A serendipitous wind seems to be blowing us south, to Texas of all places. This cool little town, Austin.
Ever since Den packed up his old Saab and drove himself back east to a place he swore he’d never return to (turning his back on career and money in Los Angeles in favor of love, stubbornly rooted still in Boston), he’s been wanting to leave.
And after a while, I started to agree with him.
Boston is a hell of a lot like hard work. Like the way it’s always impossible to find parking, and when you do, the parking ticket you inevitably get costs $50 instead of $15. And the streets are unmarked, so no matter how long you’ve lived there you still get lost. And people try to run you off the road, or if not actively try, just simply don’t care if they do. And they won’t let you merge into the exit lane on the highway, a daily stand-off that repeats itself every single morning and every single evening, except during really bad snow storms, when finally people start to realize that they’re kind of all in it together. But then they go and put lawn furniture in their “claimed” parking spots after they (or someone else) have shoveled out the snow, and will actually go so far as to slash your tires if you move the furniture and park in “their” spot. Even if it’s in front of your house. And how even your neighbors don’t smile at you or say hello when you see them on the street. And people don’t talk to each other in cafés or bars. And when you do make eye contact with a stranger – accidentally – they quickly avert their eyes in some mixture of horror, snobbery or lame embarrassment. Oh, and never mind the fact that with a combined income that places us well in the middle to upper-middle class, we can’t afford to buy the apartment we rent. Tiny condos in the Cambridge/ Somerville/ Arlington area start at $400K. And they aren’t even very nice.
After a while you start to take it all for granted and it affects your worldview. You come to expect that people won’t be kind to you, and so you go out into the world wearing your steely armor and before you know it you’re one of the people not being kind. Who knows how Boston’s famed standoffishness started, but by now it’s just a self-perpetuating cycle.
So Den and I have been talking for the last two years about getting out of Boston. Seattle has been most on our mind, just for it’s sense of place and café culture. But the secondary motivation for a change of scene is Dennis’ desire to break out of public radio, which 15 years into his career he’s up to “here” with, and pursue his real love, film. Of course, we’ve already been through the issue with LA; don’t really want to go there. Ditto New York. Even harder work and more expensive (though, sadly even grizzled New Yorkers are friendlier than Bostonians). But as it happens there’s a third burgeoning film town. It’s called Austin. And it’s cheap, and it’s hip, and people are actually nice. Really nice. Unfortunately it’s in Texas. But Austin is the state’s liberal oasis, where people with brains come to drink.
So after finding out about Austin’s place on the map of film, I presented the idea to Dennis, which he regarded with a certain amount of suspicion given the Texas element. You can take Texas out of Austin but you can’t take Austin out of Texas. Or something like that. However, not a week later he received an email with the subject line: “Greetings from Austin.” Uncanny coincidence? Fate? Should I perhaps believe in god after all? It was from a former Marketplace colleague about a position open at KUT. A position which sounded eerily like his old job at Marketplace. He went down Monday for an interview, and I for five.
Our collective interviews went well, though we won’t know for a couple weeks whether his will come to fruition, and mine are at least a little dependent on the outcome of his. So I ended my three-day visit with the town of Austin with a sense of hope and opportunity mingled with tenuousness. And flying over Connecticut now, soon to land in Boston, I’m confounded by a perversely sentimental feeling, as though I’ve said goodbye to an old friend that I haven’t seen in ages, that I’m not sure when or if I’ll see again.
Weird. How strongly that town took on a distinct persona in those three short days.
Dennis often references the year he spent in Europe, and how for the first time, after having grown up in Boston, gone to school in DC and then moved to NY, he actually felt as though he were a likable human being. Because the east coast cities have a knack for making you feel small and irrelevant. But the Europeans he met in his travels actually expressed a genuine interest in him as a person – caring more about who he was and what he’s all about than what he did for a living, or where he went to school, or who he knows, or any of the other references to pedigree that New Englanders can’t seem to shake.
Austin kind of felt like that for me. I am, after all, from the South. Despite the fact that I consiously rejected it when I turned 18 and went as far North as possible while still staying in the country, vowing never to renturn.
But I remember when I landed in Boston after finishing grad school and returning to the US from New Zealand: it was winter, the tech bubble had just burst, and in six months I only managed to secure 5 job interviews – three of which I was told I was overqualified for, and 1 internship for which I was actually told I didn’t have enough work experience. It didn’t occur to me at the time that perhaps Boston was among the toughest cities to be job hunting straight out of school during an economic downturn and with no established relationships. I thought it was just me, with a big ol’ “L” on my forehead. But how different it felt to effortlessly schedule 5 interviews over the course of 2 days in a city I don’t live in with less than a week’s notice. As to whether anything will come of them, that’s another story. But at least I didn’t feel like shit after each one, as I did back in the day.
Which may have had a little bit to do with the fact that people are really, really nice in Austin. The weather is warm (maybe a little too warm), the living is easy and the margaritas run like water. Made with fresh lime juice, not that syrupy crap. And the Wholefoods mothership is like a theme park, complete with chocolate fountain (I want to move to Austin and live at Wholefoods). And complete strangers talk to you in cafés. And people smile at you on the street. And nobody tries to run you off the road, or honk at you for driving 15 miles an hour while gawking at the giant snowman sunning itself on the lawn of Austin’s largest ad agency. And at least one of the agencies I interviewed at allows employees to bring dogs and babies to work.
And of course, beloved Bananie and her charming Schmelen are Austonians.
Blow south, winds of fate, blow south. I want to go home.
