SXSW Day Zero: The Long Bright Dark

During SXSW, flights from New York City to Austin tend to become shuttles for your entire twitter feed, musicians, industry people, and media people, crowding aboard gigantic metal tubes delivering them to what’s essentially become Spring Break for the music industry. Though I’m not a statistician and have no way of accurately measuring this, I’m pretty sure my flight consisted of 97.2% music industry people, and then five old dudes who were very confused by the one guy who was apparently rolling and trying to turn his in-flight TV into an Etch-A-Sketch.

If you’re from the south, you inherently understand certain elements to the country/city dynamic. Mainly, the people in the cities tend to be liberal as all hell, and the people who live outside of the city in towns that have been there since dirt was invented tend to resent the fuck out of them. You can see this dynamic in play in the 2008 electoral college map of North Carolina—the cities all voted for Obama and helped him carry the state, and the rural areas all voted for McCain and then as revenge they eventually got control of the state house and made everything even remotely chill illegal and now my home state sucks.

From the 12 or so hours I’ve spent in Austin, Texas, so far, this dynamic has made itself readily apparent. In the cab to my hotel (part of what my friend refers to as Austin’s “Shitty Hotel District,” a labyrinthine superstructure of hotels, motels, and Holiday Inns on the outskirts of the city that seemingly were willed into existence by the presence of SXSW), I passed place after place that looked like Rust Cohle could find one of those wicker all-seeing-eye-pyramids in, the embodiment of a real-life Southern Gothic aesthetic that anyone from down here knows all too well. Third-tier chain restaurants filled exclusively with people who’d never so much as heard of Migos. Dilapidated buildings half torn down by fire but still open, because they have no choice to not be. An auto-detailing shop called Christian Personality that looked like a compound you’d wait out the inevitable Obama-led apocalypse in, its paint faded to a shit-blue hue. We passed not one, but two seafood restaurants shaped like boats. People in the south just give less of a fuck than the rest of America. Except Austin.

There are a few cities vaguely resembling Austin in America, hip enclaves dropped down from the cosmos into a sea of normalcy, word to Neil Degrasse Tyson and Warren G. Harding. Asheville, NC is one. Savannah, Georgia is another. Probably Madison, Wisconsin, too. There’s a very real “Us Vs. Them” dynamic that they foster, because the young, hip transplants have no idea how to deal with the locals who live on the outskirts of town, and vice versa. Despite being a gunshot away from 6th Street where most of the magic of SXSW happens, I’m staying in an expanse of urban sprawl that could just as well be in Alabama, or Virginia, or Louisiana, or anywhere else where people don’t know what a Spotify Lounge™ is. Walking around last night with my friend Kyle trying to find a beer store, I got a sense that we were in a ghost town—every gas station was closed, lights from car dealerships and quickie tax places shined upon swaths of nothing, and houses were completely black, their inhabitants either sleeping or so disgusted by the fact that the Shitty Hotel District had turned into a de facto Olympic Village for music industry people that they’d skipped town.

Today is my first day of my first SXSW. As of now, my plans include seeing my internet homie Tony Hawk Pro DJ, and trying to go hang out with the bros from Bro Bible. I know I need to be doing more shit, so if you or someone you know happen to know what that shit is, tell me that shit via email or twitter, and I will probably go to that shit.

Best Band I Saw Yesterday: The bando that my friend Kyle and I passed while unsuccessfully trying to find a beer store.

Arbitrary Weird Story: Kyle and I jumped a fence. I didn’t really do anything last night.

Million-Dollar Idea I Just Thought Of: Dog collars with built-in WiFi hot spots.

Color of My Energy: Amber

Daily Selfie: [Above]

Drew is on Twitter. Connect, network, send him your music, and stalk him while he's at SXSW - @drewmillard

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