A woman you meet at a gallery opening has loved a real cowboy, and had a varied career as a founding designer for Texas Monthly, as an LA Times art director, as a NY restauranteur and now plans to be a screenwriter. The temperature soars past 100 and locals tell you that’s about 20 degrees hotter than June usually is. You cross the bridge over Lake Austin and its shimmering blue water tempts as it takes your breath away. A hot band with a cranked-up female singer-songwriter plays for two hours for a $5 cover to a full house in a place that doesn’t even demand you buy drinks. The illuminated tip of the always-blue Frost Bank tower follows you everywhere you go in and around the city. Yellow, orange and pink lantana burst out and are covered with mammoth swallowtail butterflies. You strike up a conversation with someone at a SoCo restaurant bar while waiting for a table anointed with salsas, and suddenly you’ve made three new friends without hardly even sipping your Mexican Martini. You agree, somehow we should keep Austin weird. ♣

Is Your Austin Vanishing?

BUY THIS PRINT: Choose from 99+ Vanishing Austin prints and a poster by Jann Alexander, starting at $25.

Shop my Vanishing Austin series: While many Austin landmarks are lost, many are survivors still. Admire them all in a slideshow, HERE. Prints start at $35.

Marvel at what’s lost and what’s survived in my Endangered Species of Austin poster, featuring 16 Austin icons, and sized at a handsomely large 24 x 36,” available for $25, HERE.

• How the Vanishing Austin project began
• The 99+ photographs in the Vanishing Austin series
• More articles in Vanishing Austin blog series
• The Endangered Species of Austin

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