The Coolest City in America?

The Coolest City in America?

                That distinction may belong to New York, or Los Angeles, or some may even say Chicago, but though those large cities may offer a multitude of pleasures, for my money Austin, TX is the coolest city in America.  It should be duly noted that I have yet to visit Portland, OR and it is one of the few cities that I feel may compete for that title.

                I drove there from McAllen, going through San Antonio, arriving around 7:30 PM, calling my friend Jaime, who had recently moved there several months before to start a library science program at UT-Austin.  She had a roommate, whose name I also can’t recall, and so will refer to her as Suzanne.  I arrived at their house, which was somewhat difficult to decipher due to the darkness of the night and the near-hidden quality of the address number.  I knocked on the door, saw Suzanne, asked if this was Jaime’s apartment, and she said yes.  It was actually a little house.  It seemed to be kind of falling apart, like it might be condemned.  Jaime told me she paid $300 a month for her room and I said it was awesome to have your own house for that price.

                She and Suzanne were gearing up for a performance.  Before we left, I asked if I could smoke a bowl in there and they said yes, and I was so happy.  I asked Suzanne if I could listen to her Love and Rockets vinyl that I saw in one of her milk crates by the turntable, and she said yes and it was pretty sweet.  They packed two acoustic guitars into their car.  Jaime told me it was some kind of LGBT evening of performance art at an outdoor space behind a coffee shop.  She said they were going to be playing a song and singing.  To be honest, I do not remember much about that performance evening, but I enjoyed going, because it was certainly one of the “cooler” things I did while on my road trip—I actually had friends that knew of “alternative” activities aside from the popular, Road Atlas-defined tourist attractions of each city that I would use as a rest point.  Austin was not a rest point, nor was McAllen, quite obviously. 

                Jaime and Suzanne were one of the best parts of the show, and I am not just saying that because I was friends with them, but because they really sang with very pretty voices and played their guitars very well, and performed a really great song.  The rest of the performances were uneven at best.  Some of them attempted stand-up comedy that was not necessarily awful, but did not contain the grace and poise of Jaime and Suzanne’s song.  They had obviously rehearsed quite a bit and took it seriously and in the end, it made them look better than everyone else. 

                I do remember one other’s girl’s transgressive performance which I found quite titillating.  She was a friend of Suzanne and Jaime’s, close enough that she would actually hang out at their house the next day and I would actually smoke up with her, all the while complimenting her on her bravery and outlandishness and sense of freedom.  She had delivered some sort of monologue.  It was not stand-up comedy, like some others attempted, but it was very funny.  She was talking about her sexuality.  It appeared to me that she was about 90% lesbian and 10% straight.  She was talking about her relationship with her parents, I think.  And as the monologue wore on, losing nobody’s attention for what she was saying, after a few minutes she started removing articles of clothing, until by the end of the performance, which was maybe seven or eight minutes, she stood naked on the stage.  She had gone on immediately after Jaime and Suzanne, in what seemed a lark, which made it all the more impressive. 

                The coffee shop itself where this performance was held was very cool.  Jaime and I kept going in to get beers.  The atmosphere was jovial and welcoming.  I loved everyone I met.  I also should mention that I felt very close to Jaime in that moment, that I wished I could be her boyfriend and live with her in Austin.  That night we stayed up somewhat late on her porch outside, with their cat lurking, who I think just ended up sleeping outside.  We sat for a while in vaguely awkward silence, neither one of us quite knowing what to say before we retired for the evening.  The next day we went back to the coffee shop. We brought our laptops and used the wi-fi provided there.  Jaime said she was trying to become recognized as a regular there, and so tried to go as often as possible so that everyone would know her.  I used the internet, but I think I hooked up to Austin’s network—and that was one thing I was told—that Austin was one of the first places to set up a city-wide wi-fi access point, which struck me as a generous and caring thing for a city to do for its residents, one other example why it was the coolest city in America.

