By the way, I'm not at home

[pseydtonne]

Space. Lots of space. Well, by Boston standards, there is a lot of space in Austin. You can walk a few blocks from the center of downtown and wind up in a spacious park. You can drive for ten minutes and be in the spacious parts of the suburbs.

Did I say you can drive? I have to drive. There is a bus system and it even has night buses but It's completely impractical to take the bus as a visitor. Since it's so cheap to rent a good car (about a third of the Boston price even with the insurance), I would highly recommend getting a car from the airport before you do anything else.

I was shocked that gas prices are about the same here as they are in Boston. I figured they brew the oil, right? Turns out it's like electricity near Niagara Falls: they make the money selling it north so they get no deal at the refinery.

One of the best things about this trip has been my desire to write. I have gotten so much writing done since I got on vacation Thursday. Since I did over 1500 handwritten words on the plane, it's just been growing. I need to transcribe those notes...

I'm eating another of the best meals of my life. The cuisine is just -- stunning! It's like God read my desires and said "that restaurant... or any of them. You'll be happy." I'm at the South Congress Cafe (an upscale joint but the food plus service is crazy worth it) eating migas -- scrambled eggs, cheese, potato pancake, refried beans, tomatoes, red and green chili sauces -- with a side of venison sausage. I have found the spice of my life! I am only interrupting my eating to type this because I may be in a hypnotic state about this food. Food, I say!

There are a lot of deer roaming the suburbs. When you drive at night on the Taconic Parkway in Dutchess County, New York, you have to go the posted 55 at the most because you are very likely to hit a deer. It's like that here, only you're lost in a subdevelopment going 15 miles per hour and the deer are pissed at you. No wonder they cook up so deliciously.

The first vibe I got from the place, before I drove into the downtown, was that this was sprawl without an upper class. You take any of the expressways that form a roughly ten-mile by four-mile rectangle around the metro area and you see strip mall after strip mall, housing front after housing front, and even the occasional housing front converted to businesses from a lack of zoning laws (actually, the west side of 6th Street has a few blocks of that -- nothing but bungalows turned into chiropractors, nail salons and sundry). It all looks blanched from the sun -- they start with sand-colored brick that always looks parched. You see giant overpasses and four-stack interchanges in what looks like the edge of civilization... until you get passed the stack and the sprawl continues.

I got to see the contrast between poor and rich neighborhoods after some more driving. The higher the hill, the gaudier the house. It turns out the walls are paper-thin inside but they just pay a lot for landscaping and room crenelation. Maybe I'm only looking at nouveau riche housing, which is loud unto death. If I were wealthy, I'd want a house with dense walls that don't echo anything. I would research construction methods to avoid knowing anyone was fucking to death metal in the next room.

Not all is paradise here. It's clear that the Spanish-English split remains although it's turned down. At first I was very juiced to see a Jalisco license plate and all the other comforts of Mexico's proximity. Almost everything is in both English and Spanish, but the translations are not egalitarian. For example, I went to the bathroom inside a supermarket and saw this sign on the inside door. Note that the sign was all in caps with the English on the left and the Spanish on the right, composed to look like blank verse:

ALL	TODOS
EMPLOYEES	EMPLEADOS
MUST WASH	DEBEN
HANDS BEFORE	DE LAVAR
RETURNING TO	LAS MANOS
WORK	MUY BIEN

The word alignment left the line "work muy bien" as a command crossing the linguistic border.

What's more important is that "todos empleados deben de lavar las manos muy bien" actually means "all employees must wash their hands very well". It suggests the Spanish reader is a dirtier person. It also hints that it doesn't matter whether the Spanish speaker is on the clock: said person must wash off all that non-American sin. Yes, massuh...

I have a lot more to post, obviously. I will explain as fast as I can.

Comments

[gravitrue.livejournal.com]

I was generally told that gas was cheap in jersey 'cause of the proximity to the refineries. This was a strong justification for the "full service" law; with prices among the lowest in the US, no gain for the consumer to be had by dropping the overhead cost. Of course, I'd guess that the jersey refineries aren't shipping the juice out of the midatlantic.

[chaggalagirl.livejournal.com]

when i told my mother what you said about me needing to go to austin because i'd like it so damn much she was like "ah-HA! that's what your father always said!"

i felt slightly defeated. but i'm glad you're writing. i can't wait to read more about it.

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

dude, you in my old stomping grounds! ain't austin fantastic?

[starburstlvr.livejournal.com]

3, almost 4 years of living in Texas and I haven't been down to Austin yet. Will have to change that before I leave.