Austin Adventures and Ice Cream

April 1, 2009

Right after my trip to San Francisco in mid-March I took a trip out to Austin, Texas from March 16 – 23. It was a blast. There was tons of SXSW related events going on and lots of interesting people and good music. If you don’t know, SXSW stands for South by Southwest and is a week and a half of Interactive/music/film festival that takes over Austin.

I don’t have a lot of time to write too much detail so I’ll just quickly go through some random highlights from the trip.

One of the first things I did in Austin was get some refreshing blackberry ice tea. While drinking outside with my buddy Dave a lil’ lady bug decided to hang out with us.

Tea with a New Friend

Dave and I stood in line for hours waiting to get into a live filming of The Totally Rad Show. We were the third and fourth from the last guys let into the venue. And I mean guys. There were maybe 5 women in that place. It was dark, hard to take photos, hard to see the TRS guys talking but I still had a good time. Dan from TRS even ate fire on stage.

TRS - Blurry Fire Eating Fun

Oh, and before the TRS filming began, Jonathan Coulton played several songs including “Still Alive” (a la the video game Portal on the The Orange Box – you must buy this) and “Re Your Brains” (a song about zombies and brains and two former co-workers – hilarious).

Great Performer - Jonathan Coulton

There were tons of people everywhere and music emanated from almost every bar, restaurant, or even to my surprise – the back of someone’s hitched flatbed trailer (too bad I don’t have a pic for that). Walking around SoCo (or South Congress) reminded me quite a bit of Telegraph in Berkeley. Lots of small shops, hip young people, and tourists.

It was like this everywhere

While on SoCo, Dave and I stopped off at Amy’s Ice Creams and I got Grasshopper flavor. Apparently, I have to get ice cream whenever I go to large city.

Try the Grasshopper flavor!

I did the obligatory stop by the University of Texas (which has the biggest screen I’ve ever seen in a football stadium) and the Texas State Capitol building. Even from the steps of the capitol building, we could hear music blasting from somewhere nearby.

I have nothing witty to say about this

One night I caught a movie at The Alamo Drafthouse theater. The movie I saw almost didn’t even matter. That place was novel and different enough to note regardless of what movie I may have watched. They even serve meals there so you can eat WHILE you watch your movie. And apparently they have a bunch of community oriented stuff there as well including screenings of classic quotable films in which the audience is encouraged to recite lines along with the film playing.

I ate tons of great food while in Austin, but Dave would not let me leave without having some good Texas BBQ. So we went to The County Line, which had a good atmosphere and great BBQ.

You know it's BBQ time when you see pigs on a neon sign.

At some point I decided I hadn’t gotten enough pictures of the actual city of Austin so I took this while in the passenger seat of Dave’s car racing down the highway.

Got this shot from the freeway

And there you have it. I’m sure I left out a LOT but that’s all I have time for right now. I posted a bunch of pictures from the trip on my Flicker account. Check out the set here.