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They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

texasmonthly.com

151–160 of 502 posts

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#151

Californians fleeing the the things they voted for, then voting for the very same things again. Is there a legal way Texas residents can block them coming?

Californians? Nah bro, these are the east-coast/midwest transplants who invaded our state to get fat off of the startup lottery. They never became Californians, they just slept here.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#153

There 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…

I think gentrification is simply a vague way to put a face on something people don't like: because of fluctuating wages and rents, people are often forced to leave their communities and homes. People notice the gentrification side of it, because it involves a lot of large and imposing buildings, visible cultural artefacts, etc - and they notice the most extreme examples of it - refugees, etc. There's no clear discourse about the vast middle ground, which is much more ambiguous but also much more impactful - that because the right to live in a place is subject to market forces, and because availability of work moves, it's vanishingly unlikely that any but the richest will be able to live in a stable geographical community for more than a handful of years.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#154
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think increasing housing density is the answer. We really don't need more luxury apartments or million dollar condos. This was my first natural instinct maybe 5 years ago, but seeing the differences in gentrification stories has made it clear it's far worse to keep density the same. If nothing in the city changes and rich people decide they want to flock to your city (in this case, tech workers), it's a giv…

What about the people who own houses? For all their faults, those houses were affordable and many residents owned them. Now they've been forced out by increased property taxes. Those luxury buildings are going exclusively into poor neighborhoods because they have the cheapest land and least restrictions.

Is property taxes control (similar to rent control) a thing? It seems it would avoid some of the issues of rent control (lack of maintenance for instance), since they actually own and live in the house, so they have an incentive to keep it nice.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#156
> A car club member spins his back tires—a practice known as a “burnout”—at a car club meet-up on Sunday, unleashing a cloud of white smoke

Is that really something worth calling a tradition? If it were to happen where I live, I would definitely call the police.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#157
Damn near everybody who thought about the way things were going foretold this kind of thing.

First the California (or NYC, or DC, or Boston) money shows up kicking out most of the people who aren't at least a white collar level of moneyed.

Then with nobody to stand in their way they Karens and Kevins (not necessarily from CA, just rich enough to still stick around after the CA money jacks everything up) swing their political weight around doing their best to turn the place into a sterile and conformist hellscape.

We've seen this pattern in cities and suburbs across the county.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#158
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an intentional tactic. Buy land at a discount near a nuisance, sue/threaten everyone around you into oblivion, and then enjoy your now-significantly-more-profitable house/condo/apartment building. This has repeatedly happened with the music venues, which caused them to leave that part of the city. It happened with a really nice gun range. It happened with several bars. Unfortunately the car meetup is probably…

> near a nuisance if they were a nuisance, then getting rid of it surely isn't an issue? The fact that there exists residential places near "nuisances" is the root cause of the problem isnt it?

According to the article this is simply a weekly Saturday BBQ at a school yard.

It's sort of supposed to happen where residents live. Of course this being USA people go there by car (and when a lot of people who know each other go in a procession, who also happen to love their cars, it can get loud), of course this being the 21. century somehow even just built luxury apartments are not noise-proofed sufficiently.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Weaver/@30.2522831,-97...

This looks like a nice park at the river, which also happens to be the backyard of a middle school.

So it seems The Weaver was built next to a 3+3 + 4 + 4 lane highway/interstate and a school (anyone have any experience with loudness levels at recess?) and now the residents are complaining about the one thing they feel is easiest to change. The BBQ.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#159

Earlier 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…

Millions of people get screwed by the healthcare system but when writing an article about what that looks like you've got to pick a few relatable cases to follow.

There's no unusual nuance in this case. That's the point. It's a very typical example of a pattern that's happening all over. Money shows up and destroys culture.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#160

A 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…

This is a very, very, very naive take.

Laws like this exist to only be enforced as needed to screw people as needed. Of course there is not going to be a big enforcement push because that's not the point. The point is to give busybodies a means to screw their neighbors under color of law.

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