ATX 2015

Austin, Texas. I only ever thought about it in the past because our family friends, the Schmidts, are from there and both of their kids went to UT. Even then, though, it was one of those places I heard about in newspaper articles or in passing but I never thought I’d buy a plane ticket and spend 4 days there.

But I did.

And it was awesome.

So to wrap up the summer of music festivals, Shannon, Annelyse and I decided to head to the mother of festys*, Austin City Limits. We’d been planning some sort of trip since spring 2014 when we returned from Barbados. We were fiending for adventure.

The selection process of where to go went as follows:

April 2014

Me: where should we go? I wanna go to SXSW

Shannon: samesies

Annelyse: same

Shannon: its in march

Me: hmmm

Annelyse: hmmmm

Me: okay how about ACL instead. Its in Austin too

Shannon: yes. Also its October so it wont be blazing hot**

Annelyse: yes

So there we go. In this reenactment, I take total credit. I definitely shouldn’t. WHATEVER.

Thus, a trip to Austin was born. We chose weekend 2 of ACL due to Ragnar being the first weekend of it, found a super cheap Airbnb, contacted my family friends in Austin, and we were all set. [Editor’s note: it was a trip that was always so far in the future I just didn’t think it would ever really come. Suddenly, I finished Ragnar and realized “dang, time to head to Texas.”] I asked for a ton of advice from Austinites, and ya know what, ask and ye shall receive. People are so helpful. I got advice about Austin from probably 20 people, all super willing to give suggestions and tips.

I went straight to DCA after work on Wednesday to meet up with my dear pals. We boarded the Southwest flight at 6 and didn’t leave until 7. SEVEN! C’mon Southwest! However, I heard no complaints from anyone at all, and I attribute this to the fact that everyone who works at Southwest is just so dang friendly! Smiles all around. So genuine! I felt right at home!

Anywho, off we went through the night, watching Downton Abbey on Annelyse’s iPad and nodding off. Around 8:30, we touched down and felt that Texas heat for the first time. Its very real but oh so beautiful. The hotter the better, IMO. I’d take a 113 degree day over a 40 degree day, no questions asked. Except if the question is “would you like to go skiing?” in which case yes, I’d get on the first bus up the slopes. But if skiing isn’t a factor, Imma go hot.

A nice lil man named Chad picked us up for our first Uber ride. A note about Austin Uber drivers: all very chatty, friendly, cute Texas twangs, and just brimming with good things to say about their city…EXCEPT for the complete takeover of outsiders in the past 6ish years. They aren’t too happy about the newcomers but they understand why. They just wish they’d leave forever and never come back.

Chad became a legend to our trio. He started off telling us that East Austin (where our Airbnb was) has been gentrified in the past couple of years. “10 years ago, I wouldn’t drive my car into East Austin. I wouldn’t let you girls get anywhere near it. Now it’s the safest part of the city! Its really great!”

Midway through the drive, his story began to change: “Okay so East Austin is a little ghetto. Just be warned. But its nice!” OKAY CHAD.

At the end: “There are bound to be crackheads! Be careful! You’re not too far from downtown so definitely stay downtown as long as you can! EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF!” he yelled as he sped off. Just kiddin’ about that last part. But really. Chad apparently left us to die in East Austin.

After unpacking in the cutest Airbnb I’ve ever stayed in (stayed in 7 as of now), we sank into deep and much needed slumber.

Thursday’s sun rose from the hill country of Texas like a Snorlax’s belly as he sleeps: first it rose up, then it deflated, then it rose again, and so forth. Texas suns are weird.

Nah just kidding, I was really reaching for a simile there. Wasn’t happening.

Thursday was our day of nothingness. In which I mean, we had nothing planned, except for all the suggestions from our amigos. Jennifer, our Airbnb hostess, left us a hefty list of suggestions too, and we took her up on her advice to go to a place called Mi Madre’s, a taco place a quick 10 minute walk away. Eager to try the legendary “breakfast tacos” of Austin, we set off on our journey, passing by several “crackheads” (as Chad undoubtedly would’ve called them), one who had the AUDACITY to ask us how we were doing. Good, we told him, to which he replied “Pretty good myself, for an old man!” Complete crackhead, I tell you.

