ACL Festival For Less Than $10

Yes, you read that right. We went to ACL for under ten bucks. Our super-awesome neighbor happened to have two extra 3 day passes and we happened to want to go. Good shit happens. Unfortunately, I had to work all weekend during the day but we were able to see the headliners at night.

Saturday we got to see parts of Beck's set and parts of the Robert Plant / Allison Krauss set. We also scoped out the entire area (huuuuuuuuuge) and got sausage-on-a-stick from Roy's Hawaiian Fusion restaurant. Not much fusion going on but it was tasty sausage nonetheless.

On Sunday we found a sweet spot and plopped down for the main event. The Foo Fighters were the head-headliner and were closing the entire festival. Although they were supposed to be the only ones playing, one of the smaller bands decided to play 20 minutes over their set time. Once they finally wrapped it up, we could hear Dave belt out his hits. They played for a good hour and a half and we started to leave after the first encore. Luckily, we live close enough to walk so we didn't have to deal with the parking or the line for the busses. We could hear the rest of the encores during the walk home and they finished the song where he sings "The best, the best, the best of you" as we ambled up the final hill to our apartment.

 

Old Pecan Street Festival

The 27th Annual Fall Pecan Street Festival was held this weekend. In the oldern days when Austin was laid out, the north/south streets were named after Texas rivers and the east/west streets were named after Texas trees. See, Austin was eco before it was cool (and annoying). While the north/south streets are still named after the Texas Rivers, the east/west streets got the old numbering system. Pecan Street is now the infamous 6th Street, but twice a year, it reverts back to Pecan Street for the bi-annual festival.

The festival featured free admission (of course!), 250 arts and craft vendors, musical and performing artists, art classes, dance classes, international foods, a carnival, petting zoo, and much more. Tommy Tutone, of 867-5309 fame, headlined on Saturday night and sadly, we missed it. Wonder if they played more than the one song?

Instead of eating festival food, we decided to try a new Vietnamese / Thai place called Mekong River. While we were not impressed by the spring roll, the entrees were pretty decent. Not sure if we will return though, there seem to be other Thai and Vietnamese places that are superior.

 

Kid-A-Pult in front of the Frost Building

(too bad they're strapped in)

 

Tap Dancing thugs

Random Austin Photos

 

Cool rainbow on the hike and bike trail

 

The Capitol Building through a gap

 

The dog park at Auditorium Shores never gets old

 

A cool, old church downtown

Free Museum Day

Today was free museum day in Austin. Thirty-one museums in the Austin area offered free admission plus many off them had bonus activities and exhibits. We decided to go to six of them and we opted to walk so I carefully planned our route and we began the day at the Butridge Gallery at the Dougherty Arts Center. The exhibit featured photos from the Texas Photographic Society and we found some good and some not so good. From there, we walked through Butler Park, over the 1st Street Bridge and on to the Austin Children's Museum. Total mayhem. Couldn't even figure out if it is a cool place because the noisy-kid quotient was at peak levels.

We made our way over to Congress and headed north to the Mexic-Arte Museum at 4th & Congress. They were featuring the Aztec and Maya Revival exhibition and offered hands-on arts activites. Heather created her own piece of Mex-inspired art.

At 7th & Congress we entered the Arthouse At The Jones Center. Their exhibit, entitled Reset/Replay, was a critical exploration of art inspired by video games. While some of the work was odd, a few items were pretty cool, like the 'painting' that was a working Atari 2600. Down the street was the Austin Museum Of Art. We were floored to see big names on display. Works from Picasso, Manet, Gaugin, Van Gogh, Renoir and others were available for our viewing pleasure.

The final museum on our magical mystery tour was the Capitol Visitors Center. Located on lush property next to the Capitol Building, the center was featuring it's new exhibit called 'Land Of My Dreams: Settling The Republic Of Texas.' It featured many artifacts from early Texas and even a piece of the original Capitol Building. The Capitol Visitors Center building is also a piece of Texas history as it was where the original map of Texas was drawn 150 years ago.

It was another cool and free event in this great city. A lot of people don't realize, or don't care to look for themselves, that Austin is more than just a bar and music town. While it's no NYC or Paris, it does have some culture and hopefully this day opened some people's eyes.

