THE LIST

I have no idea to start, so we'll go with something overwhelmingly obvious and beloved...

-The whole 'fucking eating things that aren't in tortillas' scene - love it.

-Watching myself be transformed into a heat-loving coldaphobe - I will be whining like a grade-A beach in MT for Xmas.

-The bats - clearly an obvious shoutout, but seeing them with a friend who was visiting recently made me remember how incredible it is to see them hit the sky en masse - when I 'accidentally' saw them before, I kind of fled the scene (I was trying to wait for the hottest day of the year so it'd be extra crazy) - I didn't realize they just keep on coming and coming until it looks like there's a tower of winged smoke in the sky.

-The ease with which I have made friends here. I've lived in some of the world's most notorious snob-haunts (Seattle, Paris, London) and felt ragingly embittered toward the human race afterwards - yet here, I almost feel a twinge of...dare I say...optimism?

-The interminable juxtaposition of big city and small town - I run into people I know on the regular, but still get lost on labrynthine highways or trying to find some new hotspot.

-Live music, obviously! Some of the highlights over the course of this year: Iron and Wine, Man Man, Fiona Apple, Islands, Art Brut, and Kings of Leon.

-East Austin Studio Tour - it became one of the early Austin highlights last November. I drove around with my then-not-yet-my-roommate and basically went into different studios and houses and looked at the work there - the kicker was having the artist hang around all day and engaging in active, thoughtful and non-pretentious discussion. Can't wait to go again this year!

-This might have been the single best night of my Austin life - I wish I could re-live it every week. Weird that I wasn't more gushing or vivid in the blog, but it was a really magical night.

-The mothafucking Alamo Drafthouse. Even though I don't get there nearly enough, knowing that it exists is enough for me. To the uninitiated - this joint is a movie theater where you can order meals and beers and sheet. They show weird cult movies, music docs, new releases, TV on the big screen...ALL kinds of shit. It rocks.

-The way this town can look after it rains - the overabundance of green and gray makes me feel like I'm in Hawaii or Japan once in a great while.

-Whataburger. I guess it's not just Austin but Tex-wide, but still - holy fucking crap.

-The utter coincidencia of this town. Some examples?
1.) Meeting new friends at SXSW - then, after a good month or two of not seeing them or communicating, they appear at a small party attended by about a dozen.
2.) The Friendtor busting out a deck of tarot cards a few days after meeting me - the exact deck I purchased in New Orleans ten years ago.
3.) My friend Renae being told by me to look out for 'IN the City of Shy Hunters' at a book sale - and it being the first book she saw.

-Whole Foods. Seriously, I haven't been that overwhelmed by beauty (human and food) since grocery shopping in France.

-The fact that when it rains here, it can just go on and on and get stormy as fuck - no dribble, dribble like Montana rain - twas more like the drips from a faucet.

-Heroic local bands like Ghostland Observatory, Black Angels, The IV Thieves, Wax Museum Pandemonium, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness and so many more - and all the ones being born right now. Y'all make us proud!

-Saying y'all. It just feels so right!

-Jenn Daly's kitchen. Seriously (y'all).

-This is the city of fucking festivals - everything from hamburgers to hot sauce to music to art to hippies is festivalized - it kind of rocks, though everything being festival-worthy sort of diminishes the magic of such celebrations.

-The freakish coincidence of this: my friend I drove to Austin with originally (Kurt Wikel by name) showing up on this, the very one year mark of my move. Yay for kismet!