My pretty travel companions

Mi Madre’s ended up being the perfect way to start off Austin. A little stand alone restaurant in the middle of a pretty barren street, it had 2 options for outdoor seating, as well as a little indoor nook. We sat down at a red table outside and immediately were greeted with the best part of the whole trip: the prices. Prices are so daggum low! A taco is $2-4. And tacos are no shrimpy lil things, they’re large! Exploding with stuff! I got 2 breakfast tacos and we got a dip to share, and I think I paid $6 in total. Without the dip, $4. For a full breakfast. I cried, kids, cried. Spoiler alert: for food, I spent a grand total of $70 for 4 full days.  That’s $17.5 a day. Roughly $6 a meal. Insane!

Oooo heaven is a place on Earth :)

I have to take a moment to remember the dip at Mi Madre’s. This dip was a medium sized bowl full of oozy golden queso, layered on top of sensuous ground beef and refried beans, expertly folded drizzled against avocado slices, jalapeno rounds and topped with juicy tomato cubes. One bite and I was in love. $Texas forreal.

I gotta add in that it was here, at Mi Madre's, that we decided we were going to make a fashion apparel line similar to Lilly Pulitzer, but only all prints are brown and yellow, to hide the inevitable bean and cheese stains we will get from all the beans and cheese we eat.

Moment of silence for the dip. The dip of my dreams. 

After being dragged away from the cheese, we hopped in an Uber and ended up at the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum. After ixnaying the $10 fee to tour it, we bopped around the UT campus, checking out the stadium (a tad bigger than Lane) and the Main Building (okay is that really what it’s called? Any Longhorns out there?), and the beautiful dorms. I liked the campus. Seemed kinda small for 50,000 undergrads, but what do I know? It’s pretty sweet that the Main Building and the Capital building (like…the state capital of Texas) are in direct eyesight with each other. Think the Washington Monument and the Capitol here in DC.

Outside of the stadium. A nice young student ran over and offered to take this photo of us without us even asking. People sure are friendly down there in Texas!

We couldn’t be bothered to spend $10 on LBJ, but $8 learning about some good ole’ Texas history seemed like a fine idea. The Texas State History Museum is right by UT campus and filled to the brim with interesting tid bits and history of Texas. It’s a fascinating place – I mean any place that was its own country for 10 years and inspires museum-style documentaries that have the phrase “I WAS BORN IN MEXICO BUT MY HEART…MY HEART IS IN TEXAS” in them are bound to be utterly interesting. I learned quite a bit, about Texas and Austin itself. (Also, we were walking down the street outside the museum and an old coworker just happened to be biking by. So random! I yelled his name, and he stopped and we all chatted for a bit. He then sent over a bunch of Austin info.)

The floor of the Texas State Museum atrium. ITS TEXAS UPSIDE DOWN IF YOU CANT TELL!

Speaking of capitals, that was our next stop, the State Capital building. We walked around the outside, oohing and ahhing over its pink color, then got to walk around inside and even listen in on a tour happening in the House of Representatives room. So the House only meets for 5 months every even odd year; they met from January – May of 2015 and won’t meet again until January of 2017. Funky, right? Every group of Reps has their own composite board around the wall – leading back to the 1800s. 1897 had half of the guys in photos and half of them drawn. Amateur sketch style. I lolled and marveled all at the same time.

simply scrumtralescent.

This is where I realized that Texans really love Texas. I’d always heard this, but I saw it first hand in this room. Sort of hard to tell in this photo, but the lights in the points of the star spell out TEXAS. Never forget where you came from! See below (hard to see but JUST BELIEVE).

See it?! SEE THE TEXAS??

