Gentrification: A Collage Poem
Local artist Julian Johnson offers a collage poem that was inspired by East Austin gentrification. Julian M Johnson is a student at Wesleyan University and lives in Austin, TX. Past works … Continue reading
North Lamar: Austin’s Most Cosmopolitan District
Austin’s most cosmopolitan district is growing—not in the heart of downtown—but along a two-mile stretch of North Lamar between Rundberg and Braker Lane at the northern edge of the city. … Continue reading
Interview with Geographer Eliot Tretter
What inspired you to write Shadows of a Sunbelt City? Two factors inspired me to write Shadows of a Sunbelt City. One was the very practical matter of needing to find … Continue reading
Native Bees and Austin’s Unrelenting Growth
Most of us know by now that Austin is a great place to live. I’ve been here my entire life and watched the city grow up with me. A lot … Continue reading
Fighting for Affordable Housing in Austin: A Conversation with Mandy De Mayo, Director of HousingWorks.
Mandy De Mayo is the Executive Director of HousingWorks, a non-profit organization on the front lines of the fight for fair and affordable housing in Austin. We sat down to … Continue reading
Goodbye to a River?
In May of 2014 I returned to Austin for one last research trip before finally sitting down and completing my book on Austin’s history. Having been gone from Texas for … Continue reading
Austin in Available Light
British historian Derek Sayer, author of an important new book on Prague, spent the past year in Austin. At the end of his time here, TEOA asked him for his … Continue reading
Pole Position: Walking Formula One in East Austin
Two local designers have superimposed the new Formula 1 track on East Austin in this creative exploration of the “overlapping conditions of rapid development and stagnant urbanism” in a city divided by … Continue reading
The Austin Disaster
Use of the term “disaster” varies widely across Austin residents – ranging from calls for volunteers to aid those effected by flash flooding to Tweets of woe over traffic congestion … Continue reading
Photos by Adrian Mesko
TEOA is very pleased to present a selection of Austin photos from Adrian Mesko, a talented young photographer based in New York City. These photos emerged from his Fall 2013 visit … Continue reading
La Cuesta: Worlding a Sidewalk
Costa Rica-born filmmaker Álvaro Torres and Guatemalan “researcher-militant” Daniel Perera are two Austin residents with a brilliant idea: “what would happen if we stood with our cameras on an ordinary stretch of … Continue reading
North Lamar Bus and other Austin poems
Local writer Monty Jones has shared four new poems with TEOA, including one that that sums up the Austin mindset quite nicely: “When I moved here, people told me I was … Continue reading
Austin/Life
‘Room 4.202, Garrison Hall, 12am’ flows like blue wispy clouds against a bright morning sun, across the crumpled post-it note that throbs proudly, full of opportunity and hope, in the … Continue reading
From KLEEN Wash to Launderette: Signposts of Gentrification or…?
At the corner of Robert T. Martinez, Jr. and Holly Streets, on the wall of KLEEN Wash laundromat, Our Lady of Guadalupe graces her visitors with a loving gaze and … Continue reading
Austin’s Plaza Saltillo: Place, Practice, and Growth
TEOA enjoys bringing together well-known writers, academics, grad students, and undergrads under one roof. Here UT undergrad Emily Mixon shares a “reflection on the dichotomies between intended and real function … Continue reading
Sing the City of the Rounded Shoulders
For Carl Sandburg and Nelson Algren. O sing this city! a land of unstoppable drive to the self-satisfied middle where it stops to spare its energy for another corporate happy … Continue reading
Austin Within and Beyond the Dome
As improbable as the metaphor might seem, Austin is a glimmering and warming snow globe. A steadily growing number of tourists behold a beautiful kingdom of sun. Austin is a … Continue reading
Start Fresh: Never Give Up
TEOA asked Andrew Takano, a video artist, to comment on the relationship between the morphing character of Austin’s graffiti and the city itself as reflected in a recent time-lapse video … Continue reading
Capital Improvements, 1984
TEOA is very pleased to publish Jeff Meikle’s introduction to Mark Goodman’s Capital Improvements. Written in 1984-85 on a Kaypro 2 computer and then filed away for almost thirty years, this wonderfully evocative essay … Continue reading
The End of Austin