Thank you, Austin, for Enabling My Curry Addiction

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Saul Elbein, and I’m addicted to curry. It’s taken me a long time to get to a point where I could admit that, but it’s true.

It wasn’t so bad at first. I’d go to someplace like Madam Mam’s and sometimes I’d order a Yellow Curry. Not always, mind. Sometimes I’d order Pad Thai, or Pad Kee Mao, or any kind of other noodle dish. And they were good. They were always good. But looking back, I have to admit, every time I did, I felt a little pang in my heart. Because it wasn’t curry.

But I was doing okay. I really was. It was too expensive for me to go that often. So most of the time I ate normal, healthy things, like pizza or hamburgers. Things that could be found in the line at Kinsolving or Jester dining hall.

And then my friend Mauro turned me on to Thai Noodles House, Etc. Tucked away behind the 7-11 at 26^th and the Drag, with an incomprehensible menu, cheap plastic tables, and a staff that spoke neither English nor the language of basic human kindness, it was capital-A Authentic. Best of all, probably since they cut so many corners on their health policy, it was capital-C Cheap.

Or to put this in the drug terms you can all understand, Thai Noodle was crack to Madam Mam’s cocaine.

So I started going there a lot. I’d order a Massaman curry, no rice, slurp it down while the waitress was still standing there, glaring. Then sometimes I’d order another.

I stopped seeing friends and family. Girls would complain that I always smelled like ginger and coconut milk. Those were the bad days. When I saw friends, it would only be at Thai Noodle. If they wanted pizza or a sandwich, I’d say goodbye and traipse off behind the 7-11, alone with my shame.

Looking back, now, I realize that the low point was when I pawned my roommate’s TV for curry money. I bought an industrial size bin—Red curry cut with Panang. I know you’re not supposed to mix, but I was beyond caring. I ate it all in one epic twelve hour binge, my eyes tearing up from hot sauce and ecstasy.

Those were the bad days. Then I moved away, to the far end of West Campus, at 22^nd and David Street, far from the Thai Row of 26^th and the Drag.

Then Crave opened at 21^st. At first, I tried to avoid it. I’d walk blocks out of my way so I wouldn’t have to walk past it, wouldn’t have to smell the succulent, sweet-sour aromas wafting over the Drag.

Until one day I was late for class. I passed by and—well, I want to say that the smell crawled into my room and forced me to skip class, to walk into Crave and put down all the money I had on Yellow Curry, extra spicy. But I’ve learned, by now, that that’s just me refusing to take responsibility for my own actions.

So I stand before you, today, to beg you. Close the Thai restaurants. Why must West Campus have three within four blocks of each other? This is a clear and present danger to the students of Austin. Maybe if we can take a stand now, they’ll go back to safer things, like alcohol, or chocolate, or LSD.

Also, to be on the safe side, we should probably close Pho too.

Thanks for your consideration.

Very Truly Yours,

Saul Elbein

High-Rises Suck

Here’s an idea, okay? Let’s say you’re a developer, right, and you want to make a lot of money by building in West Campus. You know college students and their parents, so used to substandard, below-code housing, will gladly pay a-lotsa, lotsa money for a nice, pretty high-rise. You know, someplace with a gate, and a nice paint job, and whatnot. Some place tall and high-density, so we can pack in lots of students, maybe make room for a pool on the roof.

Luckily for you, the city of Austin has rezoned West Campus to allow you to throw up (if you will) all kinds of new high-rises. Now you can charge $1700 for a two bedroom, poorly made apartment. And lo and behold, people pay it. Frat boys and sorority girls, flush with their parents money–of course, you expected that. But also other people. People who want to live somewhere nice. Or that looks nice, at least, when you show it to them.

And so the arms race starts. I see you making money, and I want in. So I by some land and throw up my own. Someplace like The Block (25th Street, 28th Street, et al) or The Texan (Salado, 25th and Pearl), or Stirling, or Quarters, or Jefferson 26. And so within two years, West Campus is filled with high-rises. Gleaming and sterile, they stretch to the sky from the Drag to Lamar, popping against the sky in bolts of creamy paint.

Except you’ve made a mistake. It’s no one’s fault, really, just a law of economics. It’s called a collective action problem, or the tragedy of the commons. None of us big-money developers wants housing prices in West Campus to crash. But we all have every incentive to throw up as many high-rises as possible. More money, right? So it should come as no surprise to find that we’ve over-saturated the market. And that $1700 you used to be getting from that two-bedroom? Well, now it’s more like $1400. Or less.

Now, we might say, okay, so we’re back where we started. The neighborhood is full of cheap housing. So far, so good.

Except that it’s not. Because what used to be an actual, um, what’s the word, ‘neighborhood,’ with actual houses and whatnot, is now a sea of identical beige monstrosities. They’re ugly, they’re poorly made, they have no character.

