End of Silence

As far as I’m concerned, there are two holidays each year that are specific to Austin/Central Texas. The first holiday of the year is this Saturday, Eeyore’s 42nd Annual Birthday Party, at Pease Park. Most long-time Austinites are aware of this holiday. Here’s a little history from the Eeyore’s website:

Eeyore’s Birthday Party was established by University of Texas students in 1963. In 1974 the event moved to Pease Park and in 1979 came under the leadership of the non-profit group, University of Texas YMCA. In 1999, The University of Texas YMCA changed their name to the Friends of the Forest Foundation. The event caters to all Austinites, young and old, and offers the only fundraising opportunity for many non-profit groups each year.

The non-profits host the food and drink booths around the park and proceeds go to their respective causes. Past participants have included Safe Place, AnimalKind Foundation and Hospice Austin among others.

You really have to attend it to appreciate the oddness of it all. I think I first attended as a UT student in the early 90’s and have returned most years since, now indoctrinating my kids in the fun. There’s a costume contest for adults and kids in the early hours, followed by an egg toss and a sack race. There’s also face painting and other kid friendly activities. For the college students and adults, there’s plenty of beer and the perennial favorite, the drum circle, where genuine and ersatz hippies pound themselves into a rhythm-induced frenzy. Of all the local annual festivals, I think this is the most quintessentially Austin of the bunch. Even the beer has a local flavor with Real Ale and St. Arnold’s being frequent suppliers.

Eeyore’s signals the beginning of summer for me as the weather is almost always warm. This year is no exception with the forecast predicting a high of 87. The rain out date is always the following Saturday. Check the website for updated information. We generally camp out somewhere near the basketball courts under the trees to the east of the path, so come by and say hello. I’ll have my camera with me and will post a re-cap on Sunday.

To kick off my weekend of freedom on Friday, I stopped by the Longbranch Inn for the Austinist Tax Day Happy Hour. I’ve seen quite a bit of positive press and word of mouth about the Longbranch, but hadn’t yet had a chance to check it out for myself. When I found out that fellow local-and-yet-nationally-affilated city blog site Austinist was having a shindig there, I figured it was a perfect opportunity to check out the bar and meet some more Austin bloggers.

The bar is owned and run by Jim Stockbauer and Kumbala, who was one of the original bartenders at Emo’s. I remember Kumbala from many trips to Emo’s past and some inter-bar football games that were staged at Pease Park in the mid-90’s, although he’s sporting a new hairdo that threw me a little bit. Stockbauer seems like a personable guy, although I’ve seen various comments that he has trouble deciding whether he’s an owner or a rowdy patron from time to time. If you search for Longbranch Inn on Google, the first hit is a good characterization of that. Stockbauer’s the one to the right in my crappy camphone photo.

The bar itself is relatively small. It seems like a great place for a happy hour drink. I could see myself hitting it for a beer or two after work. There’s a small side yard where I found the Austinist crowd was holding court.
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Oddly enough, this post involves a street casualty as well, but in my case, the street itself was the casualty.

Yesterday at roughly 4pm, I was contemplating starting the laundry before the return of the rest of my family from Dallas. I heard an odd rumbling noise and attributed it to a passing jet. About 10 or 15 minutes later, I noticed a commotion out in the street. I went outside to find the scene that you see in the photo. A neighbor told me that they heard the rumbling as well and investigated. They saw water seeping out of the street and called the water department. They said that standing on the street felt like an earthquake. A passing car finally caused the street to collapse and the water started to gush out.

We’ve had a leak a couple houses down from the water main break that the city has determined is a spring and not city water. Apparently, they test for chlorine to differentiate the two. It’s hard to tell if the ground water from the spring contributed to the break or not. The consensus seems to be that the water main system is old and needs replacing. I also heard someone mention that my neighborhood has particularly high water pressure in the mains. The crews finished the repair around midnight last night. We were without water for the entire repair. So much for the laundry.