September 3, 2007
On Authority
Editors’ note: The opinions and ideas expressed in The Accidental Gentrifist are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook and belief of anyone else in the Ist network.
The last time I rode my bike down Congress to buy someone a birthday present, I got hit by a car. I flew, face-first, into the curb right before West 4th. That’s where I regained consciousness to enjoy a ground-eye view of the octogenarian who hit me slowly drive over my handlebars. Several strapping young men in tight t-shirts rushed out of Light Bar and came to my aid. When I told them I’d probably just ride my bike home, they recoiled, looked at each other, and then said to me: “You haven’t seen your face yet, have you?” I hobbled to the tinted windshield of a nearby Honda and peered at my reflection. I could actually see my skull, in two different places. I promptly straightened my fork and rode to the Brackenridge ER.
So last Saturday, already a day past the birthday of my friend and favorite pubtender Mr. Roone, I headed for the Monkey Store, understandably believing the worst of biking down South Congress was well behind me.
But no.
Maybe I shouldn’t be writing anything about this city, because I had no idea it was ‘Cherish the Bat Week.’ I was totally surprised to find the Congress Avenue Bridge positively choked with people. I saw an opening and started riding through the throng. That’s when this sweaty red-haired security guy came running after me, shouting at the top of his lungs. Let’s point out now, that if you approached this bridge festival from the actual river it spans, at no point will you see a sign suggesting one should pay a cover to enter. Nor directions to an alternate route for the disinterested. I figured he was in a flap because I was on a bicycle, like I might accidentally crash into one of the people who made the half-hour cattle drive from Buda or Bastrop or Georgetown to Keep it Weird while eating six-dollar funnel cake and dodging straw-filled pony droppings.
Not so, my friends. He blocked my path and emphatically insisted that I couldn’t go through. I asked, “Why not?” He pointed to the screen-printed logo on his knitted t-shirt and shouted the answer to my question: “BECAUSE I SAID SO, THAT’S WHY!”
Thankfully, his left pectoral muscle had atrophied to the point where it was more like a prepubescent breast, so I had no trouble reading that which he indicated: MAS Security.
I decided to take the moral high ground, and called him a prick.
‘Because I said so.’ Wow. That phrase has the same reaction on a 29-year-old as it does on a 5-year-old, and displays about as much character on the part of the speaker.
Not that I was too pissed to notice an element of sexual politics in this guys’ approach to his troll-like bridge policy. First of all, whole groups of girls got in without paying. That, and the quality of the band on the North stage, is what made me think the event was free in the first place. Second, none of the security said a word to the cute girl I was riding with. She just coasted on by with a smile and a ring of her bell. The way I figure it, security-type guys hide their true colors from girls, because wearing that variety of authority is actually a kind of undressing, an uncomfortable exposition. Like losing your trunks after a brisk swim in the North Atlantic. As in, Yes, we know your penis isn’t actually that small—but it kinda looks that way from here.
Until the little missive you’re now reading, the greatest treatise written on these matters was Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience. Oft-quoted by the likes of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, the 1849 work was a response to many forms of institutionalized injustice, but what really touched it off was an unspeakably heinous abuse of human rights—Thoreau spent a night in jail for failure to pay back taxes… which his aunt covered the next day. Of course, we’re talking about the poll tax and Thoreau was supposedly pissed when she subverted his protest—but that didn’t stop him from trying to get bailed out just after his arrest. But alas, it was just too darn late at night to drag ol' Auntie out of bed.
We always bitch about the small things. Probably because real and heavy oppression either leaves you dead or makes you flee, or imprisons you, or makes you reach for the martini shaker right after breakfast as you shrug and sheepishly tell your children, “Hey, it’s five o’clock somewhere.” On the other hand, witnessing small acts of injustice allows one to wildly extrapolate widespread and egregious human sin. Often, it’s a rhetorical study into the banality of evil, or the basic question, ‘Why did the Third Reich have so many willing little soldiers?' I can’t answer that. But if someone will act like an authoritative a-hole for $10 an hour to ‘guard’ a street fair, then he’ll probably gas you for free if he thinks it’s in his nation’s interest.
