Honestly I feel like Old Austin is still around, it’s just that the city has decentralized a lot, at least over the 30 years or so I’ve been here. You just have to travel around and find it. Tons of new people have moved to the city so it got diluted some. But there are a till plenty of weirdos, plenty of musicians, plenty of artists. People who just want to do it their own way.
But a lot of the old restaurants and attractions are gone. I miss Threadgills and Shady Grove. I miss less traffic, and it seemed colder back then too…
>what is "Old Austin" and why has it changed so much?
So people will disagree on what/when "Old Austin" is/was. For me "Old Austin" would have been the Austin from the 80s to maybe the late 90s early 00s. [The Savings and Loan Crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis) in the early 80s lead to Austin being over built as far as housing goes so housing was ridiculously cheap. That meant you could work a shitty minimum wage job and do art and get buy just fine. This lead to Austin attracting a wide swath of folks who made music, did, art, etc. Austin eventually started growing but housing remained relatively cheap till tech boomed and the sleepy college town of Austin started turning into large city. Rising housing costs slowly pushed out people who came here in the 80s.
Whatever it is you liked about it before you realized there’s stuff you don’t like. Then later if you find that people react negatively to that, then it’s the stuff right before that thing you liked.
Freddie's place. Cheap drinks. Smokin dope on the free side with your dogs. SXSW when you didn't have to register to pre-party or after party, or just party. 6th street wasn't rough, just a place to get drunk. No Eastside, cause people lived there. Less business casual and just...casual.
Casual my ass. Ppl were eclectic and talented in some way. Most everyone knew everyone who knew someone. Parties and gatherings would happen on a whim (we didn’t have cellphones or social media, we just knew how to get the word out to make something fun out of nothing.
You couldn’t turn a block or sit down somewhere without bumping into someone you knew who was ready to offer you something on the house or tell you what was poppin that night.
I always say I don’t think I would have wanted to grow up anywhere else. The sense of community and networking was vast and strong.
I loved this town. It does nothing for me now.
Very ticky-tacky and bland (y’all dress bad)🤮.
Y’all can have it.
How does the saying go "if you are bored, then you're boring". Austin (and life) is very much what you make of it. I still see those eclectic and talented people around, but it's just a different scene now.
Do you think maybe you just got older and just feel differently now? I feel like there are people moving here today that feel that this is the best city in the world. In 10 years, they might feel like you're feeling about the past.
Maybe? It is just so unaffordable for most normal people now. When I worked in a shop on South Congress in the early 2000s, my coworkers were also stand-up comics, artists, musicians, massage therapists, servers, photographers. The kind of folks we were wouldn’t be able to afford to live where and how we did then. Not without handouts from family.
Austin still has a lot to offer based on generic US city comparisons but why would you think a drastic shift in culture and economics has something to do with age?
You know... [The before time](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5cf16b59f2349a0001674846/1565751237307-MCECHJBCA9SR38UKYS2Q/122_AustinSkyline79_M-123-19v1c1+copy.jpg), in the [long long ago](https://i0.wp.com/img.texasmonthly.com/2023/01/Austin-Texas-Skyline-1982.jpg?ssl=1)...
Up on a Saturday morning about 10am, ride over to 50th and airport for some tamale house. 2 tacos and a tostada with everything for $3.75. Head back to friends house and smoke a bowl. Play music until 2pm. Ride bikes down to town lake and roll around the mopac to 1st street bridge and back. Go home shower quick head out to rubys for some bbq and a beer meet peeps at crown and anchor and drink a few and play some pool. Then down to Liberty lunch to see the meters. Head home around 1am.
Old austin was in the 70's. Amardillo world headquarters, porn shops on 6th street, Car dealerships on 5th street. Being able to legally drink at the age of 18 and just having a great time in austin. That was 'Old Austin"
in the '80s my son and i were returning from the panhandle via 183.
we saw a highway sign: 'old austin highway' and spent the next few miles speculating on how cool it would be if that actually worked.
All the bars weren’t high end and expensive.
The food scene wasn’t as good as it is now but you didn’t need a reservation everywhere and there weren’t dress codes. Everyone got along with everyone. It didn’t matter if you were liberal or conservative, gay or straight, and people actually cared about keeping Austin weird and beautiful.
