The Austin All Star Band may be in contention this year to win the Alvin Patterson Battle of the Bands and Drumline Competition. This local group has grown in confidence and also in membership since our last sighting and the kids were crowd favorites, and not just because they’re local, today on the Avenue. Now that the legislature has skipped town, downtown seems very empty. Even at noontime, there were parking spaces everywhere. “Juneteenth” was a new term to all the tourists asking what was going on.