So Happy Birthday, Roone. I hope you enjoy the plastic elephant that extrudes cigarettes from its anus. Because that gift forced me to come to terms with the amateur police state that is this city’s sense of security.
There is no higher price.
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omg.
i'm laughing, i'm ashamed, i'm (sort of half) inspired...
awesome post.
I work on south congress, so I feel your pain. Not that I have a bike to whiz past trendy onlookers, but I have had many near-death experiences involving angry motorists.
Thanks for the laughs. In fact, I printed this out to put on the bulletin board out work so we can giggle in the back room... at your pain and expense, of course!
I was there. The crowd was not trendy. It was vert family-friendly and brought out a great cross-section of the area population.
If you had bothered to notice, there was a 4 dollar admission that benefited the Bat Conservation group.
The pedestrian path on the west side of the bridge was open to foot traffic for all. So, all you had to do was walk your bike and no hassles. No reason to cuss out someone just because you didn't pay admission and didn't see that a viable alternative was readily available.
The bands I saw didn't all fit my taste in music but I did get to see Papa Maki, Del Castillo, Ray Wiley Hubbard and Guy Forsyth.
Remember it's that time in Austin and Texas that lf you don't like the weather or music just wait around a few minutes.
BRIDGE OF EXASPERATED, CONDESCENDING SIGHS
Wow, that's rich. That the author called *someone else* a "prick."
Austinist: open a sister website called, oh, how about, Mo-Realer-Austiner-Than-Thou-Ist. (dot-com)
You know, a forum for Genuine Pre-Original Slackers like Benjamin Reed to daily dish disdain upon the philistines and despots and GP-OS wannabes who insist upon un-groovying the classic vibe.
Sincerely,
The Devil
Hell (a banally evil planned community in Bastrop)
Dear The Devil:
Editors’ note: The opinions and ideas expressed in The Accidental Gentrifist are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook and belief of anyone else in the Ist network.
atrophied pectoral! north atlantic shrinkage! $6 funnel cake!
love it!
p.s. maybe you need to stop getting your friends bday presents...
:)
This is an utterly childish rant. I don't know the author, but I suspect another dopey white trendoid with a sense of entitlement (and an ironic beard).
really nice writing and story!
Hola, amigos. Jim Anchower here, your erstwhile occasional "The Onion" guest columnist ("The Cruise") rappin' at ya. This time on the you'd-think boring topic of publisher/columnist "editorial distance."
Word up to my man Benjamin "Do You Dare" Reed, aka Senor Straight-Up. Austinist, or Zweibel, or whoever is really signing your measly check^, *does not* have your back, in the end. They'll rush real quick to espouse whatever stupidly provocative thing you said, that happened to catch on with 51 percent of the readership. And they'll rush twice as quick to disown whatever provocatively stupid thing you said, that happened to bomb with the other 49 percent. (Even factoring for the middle 90 percent who didn't read it and therefore don't care either way.)
Does Austinist's providing you a guest columnist's forum suggest an endorsement of your views, even remotely, implicitly? No way, comrade. A quick traipse through the archives will prove that Austinist's "open-transom" submission policy has historically and randomly been as open to jack-booted righties as sport-sandaled lefties.
To put it more simply: their publishing your screed "does not reflect" anything about their sympathies. Necessarily.
Sincerely,
The Devil
Hell (an evilly banal planned community in Round Rock)
Dear "The Devil"
If you're going to keep authoring verbose, non-humorous diatribes on why everyone in Austin is a sanctimonious prick but you, at least take the time to set up a user account.
On second thought, I suppose if you did, someone might find out your email address and discover that you are, in fact, a 12-year-old serial masturbator whose mommy just bought him a new Dell so he can troll porn sites in underwear.
The girl who met me for lunch today told me that a bunch of people wrote some really mean and anonymous (or maybe not) replies to my second column. (Nice people usually send emails-- go fig.) It kinda bummed me out, and I sorta had this blood-boiling emotional reaction. I mean, it's pretty standard for all A-ist columnists to get a lot of mean-spirited and often anonymous shit heaped on their plate. But I guess I take stuff kinda personal sometimes.
