[KevinFromTexas]

Actually, the boardwalk closes at midnight and reopens at 6 am, but don't tell that to the bums.

The nearest portion of the actual boardwalk (section on the piers) to any apartment building, is 100 feet. That's wider than most of the streets in downtown, the bulk of which are typically 80 feet wide. The nearest building to the actual boardwalk is Joe's Crab Shack at just 30 feet. Now, there are sections of the land based trail that are closer than that. I rode down a section of trail along those apartment buildings that are southeast of the American-Statesman, and through there the trail is probably 6 to 8 feet at most from some of the apartment units on the ground floor. Most of the boardwalk sections on the pier are buffeted from the shore by thick underbrush. Only the easternmost section of the boardwalk is wide open to the apartment buildings over there with no underbrush separating them, but again, the boardwalk at that point is 90 to 170 feet away from the building. That's the bowed section of boardwalk, the last section east of I-35.

Check it out on Google Earth. I measured the three sections of boardwalk to get those numbers.