Jump to content

What the fuck is wrong with you, Austin?

crash_davis

By crash_davis
in Daily Texan

 Share

Recommended Posts

  • Popular Post
Samson's Wig

Samson's Wig 3193

Posted
  • Popular Post
Posted (edited)

The wife dragged me down to Taquero Mucho the other night, and it felt very much like a metaphor for the entire city.  It was shiny, colorful, and fun on the surface.  The service was atrocious and the food was even worse.  They made a decent margarita (and by decent I mean they weren't chintzy on the tequila quantities).  All in all a terrible experience, though, and not one I would recommend to anyone who enjoys eating good food.  Great spots for Insta pics, though!  /eyeroll

We've become a bright shiny thing with no substance.  Very little about Austin is unique to Austin anymore. You could drop someone in most areas of town and they would have no clue what city they're in without asking someone.  It's not a bad thing, necessarily, but it is a little sad for those who prefer a city with a personality.  No soul left whatsoever.  It's a perfect city for tourists and a terrible place for residents, and our local policies both purposefully created this and continue to cater to it.  Everything is just good enough to be attractive as long as you don't stick around too long, and the margaritas will make sure your memory of the experience is at least a little bit fuzzy.  Underneath it all we're just a cold, bad-tasting taco with chewy carne asada and bland salsa.  (but we have tons of bike lanes, so you should move here for all that time you'll spend commuting to work on your bike and being healthy - we promise you won't stop doing it after the first time when you realize you will have to burn the clothes you were wearing and your coworkers won't' get near you.)

Edited by Samson's Wig
  • Hook 'Em 9
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • Replies 6.2k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Popular Posts

Bozo_Casanova
Bozo_Casanova

Well for starters it’s the one and only good public buidling we’ve got and it’s so popular that pretty millennial women take their instagram shots and hang out in groups on nice afternoons on the outs

Posted Images

PvilleStang

PvilleStang 2917

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Armybrat said:

Austin voters should perform due diligence when researching candidates for local office by inquiring what their exact ties are to real estate sales & development, plus vendor groups that do business with the city.

And how long they have lived within the city limits. plus previous places of residence.

 

You give Austin voters way too much credit.  Most will vote for the farthest left candidate.

2 hours ago, bschoolprof said:

This is a total goatfuck by the way.  Lamar needlessly backs up for hundreds of yards now and it takes an extra 3-4 minutes to get through.  

Too many people busy on their phone and not paying attention to the road...

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Samson's Wig

Samson's Wig 3193

Posted
Posted
12 minutes ago, Mittens said:

https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/why-austin-tx-sidewalks-suddenly-end/

I'm all in on completing sidewalks where they don't exist.  People should have a place to walk out of the street.   

The widening of already existing sidewalks (to double the standard size) is what drives me insane.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Armybrat

Armybrat 40854

Posted
Posted
41 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

I'm all in on completing sidewalks where they don't exist.  People should have a place to walk out of the street.   

The widening of already existing sidewalks (to double the standard size) is what drives me insane.

Yes this, like in my son’s 1960s  St. Elmo neighborhood - but some of the older sidewalks are deteriorated badly.

 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Samson's Wig

Samson's Wig 3193

Posted
Posted

The wide sidewalks come at the expense of the roadway.  It's about narrowing the roads, limiting vehicle access, and widening sidewalks that are not used with enough foot traffic to justify needing to be ten feet or more wide.  Ideologically driven nonsense that will ultimately make the city unlivable for most people.  You can't force people out of cars when there is no viable alternative.  We're doing it backward because we're a young and foolish city.

We should absolutely have 5-6 feet wide sidewalks that meet the standards necessary for the disabled absolutely everywhere it's feasible to do so.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Brisketexan

Brisketexan 105168

Posted
Posted
Just now, Samson's Wig said:

You can't force people out of cars when there is no viable alternative.  We're doing it backward because we're a young and foolish city.

It all comes down to this.

DITCH YOUR CARS!  So that you can...

- die of heat stroke 5 months of the year riding a bike?

- take a choo-choo train that goes nowhere near 98% of the population?

- take a bus that operates on a route system that can take an hour and a half to go 7 miles?

- take an Uber/Lyft for $30-40 round trip each day?

Those are your choices.  You get to choose HOW fucked you are, but not WHETHER you'll be fucked -- you will be.

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Samson's Wig

Samson's Wig 3193

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

It all comes down to this.

DITCH YOUR CARS!  So that you can...

- die of heat stroke 5 months of the year riding a bike?