So thank you, developers. You’ve made my neighborhood suck just a little bit more.

Bastards.

To the guy who broke into my apartment:

Thank you.

No, seriously, thank you.

I’m writing this on my girlfriend’s laptop because you currently have mine. Also, both of my roommates’. You walked into an (unlocked) house bursting with expensive goods-video games, game equipment, musical instruments-and walked out with the least valuable of them. Seriously, those computers? Probably worth $200 a piece. Maybe. There was video game equipment in one of the bedrooms worth more than all of them combined.

But, GWBIMA, I assume you knew that, because you took all of our computers out of our respective rooms. Why you missed out on larger chances for fun and profit is, I must confess, beyond me. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I would have burgled my place differently. But I guess if I had stolen my laptop, I’d still have it.

Now, GWBIMA, I assume as you’re reading this, toggling periodically between this page and the eBay auction on which you are, even now, fencing my HP DV2000, you’re wondering what in the name of God any of this has to do with Austin. “Does Saul,” you perhaps wonder, “think that I am sufficiently representative of this town to symbolize something he loves/hates about it?”

Well, GWBIMA, to answer your question, yes and no. Yes, I love Austin for being the kind of place where my roommates and I were able to leave our door unlocked for almost a semester without incident, where we were able to feel like our neighborhood was totally welcoming and safe. It was something that always struck me about this place, that though there are 800,000 here it always feels like a small town. Every time I walked away from my place and didn’t lock the door, I was reminded of that. I kind of liked it.

But, GWBIMA, I guess what I’m trying to say is, that wasn’t reality, was it? No matter where you go, there will be people who are going to do shitty things, and you have to protect yourself. My romantic view of Austin was a fantasy, a dream. And thanks to you, I guess I realize that.

So thanks. Enjoy my laptop.

Shmuck.

MGM Foods

So don’t get too excited, because this isn’t going to happen a lot, but here’s something I just found that’s really cool.

One of the things that has always bugged me about Austin is that – being, in essence, a really big small town – it doesn’t have a big enough population to support the large East/South Asian or Middle Eastern neighborhoods you find in, say, Houston, with their accompanying awesome, cheap ‘ethnic’ groceries.

So the other day, I was looking forlornly at this awesome recipe for Paneer Masala, an Indian dish of which I am somewhat fond, wondering where I was going to find paneer, the Indian farmer’s cheese with which the recipe is made, or any number of the semi-exotic spices which it called for. Things like coriander, garam masala, etc.

Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details of my epic Google search, but it eventually led me and my friend Tamilla to MGM Indian Foods up on Burnet a little past FM 2222. As soon as I saw their website - so ridden with typos as to be borderline incomprehensible – I knew it would be a quality find. 

And it was. The shelves were packed with everything you could possibly need to make Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi food, from dried chickpeas to frozen naan dough to more spices than you could shake a stick at, were you inclined to go around shaking a stick at spices. Around the edges of the store, stacks of Bollywood videos (in the original Hindi!) reached to the ceiling.

The owners, a sweet older couple from Northern India, were both there, and having nothing better to do, they trailed me around the store helping me find what I needed. The spices were ridiculously, riotously, obscenely cheap. For $2.50 to $3.00 each , I got half pound bags of cumin, coriander, garam masala, and “chilly powder,” which I assume was ‘chili powder,’ although, on closer inspection of the bag, seems to be a magic powder to spray on things to make them cool down.

Oh, and while I didn’t get any, they also have tons of prepared foods, curry mixes, etc. Also very cheap. So let laziness about cooking be no excuse.

So basically: cheap prices, cool ‘authentic’ feel, helpful staff, great selection. Well worth the trip.

#32 Dating Scene, or Self-Described Experts

I talked to the self-described ‘Dating Expert’ Natasha Tchirynko about why Austin is a paradoxically bad place to find a date.

#3 Allergies

Seriously, what the hell? Who said anything about fall allergy season?

I did not sign up for this. Add this to the region’s other plagues (hipsters, vampire bats, Comanche raids, et al) and I have no idea why anyone settled in this place.

more about ““, posted with vodpod

Overheard at Spiderhouse Coffee

Random lines overheard at Spiderhouse, within about two minutes of each other.

No, it didn’t make any more sense in context. I’ve begun to wonder if one can become a hipster by osmosis. I’m afraid it may be possible.

