South By Culture: HighlightsCulture editor Molly Freedenberg hits SXSW for the first time to explore the festival's extracurricular aspects. For Music Editor Kimberly Chun's take on SXSW's tunes, click here.
Some of my favorite non-musical moments at SXSW:
The “Yard Sale”
Ironic and slightly racist Texas T-shirt? Priceless.
My first day in town, my host (a friend of the family) and I came across what can only be called a Yard Sale in the most literal definition of the word. What this really was? Entrepreunerial brilliance. Rather than curse the thousands of indie rockers who descend upon his city every year, one Austin resident decided to capitalize on it. Before SXSW, he scoured thrift stores for hipster-friendly items like brightly-colored cowboy boots, ironic T-shirts, snap-front Western shirts, and leather jackets. Then he set up his wares in his front yard for three days during Southby – and priced everything three or four times higher than he paid. It was one-stop Southby-chic shopping. If only those green calf-length boots came in my size …
If only I wore a 9B.
Need Drummer
Yes, the one on the left (Malice Blackhart. Really.) is a girl. And the sign says, "Need Drummer. Hard Rock. Inquire Within (Me)."
There’s no shortage of spectacle in the closed-off streets of downtown during Southby. One favorite was a trio of guys dressed in metallic body suits, no doubt as a way to publicize their band. But even better? The young rockers from Rock Bottom cruising sixth street with a notebook on which was scrawled “Need Drummer. ….. “
When asked whether they’d met anyone, the girl holding the sign explained she’d had no problem getting hit on. “But if 1,000 guys hit on me and one of them’s a drummer, it’s worth it.”
Sure beats Craigslist.
Need cell phone charger
On Thursday afternoon, I’d intended to go to the screening of a friend’s movie, “Beautiful Loser.” Instead, I embarked on the endless journey to find a cell phone charger for my dead cell phone. Thing is, no one downtown seems to carry such a thing. I walked for an hour, visiting every convenience store and novelty shop in a five-block radius, before finally hailing a cab to the nearest AT&T store. I thought the afternoon was a bust until I started talking to my cabbie.
Turns out he was a Mexican immigrant who’d been in Austin 43 years. When he first arrived, as a 16-year-old who spoke no English, he’d intended to go to Chicago to meet uip withg family. The driver who took him across the border got him as far as Austin, opened the door, and said “You’re in Chicago.” Then he left.
It took an hour for the poor guy to find someone who spoke Spanish.
“I’m trying to call my relatives here in Chicago,” he said.
“You’re not in Chicago,” the man replied, then offered to employ him for a day to make bus fare for the windy city.
Long story short, he ended up working for the guy in Austin for 20 years. After two years of work, the guy actually went with him to visit his family in Chicago. It seems he’d ended up exactly where he was supposed to be.
That same cabbie waited for me outside AT&T – with the meter off – and took me back to downtown. His story, and his kindness, saved what would otherwise have been a horrible day. Seems I’d ended up exactly where I was supposed to be too.
The Dance Hall
Another night at the Broken Spoke.
The night my sister came into town, our host took us to a place called the Broken Spoke: part bar, part restaurant, and part dance hall in the most traditional, Southern sense. As the band played, people old and young, dancers good and great, filled the concrete dance floor – happily, jubilantly, lovingly. I’m not saying what they were doing was any more wholesome than what we do here – the beer consumption, I’m sure, is similar to what we manage at Zeitgeist – but it sure seemed like a lot more fun.
Miniskirt: Texas style, at the Broken Spoke.
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