"Another Weaver resident voiced more generalized criticism, calling the event a 'display of toxic masculinity.'"
The Californiacation of Texas.
They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions
111–120 of 502 posts
Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions
#112A variation of this rinsing out of any local culture is going on in Sacramento County California, where arguably gentrification has resulted in a 2019 autocratic edict that residents are not allowed to work on cars in their homes except fluid changes, with fines if you are found to have professional tools on the premises. https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/it-is-illegal-to... Since Sacramento County is appro…
Oh, this again. This law was written to give code enforcement a cudgel against unlicensed repair shops. All the auto enthusiast blogs and forums immediately lost their minds, but there hasn't been a sweep of the neighborhoods with officers asking to look inside of your garage for uncommon tools. The one complaint I could find online [1] was from a dude whose handle was "nimblemotorsports" and he said he had a car lif…
Making laws that target personal liberties in the hopes that they will be selectively applied does not increase justice.
Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not surprised. The article struck me as particularly amateurish, which is unfortunate because the situation is an unusually nuanced and interesting one on a topic that's constantly talked about.
I'm interested in the nuanced version. I'm not familiar with the event. The article painted a pretty clear and unsympathetic story: "these folks have been gathering in this spot to do this thing weekly for 25 years, an expensive apartment building went up, and some of the residents who moved in don't like the event and want it canceled, citing a variety of flimsy pretexts." So what's the interesting and unusual nuanc…
Strip the subjectivity and emotion away from your analysis for a moment (not permanently), and it's easy to see both sides. Construct and add the same amount of emotion/bias in the other direction and you can construct just as "obvious" a one-sided story for the other side! Just for fun, you can construct a weak form from just the phrase you used:
"these folks have been gathering in this spot to do this [illegal] thing weekly... residents... want it canceled, citing [the law]"
I don't agree with this reductive view, but to me it's not clearly more so than the one-sided perspective you expressed. As I mention in another comment, I think the question of community rights and "the tyranny of bureaucracy" is a fascinating and complex one, and don't think the situation is covered by simply noting that the gathering is clearly against the law[1] and isn't victimless. I don't personally recognize adherence to every detail of every law as the highest moral good (a view that's clearly widespread, even implicitly, as evidenced by the PD's refusal to do anything about the plainly-illegal event thus far, as mentioned in the article).
But the question of where exactly acceptable, public lawbreaking starts and ends is a complex and interesting one. Where exactly does the line fall for where lawbreaking should be grandfathered in? What's the plainly-obvious equation for how to calculate when a group of citizens is entitled to break the law, and does that apply to all citizens equally? If so, how widespread is this legal bubble? If the law itself is irredeemably flawed, why not repeal it? If it hasn't been repealed, and implicitly has the support of our democratic system, on what basis do we determine that the exception being granted has the consent of society?
None of these are rhetorical. Laws can obviously be unjust, as can specific by-the-book applications of overall-just laws. On top of that, not all important communities are concretely well-defined and not all important norms are codified. But I'm really puzzled by the claim that it's trivial and unnuanced to draw lines between the rule of law and the (many! contradicting!) uncodified moral convictions that it's being claimed should transcend collective decision-making about society's norms.
[1] The article mentions consistent violation of ordinances. To the extent that the complaint is about the legal parts of the gathering, I agree that the topic isn't especially interesting.
Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similar feelings here. I simply don't know where else to go; it seems like every nice-to-live-in medium-sized city that isn't SF is going through this same song and dance. Money comes in like a flock of locusts, consumes the city, and SF is one of the first examples we're seeing of the husk that gets left behind. Then they move on to the next one. Where's a person supposed to lay down roots, without retreating deep i…
Odd answer, but go to the megacities that show resilience and are building housing. In the US, so far that may only be NYC. I know that's not amazing to hear if you have other reservations about NYC, but I think it's the reality until mid-sized cities catch on and get their shit together. The other answer IMO is to pick a city no one in tech is even thinking about, and the growth rate is expected to be slow. Not to j…
DFW is another such megacity. The construction happening there reminds me of parts of China.
Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions
#115A variation of this rinsing out of any local culture is going on in Sacramento County California, where arguably gentrification has resulted in a 2019 autocratic edict that residents are not allowed to work on cars in their homes except fluid changes, with fines if you are found to have professional tools on the premises. https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/it-is-illegal-to... Since Sacramento County is appro…
Oh, this again. This law was written to give code enforcement a cudgel against unlicensed repair shops. All the auto enthusiast blogs and forums immediately lost their minds, but there hasn't been a sweep of the neighborhoods with officers asking to look inside of your garage for uncommon tools. The one complaint I could find online [1] was from a dude whose handle was "nimblemotorsports" and he said he had a car lif…
I'm sorry but this is difficult to believe. The site says that it's unlawful to do "minor vehicle repair [...] Using tools not normally found in a residence". If it was just a zoning law, why does it have to include that stipulation? I've seen plenty of people who own tools "not normally found in a residence". It's hard to guess exactly what the authors' intentions were, but it wouldn't be unreasonable for someone to conclude that there were other motives besides just cracking down on illegal auto shops.
Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions
#116When places are full of white people, minorities are brought in in the name of diversity and it's to be celebrated. When places are full of minorities and whites move in, it's gentrification and we need to write articles lamenting it. Cultural mixing happens both ways. Sometimes inclusion means changing long standing traditions.
Have there been any natural experiments where less-wealthy white folk were priced out by more-wealthy non-white? I think the driver of gentrification is economic class not race/ethnicity. Wealthier and whiter show up together but may not be the same thing.
Miami, Florida
Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions
#117I feel like a large parking lot is better for this sort of thing than a residential block. Compromise?
So the compromise is, the guys in the luxury condos get what they want, and the people who have been using this public park for years must go hang out in a parking lot somewhere else instead? King Solomon you ain't.
Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions
#118There are ways that people talk about gentrification that always makes me slightly uncomfortable. As a non-white person, something always feels like gentrification is something that “good” white people like to blame “bad” white people for doing, when the real problem tends to be wider and more systemic. In this particular instance I find myself asking why it matters that the Weaver residents were originally not from…
[deleted]
Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions
#119Yeah, the burning tire smell from cars doing donuts is very unpleasant. They can do this in the middle of nowhere if they want (easy enough to get there with a car).
Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similar feelings here. I simply don't know where else to go; it seems like every nice-to-live-in medium-sized city that isn't SF is going through this same song and dance. Money comes in like a flock of locusts, consumes the city, and SF is one of the first examples we're seeing of the husk that gets left behind. Then they move on to the next one. Where's a person supposed to lay down roots, without retreating deep i…
Odd answer, but go to the megacities that show resilience and are building housing. In the US, so far that may only be NYC. I know that's not amazing to hear if you have other reservations about NYC, but I think it's the reality until mid-sized cities catch on and get their shit together. The other answer IMO is to pick a city no one in tech is even thinking about, and the growth rate is expected to be slow. Not to j…
NYC is building pied-a-terres for money launderers. The whole Hudson Yards was engineered as a phony rehabilitation of Harlem so they could sell visas to millionaires who could then turn around and buy a luxury apartment in the "blighted" neighborhood they revitalized.