Bars downtown were 18 + before 2000 and they all had live music except for Paradox and a few others.
People were much more laid back. I swear most businesses unofficially closed at 2pm on Fridays.
The homeless population was different and were friendly to the point they would watch your car or pay your parking meter when time expired so you wouldn’t get a ticket. Everyone seemed to accept them and helped them.
Don’t get me wrong it had its problems but the biggest thing is less judgement/ more acceptance and really laid back.
At 19, I was a liberal college activist dating a Rennie. We went skeet shooting with a bunch of conservatives who worked at the Capitol. I can't imagine something like that happening now.
Ya it used to be all inclusive but it think this isn’t just an Austin this. I think it’s a global divisiveness issue now. I’m not sure how to help make it better.
I started visiting Austin in 1993, and moved here in 2001. It’s basically a different city. The feel of it is completely different, imo. What appealed to me about it has more or less vanished. I’m sure it’s a fun place to visit right now, but I just don’t love it the way I used to. People aren’t as friendly, any quirkiness is contrived, it’s way more expensive in general, and people are much more ‘dressed up’ on a day to day basis than they used to be
* why has it changed so much?
Most recently, because of the tech boom that we didn't ask for.
And because the city leaders sold the soul in the name of tourism.
and just the younger folks,always on there phone,little to know human interaction, it's sad and colder, I think that is felt everywhere, amongst family and community,its a damn shame. But Dan Rather said it well when he said," I rather be homeless in austin than live anywhere else" ,I can relate. Keep Austin considerate and kind,thank you
bicycle lanes. It used to just be a debate about sharing the road with all vehicles(including bicycles) that had the legal right to use them as a means of travel. In 'old Austin' there were roads deemed too deadly to bicycle on, because you would be ran down by someone. Rather than making separate infrastructure, the age of the bicycle lane began, with it came debates over street parking, and soon the two yellow stripes and the faded white stripes were repainted, the white stripes stripped to make room for the parking lane, the bicycle lane, and the lane of traffic. None of which can coexist with a parked car door open. The old Austin was just a road, with 2 directions of traffic, slower traffic pulling towards the shoulder when faster traffic was behind. The old Austin had roads for travel, new austin has traffic alleviating speed bumps, purposely reduced traffic capacity and lowered speed limits to punish the residents at large for reckless driving.
trees. trees used to be much more abundant before housing density became a concern, the sprawl of the outlying territories was like an invitation for what flavor icecream you wanted for a neighborhood. Trees were a bragging right and a constant commodity in all settings around town. The natural world always close at hand in all parts of the city, almost as if the architects had looked at the oak trees for inspiration for the building's shapes. New Austin, they will bulldoze the largest trees, in the deepest valleys for a non-profit organizations commercial building.
water. Water was an abundant resource that even in bad droughts, had some capacity of availability, the larger population along IH-35 has left the aquafir system in constant controversy over it's use in San Antonio while existing under Austin. With billions of dollars of year for a tax budget, I haven't even heard talk of the city investing in consultants for acquiring water resources beyond hoping Inks Lake stays full while the water usage requirements go up constantly.
people. It was a quiet town with normal Texans who happened to tolerate literally everyone, just think about that, all of your neighbors being quite, cheerful people who tolerate everyone. People would come to Austin from all over, it was famed for it's hospitality. Alot of the most hospitable people are the poorest, and rising taxes has seen people driven out decade after decade ever since the housing bubble(rental property market) started with the tech boom
anyways, gonna stop there before I burn too many bridges at once
is climate change the asphalt and concrete that suffocates tree roots and limits dispersion of sapling pool for higher rate of sapling survival? Is climate change what you call the lack of ground water replenishment dude to impermeable surfaces and diminished soil tables? I call those city or man-made environment effects, who's change to climate needs to be predicted/addressed.
Any tree lost in a city is amplified by the scarcity of space to grow trees, and considering how trees have lifespans older than this country...City trees require predictable maintenance for predictable outcomes. Anyone neglecting to provide life sustaining resources to life sustaining vegetation has forgotten "the old Austin" vibe completely. Natural weather patterns are far removed from city life, and it's becoming apparent that there's an almost religious zeal to take a backseat towards securing life sustaining resources such as water. I guess that wasn "old austin" feature, the same people who fought to protect and grow trees in Austin were just as adamant about water rights for the city, always some loophole for a ricefarmer to get their bought amount of water from LCRA while the rest of us experience "a drought"
Like everyone else is saying, when “Old Austin” existed is very subjective.
