Puttin' On the..

If you don't come to Austin to see Stephen (and who wouldn't do that?), come to see the Alamo Drafthouse. These guys, particularly the 6th street location, is awesome.

Here's the elevator pitch:

"Imagine if your movie theater was run by nerds with good taste in movies, and they served alcohol and good bar food."

It's hard to go wrong in a theater with drinks -- given sufficient alcohol, most movies are watchable. :)

They also really care about the quality of the movie watching experience: this story broke right after we left, and that gives a flavor for the type of establishment they want to run.

Miss B

Despite the wait at Chuy's being more than an hour long, B responded with her typical grace. ;)

Chuy's

We really want to try 'official' Tex-Mex while we're in Austin, so Stephen mentioned this place, which can accurately be characterized as "One of those places with crazy crap on the walls". Basically, my takeaway was that If Chuy's is Tex-Mex, then it's Mexican food with every cream/sauce/whatever as heavy and rich as possible.

I think my one sentence Yelp review would be this:

"If you would like to eat Mexican and contract gout, then this is the place for you".

Austin Lights

After Stephen's, we came back to our hotel. B did her 'early to bed' thing, and I was back out on the streets of downtown Austin. Stuff was really starting to pop -- just enough light from the bars, and just the right number of people to have that moment when stuff was happening.

Naturally, this was when my camera decided to break. :\

This is one of the last usable exposures I got from the evening -- was trying to capture the mood of the night life.

How's Annie?

Annie is one of Stephen and Belinda's dogs. I believe Betsy and Annie have a certain wild symaptico that really shown through as the night progressed. ;)

Green Bean

Last cute photo of Harper, I promise. :)

Also, at least two things about this photo are a lie.

Carson Hope

Carson Hope is Stephen's young daughter. As you can tell in this photo, even at a young age she is quite the creature of manners.

In the Kitchen

In my heart of hearts, I believe that Stephen bought his house on the strength of the reflected light into his kitchen.

Pictured here are Carson (more on her later), Stephen's friend Chris Maynard, and Karen's kid (whose name I can't for the life of me remember).

Mothers & Daughters

Harper is an energetic kid, but Belinda somehow managed to keep up with her. :)

Apologies for some of the soft focus here -- reviewing my images from Stephen's house, I see a lot of focus errors creeping in. Given that the mirror in my camera broke about an hour I left, I think that may be a potential culprit.

Harper Grace

Harper is Stephen's oldest daughter. Along with being extremely well-read for a three year old, she apparently is already trained in preparing homemade ice cream. 2/2!

Now a little bit of photographer wisdom:

Kids are cutest when they're between the ages of 2-4. Too young, and they don't look enough like people to really trigger the cute centers of our brain. Too old, and they look too much like regular people -- they don't hit the 'tiny.. awwwwww' center of the brain anymore.

Harper is in that sweet spot, so she spent the night basically being adorable (and making homemade ice cream).

Oxy

Our real reason for visiting Austin was to visit Oxy, who now spends all her time in a closet and e-mailed me (she has a gmail account at oxy.cat@gmail.com) that she was lonely. Naturally, Betsy and I went to visit her, and...

*

Ok, actually, we went to visit my best friend Stephen, who lives in Round Rock, right outside of Austin. The above mentioned story was meant to warn you that the next few posts will all be photos from Stephen's house, which means: largely photos of his cute family and (generally) cute pets as well.

Oxy is notable because she was Stephen's pet when he lived with me, and she and I established a special bond: She would do horrible things, and I would coo to her in order to be an enabler. I'm not saying you could prove I had anything to do with this, but by the time Stephen left, Oxy would reliably claw people in the house whenever they laughed. So, I'm not saying I trained her to hate human happiness, but...

The Shallow End of the Pool

The top of our hotel had a hot tub (which I've already discussed my love of) and a pool. B spent some time up here sunbathing, and I went up for a dip in the hot tub. (She maintained that stepping into a body of 100+ degree water when it was 95 degrees outside was "too hot"!).

It was an interesting scene up there -- lots of kind of terrible Spring Break type people having cans of cheap beer in the pool. I couldn't quite figure out what the 'scene' here was -- the hotel was too pricey for random college kids, and they all seemed too old to be here as part of a family deal.

I ended up concocting an elaborate theory that they were all tasteless scions of noveau riche oil barons, or hipsters living high off Dell money.

B, Reflecting

We clambered up to the top floors and watched the Mariachi band from above. I would like to say Betsy was rapt by the band, but I think this may have been her bored face -- however, the distance in this 14mm shot allows me to project emotions I'd like onto the scene. ;)

Fun story about the capitol: As we entered it, we had to walk through a metal detector. Betsy stopped and said, "Oh, do I have to give up my knife?" when her (largest you can get) Swiss army knife set off the detector. "Nah", said the guard, "That's not nearly big enough!", as he made bowie-knife shaped motions to indicate the largest-sized weapon allowed inside.

Fortunately, unlike one of the towns in Utah we drove through, owning a weapon was not required, but I felt a little under-equipped the whole time I was there.

The Dome

Everywhere you go in the state capitol, you can look around and see the star of Texas. Most prominently, it's up at the tippy top of the giant dome, which you everybody rubbernecks for when they walk in (assuming there's not a mariachi band already there distracting people, that is).

Mariachi Jam

The first thing greeting us as we walked under the dome of the Texas state house was a mariachi band, jamming out in grand form.

The Confederate Dead

Monument from near the entrance to the Texas Capitol.

The Capitol

I grew up in a state with pretty boring capitol buildings, and I've never been to DC, so I have some sort of pent up demand to explore vaguely Greco-Roman domed buildings.

The Texas Capitol is made from this really cool reddish stone that looks very cool at sunset, but somewhat disagreeable in direct sunlight (at least, to my picky tastes).

The Old Pecan Street Cafe

Our favorite breakfast in Austin was at the Old Pecan Street Cafe. Not only did it have great pecan-y waffles, they had cool carvings and fountains in the limestone walls of their courtyard.

Sixth Street Tarot

Betsy, for all her many virtues, has one vice: she's an early sleeper (not that I blamed her after the trip across Texas!). After she dozed off, I slipped out of the hotel to walk around downtown Austin and get some pictures.

Our hotel was right by Sixth Street, which is sort of the main artery for the flow of night life through the downtown. Lots of bars, lots of clubs, and (most importantly) lots of people.

I've never really been much for loud bars or clubs, but the crowds of people going in and out of them generally end up doing really interesting things as the night progresses. On a previous trip to Austin, I'd seen it filled with a motorcycle rally, and had had a lot of fun shooting that, so I was curious to see what it was like before Memorial Day.

The answer is: sort of an upscale Bourbon Street (but with fewer raw oysters and less grain alcohol). Lots of people, lots of stuff going on -- I went back here every night I was in Austin, and would have shot there more had my camera not broken mid-visit.

Outside Manuel's

Betsy and I have a long & proud tradition of fancy dinners, and Manuel's hit the spot. Upscale Mexican, and we had fun comparing it to the Mexican we'd recently had in Santa Fe.