- take a choo-choo train that goes nowhere near 98% of the population?

- take a bus that operates on a route system that can take an hour and a half to go 7 miles?

- take an Uber/Lyft for $30-40 round trip each day?

Those are your choices.  You get to choose HOW fucked you are, but not WHETHER you'll be fucked -- you will be.

This is why if we continue down this path it will eventually kill the city.  Anyone with the means to do so will leave.  The jobs will dry up because anyone worth hiring won't be willing to live here.   On the positive side, housing prices will come down.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Samson's Wig

Samson's Wig 3193

Posted
Posted
46 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

They did this near my parent's house on North Hills Drive.  It's rather huge.

Yeah, I'm familiar with that one.  They tried to stick them near schools in the first phases under the guise of it being "for the kids".  Every parent knows it was way too easy for parents to get in and out of those areas for pick up and drop off, so what's the big deal?  Another example of putting ideology before common sense.  If we truly want neighborhoods to be more walkable, first you need to build more schools, zone neighborhoods for some commercial development, and, I don't know, maybe have public transportation.   But no, we're just going to skip all those steps and go straight to making it difficult to drive a car in a city that leaves you with no other choice.  

  • Hook 'Em 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
ChickenSandwich

ChickenSandwich 9843

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

It all comes down to this.

DITCH YOUR CARS!  So that you can...

- die of heat stroke 5 months of the year riding a bike?

- take a choo-choo train that goes nowhere near 98% of the population?

- take a bus that operates on a route system that can take an hour and a half to go 7 miles?

- take an Uber/Lyft for $30-40 round trip each day?

Those are your choices.  You get to choose HOW fucked you are, but not WHETHER you'll be fucked -- you will be.

The smell of hot Pachouli in summer will cost lives. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Brisketexan

Brisketexan 105168

Posted
Posted
20 minutes ago, MissingInAction said:

I got a job offer with a good 15% increase in salary, but they wanted me to come into the office 4 days a week.

Fuck that noise. I dont know what dollar amount it would take to get me back into the rush hour butt fucking.

How much do you charge for regular butt fucking?

Asking for @immamac

  • Haha 4
  • Fuck Around and Find Out 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Guest

Guest

Posted
Posted (edited)

In good news, we've moved into no-murder November. Currently at 55 and after playing catch up in October, things have cooled off. KXAN only updates where there is a change. The line would be where the red dot is:

image.png.15b56c678f9f737e0bb6c8ed9c1ed20e.png

 

image.png.eb7ef6fa426cf725d608757a06686f91.png

Edited by FirstTimeCaller
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Dbeasy

Dbeasy 15074

Posted
Posted

It’s pretty refreshing reading thoughtful, reasonable viewpoints about what Austin’s doing right and wrong, with people not tightly glued to their political party typical party lines. There seems to be common ground around Austin sucking at some things. 

Seriously, the people running tech companies in Austin will tell you that if Austin doesn’t start figuring some stuff out, the parade of tech workers launching into the area is going to reverse. 

  • Hook 'Em 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Deej

Deej 76855

Posted
Posted
10 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

It’s pretty refreshing reading thoughtful, reasonable viewpoints about what Austin’s doing right and wrong, with people not tightly glued to their political party typical party lines. There seems to be common ground around Austin sucking at some things. 

Seriously, the people running tech companies in Austin will tell you that if Austin doesn’t start figuring some stuff out, the parade of tech workers launching into the area is going to reverse. 

Donald Glover Reaction GIF

  • Hook 'Em 3
  • Like 1
  • Haha 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites
South Austin

South Austin 52523

Posted
Posted (edited)
3 minutes ago, PvilleStang said:

It's like you found Adler and Watson's playbook...

It does appear to be a subtle stroke of genius.

1.  Make this city less liveable.

2.  Fewer people want to live here.

3.  Fewer people on the roads.

4.  ???

5.  Profit.

Edited by South Austin
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Guest

Guest

Posted
Posted
15 hours ago, Dbeasy said:

It’s pretty refreshing reading thoughtful, reasonable viewpoints about what Austin’s doing right and wrong, with people not tightly glued to their political party typical party lines. There seems to be common ground around Austin sucking at some things. 

Seriously, the people running tech companies in Austin will tell you that if Austin doesn’t start figuring some stuff out, the parade of tech workers launching into the area is going to reverse. 

Just give us 10, 20 years and we'll have a bus that can take you part way to the airport. That'll be $7 billion.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
crash_davis

crash_davis 23114

Posted
  • Author
Posted
On 11/7/2023 at 10:42 AM, MissingInAction said:

I got a job offer with a good 15% increase in salary, but they wanted me to come into the office 4 days a week.