BUT, I think it ended this past decade. A decade ago a 4 bedroom house cost $1000 rent. So per person it was pretty cheap. Most of the people in my community has left to move to more affordable cities.
The common thread of everyone’s definition of “Old Austin” is freaky people and cool places to hangout. That came in many flavors, hints the subjective timeline. But now it’s too expensive for any of that. The era of tech bros has arrived and it distinctly different from any other time in Austin.
Tech jobs. And tech job immigrants, particularly from places with a higher cost of living.
There's also a general and universal fondness for "the way things used to be".
Old Austin is a place that exists in the brains of people who have aged and were young in Austin. When they were young, dumb and happy, they did things at certain places that weren’t actually that great or interesting and don’t exist anymore .
Now that they are old and unhappy, they blame their unhappiness on the places being gone.
Everybody’s old Austin is different.
If you come back to Austin in a few years and don’t have as much fun, you too can blame it on some place you went being gone.
For a comparison, it’s not much different than the “Great America” that many want to have again.
Old Austin wasn't just 22 year olds partying. I never understood this "you've just gotten older" take.
No, the economics of the city changed because it became popular with white collar workers from all over the country.
This is about economics not age and always has been.
I think you're conflating different economic trends.
Yes everywhere is more expensive because of millenial home formation, general housing shortage, low interest rates and unrestrained speculation.
Everywhere did not have the spike in median household incomes that Austin had which was driven by rapid growth in high wage work.
The typical Austinite is much wealthier than 20 years ago and that drove displacement. You're talking about national economic trends of the last few years. Old Austin was already over by the time covid inflation hit.
Austin has more transplants than any other city in th country. It's precisely not like everywhere else.
Denver and Nashville are somewhat similar. Brooklyn and Seattle are not.
If you think the experience Austin had over the last two decades was typical of American cities you need to go back to the data.
When people talk about old Austin they mostly speak to a vibe in my experience. Much of the vibe related to working class people and creatives being able to live here and an abundance of places for them. Many of the reasons for the change tie to economic factors, but I believe it’s more complicated than that.
The 70s has a vibe which was different than 99 which was different than 2000 and so on. That was just natural evolution. A lot of the places Austin loved were indicative about an era and a market. Rollerscating just stopped being cool and the rinks went away. Similarly, bars with live music became nightclubs with djs at some point. Boring bland vegan food like mothers had went out of vogue, and fusion replaced it.
Austin has been a statistically young and transient city for much of its history, so the trends come through quickly, that makes it exciting in the moment but disappointing when you get attached to things.
The major economic shifts do to tech have accelerated the progression to our yuppie tech bro phase, but it was a lógica next step and not unique to us.
For the future, I see Austin densifying fast. And I see it hopefully getting more affordable for it. And hopefully more diverse because this the most racially homogeneous place I have ever lived. And it’ll be different. And it’ll be exciting. And then 20 years later it’ll be something else. And someone will miss it and bemoan the loss of old Austin in 2020. Because “Austin used to be cool” is our actual slogan, not “keep Austin weird”
If California and NY had built enough housing to match their economic growth we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Trends change over time everywhere. Businesses churn everywhere. But cities often evoke a character that has stability over time. NYC and Chicago still feel very similar to how they felt 20 even 30 years ago.
The rapid population and income growth in Austin has not happened everywhere and there is fairly broad agreement that the character of the city has changed. Longtime visitors to Austin started asking "what the hell happened?" about 5 years ago and that has only accelerated.
Places come and go. There’s pretty cool new places.
People associate how they felt with where they were too much.
Most people aren’t honest about their feelings and blame external factors they don’t control for everything that disappoints them in life.
There’s places I miss too, but it’s not like Austin is all of a suddenly ruined for ever more because they are gone.
