The roster of free SXSW events are locking down in anticipation of the upcoming spring music and film festival. Badges and wrist bands continue to sail beyond the reach of the common man, but fortunately the free, corporate-sponsored events are plentiful. The top one to come across the ASN dashboard so far is the Transmission-organized Mess With Texas fest over at Waterloo Park. Music and comedy acts filled out by the Breeders, Municipal Waste, Todd Barry, Eugene Mirman, and Janeane Garafalo are sure to please.
The first of the 4 PARD long-range planning meetings made good progress last week for drawing attention to our need for more skate terrain spread throughout Austin. I posted a write-up about the meeting along with flyers and dates for the upcoming Parks and Recreation input meetings on the APSAC site.
Progress is also showing on the concrete mini-ramp project. A week was lost thanks to a grumpy tennis player demanding the ramp be relocated for fear skate noise might distract nearby tennis players. To placate the lone complaining powerbroker tennis player, the city has committed to provide a streetlight for the ramp at the new site within the park.
Tomorrow (Wednesday) we’ve got another important opportunity to lobby the city to include skateboarding terrain in its planning process for future public parks. It’s meetings like this that got the money assigned to build the forthcoming skatepark that’s going in at House Park in Central Austin. You need not stand up and speak at the meeting to get your thoughts counted. You can fill out forms at the meeting to be heard. The more people that attend this meeting, the better likelihood skateboarding will get improved priority compared to the team sports like soccer and baseball that’ll likely be represented at the meeting. Below is a description of the meeting with time and location. (more…)
The art-on-deck show over the weekend was well attended by skateboarders and looky-loos. The demo on Saturday by Find-and-Grind’s watchless team riders enjoyed an abandoned van in the parking lot of the gallery. Perhaps someone in the audience enjoyed the un-ending reggae coming out of the PA system. Some crappy camera-phone pictures of the event are here.
Roy Scheider, the oscar-nominated star of several movies, died yesterday at the age of 75. His catch-phrase was a line he improvised in Spielberg’s 1975 movie, “Jaws.” It inspired local warp-tourers, Riverboat Gamblers, to incorporate it in their song, “What’s What.”
In that Riverboat Gamblers music video, the astute viewer might recognize the boom-chica-boom go-go dancers shaking it at Beerland. On Saturday night, half of that duo served as a judge at the second-annual Misprint Magazine Mustache (& beard) Competition at Club DeVille. It was a phenomenal event with shaggy competitors.
Think you know someone with a large skateboard collection? It’s nothing. Absolutely nothing compares to Warren McKinney’s collection. This evening and tomorrow you can see approximately half of Austin’s largest deck collection at the United States Art Authority gallery, which is conveniently located adjacent to the Spiderhouse Coffee shop and I Luv Video (2906 Fruth Street). I dropped by for a preview and was astonished at Warren’s holdings. He’s got an entire wall set up dedicated to band-issued decks. There’s another wall covered in decks featuring photos of Drew Barrymore from when she was hot. And then there’s bunches of walls emblazoned with obscurities and collectibles I had never seen before.
Bands and videos will play at the opening friday and saturday boasts a demo by the Find-&-Grind skate team. The show is free on Friday from 6 until 9, and I think all day Saturday. There is a full bar on site.
Once you’ve browsed all the crazy permutations of Jason Lee’s decks mocking George Powell’s company, you might get a hankering to step over to I Luv Video to pick up that Steve Rocco documentary. It’ll probably be checked out, though. Another hot documentary that would be an excellent second choice is the recently-released “King of Kong: Fistfull of Quarters.” As a movie, it’s exponentially better than the Rocco flick. It’s a story filled with good guys, an evil villain, and a herculean challenge: score more than a million points on a classic Donkey Kong arcade machine. One of the top 5 films of last year, I’d wager.
The roster of free SXSW events are locking down in anticipation of the upcoming spring music and film festival. Badges and wrist bands continue to sail beyond the reach of the common man, but fortunately the free, corporate-sponsored events are plentiful. The top one to come across the ASN dashboard so far is the Transmission-organized Mess With Texas fest over at Waterloo Park. Music and comedy acts filled out by the Breeders, Municipal Waste, Todd Barry, Eugene Mirman, and Janeane Garafalo are sure to please. 
flyers and dates for the upcoming Parks and Recreation input meetings on the APSAC site.
