Austin on a Friday

So, I'm sitting at a coffee shop in Austin. Out the window to my right I can see the state Capitol rise above the buildings. It's spring and Austin is lush with the varied shades of green; each hue boasting a uniqueness of the tree it represents. Austin is filled with young people, which is different coming from a country town comprised mostly of geriatrics. It's refreshing and annoying all at once. I am reminded of the hubris of college kids who have found nothing to live for but the pursuit of sex and trendier clothing.

Austin is best described as eclectic. The average kid on the UT campus is adorned in a blend of styles spanning the last four and a half decades. Hippie chic, with entrapments of the 80s pop culture and facial expressions of kids who grew up in the hopeless confusion of the 90s. There's the occasional polyester shirt and 'urban cowboy' apparel to give the disco era honorable mention. Around campus this town is liberal and pluralistic. All nationalities, sexualities, and attitudes are represented and boasted. It's four in the afternoon and people are already drinking. Yet if I drive a short ways I am immersed in the bland conservatism of proud, Republican Texas. Austin has suburbs like everywhere else, and they mannage to look just like any suburb anywhere else.

I wonder if all the kids here, my age and younger, will really live out any of the open-minded idealism they wear on their sleeves (often literally). I wonder if, when they hit their mid-30's, they will continue to strive for a humanistic tolerance. Or, will they just decide they need to make some money so they can buy remixes of albums that were cool when they were in college?

Austin has a reputation for its strangeness, but I wonder how many of these people are choosing whatever is "weird" because that gets them in with this progressive postmodern culture that buzzes about the university.

I came down here to see my friend play guitar tomorrow night. I probably should have come the day of, since, after an unforseen change in plans, I don't know where I'll be sleeping tonight. That's ok I guess. I think I also came to see if this is the type of place I really want to move to in the coming years. I guess I'm just wondering if any geographic locale is really all that different from any other. Aside from topography and climate and vegetation, is it true that there's any place where people are genuinely more open-minded/hearted than what I've been exposed to? Austin gives off such an appearance, I guess I'm just wondering if it's mere pretense or does its essence match the decor which I openly admit I find appealing.