Texas, check

It's the year of the monkey, swinging through the branches of many trees. The year of extra space to fill with reading, writing, geography tonic, general wellness. It starts in Austin at my third annual MLA convention. I could have used a warmer jacket, but otherwise I brought everything I needed and nothing more; I did not arrive late, did not get sick, did not see everything and did not mind. The Texas sky was dark when I first saw it. Our flight from Seattle, which sucked up the ripest part of the Wednesday, finished by circling awhile over a carpet of spectacularly blushing sunset clouds. On the ground it was a drizzly night. Through the fissure where the plane met the gangway came enough air to let my nose know that we were in a happy place: it was southern air.

Lots of people probably want me to call Texas "west" -- sorry, I'm not going to be able to call it anything but "south". Not Dixie south, but distinctly below 35° N latitude. That Austin air was Los Angeles air. Hold on, though. I made atmospheric associations with Southern California throughout the visit, yep, and I also absorbed the significant differences between Texas and the West Coast, in food, fashion, hospitality, spatial conventions. Latitude aside, LA certainly better resembles San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle than it does Austin. More on all these regional alignments later; for now I'm giving Austin a double southern tag. 

The female three quarters of our English teacher team bunked in a room at the brand new Westin Austin downtown. I understand that this hotel counts among so many affronts to old-school locals who've watched their kitschy quaint brick buildings get bulldozed one after another through the last decade, transformed into sleek cosmopolitan clichés. But if you can't fight the 21st Century, and you don't have a friend to stay with in Austin, stay here. The location, service, design, and rooftop are all just right.

We asked the concierge for help with our first priority: Tex-Mex and margaritas, within a few blocks. He sent us to Manuel's on Congress, where the mole queso was the star of the show. It was a warm enough night, no longer drizzly, and barely populated outside when we emerged from dinner. We were treated to our first burst of live music from the converted auto shop across the street from our hotel. It was Antone's, "Austin's Home of the Blues," in its new location, as we'd later learn. We went up to our room to regroup for a minute but by the time we got back down to Antone's, at midnight, the band had wrapped up. The big room and its staff were still inviting, though, so we stayed for an opening-night cap at the bar.

We slept late in the morning, connecting with work email and social media in pajamas, supposedly recalibrating  two hours of jet lag. Jessica left the room first, to find real coffee and inspect the gym, and returned gushing about the rooftop pool deck. No proposed conference sessions lured us until late afternoon so we hit the streets, a bit overwhelmed by the choices, settling eventually at the Slake Cafe for heaping street-style tacos and bright salads with scrumptious gouda croutons. Leftovers went into a box to join dinner scraps in our mini-fridge. Acceptable coffee remained elusive. After lunch in the precious sidewalk sun I felt that finishing my fist sabbatical book by the pool was the best professional development I could undertake on the only forecasted 60+° day of the week. My colleagues were persuaded to join me on the deck (along with a handful of traveling fellows all on their phones, and a mysterious photo shoot at the roof's edge) until another golden sunset did its work and turned the breeze cool.

From the first night of our trip, anyone we queried about where to eat, wander, sit, shop, or hear music in Austin was remarkably amicable. By Thursday we began to interrogate the ways our notorious Northwest Freeze is revealed in its contrast of other regional manners -- tips and directions offered with gentle enthusiasm and detail, rather than hipster impatience or distain; crowds unselfconsciously bustling against each other in delis and shops, ignoring any obligatory sense of personal space. It was off-putting, and I was put further off by owning that response. Here was social intimacy, that enviably intrinsic southern attribute, a key to its seductive complexity, an affront to my western-bred autonomy and detachment.

I was bait-and-switched into joining an "intermediate" yoga class at 6pm with Jessica and her Austin friend Yvonne. We walked to the studio, called Practice, on East 6th Street, and as we tucked our shoes under the bench in the anteroom Yvonne said, "This class will melt your face off." Yeah, it was an up-tempo, strenuous pose-packed 75 minutes that left me purged and triumphant. I had to discard my t-shirt halfway through. It was not Hot Yoga, but it was pushing 80 degrees in the room, because it was crammed with about 50 yogis. We'd arrived early enough to get me a spot next to the door and the tower of cubbies where everyone stored their gear. As the class filled up, so did the cubbies, and people trampled right into my mat space to shove their stuff on top of each other's without pause. My mat edge squished ever closer to the wall, Jessica's ever closer to mine, and when class began there were at best two inches of floor between any two mats. In all my various Seattle studio experiences, latecomers would about-face and abandon the class before setting up anywhere near that close to a classmate. The instructor had no room to practice in here, she merely  twined through the bodies chanting commands. Wide leg inversions put every foot right under a neighbors nose. And this shameless proximity was acceptance, was empowering, pushed me through a face-melting workout. Austin anti-freeze.   
  