                After the coffee shop, Jaime asked me if I wanted to go to Barton Springs, as it was a very hot day, and I said of course, I loved to go swimming.  I drove there and she directed me, and we laid down a couple towels on the grass there, and jumped into the very cold water.  Months later, living in Silverlake, I would see a documentary on the Sundance channel about Barton Springs and I felt like calling Jaime to tell her about it, in case she wasn’t aware it existed, but I felt it was too out of the blue to call her like that.  But that day at Barton Springs was very nice.  Afterwards, we went to a different coffee shop also to use the wi-fi, and I had an Italian soda which was very good.  Then we walked somewhere nearby to a specialty gourmet store where I bought some kind of hot sauce type thing called “rocket sauce” that never ended up being of very much use to me, so I threw it out after not too long.  Then I started making preparations to move over to Matt’s apartment, where I would spend the rest of my time in Austin.  Before I left Jaime told me she was thinking about going to a concert at the Beauty Bar by the band the Diagonals which was fronted by Wiley Wiggins who was the kid in Dazed and Confused and Waking Life and I thought that sounded interesting and would call her before the show the next night. 

                I found Matt’s place that night and would stay there for several days.  He had a couple vinyls framed on his wall as decoration—Black Flag’s Slip it In and the Fucked Up album Hidden World.  I had not heard the latter yet, and it would be one of the many items which I would import from Matt’s iTunes collection into mine.  I bolstered my collection by close to 3,000 songs thanks to Matt.  I had always felt like I had one of the most complete collections of indie rock on my iPod but Matt proved me wrong.  I don’t want to list all of the stuff I got from him, but it was very exciting to me at the time.  I got all of the Liars music.  Many Black Flag albums I had not heard yet, like Loose Nut and In My Head and Live ‘84, which were very good.  The Rapeman album.  The Jesus Lizard album Liar.  Deerhunter’s debut album.  The Panda Bear albums Young Prayer and Person Pitch, and the Animal Collective album Sung Tongs.  Three Dead Kennedys albums—Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, In God We Trust, Inc., and Frankenchrist.  The Desaparecidos album Read Music/Speak Spanish.  A couple live Joy Division bootlegs.  Too many other things to mention, but it was great, and I was very happy to be there.  Of all the people I know Matt is probably comes the closest to exactly replicating my tastes and concerns.  The difference is, he has more musical talent than me.  Sure, I want to be in a band as much as he probably does, but he actually does something about it.  We have similar taste in music, literature, and film.  We both wrote for the school newspaper.  I think we both want to do something great but find various forces prevent that from happening.

                Matt didn’t care about me smoking his one bedroom apartment, which seemed like it was the perfect size for one person, and cost somewhere in the range of $540 a month or so.  The first night, he actually joined me—saying he would do it for old time’s sake, as we used to come together for that purpose rather often in years past.  Once before we went downstairs to a friend’s room to watch The Sopranos, we had smoked out of a bong and he had a blood vessel in his eye pop.  I remember that being very crazy.

                Matt did some work at the free Austin weekly newspaper, and one night we went out to a bar where I met many of his co-workers from there.  There was a large outdoor space again, with many people dancing—it was some sort of themed evening that I was not exactly prepared for.  Another night we went to Whole Foods for dinner and Matt told me all about how Austin was the center of the Whole Foods franchise and so the one located there was even more special for the fact.  We went out to a very popular breakfast place once or twice.  And the last night we went out to a bar and met up with our other college friend Roxanne, and it was very good to see her in her element there as well.

                I remember going to sleep at his apartment.  Once I was about lay down on the futon, and his cat was there, and she hissed at me as I moved to sit down there, or try to shoo her off the thing.  I told Matt about how badly she had scared me and he took her in his room.  Another night I was watching Craig Ferguson’s late-night talk show and in his monologue he said something about Lindsay Lohan and Scarlett Johansson and I thought about how I would be in L.A. soon, and then he mentioned something about how once he completely shaved off all of his body hair in a hotel room, and it was great.  I thought that was very funny because I had done something similar at my room in Memphis. 

                I remember that Matt took me to Waterloo Records one day and I bought a used copy of the New Order album Waiting for the Siren’s Call, which we both found somewhat disappointing. 

                One day we went to a community pool and when he took off his shirt I saw he had gotten the Black Flag symbol of four black bars tattooed on his right pec.  I thought that was very cool, and later I reflected that if I were to get any single tattoo, it would be those four bars.  

                Honestly I don’t remember much else about the visit, except Matt and Jaime being gracious and kind—though we ended up not going to the Diagonals concert for some reason.  I had to get moving after not too long though, and I assured them that I had a wonderful time in their town.  And there really is no other place I would rather be, looking back on all the places I’ve been in the United States, that seem livable and friendly and affordable and attractive all at the same time.  The city lives up to its hype, for once, and yes it should be kept weird.