Viva Aust-vegas

Miss Manhattan goes to Texas.

I had forgotten I had legs.

This winter had been especially ugh. The dark days starting at 4pm, the blistering wind, the fact that I had to wear The Brown Coat of Indignity for several weeks in a row aside from the usual one. I had gotten down to Florida in February but even that brought a chill with it, and I was wearing sweaters every day. Artificial heat pumped through our apartment. We had sun for a few days. But goddamn if being down in the kiss of (real) heat and sunshine doesn’t make it all seem so far away, even for a few days.

I don’t remember why we decided to go to Austin exactly, aside from wanting someplace warm and sunny that would be easy to travel to on a short trip that wasn’t a beach vacation, per se. Well, maybe that’s exactly how we ended up there. But a few weeks into winter when it seemed like jeans would be the order of the day forever, we bought our flights, picked our hotel, and all we had to do was show up.

I’m not the best at taking time off, but Chris has made me better at it. When I’m tired, so tired I’d be unproductive, he says, then take a nap! And I look at him like he’s insane. What do you mean take a nap? I can just *do* that? Fucking of course. You’re an adult. GO TO SLEEP. GO ON VACATION. So at something like 4am I shuttled myself to JFK and got on a plane. Chris had a work thing so he’d be in the next day.

I arrived in Austin and quickly learned this would not be like my recent trip to Florida: I would have no need for my sweater or jacket during the day. At my hotel, I changed into–glory be!–a sundress and sandals that had been so buried under my bed I had to force them out with a hanger. I felt the warmth on my legs, put sunscreen on them as if I had been doing just that for four months, and I immediately went out the door in search of something yummy before I began my journey through many of Austin’s vintage clothing stores. Listen, when the boyfriend who hates shopping is away, the mice will play.

Lunch was downtown’s Taquero Mucho, and I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t go there expressly because they have pink tortillas they make in house (with natural dye from hibiscus). Everything, everything inside was pink, too, and I sat quietly, my phone far away, as I waited for my food to arrive. It was indeed pink as promised, loaded with salty shreds of chicken and creamy cheese.

Walking up West Avenue, I traversed 19th century historic colonial homes until I got to some that were actually art deco buildings from the 1930s–one of which, of course, was the offices of the local American Institute of Architects. It was shaping up to be a city of contrasts, Grecian columns next to sleek angles, bright pink tortillas and cold beer, a vintage clothing store selling thousand-dollar jackets next to a barbeque joint proudly proclaiming “Need no teef to eat my beef.”

My vintage journey began by taking in a slew of aged denim and leather cowboy boots accented with books upon books of cowboys on horseback. Plus, there was a handy-dandy brochure highlighting the multitude of similar stores in town–I’d be lying to you if I didn’t cross off most of them by the end of the day.

From downtown, I made my way up to the North Loop–all record stores and thrift stores and coffee shops and college kids from UT. I slurped an iced coffee and just sat on the patio quietly. Music that sounded like the Stereolab song from the High Fidelity soundtrack played overhead. People have carved their names into the wooden tables and benches, slapped on stickers from their bands, etched messages to 45/47 that he should, in no uncertain terms, fuck off.

Across the street, there was a little red house with a giant fanged panda bear sculpture and a pale blue vintage pickup truck in front of it. A skeleton waggling on top of a bakery painted white. The record store sold Texas Country 45s. A vintage store sold “Y2K” clothing and I wonder if I should start using a retinol. The next day, when I visited a tattoo bookstore (yes), the owner, who has lived in Austin for over 40 years, told me the North Loop is what the whole city used to be like.

My favorite stop of the day is Room Service, which I can only describe as a tacky vintage department store, and I mean that as only the highest compliment. NASA jackets from the 80s, vintage Playgirl magazines, an entire bathroom dedicated to toy rabbits. I snagged a copy of Aperture magazine from 1979 and a science film reel from the 1970s for Chris that we learned became an episode of PBS’s NOVA. The sky began to take on a pastel yellow tone, the way it does when sunset isn’t too far away. I headed back to the hotel and reset before the second half of my day–it’s wild to me that I’d been up since what, 3:30am? I love to squeeze as much as I can into a vacation (sometimes against my better judgment).

But the evening awaits, what with a trip to Oil Can Harry’s, Austin’s oldest gay bar, for a drag show–I love to see drag in any city I go to if I can–and an accidental stop in the local bear bar while looking for a place to eat a late dinner. It was called The Iron Bear and I should have known. The bears were friendly and told me what streets to walk on and not walk on at a later hour, what places were still serving food. It’d only been 12 hours but I was overwhelmed at the genuine kindness I experienced everywhere I went–people introduced themselves, they wanted to know where I was from, what brought me to town. I certainly was a tourist, but it was nice to see some semblance of what it might actually be like to live here. It was so easy to belong.