Quote:
Originally Posted by Tech House
Excellent reply, and I agree with everything you said. I'll have to go back to the drawing board to try to ascertain what it is that has me feeling so disgruntled about many of the changes here. Maybe it's just that I'm now an outsider. I can't afford to participate in downtown Austin any longer. I'm getting too old, and I'm too poor, and I'm too funky and eclectic for the 2nd Street district, the Marriott, and everything else that is showing up. Rainey Street would totally be my scene if everything there didn't cost 3x as much as it should. I just can't keep up. I'm old and in the way, I need to make my move to Boise or Bend or Missoula, and from there I'll regularly visit and admire Austin. Perhaps then I'll appreciate it more, because I'll be living in a place that lacks many of the urban amenities I've grown accustomed to in this booming global metropolis.
I still love parts of east Austin, especially right around the neighborhood where I used to live, where I foolishly sold my house in 2004 so that I could go live on a fantasy farm near Lockhart.
|
Dude, you leave town, and I am going to be the only cranky geezer left on the Austin forum. I think I have several years on you, but there is a perspective that comes with age that is often lacking here. I'll miss your input. I agree that the new downtown lacks something. It is expensive and congested. It seems geared to tourists and visitors. The podium towers are off putting in most instances, but I have to say that I think it is the overall blandness of the new buildings, the hard plain surfaces of most everything at street level and the glassy sameness of most of the towers that is most disappointing. Maybe it will age well, and hopefully when the boom times subside there will have been a fair amount of in-fill construction to create a more human scale. I hope that the areas surrounding downtown develop in ways that give them a true lived-in urban look and feel. I don't know why I care really since my current old gay guy lifestyle finds me living in an inner suburban area with way too many dogs and way too little cash to consider moving to one of these trendy center city areas. The funny thing is that so many younger Austin SSP members also live outside of the newly developing center of town. The reality must be that few can afford to live in the center of all the new action, or else they choose not to live there for other reasons.