Gathering thoughts for a brief talk to the leadership committee of the Austin Area Research Organization, which I’m meeting in less than an hour. I think the group was struck by some lines in a recent Out & About column, which went something like this: “I’m not one of those who celebrate Austin’s weirdness. I celebrate the culture that nurtures weirdness. And by that I mean the city’s openness, engagement and social sentience.” Those who want to “Keep Austin Weird” often mean “keep Austin funky.” They believe that’s somehow integral to Austin’s character. Hence their opposition to downtown high-rises, the Domain, the ...

Do you work in a restaurant? A bar? A nightclub? A hotel? We need your eagle eyes. We are trying to update our Austin Club & Bar Guide for the Dec. 11 issue of XL. Go to the base of this Out & About post. Link to “Austin Club & Bar Guide.” Check the lists. Make sure we haven’t missed a new spot or a recent closing. We have a small team proofing this list, but with more than 250 entries, mistakes can happen. You know this industry better than anybody else. Keep our lists clean. ...

For the December XL Bar Guide, we attempt to identify 14 Austin club micro-hoods. Well, actually nine downtown micro-hoods, then five larger regions outside the central business district. Why open-source reporting? Because you can contribute to our knowledge of which bars and clubs have opened or closed in the last year. We depend on you. Note: Restaurants are included if their bars attract a separate social scene. We originally considered a West region, but, other than the Balcones Fault, we couldn’t settle on a geographical and cultural boundary. So we simply put everything south of the Colorado River (with a few ...

For the December XL Bar Guide, we attempt to identify 14 Austin club micro-hoods. Well, actually nine downtown micro-hoods, then five larger regions outside the central business district. Why open-source reporting? Because you can contribute to our knowledge of which bars and clubs have opened or closed in the last year. We depend on you. Note: Restaurants are included if their bars attract a separate social scene. The next region is not a micro-hood, but rather a vast swath north of the Colorado River. It does not include downtown or Central East Austin groupings. These are way spread out and, as ...

Just as we were beginning to process the affect of the economy on holiday socializing, along comes Kalhua. Yes, the liqueur company wants to act as White Kinght, offering to throw company holiday parties for five small businesses around the country — one in Texas. According to a recent marketing survey, approximately one fifth of businesses were cutting back on holiday fiestas. Eligible companies who have canceled their revels can contact Kahlua Saves the Party to apply for a $10,000 grant. Ten grand buys a lot of party in this economy. Sign up. If you win, you can bet Out ...

Last we checked in with Austin’s Ally Davidson, she had won the 2008 “American Gladiator” season, with its promise of cash, vehicle and a chance to return as a full-time Glad. (That of course depends on the show returning to NBC, as well as success in ongoing auditions.) Well, she and husband Jeff Davidson, also a contestant, have opened a series of Gladiator Camps in Dallas, where the couple settled after their Austin wedding earlier this year. We’re heading north this week to report on this remarkable couple and maybe get some bootcamping in along the way. (Goodness knows ...

The Ear Candy 3 turns now to classical albums that deliver small surprises. Renaud Capucon “Capriccio” Every violinist practices and performs short string pieces, especially for the inevitable encores after concertos. Capucon’s gift is the intimate relationship with pianist Jerome Ducros in this collection of 21 showcases. Xuefei Yang “40 Degrees North” Classical guitarists must fight over-familiarity with the core repertoire. Chinese-born Yang battles this by pairing Spanish nuggets with arrangements of Chinese traditional music. Clever. Frederick Moyer “Edward McDowell/Clara Schumann” The mid-major Romantics of this album’s title provided the two epic piano concertos. Moyer stirred the waters by recording McDowell’s No. ...

Texas A&M University scientists revealed this week that Aggie and Austin Mayor Will Wynn has been secretly cloned. So that’s how he makes all those social events. Our civic leader — or one of his clones? — arrives early and stays late for each ribbon-cutting, nameday-proclaiming, smart-growth-toasting party. And despite his municipal duties, Wynn always appears tan and trim on the arm of an equally trim and tan female companion. Granted, Wynn is a politician. Socializing tops the job description. His breed’s only true competitors are the social all-stars who storm cultural lines to champion causes and weave personal connections into ...

When a friend says you resemble a character in a book or movie, beware. I flinched when dear friend Joe Starr said the protagonist in Leonard Barkan’s memoir “Satyr Square” reminded him of me. What did he mean? Would I recognize myself in the epicurean academic during his sojourns in Italy, including a yearlong research sabbatical in Rome? Or would I discover freshly unflattering aspects of my already distorted persona? Barkan and I share a love of Italy. We prefer Rome over other Italian cities. We are natural pedestrians who learn a city by walking. He is an academic who ...

For the December XL Bar Guide, we attempt to identify 14 Austin club micro-hoods. Well, actually nine downtown micro-hoods, then five larger regions outside the central business district. Why open-source reporting? Because you can contribute to our knowledge of which bars and clubs have opened or closed in the last year. We depend on you. Note: Restaurants are included if their bars attract a separate social scene. This one is going to be controversial: We’re dividing East Sixth Street — at least the blocks lying west of Interstate 35 — into two zones. We’ve noticed, particularly early in the evening, that ...

