Howdy from Texas! I definitely know I'm in Texas, in the heart of Texas as a matter of fact: Austin. Austin is often considered the oasis or mecca of Texas especially by those people who went to the University of Texas or those we reside in Austin. I'm here to tell you though that there are two distinct Austins.
I consider Austin to be a big, old donut. The doughy part is urban Texan, recognizable to anyone who lives in the Big D, Fort Worth, San Antone, Houston or any number of smaller Texas cities. Its full of big box stores, slick strip shopping malls filled with chain stores, and every restaurant chain is represented not just once but multiple times as you move around the donut - think Round Rock which is a seamless suburb of Austin but has more in common with Dallas or Fort Worth.
As a Texan, have you noticed that we are no longer a 'rural' state? - only about 14% of Texan can be considered hayseeds now. That doesn't mean there aren't a lot of them - we have the largest rural population in numbers of any state - over 3 million. Those 14% are busy, as they account for Texas being #1 of all the states in livestock production and #2 of all the states in agricultural production. That's why this catastrophic drought covering the state is going to impact the rest of the country. Demographically, though, virtually everything west of Fort Worth has been losing population. We are the fastest growing state in the Union - almost a 13% increase in population in the last 10 years. People are streaming into the urban areas - especially around Austin. Not too many people are moving into central Austin - what I call the 'hole'
I live in the hole of the Austin donut. The hole is between the two major freeways running north/south (I-35 and "Mopac") and between two major highways running east/west (Hwy 183 'Research' and Hwy 71 - 'Ben White") The 'hole' includes the University of Texas: 50,000 students. It includes the State Capitol. It includes some of the oldest neighborhoods in Austin. The roads are almost incomprehensible filled with 'gotchas' of vanishing lanes, zigzags, and streets with 1/2 attached to their names. There are more men with long hair here per square mile than anywhere other than some environs of California. There's also a lot of tie dye, tattoos, headbands, and people still making a somewhat dubious living making bongs or ethnic jewelry. The young financially successful also live in the 'hole'. They live in neighborhoods close to the trendiest restaurants, bars, and 'nightlife'. This is one of the few spots in Texas that has inflated housing prices, and one of the few places in the country where those inflated prices didn't take a 50% tumble.
I have heard "the Hole" referred to as "Nut Town", that Commie town, (for those of you born after 1990 - "commie" means Communist in a very derogatory sense), and Weirdsville. I've heard that this part of Austin can either be considered an oasis or an infection depending on what Texan you talk to. It's definitely not homogenized and marches to a beat that is hard to quantify. The 'hole' slogan is "Keep Austin Weird". What they mean is to actively boycott chain restaurants, and big box stores as much as possible in favor of locally owned businesses. People who live inside the hole are willing to pay a small premium to keep those local businesses afloat. Every restaurant inside this area of Austin can be packed on a Friday night, and the one Chili's I've seen has an empty parking lot. There are lots of practical shops that harken back to the 1950's.
Another result of the Keep Austin Weird campaign is wonderful restaurants and interesting shops that sell everything from the most mundane to high art. The "hole" even has it's own hotel/motel: The Austin Motel - whose motto is: "So close yet so far out." http://www.austinmotel.com/ They even have their own grocery store here: Whole Foods - which got its start in the hole part of Austin. This area has it's own fashion color too: Burnt Orange, which is really amusing, considering that most women wouldn't be caught dead in this color since it's really, really unflattering. However, in the Hole of Austin, you can buy everything from a toilet seat, to a car in that nauseating color. Every hat here has a pair of horns on it. Because of the preponderance of people under the age of 40, when I'm here I feel ancient. In most situations I've found myself in the past several weeks, I'm the oldest person in the room - and that includes Drake since I'm four days older than he is.
There are three iconic buildings in the hole: The UT Tower which is bathed in that Burnt Orange color after any football victory, the State Capitol which can still be viewed unobstructed from the length of Congress Avenue, and the Frost Building which is actually lovely with its top looking like wings of frost.
This is a fascinating place to live. It's the most experimental place in Texas. It's the most obnoxious place - as only that crazy, college thing can be. It's the most politically liberal pocket of Texas. It's a visual throwback to the early 1970's, and in that regard, it's a bit unsettling. Sometimes time stands still here and yet, sometimes the 'hole' is on the cutting age of change. This had been another fascinating place to live.