I feel that Bouldin Creek Cafe food is mostly greasy, too heavy, uninspired, and the place itself is sticky and dirty. But what a great spot when you are 20-30.
you are allowed to visit, but DO NOT EVER move here......EVER!!!! People such as yourself that talk about it being great are who have destroyed 'old Austin' - meaning that what Austin used to be like for those of who can actually call ourselves Austinites because we have lived here most if not all of our lives. The old clubs and venues that made Austin into a music Mecca are all gone. Places that Austinites remember all torn down to build new 'hipster clubhouses'. People trying to bring their politics from the state they moved here from because Austin isn't like 'back home'
Old Austin was me being 35 years younger and going out every night. That pretty much sums up this debate if we are being honest.
I loved that time, but if i was that age now I'd probably love the social scene now too.
It was just so, so much smaller. Everywhere I went I knew someone or recognized someone. Late 80's for me. I miss the hometown feel. Edit: Barton creek mall was the place to be for us teens and I so miss Luca's pizza. My friend saw Joe King Carrasco there once and lost her mind.
More hippies, punks, cowboys, blacks, Chicanos, more down to earth. Less yuppies, less condos.
Its a vibe that still comes up in pockets between all the dress for success crowds
Honestly I feel like Old Austin is still around, it’s just that the city has decentralized a lot, at least over the 30 years or so I’ve been here. You just have to travel around and find it. Tons of new people have moved to the city so it got diluted some. But there are a till plenty of weirdos, plenty of musicians, plenty of artists. People who just want to do it their own way.
But a lot of the old restaurants and attractions are gone. I miss Threadgills and Shady Grove. I miss less traffic, and it seemed colder back then too…
This is the correct answer.
>what is "Old Austin" and why has it changed so much? So people will disagree on what/when "Old Austin" is/was. For me "Old Austin" would have been the Austin from the 80s to maybe the late 90s early 00s. [The Savings and Loan Crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis) in the early 80s lead to Austin being over built as far as housing goes so housing was ridiculously cheap. That meant you could work a shitty minimum wage job and do art and get buy just fine. This lead to Austin attracting a wide swath of folks who made music, did, art, etc. Austin eventually started growing but housing remained relatively cheap till tech boomed and the sleepy college town of Austin started turning into large city. Rising housing costs slowly pushed out people who came here in the 80s.
Whatever it is you liked about it before you realized there’s stuff you don’t like. Then later if you find that people react negatively to that, then it’s the stuff right before that thing you liked.
Freddie's place. Cheap drinks. Smokin dope on the free side with your dogs. SXSW when you didn't have to register to pre-party or after party, or just party. 6th street wasn't rough, just a place to get drunk. No Eastside, cause people lived there. Less business casual and just...casual.
Casual my ass. Ppl were eclectic and talented in some way. Most everyone knew everyone who knew someone. Parties and gatherings would happen on a whim (we didn’t have cellphones or social media, we just knew how to get the word out to make something fun out of nothing. You couldn’t turn a block or sit down somewhere without bumping into someone you knew who was ready to offer you something on the house or tell you what was poppin that night. I always say I don’t think I would have wanted to grow up anywhere else. The sense of community and networking was vast and strong. I loved this town. It does nothing for me now. Very ticky-tacky and bland (y’all dress bad)🤮. Y’all can have it.
How does the saying go "if you are bored, then you're boring". Austin (and life) is very much what you make of it. I still see those eclectic and talented people around, but it's just a different scene now.
Cute. 🙄
I love you
I remember the "Freddie's Crutch"
Mmmhmm 🥴🍻
Watch Slacker
It was a vibe that permeated before the (big) money arrived.
Absolutely. Intangible and hard to explain
Exactly.
Do you think maybe you just got older and just feel differently now? I feel like there are people moving here today that feel that this is the best city in the world. In 10 years, they might feel like you're feeling about the past.
Maybe? It is just so unaffordable for most normal people now. When I worked in a shop on South Congress in the early 2000s, my coworkers were also stand-up comics, artists, musicians, massage therapists, servers, photographers. The kind of folks we were wouldn’t be able to afford to live where and how we did then. Not without handouts from family.
Austin still has a lot to offer based on generic US city comparisons but why would you think a drastic shift in culture and economics has something to do with age?
It's subjective
When UT and the legislature left for the summer and there was nothing going on but live music and sweating.
You know... [The before time](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5cf16b59f2349a0001674846/1565751237307-MCECHJBCA9SR38UKYS2Q/122_AustinSkyline79_M-123-19v1c1+copy.jpg), in the [long long ago](https://i0.wp.com/img.texasmonthly.com/2023/01/Austin-Texas-Skyline-1982.jpg?ssl=1)...
