austin: the three b's

what did we actually end up doing in austin? well, let me tell you:

• barton springs

  barton springs is a natural spring fed public pool. which doesn’t sound that exciting, but then you remember that you’re in texas. which means that this spring fed public pool is HUGE. texas-sized, that is. it’s about 100m wide and two football fields long. perfect for cooling off on a hot summer day, although at 68 degrees i don’t know if ‘cooling’ really conveys the exact experience. perhaps something like ‘cryogenics’ is more apt. then again, it’s better than swimming in the pacific in the bay area.

• bats

  what else is austin famous for? the bats!
  

  When engineers reconstructed downtown Austin’s Congress Avenue Bridge in 1980 they had no idea that new crevices beneath the bridge would make an ideal bat roost. Although bats had lived there for years, it was headline news when they suddenly began moving in by the thousands. Reacting in fear and ignorance, many people petitioned to have the bat colony eradicated.

  About that time, BCI stepped in and told Austinites the surprising truth: that bats are gentle and incredibly sophisticated animals; that bat-watchers have nothing to fear if they don’t try to handle bats; and that on the nightly flights out from under the bridge, the Austin bats eat from 10,000 to 30,000 pounds of insects, including agricultural pests.

  As the city came to appreciate its bats, the population under the Congress Avenue Bridge grew to be the largest urban bat colony in North America. With up to 1.5 million bats spiraling into the summer skies, Austin now has one of the most unusual and fascinating tourist attractions anywhere.

  talking to the local folk, it seems like a lot of people here in austin haven’t actually seen the bats. it’s like a local attraction that only tourists go to see, but if you live here, you never get around to it. sort of like alcatraz or the empire state building. except that there’s a million of them, and they fly. however, it does seem to be a small source of civic pride, and i hear that the local minor league hockey team is called the ice bats.

• brawl

  with all these factions in town, hmc was desperate to start some sort of brawl between the three. we kept walking up to the hackers and telling them, “man, those bikers are talking some shit about you! they say that you guys couldn’t hack your way into an wet paper bag!” likewise, we’d bump into the bikers and tell them, “some of those hackers said that you guys are all talk. they could beat you on their scooters!” and as for the pride parade, well, we couldn’t find any of those guys. somehow they mysteriously vanished as soon as the parade was over. the best we did was to spot the dyke britney spears at the ecoset show at ego’s, so that was pretty good. she was pretty much dead on, same face and smile, only with a punky haircut and tattoos. and not married and pregnant. oh, and sadly, no rack at all. on the other hand, isn’t that half of what britney’s all about anyway? what is a britney without the rack?