Afterwards Yvonne took us across the street to dinner at the Creole-Italian flavored East Side Showroom; modern-gothic decor, flowing champagne, double risotto orders and salted caramel cake recommended by a white sweater server with a sexy accent. Then our gracious guide drove us the mile back to the hotel and on the way I got a first taste of the West 6th that some people had suggested avoiding. It was a familiar spring break party street, though less raucous than I'd expected. It's best feature, another Southern one in my mind, was the profusion of roof top decks. Most had iron railings reminiscent of New Orleans, in fact Natalie said it seemed like a NOLA/Vegas mash-up. To me it brought back Beale Street in Memphis, especially the barricades that marked the East/West 6th border and opened the whole road to pedestrian revelers. For us, the low key of Antone's was more enticing.

The MLA conference had the serendipitous timing to coincide with Austin's Free Week, during which everyone enjoyed complimentary admission to all music venues. Another lovely unheard of (at least to me) idea. Natalie was ready for bed, so just Jessica and I would meet David at Antone's. Sadly our personal clocks were still off, though, so it was past 11 by the time we got back out of the hotel room and into the club, where we heard one song before the band packed up, again. Free as it may have been, Thursday was not the new Friday here. Just as well though to be in bed by midnight, ready to conference for real tomorrow.

Up earlier on Friday morning, Jessica and I returned to the edge of East 6th for chocolate croissants and coffee at the Easy Tiger Bakery. We ate standing at a narrow bar since the creek-side patio wasn't open yet, and then, finally, went to the conference center. The fist session was a dynamic Joan Didion Panel through which I took a flurry of notes. At noon we had a lunch of leftovers back at the hotel, and then split up. I spent the remaining light hours in windowless rooms with Twain's Missouri, Louise Erdrich and Jhumpa Lahiri. Between sessions I watched a clique of scholars in pink t-shirts make picket signs they'd carry to the Capitol that evening in a march against Texas gun culture.

At the end of the day, with no small amount of text coordinating, I found Natalie in a swarming hallway. Jessica was off to dinner at Yvonne's house, so we took a cab with David to Z'Tejas. Happy hour included catfish beignets, grilled Ruby trout, and a wonderfully deconstructed chop salad. The dessert special was Bavarian Cream churros which I failed to order. Strong margaritas made us feel like going back on foot, and just a few blocks from the restaurant, behold, here was a full-blown Friday night on infamous 6th. Cheesy chain bars and whirling drink signs galore, it was a little bit Universal City Walk, a bit more downtown Vegas, and most of all, for sure, Beale Street. Why had I not previously considered just how many of our fine cities might have such a thoroughfare? I scanned the crowds for evidence of a liberal open container policy. All I noted was a lot of wobbly heels, and frat boys on stools outside every club calling "free alcohol inside, Ladies," or some such enticement. But we were not the ladies they were looking for; we were happy to keep on walking. David was moving up the street at a brisk pace, waxing about the olden days of Austin, excited about the reunion rock show he'd play in a few hours.

We freshened up at the hotel and strolled to Beerland. On the way we passed a congregation of food trucks surrounding a few big spool tables. These eateries were all over town, scattered in groups of four or five, as opposed to Portland's dozens of trucks stacked into one industrial parking lot or Seattle's single trucks tucked into busy gas stations. This one at Red River and 7th was my favorite so far, with folks enjoying pizza, hot dogs, hot wings, gyros, and curry. One truck had its heat scale marked from "brown people spicy" to "white people spicy." I wanted to come back later for the pizza. Across the street, Beerland featured a mob out front on the smoking patio. Inside it further distinguished itself from the commercial party scene a few blocks away -- it was all beer bar band stage, stripped down and familiar, not even a t-shirt for sale. David was holding court with his old Enduro band members and Natalie and I carved out a spot near the pool table. Some tall drunk kid tried hitting on Natalie. Jessica arrived, dropped off by Yvonne's brother who had gone to a Bowie birthday drag show at the Elysium Nightclub right next door. Two terrifically different things happening in either half of the shared building, this was the No Fucks vibe of the town. It was great cheering Enduro on, but how I wish now that we'd hit that drag show afterward. Instead we strolled home to bed by midnight again.