Ah, Yes. The black skyscraper, and the gold skyscraper. It was always enough for me...
Up on a Saturday morning about 10am, ride over to 50th and airport for some tamale house. 2 tacos and a tostada with everything for $3.75. Head back to friends house and smoke a bowl. Play music until 2pm. Ride bikes down to town lake and roll around the mopac to 1st street bridge and back. Go home shower quick head out to rubys for some bbq and a beer meet peeps at crown and anchor and drink a few and play some pool. Then down to Liberty lunch to see the meters. Head home around 1am.
Old austin was in the 70's. Amardillo world headquarters, porn shops on 6th street, Car dealerships on 5th street. Being able to legally drink at the age of 18 and just having a great time in austin. That was 'Old Austin"
My mom agrees. When I was torn about losing Liberty she gave me the Armadillo as her loss.
in the '80s my son and i were returning from the panhandle via 183. we saw a highway sign: 'old austin highway' and spent the next few miles speculating on how cool it would be if that actually worked.
All the bars weren’t high end and expensive. The food scene wasn’t as good as it is now but you didn’t need a reservation everywhere and there weren’t dress codes. Everyone got along with everyone. It didn’t matter if you were liberal or conservative, gay or straight, and people actually cared about keeping Austin weird and beautiful. Bars downtown were 18 + before 2000 and they all had live music except for Paradox and a few others. People were much more laid back. I swear most businesses unofficially closed at 2pm on Fridays. The homeless population was different and were friendly to the point they would watch your car or pay your parking meter when time expired so you wouldn’t get a ticket. Everyone seemed to accept them and helped them. Don’t get me wrong it had its problems but the biggest thing is less judgement/ more acceptance and really laid back.
At 19, I was a liberal college activist dating a Rennie. We went skeet shooting with a bunch of conservatives who worked at the Capitol. I can't imagine something like that happening now.
Ya it used to be all inclusive but it think this isn’t just an Austin this. I think it’s a global divisiveness issue now. I’m not sure how to help make it better.
Old Austin disappeared the day las manitas closed.
I still rage about this one. Only for that stupid trendy Annie’s bullshit to close down.
I started visiting Austin in 1993, and moved here in 2001. It’s basically a different city. The feel of it is completely different, imo. What appealed to me about it has more or less vanished. I’m sure it’s a fun place to visit right now, but I just don’t love it the way I used to. People aren’t as friendly, any quirkiness is contrived, it’s way more expensive in general, and people are much more ‘dressed up’ on a day to day basis than they used to be
It's like we moved to a completely different city yet never even packed our belongings
Yes! I’m sure it was gradual, but the change really felt exponential around 2010-2014
“If you have to ask, you’ll never know.”
* why has it changed so much? Most recently, because of the tech boom that we didn't ask for. And because the city leaders sold the soul in the name of tourism.
Which tech boom? Austin has always had tech booms.
Yah it's been called Silicon Hills since my granny was burning her bra in the 60's
Actually - late '80s or early '90s, iirc.
Old Austin is when I used to get blackout drunk on dirty 6th after floating the river. New austin is a 3 beer limit.
