Selling The Dream
I moved to Austin in 1980 to attend the University of Texas. At the time, anyone in Texas who imagined a life beyond the suburbs & corporate America headed to Austin seeking to expand their horizons. Many came, got their degrees and, if they were seeking money, they went to Houston or Dallas. The rest of us had come for the cultural wealth and, therefore, stayed in Austin
At the time we were the naive annuals in the economic garden, we are now the perennials who, as Gina Pell states so well, “get involved, stay curious, mentor others, [be the] passionate, compassionate, creative, confident, collaborative, global-minded, risk takers who continue to push up against [the] growing edge and know how to hustle”.
Believe it or not, at that time Austin was small enough that when it came time to get a phone for my apartment in TriTowers (which no longer exists), I just walked down the street to the Southwestern Bell store on the corner of Guadalupe & 24th where the woman handed me a pencil and told me to create a phone number I thought I could remember. No Apple store, no Genius Bar, just a pencil, a clipboard and a phone that connected to the wall.
Although Austin has always been a bit more expensive than the rest of Texas, it was still remarkably affordable at the time. Part of that was because the very slow moving twin turbines driving economy were government & education so nobody really came here to make their financial fortune, most came here to immerse themselves in the natural cultural wealth.
That all changed in the mid 1990s with the introduction of a new, faster economic engine called technology. As that engine revved up, it changed the entire story of Austin. People moved here to make money, not art, and the cultural roots were ignored as the easy pickings of tech-driven economy became available. Naturally, this disrupted the economic patterns, favoring the fast riches of tech over the slow growth of the local commerce. This has led to a well-documented wealth/opportunity inequality.
I am fortunate to have had a nice home that has greatly appreciated in value. However, I recently sold it because the Austin I moved to all those years ago is becoming much harder to find and comes at too high a price. I’m following my own suggested practice of refreshing the screen and asking, “Is this still true? Do I still love this thing as it is, or am I just in the habit of thinking that I do?” I found an affordable place to land & I’m living one of the last neighborhoods that feels like ‘old Austin’ and even that is slowly disappearing.
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I have very clear ideas about what’s next, but the yet-to-be-answered question for me & many others is where?
