I’m happy to report that the HOPE Outdoor Gallery is still thriving at Baylor and 11th Streets. This outdoor community paint park is on the site of an abandoned condo project. The site’s many concrete walls are perfect for creating large-scale street art. The place is managed (but not owned) by the non-profit, Helping Other People Everywhere (HOPE).
Last weekend our city hosted the 7th annual HONK!TX festival of community street bands. Eleven of the 25 bands were from Austin. On Friday evening, the bands played along South Congress. Saturday afternoon’s festivities centered around Adams Hemphill Park and Spider House Cafe. Sunday morning’s parade was cancelled due to thunderstorms, but the front moved through quickly, and an All Band Revue was held in Pan Am Park.
Over 125 local and national artists participated in last weekend’s Art City Austin. Sponsored by Art Alliance Austin, this three-day fine arts festival was again held at the Palmer Events Center. This was a huge improvement from those painful years when the festival shut down the streets around Austin City Hall.
Beautiful spring weather was on tap for the 60th annual Zilker Garden Festival. One of the vendors told me that the weather has been wonderful for the ten years that she’s had a booth there. The annual Zilker Kite Festival, also held in Zilker Park few weeks earlier, has not been so fortunate in recent years.
Block Party Time! Last Saturday The Blanton Museum of Art threw a big party and opened up their doors—and their lawn—to the public. The Blanton was celebrating the remodeling / reopening of their upstairs galleries, plus the opening of a new temporary exhibit on the first floor.
Well, another South by Southwest has come and gone. The Big Sick was my top Film pick, followed by May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers and Bill Nye: Science Guy. Although I went to some technology sessions, my favorite Interactive sessions were all related to politics: NYT editor Dean Baquet, NJ Senator Cory Booker, and a panel discussion with Dan Rather, Katy Tur, Matthew Dowd and Brian Stelter. In recent years, Interactive has ended on Tuesday, but this year SXSW organizers decided to extend those sessions for two more days. As a result, I didn’t see as much music as usual, but I did enjoy the Avett Brothers, Lady Antebellum, and local musician Gina Chavez. And I’d like to share some other interesting experiences from SXSW 2017…
A large junk of my last day of SXSW 2017 was devoted to the Audience Award winning film, The Big Sick. Bill and I waited in line for an hour to get into the Alamo Ritz theater, and then due to “technical difficulties,” this two-hour movie started one hour late. Was The Big Sick worth four hours? Most definitely! This was my favorite movie of the festival. Look for it in theaters this summer.
SXSW Music day was going strong today. I looked around the Flatstock show and SXSW Gaming, but most of my day was spent listening to music. After dinner, Bill and I headed to Central Presbyterian to listen to several groups. Our evening ended with a tribute performance to 70’s band called Big Star. We had never heard of this Memphis group, but apparently they influenced the next generation of musicians.
On Thursday, I went to one Music session in the morning, one Interactive (Journalism) session in the afternoon, and filled the rest of the day with music. It’s always fun to watch the SXSW crowd changes from geeks to music fans…and now there are definitely more creative types around town!
Although today was the first full day of SXSW Music, I found several interesting sessions to attend at the JW Marriott Hotel. SXSW had announced some extra political sessions for today and tomorrow, but there were also sessions about space and computer science. In the evening, Bill and I saw a documentary about The Avett Brothers, followed by their concert at the ACL/Moody Theater.