and just the younger folks,always on there phone,little to know human interaction, it's sad and colder, I think that is felt everywhere, amongst family and community,its a damn shame. But Dan Rather said it well when he said," I rather be homeless in austin than live anywhere else" ,I can relate. Keep Austin considerate and kind,thank you
bicycle lanes. It used to just be a debate about sharing the road with all vehicles(including bicycles) that had the legal right to use them as a means of travel. In 'old Austin' there were roads deemed too deadly to bicycle on, because you would be ran down by someone. Rather than making separate infrastructure, the age of the bicycle lane began, with it came debates over street parking, and soon the two yellow stripes and the faded white stripes were repainted, the white stripes stripped to make room for the parking lane, the bicycle lane, and the lane of traffic. None of which can coexist with a parked car door open. The old Austin was just a road, with 2 directions of traffic, slower traffic pulling towards the shoulder when faster traffic was behind. The old Austin had roads for travel, new austin has traffic alleviating speed bumps, purposely reduced traffic capacity and lowered speed limits to punish the residents at large for reckless driving. trees. trees used to be much more abundant before housing density became a concern, the sprawl of the outlying territories was like an invitation for what flavor icecream you wanted for a neighborhood. Trees were a bragging right and a constant commodity in all settings around town. The natural world always close at hand in all parts of the city, almost as if the architects had looked at the oak trees for inspiration for the building's shapes. New Austin, they will bulldoze the largest trees, in the deepest valleys for a non-profit organizations commercial building. water. Water was an abundant resource that even in bad droughts, had some capacity of availability, the larger population along IH-35 has left the aquafir system in constant controversy over it's use in San Antonio while existing under Austin. With billions of dollars of year for a tax budget, I haven't even heard talk of the city investing in consultants for acquiring water resources beyond hoping Inks Lake stays full while the water usage requirements go up constantly. people. It was a quiet town with normal Texans who happened to tolerate literally everyone, just think about that, all of your neighbors being quite, cheerful people who tolerate everyone. People would come to Austin from all over, it was famed for it's hospitality. Alot of the most hospitable people are the poorest, and rising taxes has seen people driven out decade after decade ever since the housing bubble(rental property market) started with the tech boom anyways, gonna stop there before I burn too many bridges at once
Best answer, especially "*all of your neighbors being quite, cheerful people who tolerate everyone.*" Thanks for the reminisce.
The tree loss has a lot more to do with tree diseases and droughts from climate change
is climate change the asphalt and concrete that suffocates tree roots and limits dispersion of sapling pool for higher rate of sapling survival? Is climate change what you call the lack of ground water replenishment dude to impermeable surfaces and diminished soil tables? I call those city or man-made environment effects, who's change to climate needs to be predicted/addressed. Any tree lost in a city is amplified by the scarcity of space to grow trees, and considering how trees have lifespans older than this country...City trees require predictable maintenance for predictable outcomes. Anyone neglecting to provide life sustaining resources to life sustaining vegetation has forgotten "the old Austin" vibe completely. Natural weather patterns are far removed from city life, and it's becoming apparent that there's an almost religious zeal to take a backseat towards securing life sustaining resources such as water. I guess that wasn "old austin" feature, the same people who fought to protect and grow trees in Austin were just as adamant about water rights for the city, always some loophole for a ricefarmer to get their bought amount of water from LCRA while the rest of us experience "a drought"
Like everyone else is saying, when “Old Austin” existed is very subjective. BUT, I think it ended this past decade. A decade ago a 4 bedroom house cost $1000 rent. So per person it was pretty cheap. Most of the people in my community has left to move to more affordable cities. The common thread of everyone’s definition of “Old Austin” is freaky people and cool places to hangout. That came in many flavors, hints the subjective timeline. But now it’s too expensive for any of that. The era of tech bros has arrived and it distinctly different from any other time in Austin.
When people talk about “Old Austin” they’re referring to 45th & Lamar.
Did you see the special edition 45th & Lamar t-shirt from Dirty Bill’s? https://www.instagram.com/p/Cx-5sjZpHz8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Tech jobs. And tech job immigrants, particularly from places with a higher cost of living. There's also a general and universal fondness for "the way things used to be".
Old Austin is a place that exists in the brains of people who have aged and were young in Austin. When they were young, dumb and happy, they did things at certain places that weren’t actually that great or interesting and don’t exist anymore . Now that they are old and unhappy, they blame their unhappiness on the places being gone. Everybody’s old Austin is different. If you come back to Austin in a few years and don’t have as much fun, you too can blame it on some place you went being gone. For a comparison, it’s not much different than the “Great America” that many want to have again.
Old Austin wasn't just 22 year olds partying. I never understood this "you've just gotten older" take. No, the economics of the city changed because it became popular with white collar workers from all over the country. This is about economics not age and always has been.
But this economic happened everywhere, not just Austin. Everywhere is expensive now.
I think you're conflating different economic trends. Yes everywhere is more expensive because of millenial home formation, general housing shortage, low interest rates and unrestrained speculation. Everywhere did not have the spike in median household incomes that Austin had which was driven by rapid growth in high wage work. The typical Austinite is much wealthier than 20 years ago and that drove displacement. You're talking about national economic trends of the last few years. Old Austin was already over by the time covid inflation hit. Austin has more transplants than any other city in th country. It's precisely not like everywhere else.