Each day I talked about exploring South Congress, a river promenade, art museums, the UT Austin campus... and each day I wound up a little further down East 6th Street. Call this the day I accepted the patterns of my travel proclivity. Instead of comprehensive surveys, I sink into single streets or neighborhoods (or regions, cities, sides of islands) to achieve maximum familiarity in minimum time. I'm struck by this spotlight on a key angle of my character: I choose depth over breadth. On Saturday we chose a late breakfast at Cisco's with custom-made migas, dollar bacon-egg tacos and divine biscuits. Then we lingered at a charming gallery boutique called The Lion's Nest. Some of us lingered so long in fact that others opted for another sidewalk sunbath, but the wind was feisty, asserting that it was January in the South, too, and now's when I started missing that winter jacket.

I never heard for sure whether suitable coffee was found in Austin, but the Easy Tiger must have come the closest because we stopped in again, and this time got to sit a spell on their benches down by the creek. There was less wind down there, but we needed to keep moving soon enough. Next I got sidetracked at the O. Henry historic house. With manuscripts under glass, the only-known recording of the author's voice, turn of the (prior) century furniture, first editions, and an expert docent, I considered this surprise more than adequate literary professional development for the day. And so the afternoon passed in the cozy Westin room where I read and Natalie and Jessica caught up with their courses. Our only remaining obligations of the trip were three 7:45pm facial appointments at the Milk and Honey spa.

On the way we tried to find some dinner with David, anywhere on 2nd near the spa would do. The first fun place we stumbled upon turned us down despite many empty tables in view. Reservations, they said. We regrouped grumpily in the bar since the wind had become prohibitive outside. At the other end of the block we tried Malaga, and again were denied seats at any of the dozen plainly open tables. Reservations, they said. I blamed MLA attendees, pesky specters I didn't feel like I'd really seen all week. But instead of ruining our street karma by giving the host a piece of our minds, we snuck up to the last four seats at the bar, and were rewarded with wonderful Spanish tapas. Each small dish of garlicy, cheesy, crispy, green goodness was tastier than the last, so we still had a perfect score on Austin food. It was lemon curd beignets for dessert this time, a treat that couldn't possibly sound more perfect to me, and  again I failed to order it. I believed we'd come back later for a box full, but the Milk and Honey spa did its job too well. It was 10pm when we emerged from our plush pampered cocoons into the bitter cold night. The Saturday streets were fuller of people and music each block north we moved; a town-sized party surrounded our hotel. But all we wanted was to bundle up in bed, where we put together a quick picnic of snacks before calling it the earliest night of all.

Believe it or not I went back to Practice at 9am Sunday morning for another 75 minutes of yoga. This class, all about powerful bandhas, was half as crowded as the other one and took a slower pace, though there were still some poses in which I compromised. After a long savasana we made a quick change (so quick that Jessica left her sneakers at the studio) and a coffee stop at Rio Rita's (is it a cafe or a bar?) en route to our furthest point on East 6th: brunch at Gardiner. Right in sync with the tone set by morning yoga, this place was a light-drenched mid-century splendor. Two hours of fresh inspired dishes and grapefruit mimosas later, we strolled back among the palms and agave, admiring the many layers of street art, and re-learning a classic gentrification story as David -- who'd run into his old mechanic, in his front yard, on the way to brunch -- explained the two sides of the freeway and the racism of the road.

My prior night's facialist, Megan from Portland, Oregon, had affirmed what I was beginning to consider: that this town was a warmer Portland. The vibe being strived for was the same, I could see on the faces and on the walls. The tech-eclectic flavor and longings of the little sibling town bubbled up in similar forms. No doubt, based on the roof decks and flora, the weather was warmer most of the time even though it wasn't today; and no doubt the southern hospitality wrapped a warmer blanket around visitors and neighbors alike. But maybe, in the same way I evidently didn't care to capture the place's spirit by taking any pictures of my own, I didn't feel like paring or categorizing that cleanly this time. That south-west overlap is such a pleasant complexity. The influence of and on Hispanic culture here is significant; the distance of the Pacific Rim is, too. Portland's indie conceit could not support a film or music festival like the ones here, and that neon party street in the middle of town -- Portland would spit a street like that right out. Everywhere in Austin was an evocative scent of something being charred.

Even with our late Westin checkout, we were hanging around the lobby with over three hours to spare before our flight home. We got in a cab anyway, thank goodness; between Sunday gridlock and perhaps the longest security line I've endured in memory, we had just enough time to find airport dinner before boarding. I got some pizza, though no churros or lemon beignets; satisfaction remained my dominant mood nevertheless. We'd covered just enough ground that with the help of the grid layout I think I'll be able to navigate a downtown map any time in the future. Should a reason arise, I'll gladly spend another five days, preferably in spring or fall, finding tacos, pushing poses, and hearing bands, in Austin. And that's definitely all the Texas I need.