• “Mmm, gentle Austin liberals walking through their fields with flowers.”
• “You won’t say that when the black helicopters show up.”
• “Yes, I know the kitchen closes in half-an-hour, but it’s closed now.”
• “Yeah, well, Ecclesiastes is my favorite book of the bible. All is folly! I tried fuckin’ everything, and it’s all folly.”
• “I feel like people should be more like Ethiopians.”
• “Mmm, the dick jokes are comin’.”
• “Yeah, it’s like Jesus would have come back, but he realized we’re all wearing crosses around our necks.”
• And, in response, “I feel like I should wear a rifle pendant around my neck for JFK.”
• “No, man, Luke didn’t actually write Acts.”
• “I feel like it’s nice that at 21 you can do something that’s previously illegal, but I feel like we should extend that. Like, every birthday you can do something that was illegal. When you’re 65, you can litter without penalty. Then if you can make it to 100, you can legally murder someone.”
• “I, you know, I didn’t become doctor because, you know, I didn’t want to lose my fascination for the female breast.”

#37: CapMetro

So our friendly local Capital Metro drivers are going on strike Wednesday over ‘oppressively’ low wages. Fine. I’m a liberal, pro-union man. I believe in solidarity with the working classes; to this end, in fact, I will be biking to my bourgeois internship for the duration of the  strike (Also, I just fixed my bike).

But Capital Metro’s idea of a strike isn’t ‘complete shutdown,’ but rather ‘gradual scaling back of service.’  They’ll still run from 6 am to 7:30 PM, with somewhat reduced service.

Now, I understand. CapMetro drivers understand that many people rely on the bus, and they don’t want to hurt innocents who have nothing to do with their pay dispute with StarTran. That said, all I have to say is:

Seriously, CapMetro, grow a pair.

I mean, come on. When our great-grandparents were striking for the 8 hour workday, the five day work week, and the right to not get beaten at their sewing machines, they didn’t say, ‘Oh, Mr. Coercive Industrialist, we’ll still come in four hours a day. Just, you know, so as not to inconvenience anyone who needs to buy clothes/cars/lead-based Chinese toys.’

No. They walked out, and they picketed, and they brawled with the scabs brought in to do their jobs for cheaper. People were beaten up. Cars were overturned. Woody Guthrie songs were sung.

Or more recently, the writer’s strike. The writers didn’t agree to put out a few episodes and a pilot. They didn’t say, ‘Okay, we’ll write your jokes/sappy love scenes/monologues, but just make ‘em real crappy.’ No. They said, we have a legitimate grief, and if innocent people suffer from the giant howling wasteland that is cable TV, that’s life.

So CapMetro, in case you’ve somehow missed the point, let me clarify:

Strikes are inconvenient. They make people unhappy. That’s the point.

You have the most power of any organized group in the city. At a stroke, you can shut this place down, and put enormous public pressure on your bosses to raise your wages. Yes, people will suffer. But if you give TranStar a way to put you off, because the city’s still functioning and the public outcry is reduced to grumbles, you’re just going to make everyone a little less unhappy, but for a lot longer.

For a better model to follow, my striking comrades, I would like to refer you to the words of the great, somehow-still-alive Pete Seeger, in his 1949 “Talking Union Blues.“

Suppose they’re working you so hard it’s just outrageous,
They’re paying you all starvation wages;
You go to the boss, and the boss would yell,
“Before I’d raise your pay I’d see you all in Hell.”
Well, he’s puffing a big see-gar and feeling mighty slick,
He thinks he’s got your union licked.
He looks out the window, and what does he see
But a thousand pickets, and they all agree
He’s a bastard.

That’s a strike. This, this is not. Seriously, CapMetro, go big or go home.

#19: Bats

Oh, I know, I know. They’re so damn cute. They’re a symbol of Austin. Countless generations of Austinites have been conceived under the Congress Street Bridge during dubious ‘bat-watching’ dates.

But I have to ask: how much do you really know about the common Mexican Free-tailed Bat?

By which I mean, how sure are you that they aren’t a really fiendish horde of blood-sucking demons who leave the Congress Street Bridge by night to feast upon the living?

Eh? Eh?

Cute, huh? Now imagine his teeth in your neck. (Credit J Centavo)

Oh, I know. You think they live on mosquitos. But look at those teeth and tell me those are for bugs. You ever kill a mosquito? Know how they squish real easy ’cause they don’t have any bones? So tell me: if you’re living off flying invertebrates, why would you need teeth like that?

The answer, of course, is that you don’t.

I’ll tell you what’s happened here. With their big ears and whiskers and scrunched-up little cat faces, the bats have tricked us into thinking they’re harmless. Instead of being terrified by the possibly demonic presence just blocks from the Capitol, we’ve made them our city’s unofficial mascot. We’re in mortal danger, folks, of waking up one morning to find the bats in control and ourselves as their undead minions.

But it’s not too late. We can still take back our city.

I’m not, of course, advising violence against bats. I think that, for all their possible evil, they’re still pretty cute. We need more of that in this city. Also, I’m not certain they can be killed.