For the December XL Bar Guide, we attempt to identify 14 Austin club micro-hoods. Well, actually nine downtown micro-hoods, then five larger regions outside the central business district. Why open-source reporting? Because you can contribute to our knowledge of which bars and clubs have opened or closed in the last year. We depend on you. Note: Restaurants are included if their bars attract a separate social scene. As explained in a previous post, we’re splitting the western three blocks of East Sixth Street from the adjacent eastern three and a half blocks. We did so because the cultures of the two halves ...

For the December XL Bar Guide, we attempt to identify 14 Austin club micro-hoods. Well, actually nine downtown micro-hoods, then five larger regions outside the central business district. Why open-source reporting? Because you can contribute to our knowledge of which bars and clubs have opened or closed in the last year. We depend on you. Note: Restaurants are included if their bars attract a separate social scene. Most large universities are associated with entertainment and shopping districts located near campus. The University of Texas comes with just such a retail zone, an ever-evolving strip along Guadalupe Street called the Drag. Thing ...

For the December XL Bar Guide, we attempt to identify 14 Austin club micro-hoods. Well, actually nine downtown micro-hoods, then five larger regions outside the central business district. Why open-source reporting? Because you can contribute to our knowledge of which bars and clubs have opened or closed in the last year. We depend on you. Note: Restaurants are included if their bars attract a separate social scene. East Seventh Street is the lost child of downtown clubbing. Does it belong to East Sixth Street or Red River Street? Has it developed its own distinct culture? For a while, it seemed its western ...

For the December XL Bar Guide, we attempt to identify 14 Austin club micro-hoods. Well, actually nine downtown micro-hoods, then five larger regions outside the central business district. Why open-source reporting? Because you can contribute to our knowledge of which bars and clubs have opened or closed in the last year. We depend on you. Note: Restaurants are included if their bars attract a separate social scene. We were tempted to identify a micro-culture on East East Sixth Street, with its mix of Latino bars and hipster lounges. It just hasn’t jelled yet. (Maybe next year, we’ll spin East East ...

Warehouse theaters generally don’t attract top social influencers and connectors to their openings. Yet the premiere of Michael Mitchell’s “Still Fountains” sprinkled representatives from real estate, banking and politics with legates from philanthropy, arts, education, fine dining and media. Of course, it helped that political activist, teacher and social entrepreneur Eugene Sepulveda and playwright, teacher, coach and consultant Steven Tomlinson made their debuts as producers of Mitchell’s two one-act plays. Douglas Taylor, Michael Mitchell The pairing of his traditional playlets — in the Tennessee Williams mode — with experimental director Katie Pearl might have proved infelicitous, but the actors raved about ...

What kind of people invite strangers into their homes? I’m not talking about the lady who asks the wilted salesman into her sitting room for a cool glass of water (in itself, an act of social bravery). Or, on the other end of the investment spectrum, the couple who adopts an errant child for life (soon, they are no longer strangers). Rather, I’m interested in those who set aside parts of their homes for travelers. The most familiar of these social innkeepers tend those odd, in-between phenomena known as beds and breakfasts. Marsha and Clayton Waits operate, instead, a farm and festival. ...

For the December XL Bar Guide, we attempt to identify 14 Austin club micro-hoods. Well, actually nine downtown micro-hoods, then five larger regions outside the central business district. Why open-source reporting? Because you can contribute to our knowledge of which bars and clubs have opened or closed in the last year. We depend on you. Note: Restaurants are included if their bars attract a separate social scene. We’re going out on a limb here, since East Second Street is supposed to be connected to West Second Street. But that’s years away, once four or five high-rises have risen. For now, this ...

After 15 years of serving disco, retro ’80s, techno and hip-hop to the masses, Paradox is closing. The East Fifth Street magnet for the 18-and-up crowd will shut its doors with finality on Saturday. The owners still run the Sky Lounge in the Warehouse District/Middle Fifth Street. Don’t know what this means. Hope the few purveyors of dance music stick around. ...

Blind dates are trouble. Face it, they hardly ever work. The anticipation is so pressing, the actual date can hardly bear the stress. Still people fix up singles on blind dates all the time. And a curious contender won the A-List vote for best place for a blind date. I guess if you attend a Texas Rollergirls match with a stranger, little is left to the imagination. Either your date joins the cheering, jeering and theatricalized thrumming, or they don’t. That may be a enough. A full 32 percent of voters chose it as a fine first date. The more ...

Boy, could we use a sale right about now. The economy is in the dumps. Every cent counts. Merrily, two of the biggest sales are on their way. I don’t mean the Black Friday madness, but rather two retail/cultural traditions cherished by Austinites. The Blue Genie Christmas Bazaar and Armadillo Christmas Bazaar came within one vote of tying for the A-List Best Sale contest — the Genie getting the upper hand. One event is thrown by scruffy artists on the East Side, the other by scruffy — well, more cleaned up these days — artists on the West Side. Each ...