But then, I got back home and booted up the Coleco. And lo-- what was I worried about? One guy didn't read it through, another thinks I have a beard or something. Somebody thinks I'm getting paid or that I care whether or not a blog editor 'has my back'. That one was my favorite, no offense intended toward Allen or Craig. I did smile at the 'bridge of sighs' bit. That was kinda funny. But generally, I have a harder time finding typos than I do dismissing this kind of criticism.
For the record, the guy (in the article) was a prick. And often, so am I-- I just figured I was telling a story, replete with semi-farcical editorial, not necessarily taking a stance that would lead me to be excoriated by the ombudsman of the satirical community. Geez. (What if I had the misfortune of wearing an Astro's t-shirt. I mean, are you going to hold me to that?) And who is Jim Whatsit? Never read his article, but I'm guessing he's not there to 'keep it light', as they say. Just glad he felt generous enough to put me in my place.
Also, one of the commenters has been reading my notes, apparently-- Next Monday's A.G. is actually about notions of authenticity and identity among Austinites. Yay! Although my own beliefs may not jibe with the above inferences about me, I promise I'll try not to shave, if it will help me better fit into a category you can label, and thus understand.
Until next time, BR
How can someone write on "things Austin" when they don't even know that we have a Bat Festival on Congress every year? Maybe it went away for a bit, but I remember going to it 4-5 years ago. Also, just becuase you're on a bike doesn't give you any more right than a car to use the bridge when its closed. And dissing the band that played for free - wow, I guess only Spoon would have made it an event worthy of a cover in your mind. This is possibly one of the most lame and selfish posts I've seen from an actual contributor on Austinist. Like they are asking of Lloyd Carr, while you won't be fired, please have the decency to resign.
"On second thought, I suppose if you did, someone might find out your email address and discover that you are, in fact, a 12-year-old serial masturbator whose mommy just bought him a new Dell so he can troll porn sites in underwear."
...talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
12:
Not knowing a big city event is going on? What a sin! It's called being busy. Or traveling. Or working long hours. Or not caring. All excusable. And the bridge wasn't "closed," there were wide entrances where crowds came in and out, and the f-ing post TOLD YOU the admissions sign couldn't be seen from at least one approach. Re-read, Dummy!
You make Lloyd Carr look like a saint. And who's 'Spoon', anyway? Wait--No! Did Fischerspooner break up?!
Yours,
"Guest"
P.S. - Hey let's start a new site where we can continue these super-cool chains of incognito insults-- We can call it: "The Anonymist"
I've been here 20 years and I never heard of a bat festival. I've heard of Eeyore's Birthday and Spamarama and Aqua Fest, but never a bat festival.
i'm busy. i was travelling this Labor Day weekend, wasn't even here for the event. To top it off, i don't even care about the BatFest.
But i was surprised to note upon reading Thursday's Chronicle that the Ann Richards bridge would be closed for two whole days.
I'm just sayin, is all...
This is at least the 3rd consecutive Bat Festival on the Congress bridge during Labor Day weekend (05, 06, 07). Maybe it happened before 2005 too.
If I get hit by a car while riding my bike, I'm not going to be mr. macho and ride it to the hospital. That'll be usable in court by the other guy's insurance company to prove my injuries aren't that serious. Instead, I'll cry.
Seth
Roone is also my favoritest bar keep of all time. And he has never, in my seven years of drunken history with him, had an ironic/non-ironic beard. What makes a beard ironic, anyway? I can imagine an ironic moustache, but in my estimation, a beard is just a beard.
Roo - here's to you and your non-ironic-baby's-behind-smooth-belated-birthday-face!
Brilliant! I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants. Well, OK, maybe I peed them a little. But it was definitely worth it. I can't wait for next week.
As a side note, do you think the bats appreciated having their sleep disturbed by a bunch of bands and noisy people?
Considering the festival was put on by the Bat Conservation International, I doubt you need to be concerned about the bats being disturbed. These peoples' jobs are to protect and promote the bats safety, etc so I am going to trust that they know what they are doing.
They want your trust AND you money? Sounds cool.
They want your trust AND your money? Sounds cool.
ROOOOOOOOOOOOOONE!
I believe the bats hated Flugtag.