So instead, I present you with the top-eight list of things we can do to help avert the Bat-ocalypse. 

1. Ban The Bat City Review. A literary magazine telling the bats that the city is already theirs? Seriously, whose side are you guys on? It’s only by the grace of God that bats prefer pulps and cheap gothic romance, or else they would have caught on to this by now. Knock it off.
2. Stop going to the Congress Street Bridge on dates. The risk of vampiric bat infection is just too high. Even if you don’t mind waking up to your significant other sucking the life-fluids from your neck, what if he or she cheats on you? Don’t put the rest of us at risk.   
   

   Marcos, his fuzzy whiskers concealed behind a black ski mask, plots the humans' demise. (Credit Distra)

3. Call in la migra. This one seems like a no-brainer. They’re Mexican bats, eh? How many of them you think have green cards? Now, true, the Mexican Free-tailed bat can live up to 18 years, and it only takes 14 to become a naturalized citizen. And, of course, any bat-lets (trust me, this is the correct scientific term for a newborn bat) born under the bridge would probably get to stay. But I think the INS could probably help us sort through the problem. I mean, these are the people who are afraid of terrorists sneaking in through Mexico, right? Well, which is a greater threat, Al Quaeda in Nuevo Laredo or a million bloodthirsty carnivores right in the heart of Austin? I thought so. Which brings me to:
4. Spend some of Will Wynn’s leftover campaign money on an ad-campaign linking the bats to terrorists. Personally, I’d suggest the Zapatistas-no one’s ever seen their Subcomandante Marcos without his ski mask. Could he, in fact, be a bat? Seems suspicious to me. 
5. Every night at sundown, burn a hipster at the stake under the Congress Street Bridge as a warning to the creatures of the night. True, true, I don’t know this one will work. But dammit, in a time like this, aren’t you willing to take the chance? 
6. A UT/ACC joint ‘Defense Against the Dark Arts’ class. Personally, I’m a little surprised that this hasn’t happened yet. Might create more interest for the struggling UT Affiliated Studies program in Transylvania.
7. Stop advertising for them. This means you. And you. One of these days they’re going to get internet access down there, and they’re going to realize how harmless we think they are. And then it’ll all be over.
8. Bat chili.

That’s a start. But we need more.

Thoughts?

#1: Austinite Exceptionalism

I’m sitting here typing with one eye closed, thanks in part to a sparring match gone bad but mostly to Austin’s four-season allergy season (which is #5 on my list of things I hate about Austin, putting it somewhere ahead of ‘traffic’ but behind ‘UT business majors’ and ‘Spiderhouse Coffee‘). Luckily, it doesn’t take much depth perception to bitch about things I hate about this city. And number one on that list is ‘Keep Austin Weird.’

I hate to do it, kids, I really do, but I have to shatter a cherished, long held myth. This is going to be like the time your parents told you where Easter Eggs/Christmas presents/babies really came from. It’ll hurt, you may cry, but in the end you’ll be so much happier that you know the truth.

That’s this: Austin isn’t exceptional. Austin is cool. Austin is trendy. Austin has a lot of well-dressed, attractive people. I can’t think of anyplace I would rather live as a student. But it isn’t exceptional.

This whole thing is actually two combined myths. One, that Austin is this Promised Land which isn’t actually part of Texas; two, that it’s this rich, diverse, local town. These myths, by the way, have been picked up by every snotty Northeasterner who has ever told me that, ‘Oh, you’re from Austin? I’ve heard Austin is the only cool place in Texas.’

First off, no. You are wrong. In a state of 20 million, there damn well better be other cool places to go. Second off, why exactly do you think Austin is so damn exceptional? Because Travis County consistently goes Democrat? Because there’s a lot of green space? Because women are allowed to go topless in public parks? (If the last, I concede that this is awesome, but only, I repeat only, in theory)

Because let’s face it. The ‘Keep Austin Weird’ parts of Austin are pretty stultifyingly monocultural: upper-class trendy liberal white people (some of whom may be slumming). Get outside those areas, and you’re either on the East Side or in the suburbs. In either case, you could as easily be in parts of Houston, or Dallas, or-for that matter-San Diego.

(And as for the liberal thing: you remember we’re in a ridiculously conservative state? With a reactionary legislature? Where do you think those people hang out?)

When people say Austin’s ‘weird,’ they mean it has a local character. Fine. It does. But so do lots of places in Texas. And Austin doesn’t have the cultural resources or immigrant neighborhoods (yes, yes, I know, except for the East Side) that Houston, or Dallas, or San Antonio do. And, partly, because they are so much larger and so much more diverse, those are all a lot more interesting than Austin.

Not that I’d rather live in any of those places. I like this town. But stop acting like it’s so damn special. You’re still in Texas. Get over it.