I’d guess there will be a lot of hand wringing over this years Austin City Limits, the bands, the venue, the environmental impact and of course the grass. I’d bet that right now, over at  C3 Presents , a member of staff will be working on a press release extolling the virtues of the recycling effort, etc. etc.

I only did ACL Friday this year, the music wasn’t really my “scene”. Anyway, to the point of my post. Saturday evening I found myself downtown for dinner at La Condesa on 2nd St. What stunned me was between 7:15pm and about 9pm, the sheer number of Cap Metro shuttle buses streaming past the restaurant completely empty.

Tonight I stopped off on the way home around 7:30pm and counted the empty buses on their way back to Republic park. Again, mostly for the 30-minutes I waited there were a dozen or more buses, travelling back completely empty. As far as I could see, none of these were Cap Metro’s fleet of Gas powered buses, they were the older stock diesel buses. On my way along Caesar Chavez doing the regulation 35MPH, I was overtaken by a bus doing at least 5MPH faster.

For a city that makes a big deal of it’s environmental efforts this needs addressing for next year. Sure, C3 contracts with Cap Metro to run a bus every so many minutes. At peak times, I’m sure that is not enough and a backlog of passengers builds-up. However, there has got to be a better way than shuttling back and forwards all these empty buses.

Next headline: Zilker Park becomes private entertainment complex, fenced off again for 2010!

Austin Handmade have moved their shop from it’s (apprently) temporary home on the corner of South 1st and W Mary to next door to Once over coffee at 2009 Sout 1St, which has easy access parking and stops for the #10 bus route. They have a small gallery in the store. More interestingly though, they’ve been hosting  the Austin Handmade Market, on the 2nd and last Saturday of each month. It’s a small outdoor of some 5-6 stalls offering goods created exclusively by Austin area artists & makers of things.

Yesterday’s children’s matinee was so delightful that I hope to attend another performance of Iolanthe before the run ends. Performances are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (June 18, 19, and 20) at 8 pm and on Sunday (June 21) at 3 pm. There will be supertitle captioning on Thursday and Friday.

H.M.S. Pinafore, Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado are performed more often, and the opportunity to see a fully produced and laugh-out-loud production of Iolanthe is a precious one. When the peers of the realm (who are threatened by the possibility of competitive examination), along with other, lesser mortals, meet the fairy sprites of the woodland, merriment ensues. And so does beautiful music, vocal and instrumental.

Iolanthe is a true labor of love. I think that only in Austin is to be found the combination of multifaceted talent and concerted volunteer effort required to mount performances of such excellence.

Trash? Art? from atxgraffiti.com

One such was on the side of Sinsations on 1st, where a 75ft mural had been painted. It wasn’t a thing of beauty but a lot of time and effort had gone into it, not to mention, a lot of paint. I went back to take a picture a few days after I noticed it, and it had been painted over. When I asked why, apparently they’d painted the wrong wall. Whoops.

What I don’t get, no matter how “artfully” painted, and many are little more than mere scribble, is the 70’s style resurgance of tagging. Little or no thought goes into this, and it is a sometime gang-style marking of territory, doing little or nothing to enhance the area, and taken overall actually makes things worse. atxgraffiti.com documents some of the best and worse examples, sadly more bad than good in my opinion and much of it will cost the city to clean-up, never a good thing in a downturn.

I went looking for pictures of graffiti on flickr.com in Austin and was mildly amused that same of the very people who feel it’s ok for graffiti to be painted on other peoples property, without their permission. Have asked that their second hand “art” pictures of graffiti, is published all rights reserved, no reporduction or unauthorized use. Ironic eh? Even more ironic is this one, by UK Artist Banksy, which the flickr account owner has posted all rights reserved.

I guess ownership too is in the eye of the beholder. I have three of Banksy’s pictures on blocks hanging in my hall. Keep your coins, I want real change!

Art or vandalism?

And so it was tonight, at the City Council meeting where the staff recommendations for implementation of the Downtown Street Closure Task Force recommendations were heard. It was public hearing and a large number of people from 4-sides showed up, with a few others including marginalized neighborhood associations.

The Churches were well represented, as were the Race and Event organizers, and the task force members. In addition there were a large number of runners and event participants, but they had been effectively neutered by the race organizers through their emergent AREA organization. The Austin Races and Events Alliance (AREA), had appealed for people to attend but not speak until they’d spoken, probably fearing a backlash similar to the earlier one at the early taskforce meeting.

