Don't Mess With Texas!

This last weekend I flew to Austin Texas for a bachelor party. A few friends from college are getting married in a few weeks and instead of having to separate parties the decision was made to combine the forces of evil and have a gigantic party. We ended up with about 25 guys arriving from Seattle, Madison, Lansing, Las Vegas, Chicago, Bloomington, Columbus, Milwaukee, and possibly places beyond that I’m forgetting. I’m glad I wasn’t in charge of that debacle – herding cats comes to mind because that is a lot of humanity to move around without the benefit of military training. This came off pretty smooth overall, a few small gaffes but otherwise well.

Austin is a pretty nice town. It reminds me a lot of Madison Wisconsin for a lot of different reasons. They are both major college towns and the state capitols respectively. Austin is about twice the size of Madison so there is a more metropolitan feel than Madison but not by much. Walking around 6th street was also similar to State street in Madison – a few too many bars and a little too dirty but good for cheap beer and keeping college kids out of mischief for the most part. It was almost like a cleaner version of Bourbon St. or maybe Beale St. in Memphis would be a better comparison with all the live music.

The selection of Austin as the destination stems around the large music festival they have towards the end of summer called Austin City Limits or ACL. Most people are familiar with the long running show on PBS called Austin City Limits which shares the name but is unrelated to the festival. ACL is held in a city park a little bit away from downtown. Every city and county bus available must have been used to transport most of the 65,000 people in attendance around because it went pretty seamlessly. Milwaukee could take a few lessons for Summerfest which doesn’t do a bad job.

The only problem, and it’s pretty much unavoidable, is the excessive heat. The temps were pushing 90 – 95 during the day and the skies were pretty clear. That’s really warm to have so many people in a treeless park drinking cheap beer. They schedule the festival around Longhorn (UT) football games so there is some flexibility but they can’t push it up because it would be even hotter and they can’t push it back much farther, supposedly because of the threat of thunderstorms. I’m not sure what could be done because a different music festival is held in the spring called South By Southwest (SXSW) and it’s going to hot in Texas most of the time. To keep things moving they staggered starts to prevent shows from bleeding over each other and to maximize the music being played. It was cheap too! A 16oz beer was $4 and the slightly larger souvenir cup was only $7.

A few of us watched college football for a while to keep us from baking in the sun, or maybe in the honor of the Violent Femmes, from blistering in the sun. We showed around 5 and not being in the sun might have saved my life. It was hot and there was no shade but there was plenty of water and lots of good food options. The Arctic Monkey’s put on the same solid show I saw in Seattle a few months ago, solid but not spectacular. Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah put on a good show but they are hard to understand and I wasn’t familiar with the new album. Good but not great I guess. The Arcade Fire was put on a great show. Lots of energy, great songs, and it would appear the members of the band really enjoy playing and being on stage. Good times.

Flying out of Seattle meant an early leave time on Friday so I bought a paper at a newsstand to kill time and was given some change. Nothing weird about that until I realized I was given three different $1 coins and 3 quarters. Either the United States need to get rid of the paper dollar (which I think we should) or the coins need to stop being printed. I got a Susan B. Anthony (from 1979), a Sakakawea (2000), and a new George Washington (2007). The United States has failed twice to go to coins and now a series of coins that will have the Presidents in sequence is being rolled out similar to the quarters. Who cares? Either go with the coin and get rid of the paper dollar or stop trying to roll out the coins with the halfhearted crap. Coins last forever and paper has a very short lifespan. I think coins make the most sense and if Europe and Canada can do it so can the United States. Hell, most people don’t even realize we have a $2 bill. I think we can make the change on dollars and don’t even get me started on how useless the penny is.

I know used the North Dakota spelling of Sakakawea and I don’t know why we pronounce it that way as opposed to the more commonly known Sacagawea. I'm going to blame Lewis for this one, take that Meriwether!