AUSTIN TO ATX

A searching character study of the lively
Texas capital city.

Patoski (The Dallas Cowboys: The
Outrageous History of the Biggest, Loudest, Most Hated, Best Loved Football
Team in America, 2012, etc.) arrived in Austin in the shiniest days of its
golden era, a time when every bar hosted live music and the city was “loose,
easy, and cheap.” As a former music journalist–turned–alt-Texas enthusiast, he
writes about everything that makes Austin what it is, from the paradise of
Barton Springs to the moon towers and Austin City Limits. His
approach is celebratory without being cloying, albeit with an elegiac closing
that laments the sad fact that with economic and demographic growth, “Austin
had arrived at the maturation/saturation point of a Manhattan or a San
Francisco. Limits had been reached.” Anyone who’s tried to drive I-35 or find
an affordable home in the city will appreciate the author’s appeal to the good
old days. Along the way from then until now, Patoski hits all the bases, including
the city’s culinary culture, a blend of the trendy and the new with reverence
for the old and hand-rolled (especially when it comes to barbecued meats);
Austin’s underappreciated literary culture (Patoski ranks this magazine among
the city’s lights, along with writers such as Gary Cartwright and James
Michener); the movie scene, dominated by Richard Linklater and Robert
Rodriguez; and, of course, the music, with legendary places like Antone’s and
the Armadillo World Headquarters giving hippies and rednecks a place to party
together. Patoski works with a wealth of material that sometimes overpowers the
narrative; the long sections on Whole Foods could have been cut in half without
harm, and there’s a touch too much repetition of the idea of Austin’s
uniqueness and the tragedy that it couldn’t have been kept weird. Still, if
there’s excess, it’s appropriately Texas-sized and easily forgivable.

Fans of the place where “anybody who’s
a little different runs…as fast as they can” will find much to like here.