In the end the meeting was conducted in a relatively orderly and positive fashion, with Mayor Wynn and a number of the speakers enjoying entertaining interaction. After some 2-hours 30-minutes, most of it hearing public testimony, what became clear is that the City staff had turned months of work from the taskforce into a lose-lose-lose situation and wasn’t clear why this was.

The staff recommendations introduced rules like ensuring that Caesar Chavez was ALWAYS open, which the task force had never considered, as far as I know. That, had the Art Austin, 1st Night Austin and many other event promoters and producers losing out. The recommendations did not institute the Special Events office that the Task Force had recommended, thus they were losers. The Churches didn’t get their access needs met and they lost out, and well, the race organizers didn’t get it their way either, so they lost out too.

After the meeting I was asked “did we win?” My answer was, no, but you got what you wanted. What did they want? Well almost no one it seemed wanted it to go ahead as prescribed, and that’s what they got.

What happened was Council Member Leffingwell proposed to adjourn the public hearing and pass the staff proposal on the caveat that the letter submitted by the Task Force would considered and the proposal amended to accommodate. After a small amount of discussion and clarification from council members and Mayor Wynn, thats what they got, approved on first reading with the Leffingwell compromise. 2nd reading with be on either the 23rd or 30th of April, based on City Staff’s ability to meet with Task Force members and incorporate the changes.

However, quite why and how we got to where we did is beyond me? Why would staff come forward with these recommendations that were so out of line with a process that had taken months of compromise? Given that it’s been three of four months for staff to come forward with that, how likely is it that they’ll come back in as little as two weeks with the update thats acceptable to the task force and everyone else?

I found it personally interesting that none of the Mayoral candidates publicly took a stance on this and push it through one way or the other. One can only wonder if they really hope they’ll get the election over and done with before the Street and Event Closure really does claim a loser, the mayoral candidate that backs the wrong horse.

And so it was, process over people. – Oh yeah, before anyone suggests I’m a conspiracy theorist, I’m not. I also know that things don’t happen by accident.

After cruising some of the displays at Art East and during the South 1st Art Walk, I realized how much I like photography over painted art, and how much more there was to it these days with all the extras digital has bought, not just ones and zeros.

Friday evening sees the opening of EXPOSURE – photos from Austin area photographers at IF+D. Friday evening there is an opening reception of work from Brian Alesi, Brian Birzer, Andrew Boyd, Aron Geizer, Liz Hoisington, Anaya Vaverko, and Keith Young. The reception runs between 6-10pm and will have music by DJ Chicken Geoge. IF+D is in the 2nd St Retail district and is at 208 Colorado St.

Area considered by the Task Force

After about a 6-meeting gestation, bi-weekly meetings, went weekly. The task force was co-led by RunTex owner Paul Carrozza, and local political grandee and former Democratic U.S. representative, Jack Hightower, with assistant City Manager Rudy Garza accompanied by a city staff from Parks and Recreation and other effected depts. as well as Lt. Boydston, APD Special Events Unit and other safety related groups to advise. Also heavily involved in the process(from my observation) was Larry Shooler, Policy Director for City Council Member Lee Leffingwell.

However, staff were there primarily as advisors, the bulk of the work was done by the task force members. For those of us from the public that did show up, there was a limited opportunity for people to speak for 3-minutes before the start of the meetings. After that it was down to the old game of passing short notes to task force members on specific points during meetings, a frustrating experience at best. Mid-way through the process the task force seemed to be getting bogged down, lack of clear definition and the [obvious?] groupings for and against events, seemed to be stopping reasonable progress. I also missed about 5-meetings.

It was then with some surprise when I attended the last two meetings. The task force had come up with a good set of recommendations. Seemed to have pulled together some key threads. Presentation of these on the 18th was pretty straight forward with a number of the Task Force members, Shooler and Garza present along with the full council.

The key points and focus areas were:

• Issues/Challenges
  • Events in “downtown” up from 110 in 2005 to 145 in 2007
  • Number of downtown residents estimated to almost triple between 2000-2010
• Event Frequency, Number, Variety, Scheduling, Capping etc.
• Application Approval Process and Timeline etc.
• Set Race Routes, Street and Building Access etc.
• Financial Cost/Impact and Event Fee Structure
• Political Events and Parades were not in-play for the Task Force

And a large number of issues and concerns related to these. From which the Task Force made the following recommendations, presented by Carrozza to the City Council.

