Art City Austin is an event organized by Art Alliance Austin. I had heard of it but attended this year for the first time on April 24th. They close off about five blocks in Austin’s 2nd Street District downtown and 190 artists, many local, but most (all?) national set up a booth where they show off their goods. Lots of very good painting, some very impressive metal work, sculpture, glass, etc.
Read more for more details, photos, and the ever important description of the food available.
I’m not fully recovered from SXSW concert overload yet but singer, composer, guitar player and former Brazilian Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil was in town so missing it wasn’t really a smart option. It was a beautiful all stings acoustic concert. No video, but you can at least hear this low quality recording. Enjoy!
Update March 29, 2010: The concert was at the Hogg Memorial Auditorium.
Ok, last SXSW 2010 post.
Saturday was the final day of South By Southwest. Destination: Beauty Bar – or rather, a seemingly improvised venue called “Beauty Bar/Palm door” three blocks south of the real Beauty Bar. The place had three nasty problems:
In spite of this, it turned out to be an excellent night with one of the best shows I’ve seen in a SXSW.
Photos and videos of the shows if you read more…
Hard to catch up with all the stuff I saw. Here are some more photos and videos from last Thursday at South By Southwest (Warning: Extreme close-ups). First, some photos of Ozomatli’s awesome dance circle finale, where they get off stage with the crowd. Then, if you read more, you can see to another video of Bajofondo and one of Ozomatli that didn’t make it into the last post.
My office’s window is turning out to be quite the interesting spot. A few days ago I could see smoke from a plane crash. Today I can see some heavy snow. Snow is rare in Austin, Texas. This quantity of snow is even rarer.
Read more for more photos and a short clip.
This afternoon the 5th Annual Kosher Chili Cook-off was held at the JCAA. This is a probably the only kosher chili contest in the world – blending Texan and Jewish culture together (although I’d prefer a kosher BBQ cook-off).
I promised last year to enter for 2010, but due to unforeseen reasons, I did not. Most of the chilies I tried were not very spicy, but there were some good things out there. I’m warming up to the idea of vegetarian chili. What’s wrong with me? Well, perhaps I will enter in 2011.
I didn’t stick around until they announced the winner, so please comment if you know. In the meantime, a few photos after the break.
This is a photo I just took of what is apparently the smoke from a plane crash on MoPac and 183. I took it from the eight floor of my building at work:
There’s not a lot of news out there but KVUE has a report (with video): Apparently a 1-engine Cessna crashed onto the Echelon building.
According to my calculations, in the embedded map you can see how far from me it happened:
[UPDATE]: Two people still unnacounted for. Let’s hope they’re ok!
[UPDATE 1:13 PM]: There was a big column of smoke I could see from my building this morning (before the crash). It was a house on fire. It’s possible that this is the house of the pilot that smashed a plane this morning, Joseph Andrew Stack. His suicide letter is online on his website.
I recently learned about a new Vietnamese restaurant in Austin called Pho King. It sounds way too close to a conjugated form of the f-word. As of this writing, their website still has Lorem ipsum text placeholders and some stock photos. See screenshot below:
The place does exist: here’s the Yelp link. So… is the name an accident? Or a stroke of viral-marketing genius? I’m happy to hear your opinions and reviews in the comments.
We are expecting the coldest weekend in Austin in over a decade. I know that to some of my readers from Sweden, Alaska, the South Pole or Jupiter this is nothing. Well I don’t care. It’s notable enough for me to post. I had to take out my huge crazy winter coat that I never wear and I’m saving for the next Ice Age… so I can walk 25 meters from the parking garage to the office building.
As a favor to reader Eli Seidner, who practically got on his knees and begged me to do it, I left a bucket of water outside. Turns out that if you get water down below certain as of now undetermined temperature, it turns into ice. Ice! Hard to believe.
As part of their 20th anniversary celebrations, Mexican rock band Café Tacvba is touring 20 cities. Austin is one of them. I got last minute tickets to see them perform at La Zona Rosa. As usual, great concert. And even though I have seen them play live many times (Feria Monterrey, La Huasteca, ACL TV Show, ACL Festival, Stubbs twice, La Zona Rosa just to name a few) it’s always a great show, plus this time I had to bring a newbie.
YouTube clip may follow… I’m a little scared.
