rise condo construction, a massive influx of people and the demolition of the city infrastructure that I had grown to love. After encountering a satellite parking lot, shuttle bus ride and an hour plus wait at The Oasis last night, there’s no more denying it. The Austin that first greeted me in 1999 has all but disappeared. What’s replaced it is poorly constructed ‘high end’ developments, tens of thousands of tasteless nuevo riche West coasters, unreachable real estate prices, Katrican’s and a rising crime rate.

For years Austin was a sleepy college town that only hosted the state government and a few early adopters. Most Texans were too busy jockeying for position in Houston and Dallas to care about this hill country city in the center of the state. The University of Texas gathered hippies and other nardowells from all over the country and most of them stayed in Austin and opened head shops and organic businesses that needed very little to sustain themselves. Downtown consisted of a few scattered office buildings, no retail and very few restaurants. There was no such thing as paid parking anywhere and Austinite’s balked at a 15-minute wait at a restaurant or the Post Office. The old-timers enjoyed beautiful weather, tons of green space, lakes and a bottom-of-the-barrel cost of living. It was a lifestyle that most would envy.

The first hint of real change happened around 2000 when Austin became one of the start-up/dot.bomb epicenters of the universe. At one time there were over 150 VC funded start-up internet companies happening here and that’s when I joined the ranks. I remember people complaining about the “change” then, although it paled in comparison to whats going on today. Tons of dot com “thousandaires” popped up around town and the cost-of-living jumped from next to nothing to somewhat reasonable almost overnight.

Best I can gather, somewhere between 2002-2005 Austin suddenly became a prime Target for the Northern Californian transplants. They had already devoured (and ruined) Portland, Seattle and Denver and finally found their way south to Austin. Austin’s mild climate and topography are very familiar to those folks, that coupled with the high-tech focused industry here sealed Austin’s fate as the next city on the list on their destruction tour of the US. I have heard estimates that over 100 Californians are moving here every day which is almost unbelievable. But it becomes all too real when you visit restaurants whose parking lots are packed with oversized SUV’s with California license plates or when you sniff around the real estate market and realize you can’t buy anything inhabitable in town for under 500K.

The question becomes; Do you acclimate to the city that Austin has become and fight the good fight or do you look for another mid-large size town to start-up in again? It’s not fair to think that I should be forced to abandon the place that I love and leave everything I’ve built here behind because the new comers have pushed the city into a millennium that ignores a good majority of it’s inhabitants (including myself). I don’t think I could ever leave, even if Arnold Schwarzenegger becomes mayor, Kaballah was mandatory and my neighborhood was renamed Bellaire east. The underlying principles that make Austin special to me will always be there. I may have to peel back the layers but I know under the granite substitute and stainless steel fronts it’s still there.
I have 1 special place here in the city that I go to when I need to experience the ‘old’ Austin I fell in love with all those years ago. Luckily, it has remained untouched since I first discovered it. I wont tell you where it is, but know that I’m probably there if my cars not in the drive and im not answering my phone.