Deep in the Heart of Austin

[Elspode]

A shot looking Northeast up Congress Avenue to the Texas State Capitol...

[Elspode]

The gigantic Dell Round Rock Texas campus is right outside my hotel window. There is also a huge traffic jam on the two lane road that leads from there, past my hotel, and to the I-35 frontage road on the other side of my hotel. I guess there's another way out, but at 5:30, the road out front was backed up all the way back to the parking structure.

Don't you think that the city of Round Rock would have made just a *little* more infrastructure concessions to such an enormous entity?

[warch]

I'm sure 35 was stopped or crawling too. The hideous traffic, I dont miss. It was bad 5 years ago. Austin is a little town that sprang and sprawled through the existing modest streets and rural roads.

Christmas on congress!

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally posted by Elspode
Don't you think that the city of Round Rock would have made just a *little* more infrastructure concessions to such an enormous entity?

Maybe Dell wants to discourage people from leaving.

[Elspode]

I-35 (now called IH-35 for some unknown reason...I'm assuming it is now International Highway 35...fucking political BS) is really hosed in the morning. I only have to go about five miles down the road to get to the exit to the place I've been training, and it takes 25 minutes. Traffic comes to a stop at every entrance ramp (along this stretch, the entrances and exits come off of the parallelling one-way frontage roads) as the traffic attempts to merge into the flow, then it picks up to about 50, until you come to the next ramp, where it stops again. There's about one ramp per mile in the stretch up this way, so you can probably do the math.

I took the frontage road all the way down this morning, but the traffic also comes to a stop on the frontage road as it constricts to one lane before the ramp actually goes to the highway, presumably to discourage last-minute lane changes to get to the ramp. The net result is the same as being on the highway.

The Texas capitol building is gorgeous...

[Elspode]

...inside and out. This picture of the inside of the rotunda doesn't do it justice by a long shot.

[Elspode]

They take great pride in pointing out that what is now the Great State of Texas has been under six different sovereign flags, the symbology of which is immortalized on the outside of the building, and the inside, and at Six Flags Over Texas in Dallas. All I know about that theme park, though, is that it is where they shot The Banana Splits, and early Sid and Marty Kroft kids TV show...

[Elspode]

And Wolf, OC...there are stars frigging *everywhere*, on *everything* here. These people are Pagan as hell and they don't even know it!

Even the trash cans on Congress Avenue are cool looking, as evidenced by the pic below. All of the public seating inside the capitol building is made of wood with a perforated Lone Star pattern...benches, chairs. Believe it or not, it is damn tasteful. I've been in the State Capitol buildings of Kansas, Missouri, Idaho, Iowa, Colorado and Arkansas, and Texas' is the most beautiful. The grounds are also very, very nicely done and kept.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Nice shots, Els. What are the six flags? Spain? France? Mexico? Texas? USA? Confederacy?

[Elspode]

The capitol also is filled with groovy historical pieces, but none quite as cool as this...the battle flag carried at the Battle of San Jacinto, the final battle in the war of Texas independence, the battle at which Santa Ana surrendered to Sam Houston. Sorry about the picture quality. The flag hangs behind the podium of the Texas Speaker of the House's podium, and the House Chambers are not terribly well lighted, plus, I shot it with a zoom at about fifty feet distance. Still, how cool is this as artifacts go? They also have the only known oil painting of Stephen Austin hanging in there. In fact, it is the only known rendering of the man at all that was done contemporaneously, and all other representations of him are based on that painting.

[Elspode]

You got it right, Bruce. This is only my third time in Texas in my whole life, and so far, I'm liking it very much.

Good things about Austin:
1. People let you merge...every time I've been in traffic, people have let me change lanes, or let me into the traffic flow, or left space for me to leave a driveway when traffic was lined up on the street...*every single time*. Shit like that really makes me feel good about the local populace.
2. These people know how to eat. Easily twice as many restaurants per square mile as in KC.
3. Steeped in history, under considerable restoration right alongside new construction. A vibrant, vital downtown, not a dead zone like KC.
4. Hipness...the presence of colleges guarantees this.
5. Weather this time of year. Unbelieveable. Perfect. Beautiful. Windows down, stereo blasting, wind in the hair perfect the whole time I've been here.

Bad things about Austin:

1. Sprawl...this town is spread out all over hell and back, right out to the barren godforsaken frontier, where it just...ends.
2. New construction in these outlying areas is all ChainRetailRestauroboxes. Giant strip center/non-mall malls. No architecture considerations, just build it and get people spending money in it asap.
3. The sprawl causes an odd mix of expensive looking houses and associated retail areas right next to concrete plants and other industrial concerns.

My grade for Austin overall? A-. Pretty cool town.

Picture below? Davy...Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier, depicted in a giant oil painting in the south lobby of the Capitol Building, upstaged only by a painting of Santa Ana's surrender, and Italian marble statues of Houston and Austin in close proximity.

[warch]

There is one other amazing thing about Austin: Zilker Park and Barton Springs.
Its a beautiful, scrubby, rolling park, and in the middle, a huge, natural stone lined spring that has hosted swimmers for centuries. Its essential in July and August.

[Elspode]

Drove by it last night in the dark...drove me nuts that I couldn't go through it.