The Capital building is also one of the few capitals in the country that is taller than the Capitol building in DC. << That is also one of the few sentences ever written that contains some form of the word Capital more than once. TAKE THAT, KEN JENNINGS!

From there, we knew the next stop: Sixth Street. By this point, we only knew of Sixth as one long street. We didn’t know it was a ghastly decision to hit up East Sixth, aka DIRTY SIX, in the daylight hours, let alone sober. But that’s where we ended up. Shannon got a beer, Annelyse got food, and I soaked up the sun at a bar on East Sixth called Old School. We went into this particular bar out of desperation for water, and also the fact that it had a large outdoor upstairs seating area, optimal for people watching and hoping that we saw a stray celeb in town for ACL. Little did we know that Shia LaBeouf would be arrested next door the very next night!

All clean on Dirty Six.

After this nice break, we ventured down the other way to get to the first ever Whole Foods, which is a sort of Mecca for me. Growing up Vicky’s daughter instilled in me a love for the Foods that are Whole and I relished in getting to visit my Holy Land. Except that it was nearly identical to the Whole Foods in Fairfax. Maybe a tad bigger. But not much! I did reach enlightenment, though, so there’s that.

MOM LOOK ARE YOU PROUD OF ME???

Next stop was a suggestion from a buddy: Kung Fu Saloon. It’s a bar outfitted with giant Jenga and Connect Four, as well as video games up the butt, and pac man drilled into the bricks outside. Also a funky mural. Sadly though, this place had no food, so after a few games of Buckhunter (who leaves $10 in Buckhunter? Idk but I’m sure glad that person did! DON’T SHOOT THE COWS!!!) we moseyed to a nearby bar called J Black’s for real food. Its here where things got interesting.

#BOSS

I had previously posted an Instagram of my Texas-ing, to which I got a fast and furious response from a bunch of people, most of whom I had no idea lived in Texas. One of them was an old Pike buddy named Cory, who said we should meet up for drinks while we were in town. We texted a bit and he informed us that he had a work happy hour, and could meet us wherever once that was done. We never exchanged info on where to meet or where he was. Well, dear reader, guess where he was. You guessed it, J Black’s. WEIRD RIGHT?!? Out of all the bars, we ended up at the same one. Do you beliebe in magic? Because I do!

This bar also had one of my favorite non-taco dishes (out of the 2 non-taco dishes I had), a salsa comprised of mango, avocado, grapes, cilantro, tomato, and jalapenos. Delicioso. Alan, my buddy since I was 5 (all my childhood memories somehow involve him, whether it was ding dong ditching all the neighbors in sight, making towns in the woods or getting completely wasted in a random dude’s basement) met up with us here too.

My one pic from J Black's. The sign said FEEL GOOD NOW. But what if I want to feel good later?? :(

He lamented in the fact that none of us were drinking. This was never really the plan. Texas has great beer, and I would’ve loved to indulge, but since planning this Argentina/Chile trip I’ve put myself on a tight budget and beer is a super easy way to save money and guarantee that I could function the entire trip. Plus, I haven’t had anything to drink, not so much as a beer, in about a month now, and I’m going to see how long I can keep this going. [Side note, I did end up having a few shots on my last night here, but they were so few and far between and so much water was ingested that I’m wary about counting that forealz].

We stopped at an ice cream chain in Austin called Amy’s to try out the Mexican Vanilla, which Alan basically wrote poetry about while describing it. Sort of a cake batter ice cream mixed with heaven. Or something. Then, being the great guy he is, he drove us home and we soundly slept, awaiting the whole reason why we came to ATX…

AUSTIN CITY LIMITS.

(Wait wait I can't go on about ACL without first mentioning Fresa's delicious tacos that we had on the way to ACL. SO GOOD. Okay moving on.)