• Create Office of Special Events (OSE) to report to the City Manager’s Office
• Create Special Events Advisory Commission
• Create a “no event” zone around 5th/6th Streets to provide open access
• There should be a no-entrapment rule, all events should provide alternate access
• Walks should be held in a “moving bubble” rather than blocking streets
• There should be a cap on events at current levels
• Timeline for Event submission and review changed from 60 to 210 days prior to the event
• Events getting 20% or higher objections are referred to Special Events Advisory Commision
• Organizers must have approved application before marketing events
• Traffic plan inc. alternate access must be finalized earlier

Of these, when you look at it, the Cap was perhaps most feared by the event community. The problem is that each event community has their own, blinkered view on the disruption caused by their events. Limited by their events own geographic boundaries. What they don’t see is the big picture. The problem is that under the current scheme, nor does anyone person or department in the City, since different types of events are currently permitted and approved through different depts. So while you could take 145 events, and say thats almost 3-every weekend. It isn’t, sometimes it is more, sometimes less, and there are the inevitable clashes which don’t become apparent until Road Closures are processed, sometimes long after the events are approved.

For such a relatively small downtown area, often using public roads, 145 events as a cap seems more than enough. One of the key recommendations of the task force was to tier races and to find and encourage other great parts of the City. This both spreads the benefit and the burden. The continued, unbridled growth of events in the downtown district was perhaps the greatest concern of the non-events stakeholders, including residents, businesses, Churches etc. all of whom suffer regular disruption, which is currently left to the best will of the event organizer to minimize.

The “no event” zone was referred to as both the “Equator” and the “Red Sea”. Using the former designation, it was envisaged that the “Red Sea: would part on Congress for no more than six “grandfathered” events. Other events could start north or south of 5th/6th St but not cross or close them. So You could have a 5k race that went south from 4th, down Chavez, and loop back around, but it couldn’t cross or close 5th/6th, likewise a Walk could start on or north of 7th but not cross or close 5th/6th.

Final recommendations were around the City’s ability to understand, plan, budget and grant waivers for events. Currently there is no clear process, or understanding of the cost or benefit for events, and no tracking or post event evaluation is done to see if event organizers meet their commitments, and if waivers for closures and fees etc. are justified. There is also some work to be done on various ordinances if these recommendations are to become the norm.

The council meeting wrapped up with questions from council members. There were few. Members Leffingwell and Martinez both raised the point of citizen input. This was accepted, and the job is now on staff to turn the recommendations into proposed policy.

As part of that process, and in review with council, it’s clear that a broad coalition of event organizers and participants, and NOT just those from the sports community, need to review and provide feedback, as well as the neighborhoods, including mine Bouldin Creek, and the businesses and other effected parties. It’s our city and its also the events, from art, to music, and sport, are what make downtown Austin the small village it is, in a Capital city.

[1] “Downtown is defined by MLK to the north; Oltorf to the south; I35 to the east; and Lamar to the west.
[2] Minutes, Mission Statement, and full member list(although not including their alliances) can be found on the city website, here.

This has got to be seen before it’s too late. I ran past on Saturday, and again on Sunday and stopped by this afternoon to take a look. The Resolution Clock is being hand carved, much of it in place on Auditorium Shores as part of the “A Change in Time” display. It will be a center piece for Austin First Night on Wednesday, visitors will be able to attached messages and resolutions to the clocks chain apparently.

The only thing is, come New Years eve, it will actually be burned as part of the celebrations. That means if you want to see the clock when it’s not in flames, you’ve got Tuesday while they finish it off, and during daylight hours on Wednesday as part of Austin First Night.

[Update: See also this facebook event for pictures and information.]

(*) Picture by atxbill on Flickr, some rights reserved.

Bouldin Creek Studio tour

• Stella Alesi and Brian Alesi – Alesi Art
• Stephanie Lindsey – Baby Jane
• Kathie Sever and Bernadette Noll – Future Craft Collective
• Leslie Bonnell – Glitzkrieg Stitch Lab Sewing Studio
• Jody Haller – One-Eared Cat(will be showing at the Stitch Lab Studio)
• Natalie Tischler – Ornamental Things
• Rachel Lavin – Pio
• Shannon Lowry – Round Robin Press
• Mary Sledd – Sledd Photography (This studio will only be open on Sunday, December 7th)

You can catch a glimpse inside the creative workspaces of these fine artists, craftspeople and creative mavens. There are eight different, diverse and vibrant studios to choose from, the Bouldin Creek Studio Tour offers the community a chance to discover unique treasures for holiday gift giving while supporting local businesses. For details, locations, times and samples of the artists work and link to their website(s) via the http://www.bouldincreekstudiotour.com/ website.