THE ROAD TO IDIOCRACY RUNS THROUGH AUSTIN: “Austin is chasing its tail on ride-sharing,” Ellen Troxclair writes in the Austin American-Statesman:
Yes, there was life before Uber and Lyft, and life can go on after. There was also life before the wheel, before electricity, and before high speed internet, but no one wants to go back to living like cavemen, in the dark, with dial up.
No one? When the New York Times’ writers aren’t personally railing against the evils of air conditioning and jet planes, the paper runs approving Unabomber-esque features on urban hipsters looking to reprimitivize on a regular basis. NBC hectors its viewers over their electricity and light bulb use. A presidential candidate vows to bankrupt the entire coal energy, and the editors of the San Francisco Chronicle silently approve.
But beyond Uber given the boot, Austin is full of examples of progress running backwards. For example, last weekend, my wife and I were in Austin so that Nina could meet a client from Slovenia (who also has an office in Silicon Valley) in town for a tech conference and give him and his fiancé a taste of some real Texas barbeque, courtesy of a short drive to Kreuz Market in the neighboring town of Lockhart. (It was mouth-wateringly good. Just fabulous.)
While in Austin, we stayed in the Hyatt Regency, located across the street from the offices of the aforementioned Austin American-Statesman newspaper. Evidently, their large parking lot is used for medium-sized concerts and other outdoor events on weekends, weather permitting. From 4:00 PM on Saturday, shortly after we returned to the hotel from our excursion to Lockhart, until 11:00 PM, the entire hotel shook from the sound of the incredibly loud sub-octave bass bins being employed by the JMBLYA 2016 rap concert, “featuring Future, Rae Sremmurd, Carnage, Kevin Gates, Kehlani, Keith Ape, Jazz Cartier & More.” (No, I’ve never heard of any of these guys, either.) But it wasn’t the genre of music – a lily-white death metal concert played at the same volume with the same sound system would also shake the hotel’s walls just as much.
I’m not exaggerating. Nina and I went down to the restaurant in the lobby for dinner at around 7:00 PM, and we could still hear the bass waves from the concert despite being in the center of a massive 16 story 448 room concrete and steel hotel. There’s a reason why a city like Philadelphia placed its hockey arena which hosts rock concerts out in the hinterlands, where the only neighboring businesses are meatpacking plants that presumably close at 5:00 PM before Van Halen shakes the concrete.
As James Lileks would say, World War I called our concert and asked them to turn it down. While the bands at the concert across the street were deafening their audience and shaking the walls of our hotel, a high school was having its prom in ballroom of the hotel; dozens of teenagers tromping up the escalators in rented tuxes and gowns, corsages ready to pinned, a last vestige of a way of life being fundamentally transformed.
Speaking of fundamental transformation, in the past, the newspaper and its physical plant was seen by the community it served as a staid middlebrow paragon, a place where reporters would keep local politicians honest, and critics would advise local readers what books to read, what films to see, what galleries to attend. This sniffy 1964 Newsweek cover story on the Beatles’ arrival at JFK is exactly how every contemporary newspaper would have covered the event, which boils down to four words: Not Our Class, Dear.
As late as 1970, Jimi Hendrix’s death was announced on the ABC evening news with more than hint of disdain; you may have heard about this crazy guitarist from your kids; we know you don’t listen to him, gentle respectable viewer. But during the ‘60s and especially the 1970s, a counterculture formed that would entirely sweep away grown-up culture. Evidently in 2016, the Austin American-Statesman isn’t worried about what hosting rock and rap concerts will do to its reputation in “Keep Austin Weird” Austin. But it’s curious that the same week that the tourist-hungry city banned Uber, it sanctioned a concert so loud, it could disrupt neighboring hotels. Idiocracy, here we come, even in Texas.
Click for a larger version of the photos of the concert I shot from our hotel room; that last shot is from the day after; as with Woodstock, a concert isn’t officially over until the Port-o-San man says it is.