We did it. But we only did 1 day of 1 of those weekend LOL

If you keep up with me (which isn’t hard seeing as how I post about once a year on average nowadays) you’ll know that 2 posts ago, I wrote about how nice and chill Landmark Festival was, at least in comparison to Firefly. I still agree with this, but now I have to distinguish “chill”. Landmark was “low key chill”. ACL was “I know what I’m doing I’m going to fuck shit up while keeping my composure and I’mma make everyone else look like FRIGGIN IDIOTS chill”.

Interesting tidbit: the same company that put on Landmark also put on ACL. These flags are the EXACT FRIGGIN SAME AS LANDMARK. I am APPALLED. (jk go green recycle weee)

Okay so disclaimer: I am a human being, I’ve been in big crowds before. Tech football games are a masse of people like you wouldn’t believe, Nats Park when filled to capacity is something else. Trying to get on the Mall on the Fourth of July is like asking to get swept away and stampeded by a zillion people in Old Navy flag shirts. Hell, Rio de Janeiro after Brazil lost 7-1 to Germany was basically a sobbing mob of humanity – goodbye South African buddies! It was nice knowing you, because despite us staying at the same hostel, I never saw you again in that crowd!

All that being said, I’ve never seen anything like the ACL. Zilker Park, where the festival is, isn't THAT big, so fitting 200,000 people (yes TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE) is a tight squeeze. But it never felt overwhelming. This is corny as hell but it felt...powerful, other-worldly, just freaking incredible to be a part of. It wasn't like Firefly, where the swarms were just plain annoying. Here, the crowd ebbed and flowed together and the chill was real! No crowd surfers! People spoke to each other and danced like there was no tomorrow! UGH you have to experience the thing to understand.

If memory serves, this is during Run the Jewels. A 5pm show. MADNESS.

We saw Nate Ruess (fun. front man), Cherub, Run the Jewels, Billy Idol, Tame Impala, George Ezra, Foo Fighters, Disclosure, and last but not least, the crown jewel of the night, Flosstradamus. No joke, Shannon listened to them on Spotify a while back and thought "ehh...this is a no" and I listened and felt the same. It sounded like robots having sexual relations on a dying cow. No thanks. However, maybe its time to stop trusting Spotify...because Flosstradamus was fun af. We crumped, we danced, we fist pumped, we laughed, we barfed (jk). They tore down the metaphorical house that was ACL. Thanks Flosstradamus!

They are happy because we got offered drugs multiple times here at ACL! BUT WE DIDN'T INDULGE. No dranks either. We are so good! Also it was hot as all hell and drinking anything but water would've undoubtedly killed us.

This delicious morsel was from a stand called The Mighty Cone. Its fried shrimp, fried avocado, and some chipotle ranch thing that embodied all that is good and wonderful in this world. Thanks ACL! Your food was two thumbs up! We also had kimchi fries <33333 AND AMY'S ICE CREAM!

Somehow in the throngs of people, we managed to stick together. We sat, we stood, we made friends with dudes who tried to get us to go on their boat the next day, we basically had a joyous time. 

This doesn't do the amount of flags justice. Tame Impala came out and the lead guy looked around and went "huh. you like your flags now do ya?"

Hydrated and Afraid: the Alex Fogg Story. #camelbaklife

Aint Annelyse pretty?? And Shanny too, she's in the back takin pix

Best part of ACL: the spotlights. There were spotlights on every stage and all around Zilker. They basically formed a sort of magical dome over the whole thing and were simply mesmerizing. I'll never forget sitting on the ground, gazing at the spotlights in wonder and also wishing the Foo Fighters were better. I like the Foo Fighters, I do, but they were just kinda meh.

Frands. Check out the Austin skyline in the background. The stage way in the distance (directly above my head) is the main stage. On the left side of the pic are the "shops" and places to get food. There was a giant beer garden by the other big stage.

After the Foo Fighters ended, we strolled into downtown, caught an Uber, and crawled into bed. We were exhausted.

