line culture

there are times i don’t miss the city of my birth…

…and most weekends fit it.

now, oddly enough, i spend most of the weekends in the city of my birth…within a couple miles of where i was born, actually. seton medical center in austin is on thirty-eighth street, and has been there for almost forty years, being erected (hehehe) in 1975 – but i was born in 1971 back when it was on 26th & rio grande…and the city has grown a metric fuck ton since…which is not always for the best.

i have never been a terribly patient man when it comes to certain things, and waiting in line is one of them. don’t get me wrong – i know, in certain situations, waiting in line is just going to happen…but the fact that we, as a culture, seem to just accept that lines are going to exist in 90% of our world just seems like bullshit…

…and austin seems to be the line epicenter.

people wait in ridiculous lines to get into shows…or to get beer at shows…or to piss out beer at shows. they stand in line for hours to get bar-b-que at certain restaurants. they stand in lines twelve or fifteen deep to check out at wal-mart or the grocery store.

people didn’t wait in lines for blue jeans in the u.s.s.r. back in the 1980’s as long as the ones where an austinite will wait for breakfast tacos – and they’re usually not even that good of breakfast tacos.

and then there’s the traffic – the ultimate in line culture. you try to take i-35 through town pretty much any time the sun is up and it sucks balls. five o’clock traffic? it’s just a parking lot that doesn’t end till 7:30 or 8:00, but it doesn’t start at five…more like two. even on saturdays.

why?

because people keep fucking moving here!

i’m actually kind of glad i don’t live in austin proper – i would have gone bullet-spewing crazy ages ago.

an example:

this is the view from kramer’s place back in 2003, shortly before he left for sa:

and this was it in 2012:

(it should be noted the concrete in the water is the base of what is now a hike & bike bridge across the lake, which would have been really nice for kramer’s then non-driving ass)

want to see a more dramatic difference (with building labels courtesy of the austin paper?

the view of downtown from my first real radio gig, circa 1997:

and the same view in 2012:

and, again, it’s only gotten worse from there.

so people, stop moving here. i had originally hoped to eventually make my way back here, but not any more. i couldn’t take the crowds and lines and bullshit.

oh, and happy birthday JAB!