Johnson City, TN. I could live here.
Has “Groovers Paradise” of the Doug Sahm ode become Losers Paradise, a land grab for the overfunded and underemployed? Once the cheapest city in America, Austin is now one of the most expensive and a lot of folks are benefiting financially, which is fine. Big fan of money, but all this new wealth has changed the mindset.
Or maybe I’m just the old guy at the party. I haven’t fallen out of love with my town of 30 years, but the spark is gone. You know all those reasons people are moving to Austin on dead daddy’s dime? Music festivals and film festivals and comedy festivals and food festivals and Formula 1 and a great place to raise kids and Aaron Franklin’s meat and chicken shit bingo and SXSW Interactive and Zilker Park? None of those things really hold much appeal to me, so I’m not going to pay $1,200 for a one-bedroom apartment off Burnet Road. This town is just so hyped to the point that I sometimes feel like an Austin cliché. Right now, I’ll take any city with a Trader Joe’s, garage sales, kickass wireless and rents in the three figures.
I used to love to go out to the rock clubs, but it’s not my thing anymore. I gave it up like I did drinking, just stopped doing it because it wasn’t fun anymore. When you’re younger and on the prowl, going to see bands is a good idea. Even I got laid. And I had a blast. But I’ve had better times at birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese than the last few times I went out to see loud rock bands. Home is killing live music.
Needed a new adventure, so I’ve been on a roadtrip since June 26, driving from Austin to Brooklyn, where a friend generously lent his apartment for 10 days. And then, after that, wandering in the Berkshires of Western Mass. and my beloved Albany, NY, where I was blissful and skinny and well-dressed from 1979-82. I’m spending my last night outbound with my former bosses, the Ornsteins, who were responsible for my sartorial splendor when I worked at their antique clothing store Daybreak. Tomorrow, the return trek.
Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, NY
Is there an opposite word for gentrification? That’s what’s happening in Albany right now. But Troy, NY, recommended to me by a couple of former Albany musicians Jack Fris (The Crude) and Paul Rapp (Blotto), is a city on the rise. Founded in the 1700s and once a center of industry and fashion (it’s nicknamed “Collar City” for it’s detachable shirt collar invention), Troy was once one of the richest cities in America, as evidenced by spectacular architecture. But when I lived in the Tri-Cities (Schenectady rounds it out), the joke was that if you wanted to give the area an enema, Troy is where you stuck the hose. Soon after I moved to Albany, a group of artists and punks who’d just attended a concert at Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute (RPI), decided it would be a hoot to pop into a dive bar in Troy for a drink. The townies ended up beating the fuck out of all of them, females included, just for being different.
Those sorts of stories defined Troy at the time. But the city is really turning around downtown, especially with the new Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center on the RPI campus. Austin needs to go bust bigtime, then rebound in 50 years to come close to the vibrancy I felt in Troy 2015. But could I actually live there: winter, hello? I’ve got four days of driving to mull that one around. Hudson, NY is another city I absolutely loved, but it’s being called “the next Williamsburg” which might as well be “the Bedbug Capital of the USA” as far as I’m concerned. Berks County, PA is a really charming area just an hour and a half from New York City. Drive an hour and a half from Austin and you’re almost to Waco.
Hamburg, PA is affordable and just over an hour from NYC.
Tomorrow morning I’ll be heading back to Austin, taking my time. On the return agenda are Newburgh/ Beacon, NY, a second look at Hamburg, PA, maybe West Virginia, definitely Knoxville. Do some research in D.C., hang with friends in Nashville and Memphis. Then there’s that boring stretch of Arkansas (AKA Arkansas) and then Texas usually finds me driving 79 MPH all the way home.
I’ll be writing about this trip in Motel 6’s and posting those dispatches here daily, so stop back. Tomorrow I’ll tell you all about a great music festival I attended in Western Massachusetts that had no video screens, no insane crowds, no fleet of golf carts, no VIP sections, no media tent, but three days of top flight musical talent. And free sunscreen for any Irish dumbasses who don’t think you can get a sunburn north of West Virginia.