Here it is, the big wrap up. As always it was a clusterfuck of a
weekend. I had a lot of fun running myself in to the ground and I saw
some pretty cool bands, but the festival is just too big for Austin.
It's been that way for the past ten(ish) years and it's just continued
to multiply. If you've read any of the post-festival fallout (examples
here and
here) you've probably noticed a trend towards the negative, there are some
very good reasons for that. Austin and SXSW are changing and it may not
be for the better.
It's not easy to see the changes when your
living here, they can be too small and/or subtle. It's like plastic
surgery. At the beginning you may notice one or two small changes here
or there then suddenly one day you look up and you can't recognize Joan
Rivers anymore and it scares the hell out of you. She may have the same
personality but something isn't right... That's what Austin is like
right now. I still love her and I don't want to move, but the grievances
are stacking up. I know I'm gonna sound like a pissed off old man by
writing the next few paragraphs, but they are accurate and my grievances
need to be aired.
Read this first
http://i.imgur.com/KRWNNiR.jpg
Imagine
that in the "land of the free". The city is forcing a business owner to
dedicate one of it's parking spaces (on private land) to another
businesses vehicle. It isn't even an Austin (or US) based company, they
are from Germany. I like the Germans a lot, but they should not be able
to force another business to store their cars and prevent an actual
customer from using a parking space and the city shouldn't be writing policies for it to happen in the first place. The Car 2 Go folks have also taken
a number of the regular downtown street parking spaces and converted
them into Car 2 Go only spaces (as in if I park my truck in one I will get
towed.) If you drive a Car 2 Go you can park in any of the regular
spaces and not have to pay for it... So one Car 2 Go can prevent two
regular cars from parking. Are you pulling your hair out yet?
Last
year I pad $20 to park, all night, downtown a week and a half
before the music fest. It was a total ripoff, but I justified it because
it was very close to where I was playing and I was getting paid. This
year I saw signs that were offering $35 parking for three hours. When
did this become Manhattan? I parked on the street in San Fransisco for
three hours for less than five bucks just a couple of years ago. The
last time I checked there are a lot more people in a lot less space in
SF and NYC then there are in Austin, why are we paying this much for
parking?
We have the metro rail. It was screwed up as a concept
when I moved to town twenty two years ago, now it's a screwed up
reality. This is a two parter.
#1
They never bought the
proper sensors for the trains. They are loaded with the gear that is
meant for freight trains. The sensor is different because a freight
train travels long distance at a fast speed, so people at an
intersection a half mile away will be stopped from crossing the track
when a freight is barreling down. This makes sense. Metro Rail trains
don't travel at freight train speeds. They also stop at multiple
stations along the track, so they need a different kind of sensor.
Currently when a metro rail train is stopped at a station you are not
allowed to cross the tracks anywhere near it.
On my daily (bike)
commute to work I cross Guadalupe at Airport four times a day. This
intersection has two stations about a quarter of a mile on either side
of it (this is also pretty stupid, it's miles in between the stations on
either side of those.) If there is a train at either station I am not
allowed to cross the tracks. There have been days where I have
literately spent a total of twenty extra minutes out in the sun waiting
on the metro rail to leave it's station and go past. It sucks in
February, it is misery in August.
#2
But part of me was
ok with it. Since I live near two stations I would head downtown on
Mondays and get my mail from the PO box and get a little lunch and head
home. It was nice and it was $2 a person to do the round trip. That's
all changed. Now it's $5.50. There is no longer any "local" service. If
you come in from the Lakeline Mall stop (the northern, end of the line)
it's $5.50 for the round trip. If your headed all the way downtown, you
will save a lot of money on the 30-40 mile round trip and you won't have
to pay for parking or screw around with traffic, it's a great deal when you factor
in everything. But when you get on in my neighborhood and your charged
$5.50 for the ten mile round trip that was $2 a month and a half ago it
can piss you off.
The train is no longer meant for local use.
It's only purpose is to move people who don't live in Travis County, or
pay taxes in Travis County to and from their Travis County jobs. Sure
there is a little less congestion on the roads and that's a good thing,
but it does very little for the people who actually live AND work in
Travis County. It just makes it harder for the "locals" to get around.
Why are we making it easier for people to use the services of Austin when
they don't pay the taxes that fund them?
I am not even gonna get in to the toll road fiasco... it is awful and depressing on a whole different level.
So
how do I feel about this year's SXSW? I liked getting to see a few new bands, but I didn't really take advantage of anything. If I wasn't
playing I wasn't gonna be in the middle of it. Especially since there
was no easy way in or out of downtown (or parking when you got there.)
It was too easy to say fuck it and just stay home. So that's what I did.
Hickoids
getting in to the Hall Of Fame was pretty cool, but it wasn't that
special and we had to pay for booze and food. Sure they had us stand for
pictures in front of a banner covered with booze and food manufactures
names and now my picture can be used for advertising, but we couldn't
get any of those products for free... I would have had more fun if I
stayed back at the White Horse watched some music.
One of the
stupidest things I saw had to be the SX Subway thing that was set up
right next to the convention center. It was a little, fenced in
"village" with banners all over the place. I'm guessing that since
there was all the bad press over having
rubber in their bread they spent some cash trying to make Subway "hip" and "friendly"
again... Pitiful. Don't forget that SXSW let Subway coop part of the
name so they got paid and allowed to allow it to happen. Pitiful times
two.
So all of this bitching is coming from someone who still
loves Austin. I have no desire to move and I have no idea where I'd move
to if I did. I am also an optimist (believe it or not). No matter how
many times my nose is rubbed in to the figurative shit that is humanity,
I still want to believe things will turn around for the better. I'm
hoping my grievances are just Austin's (and SXSW's) growing pains and
that things WILL improve in the future. Let's just hope that we as a
city can grow up enough to fix some of this before our souls are gone.
