so ironic, it isn't and so un-ironic, it is

So Austin is weird. I get it. I like it, yes, but it's no longer mine. I go there, visit, eat my share of urban delicacies and I'm reminded with each neo-dive establishment that I'm not as cool as you. Even as I spend a three day weekend at a huge festival and blend in among them, I'm the explorer stumbling across the beautiful person microcosm. It's more foreign with each new high rise condo that appears and with every familiar face that leaves. I feel more like a stranger each time I come home.

So SA is lame. I understand. We passively watch pro wrestlers in for a glimmer of pasión and have generally relegated any smattering of comunidad to the chunk of year between Fiesta and NBA championships. For years, I know, the urban renaissance has been underway, but this rate of rebirth has pushed our pregnancy into a fifth trimester. As I've found myself well into el gremio, it's time to create that which we've always wanted. With each high rise hotel taking over downtown, I find another action/cultural/planning event and recruit troupes for the eventual Battle of the Alamo Gifts Shops. Community gardens, neighborhood planning meetings, bicycle coops, and the whole grab bag of cliche liberal ammunition that it takes to push back against our own momentum. It's underground, by certain measures, but the people in power are dropping phrases like farmers market in increasingly regular city meetings. This week I watched my old SA neighborhood passionately presenting for historic designation and everyone in the press room felt something we hadn't felt in a while. I think this is going to happen, my friends, but we must look to our neighbors a la norte and figure out what we're willing to do to get there.  Let's not forget where we came from.