We were downtown around noon today and just missed this accident. Apparently, the car may or may not have been sideswiped, hydroplaned into the hotel and then the disoriented driver backed into the columns. It looked like there were at least two small children in the car, but no one appeared hurt. There’s a decent chunk out of the corner of the Stephen F. Austin Hotel.
The Statesman reports that the Austin Children’s Museum has signed a deal to move to Block 21, that’s West Second between Lavaca and Guadalupe, one block north of City Hall and two blocks west of its current location.
I remember going to the old location on West 5th Street in the same complex as Art on 5th as part of a developmental psychology class I was taking at UT. They’ve expanded quite a bit since then and the new space will give them room to do even more. I must say that I’ve been disappointed with the cost a quality of the exhibits though. The family and I checked out the San Antonio Children’s Museum last summer and it was much cooler. I guess a larger city has more funding, but still. We’re headed to Chicago next month, so we’ll see how theirs stacks up.
If you’d like to check out the museum at its current location, the best time to go is Wednesday evenings when admission is by donation as opposed to the usual $5.50 per person over 2-years-old and $3.50 for 1-year-olds, which I think is a little steep. Admission is also free on Sunday from 4-5pm.
Yes, I just got done complaining about how the museum isn’t that great and now I’m telling you how to get in there without paying.
I noticed this the other day, but didn’t have a chance to get a shot of it until this evening on my way home from work. They auctioned off all of the junk in the house a few weeks ago, so it’s not inconceivable that Blackmail would purchase it in the auction for their own building. It doesn’t look like the sign has power. In fact, it looks like most of the neon is broken. Anyway, anybody know the story?
Ok, I’m a couple of weeks late on this, but it’s worth redundancy to make sure that the word gets out. UT is trying to bully Player’s out of its location of 24 years. You can get most of the story from SavePlayers. They link most of the recent media coverage (the Chronicle article gives a pretty good overview) and a petition for you to sign. If you don’t trust Teh Internets, you can go sign it in person and be sure to get a burger and a shake while you’re there. I like mine with jalapenos.
I can remember walking over to Player’s my freshman year at UT on Thursday nights when I should’ve been studying to watch The Simpsons on a big screen TV and have a burger. Mmmmmm…burger.
Paul Ferguson pointed me to a story in today’s Statesman about random car searches at ABIA. The gist is that anyone wanting to pull up curbside is subjecting their car to random searches. Refusing the search means you’re sent to park instead of being able to get close to the terminal. I haven’t yet seen this in action, but I can’t see how they’re going to pull this off without causing a mess. I’m interested to know if anyone out there has actually been selected for one of these searches and, if so, did you agree? What happened?
I posted about this last September when I heard it mentioned in a KUT report.
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The Austin City Limits Festival schedule for this year is due to be released today. It’s not linked on the main website yet, but if you’re registered with their newsletter, you got the link last night.
I’d pretty much decided that I wasn’t springing for the 3-Day Pass this year. I was disappointed with the experience last year for various reasons (Austin Metblog didn’t launch until after last year’s fest, so my comments are on my own blog). However, the lineup for Day 3 motivated me to go ahead and buy a one day pass this morning. I think the chance to see Rilo Kiley, Bob Mould, Tortoise, Wilco and, if I’m not worn out by then, Coldplay, in the same day is worth the $45. Any opinions on who to check out between Arcade Fire, Sleater-Kinney and Jason Mraz?
Now that the schedule is public, you’ll probably want to snag your tickets soon. They’re bound to sell out and I suspect there’ll be a price increase coming eventually.
If you’ve driven down South Congress in the past 6-12 months you may have noticed the slogans that have been appearing on the marquee at the old Cinema West/Austin Theater. They’ve featured everything from l33t speak to references to the latest Star Wars film to homages to the recently deceased Hunter S. Thompson.
The space is currently occupied by Gizmondo Austin, formerly Warthog Austin. If I’m not mistaken, Future Protocol, an Internet services firm, renovated the theater during the dot-com boom and then promptly went bankrupt in 2001 (surprise, surprise). According to the Austin Chronicle, the Avatar Technology deal fell through shortly after it was publicized.
Wil Wheaton, a member of Metroblogging Los Angeles captured a shot of the sign on a visit back in October of last year, which brought the marquee to the attention of people outside of Austin. You can get the inside scoop on the sign from the blog of one of Gizmondo’s employees.
You may have noticed some changes on our site lately. We’ve added three new cities in the past week: Lahore, Berlin and Philadelphia, bringing the grand total up to 30.
There’re also a few new features across the Metroblogging empire:
1. Posts by Author: Click on the name of the author in the “posted by” line and presto! you get a list of all the posts made by that person.
2. Recent photos from flickr: Our site header images are randomly pulled from the 50 most recent images in our flickr pool. Check out the left side of the site under recent comments – those are the 5 most recent images submitted to our flickr group.
3. 50 most active bloggers: See the posting machines in the Metroblogging family with their name, city and number of posts in the last 30 days. Not that we’re competitive or anything.
The most kick-ass theater chain in the world will have John K., creator of Ren & Stimpy, in person to screen some episodes of his groundbreaking show on Saturday, August 13.
Since I’ve already got my tickets for the 7pm showing, I feel it’s safe to let the rest of you lot know about it. Sure, it’s a month and a half off, but time flies and tickets just went on sale this afternoon.
We’re not hitchhiking anymore, we’re riding!
The City of Austin was gracious enough to have a public site visit to view the remediation in progress of our neighborhood park, Mabel Davis. The family and I headed over there last night to check things out. There were representatives from the city and the contractors responsible for the cleanup work. I estimate that there were about 10-15 people from the neighborhood and 5-10 city staffers and contractors at the visit. I expected a few more people. The contractor said that they’ve had to turn people away from the pool, which is closed for the summer because of the remediation and they’ve turned away skateboarders looking for the not yet constructed skate park.
I’ve posted photos from the visit as a Flickr set. Those interested in keeping up with the progress and any new information on the park remediation should check out the Yahoo Group. On a related note, there’s also a group focused on the Country Club Creek Trail, which would connect Mabel Davis with Roy G. Guerrero Colorado River Park.
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