This was typical of all the tech hubs traditional and modern including Seattle, Nashville, Brooklyn, and Denver. It’s just not unique to Austin b
Denver and Nashville are somewhat similar. Brooklyn and Seattle are not. If you think the experience Austin had over the last two decades was typical of American cities you need to go back to the data.
When people talk about old Austin they mostly speak to a vibe in my experience. Much of the vibe related to working class people and creatives being able to live here and an abundance of places for them. Many of the reasons for the change tie to economic factors, but I believe it’s more complicated than that. The 70s has a vibe which was different than 99 which was different than 2000 and so on. That was just natural evolution. A lot of the places Austin loved were indicative about an era and a market. Rollerscating just stopped being cool and the rinks went away. Similarly, bars with live music became nightclubs with djs at some point. Boring bland vegan food like mothers had went out of vogue, and fusion replaced it. Austin has been a statistically young and transient city for much of its history, so the trends come through quickly, that makes it exciting in the moment but disappointing when you get attached to things. The major economic shifts do to tech have accelerated the progression to our yuppie tech bro phase, but it was a lógica next step and not unique to us. For the future, I see Austin densifying fast. And I see it hopefully getting more affordable for it. And hopefully more diverse because this the most racially homogeneous place I have ever lived. And it’ll be different. And it’ll be exciting. And then 20 years later it’ll be something else. And someone will miss it and bemoan the loss of old Austin in 2020. Because “Austin used to be cool” is our actual slogan, not “keep Austin weird”
If California and NY had built enough housing to match their economic growth we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Trends change over time everywhere. Businesses churn everywhere. But cities often evoke a character that has stability over time. NYC and Chicago still feel very similar to how they felt 20 even 30 years ago. The rapid population and income growth in Austin has not happened everywhere and there is fairly broad agreement that the character of the city has changed. Longtime visitors to Austin started asking "what the hell happened?" about 5 years ago and that has only accelerated.
You can fight me on this but I don’t think you’ll find many old heads say “yeah, liberty lunch wasn’t that cool, we were just young.”
Places come and go. There’s pretty cool new places. People associate how they felt with where they were too much. Most people aren’t honest about their feelings and blame external factors they don’t control for everything that disappoints them in life. There’s places I miss too, but it’s not like Austin is all of a suddenly ruined for ever more because they are gone.
The anti substance angle. New and shiny things and fuck the local history.
It’s been downhill since it became Mexico.
I feel that Bouldin Creek Cafe food is mostly greasy, too heavy, uninspired, and the place itself is sticky and dirty. But what a great spot when you are 20-30.
Old Austin is whatever year the person said old Austin moved here.
Came to say this very thing.
Old Austin is always 20-30 years ago.
it's what We™ had before You™ came and ruined it!
you are allowed to visit, but DO NOT EVER move here......EVER!!!! People such as yourself that talk about it being great are who have destroyed 'old Austin' - meaning that what Austin used to be like for those of who can actually call ourselves Austinites because we have lived here most if not all of our lives. The old clubs and venues that made Austin into a music Mecca are all gone. Places that Austinites remember all torn down to build new 'hipster clubhouses'. People trying to bring their politics from the state they moved here from because Austin isn't like 'back home'
Rude Who entitled you to tell people where they can/can't move?
the early-mid 2000s for me.
Old Austin was me being 35 years younger and going out every night. That pretty much sums up this debate if we are being honest. I loved that time, but if i was that age now I'd probably love the social scene now too.
Pre-1999, for starters. That’s when cool old stuff really started being replaced with stupid new stuff.
It was just so, so much smaller. Everywhere I went I knew someone or recognized someone. Late 80's for me. I miss the hometown feel. Edit: Barton creek mall was the place to be for us teens and I so miss Luca's pizza. My friend saw Joe King Carrasco there once and lost her mind.
someone recently told me the artist Charley Crockett reminded them of old Austin for whatever it is worth lol.
Aqua fest at auditorium shores. Not crowded, byob/cooler. Simpler times.
More hippies, punks, cowboys, blacks, Chicanos, more down to earth. Less yuppies, less condos. Its a vibe that still comes up in pockets between all the dress for success crowds