Fuck that noise. I dont know what dollar amount it would take to get me back into the rush hour butt fucking.

Think about the cost of commuting to work.

 

1-2 hours of commute/day, 4-8 hours per week of your life that you'll never get back. Think of all Surly and porn that you'll miss. Plus you'll have to deal with bike lanes. Fucking bike lanes.

Waking up an 1.5 - 2 hours earlier. Less sleep, more bitchassedness.

Buy more clothes for work. Metrosexual clothes aren't gonna buy themselves.

Dry cleaning is expensive, assuming you're not a slob. Just more laundry which is more energy and water usage. You're going to collapse the grid and drain the fucking lakes!

Increase car maintenance cost (tires, oil change, consumable shit). 

Home will be empty allowing thieving assholes to thieve from you.

Your dog is gonna shit and piss himself 4 days of every week.

 

All that shit is not worth 15% salary bump. Fuck that.

  • Hook 'Em 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites
PvilleStang

PvilleStang 2917

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, crash_davis said:

Think about the cost of commuting to work.

 

1-2 hours of commute/day, 4-8 hours per week of your life that you'll never get back. Think of all Surly and porn that you'll miss. Plus you'll have to deal with bike lanes. Fucking bike lanes.

Waking up an 1.5 - 2 hours earlier. Less sleep, more bitchassedness.

Buy more clothes for work. Metrosexual clothes aren't gonna buy themselves.

Dry cleaning is expensive, assuming you're not a slob. Just more laundry which is more energy and water usage. You're going to collapse the grid and drain the fucking lakes!

Increase car maintenance cost (tires, oil change, consumable shit). 

Home will be empty allowing thieving assholes to thieve from you.

Your dog is gonna shit and piss himself 4 days of every week.

 

All that shit is not worth 15% salary bump. Fuck that.

Just do like Fitlump: go work on the City Council, get your dog emotional support animal certified, and BOOM, you can take your dog to work, do jack shit, repeatedly vote for a pay raise when you get bored...

Link to comment
Share on other sites
blacklab

blacklab 11941

Posted
Posted

Holy shit WFT on barton springs. Haven't been that way in a while, and now the only way to Mopac from the river to 70/290 is one fucking lane in each direction?

Made a round trip and used it twice. Hundreds of cars, traffic backed up eastbound, and I saw one dude on a bike between mopac and lamar. This was around 10-11am. I can't imagine how bad it is during rush hour.

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Samson's Wig

Samson's Wig 3193

Posted
Posted
13 minutes ago, blacklab said:

Holy shit WFT on barton springs. Haven't been that way in a while, and now the only way to Mopac from the river to 70/290 is one fucking lane in each direction?

Made a round trip and used it twice. Hundreds of cars, traffic backed up eastbound, and I saw one dude on a bike between mopac and lamar. This was around 10-11am. I can't imagine how bad it is during rush hour.

Don't worry, everyone will be on a bike soon.  You just have to wait for it.

 

Mad Looney Tunes GIF by MOODMAN

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Mittens

Mittens 8287

Posted
Posted
28 minutes ago, blacklab said:

Holy shit WFT on barton springs. Haven't been that way in a while, and now the only way to Mopac from the river to 70/290 is one fucking lane in each direction?

Made a round trip and used it twice. Hundreds of cars, traffic backed up eastbound, and I saw one dude on a bike between mopac and lamar. This was around 10-11am. I can't imagine how bad it is during rush hour.

On 8/23/2023 at 8:19 AM, Mittens said:

I'm a cyclist who uses that stretch of road fairly often and acknowledge it's a bit sketchy.  This is the dumbest fucking idea and it's going to back traffic up into Lamar, way up into Barton Hills, and well back into Zilker.  Just ridiculously stupid.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Texas Jeff

Texas Jeff 1945

Posted
Posted
On 11/6/2023 at 2:18 PM, Samson's Wig said:

I'm all in on completing sidewalks where they don't exist.  People should have a place to walk out of the street.   

The widening of already existing sidewalks (to double the standard size) is what drives me insane.

I'm both pro and anti sidewalk...

If a street has a yellow line in the middle of it, it probably needs a sidewalk.    If it doesn't, it may not.  The sidewalk/bike lane/car lane paradigm put buffer between the people and the cars.  The new wide sidewalks have folks walking a lot closer to traffic, but mostly they are empty.  It's also a little weird for bikers, because I thought you were not supposed to ride bikes on a sidewalk, but I clearly see bike lanes ending with a ramp onto the wide sidewalk ... are wide sidewalks OK for bikes but narrow ones off limits?