The last full day arrived. This day wasn't really planned either, but Alan did tell us he'd drive us to a place that a coworker recommended, called Hamilton Pool. Since we had no car, and Alan did have a car, well we were very thankful and excited. We got food at a place called Maria's Taco Xpress (our Uber driver was in awe that we were going there. "No one from out of town ever asks to go there" he said. Score 233 billion for us.) Maria's was described to me as "quirky as hell" and that was spot on. So so so good. Breakfast tacos and queso held us over until Alan came to pick us up. Off we went to the Pool.

Back story: basically as I was leaving work to go to the airport, a coworker stopped me and told me I had to go to Hamilton Pool while in Austin. She showed me a picture and I was sold. It reminded me of the whole reason I went to Portland a few years ago - Multnomah Falls. I just had to go see it to believe it. This was similar, the pictures were so spectacular I just couldn't stop thinking about it. 

And can you blame me?? This place was surreal. We parked and hiked for about .25 mile to reach the secluded pool, which was partially covered by a cliff. I don't know how this came to be, a sunken lake? An underground spring that eroded away over time? I should look this up.

We hung around the Pool for a while, taking pictures and such. 

That green color is vvvv real.

Neighbors 4 life. Except not now, since he lives in Austin. (Fun fact: see that shirt I'm wearing? Its from Cape May Brewing Co, from the Jersey Shore. As I was leaving Hamilton Pool, a girl walked by me WEARING THE SAME FRIGGIN SHIRT. SEE??? It was so weird. Life is nuts, guys)

Alan was kind enough to drive us home after this (and informed me that our Airbnb was on the same street as a guy who went to my elementary school. His name is Johnathan Alexander Justice but went by Alex...and in the second grade my teacher made me change my name to Allie because of him! HIS FIRST NAME WASN'T EVEN ALEX. But I'm definitely not still bitter about it) and we got ready to go out for the evening.

Tonight was "rage night"! And rage we did, really. We first got tacos from a taco truck on Rainey St., which is a precious/awesome street full of old houses that have been converted into bars. This street alone convinced me to move to Austin some day. (Also the weather, the abundance of stuff to do, the inexpensiveness of it all, but I digress). From there we went to two bars on the street, and then and only then, we took the plunge and went to Dirty Six, to be a part of it, to immerse ourselves in the chaos. 

We got there around 10, which wasn't exactly prime rage time, said Alan. He took us to a shots only bar where we waited for some of his buddies to show up. By shots bar, I mean they only serve shots. Shots with names like "Woo woo" and "Alien Secretion" and "Purple Nurple". We got a few rounds of them and played giant Jenga with a neighboring group of nice people who also went to ACL. 

By the time we emerged, around midnight, Dirty Six was just. Plain. DIRTY. Drunk people of all ages, shapes and sizes wandering around, popping out of windows, dancing, singing, being black out. Cops on horses waltzed by while street vendors peddled street tacos and bar promoters ran up to us to get to go inside under the promise of FREE DRINKS!! It was a spectacle, for sure.

Of course this doesn't do it justice. Justice Beaver. Justice will be DAMMED.

We stumbled upon the soft opening of VooDoo donuts (flashback to Portland) and that ended the night for us. We said goodbye to Alan and his pals and Ubered away into the night.

The rest is straight forward: Sunday morning, Shannon and I went back to Mi Madre's to get the dip ONE LAST TIME (Hammy stayed behind to pack and relax), then we hopped in an Uber and went to the airport. Twas time to go home. 

black outfits not coordinated I SWEAR

In short, but actually long because this post is a novel, Austin is pretty great. Weather was perfect albeit hot (but some of us like that kinda thing), everyone we met was friendly, there's no shortage of stuff to do, and most of all, everyone we met just LOVED living there. I don't think I can throw a rock in the DC area without hitting someone who would leave this place in a heartbeat if they had the chance. So that's really saying something for Austin. I hope I get to go back soon!

*Maybe the mother of festivals is Coachella. Or Burning Man. Or Glastonbury in England. Whatever. Maybe there are multiple mothers, this is 2015 after all.

**October was still pretty dang hot.