That Purple Building On 6th Street

While I usually try to avoid purple buildings based on principle, we were really craving Thai and have read good things about Thai Tara so we covered our eyes and entered the newly painted purple building on 6th Street. After waiting for a table to be bussed for what felt like 10 minutes (probably 5), we were finally sat and ordered our drinks (Coke for me and Thai iced tea for Heather).

Our favorite restaurant in New Jersey was a small restaurant in a little unassuming strip center called Thai Kitchen. We went so often that they knew us by name and always greeted us warmly. On our list of things we miss, this place is in the top five. So, it goes without saying that we have high expectations for Thai food.

Heather ordered the Pad Se-Ew (stir fried flat noodles with eggs and broccoli in brown sauce) with chicken and I had the Lard Na (flat noodles topped with vegetables in an Asian bean gravy) with chicken. I asked for mine spicy and Heather opted for mild. I always order Lard Na in a new Thai place because it's easy to compare as I've had it so many times. While we both agreed that it wasn't quite on par with Thai Kitchen (nothing probably ever will be), we both really enjoyed our dishes very much and felt like we could get used to coming to Thai Tara. Bonus points for free Tom Yum soup!

There Is More To Texas Than BBQ And TexMex

Living close the NYC, we were fortunate to have a wide range of ethnic possibilities when it came to food. We knew that moving to Texas we would definitely have to sacrifice in this regard but, as we did a lot of research in this department, we felt confident that we would be able to at least get by.

So with lower expectations than we had when eating Indian food back in New Jersey, we headed out to Clay Pit. It is located in what I guess you'd call midtown Austin, north of the downtown action but south of the university action. Being Saturday night there was a decent crowd so we waited on the porch. It was a nice, cool evening so it was pleasant and we noticed lots of Indian families coming and going which is a good sign of authenticity.

(another stolen picture from the internet)

After being sat, we were served the traditional pappadam (crispy flatbread) with various chutneys (red, green and brown) and we quickly ordered garlic naan (another flatbread that is more pita-like and cooked in a tandoor - which is the clay pit that the restaurant is named for). The garlic naan was perfection and truly excited us for the main event. Both of us had curries: Heather had the Jeera Saag (pureed spinach cooked with cumin and other spices) with chicken and I had the Mirch Masala (jalapenos, garlic, ginger, mushrooms and onions in a tomato sauce), also with chicken.


Both dishes were as good and as authentic tasting as any that we've had. I ordered mine spicy and was pleased that my forehead beaded up as I ate. The portions were perfect and the side of basmati rice that came with the entrees was sufficient. The couple that came with us were experiencing Indian cuisine for the first time and we found out later that they returned the next day for lunch!


After that fine meal we headed to south Austin to Dominican Joe coffee house which proudly serves fair trade coffee. They buy their beans from Makarios, an Austin-based non-profit organization who works directly with farmers in the Dominican Republic and pays them higher wages. Like most independent (meaning not Starbucks) coffee houses it has a cool, laid-back vibe. It was pretty full of artsy-type people (hipsters) on their artsy-type computers (Macs). Funny how none of them seemed to be actually drinking coffee. The coffee was decent, served in a real mug and, even though it was fair trade, it was still cheaper than Starbucks.

Meet Squizby

We went on our normal walk on the Town Lake Trail, which consists of parking by Butler Park and taking the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge to the north side, walking east to the Congress Avenue bridge (aka The Ann Richards Bridge), heading south over the bridge, then west to the dog park at Auditorium Shores, watching the dogs until dark and then returning to the car via Butler Park.

Everything was normal until right before we got to the Congress Avenue bridge and we noticed an itty bitty rodenty-looking thing hanging out in the middle of the trail. Upon closer examination we discovered, and quickly named, Squizby. It looked as though he (we are in no way squirrel experts but we decided that Squizby was male) had fallen out of his nest and was very confused.

The Town Lake Hike & Bike Trail is aptly named because people with bikes use it. Some of them go quite fast. We were quite concerned that Squizby would soon become trail-kill so we tried to talk him into returning to the woods along the bank of the river. We hoped that his mother would find him, scold him for talking to strangers and then tuck him safely back into the nest.

He either did not understand human or was stubborn because Squizby did not want to go back into the woods. Heather found some cardboard and picked him up but he slipped and ended up in her lap. He took a liking to her and began gnawing on her shorts. Though she really wanted to take Squizby home and raise it like a son, we agreed that it was best to put him into the woods and hope for the best. Keep your head high Squizby!

Sorry, cell phone pics aren't the clearest