I walked my kids to school on roads without sidewalks, except for a small stretch on a yellow-line road.  We walked over 1000 miles without a problem.  I walk around our neighborhood, sidewalk free, almost every day.  Putting sidewalks everywhere would coat about 3% of our neighborhood in concrete, with a lot of that occurring over the root zone of mature oak trees.  Austin does not maintain sidewalks, the ground does move and a lot of our older sidewalks are broken.

We do need a solution for wheelchair-bound folks, and I'm not sure how you balance that need with the desire to keep the green space.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
tx 3 putt

tx 3 putt 77212

Posted
Posted
On 11/6/2023 at 11:51 AM, Brisketexan said:

Yep.  Phase two of the Austin brilliant transportation plan.

Phase one lasted decades, and was the "if we don't build it, they won't come" plan.  The fact that the City actively recruited any and all businesses that utilized 1s and 0s in their business for the past quarter century might seem to be contradictory of that plan -- and it fucking was -- but don't question the genius of our leadership approach.

Since phase one didn't work we are now onto phase two: "okay, they came here....let's make it impossible to drive now."  This will surely meet with similar success....as we continue to recruit business after business to relocate here.


Austin has a traffic plan ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
tx 3 putt

tx 3 putt 77212

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Texas Jeff said:

I'm both pro and anti sidewalk...

If a street has a yellow line in the middle of it, it probably needs a sidewalk.    If it doesn't, it may not.  The sidewalk/bike lane/car lane paradigm put buffer between the people and the cars.  The new wide sidewalks have folks walking a lot closer to traffic, but mostly they are empty.  It's also a little weird for bikers, because I thought you were not supposed to ride bikes on a sidewalk, but I clearly see bike lanes ending with a ramp onto the wide sidewalk ... are wide sidewalks OK for bikes but narrow ones off limits?

I walked my kids to school on roads without sidewalks, except for a small stretch on a yellow-line road.  We walked over 1000 miles without a problem.  I walk around our neighborhood, sidewalk free, almost every day.  Putting sidewalks everywhere would coat about 3% of our neighborhood in concrete, with a lot of that occurring over the root zone of mature oak trees.  Austin does not maintain sidewalks, the ground does move and a lot of our older sidewalks are broken.

We do need a solution for wheelchair-bound folks, and I'm not sure how you balance that need with the desire to keep the green space.


I’m pro sidewalk. I live in an old Mexican Houston neighborhood full sidewalks and metro. When it’s not 120 out, I walk Al over as do a lot of other people 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
TexasHooch

TexasHooch 5122

Posted
Posted

Not a government issue, but what the hell?

https://www.fox7austin.com/news/peanut-allergy-lake-travis-high-school-students-football-teammate-severe-allergies

Quote

 

The school district confirmed with FOX 7 Austin that it was two varsity football players that spread peanut powder and peanut products on a fellow teammate's locker and clothes.

The teammate had a severe peanut allergy and broke out in hives.

 

Whatever happened do TPing his yard, or putting icy Hot in his jock.  Hell, even dumping his head in the toilet is better than this.  At least that won't kill him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
1978horn

1978horn 894

Posted
Posted
Not a government issue, but what the hell?
https://www.fox7austin.com/news/peanut-allergy-lake-travis-high-school-students-football-teammate-severe-allergies
 
The school district confirmed with FOX 7 Austin that it was two varsity football players that spread peanut powder and peanut products on a fellow teammate's locker and clothes.
The teammate had a severe peanut allergy and broke out in hives.
 
Whatever happened do TPing his yard, or putting icy Hot in his jock.  Hell, even dumping his head in the toilet is better than this.  At least that won't kill him.

Seems like assault to me.
  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Armybrat

Armybrat 40854

Posted
Posted
On 11/8/2023 at 4:37 PM, blacklab said:

Holy shit WFT on barton springs. Haven't been that way in a while, and now the only way to Mopac from the river to 70/290 is one fucking lane in each direction?

Made a round trip and used it twice. Hundreds of cars, traffic backed up eastbound, and I saw one dude on a bike between mopac and lamar. This was around 10-11am. I can't imagine how bad it is during rush hour.

I’m sure Adler was very smug when he sneered at you while he pedaled by.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing


Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business and Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Subscribe!... Donate!... Advertise... COOKIE MONSTER!

×
×
  • Create New...