Editors’ Note: The opinions and ideas expressed in The Accidental Gentrifist are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook or beliefs of anyone else in the Ist network.

I know, the typical thing to do at year’s end is to either perform some kind of sentimental wrap-up of the year’s events, or perhaps make predictions for the year to come. Personally, I’d always go with prophecy. Never look back. But why just the coming year? I thought I’d make my forecast for a year a half-century down the line. I figure it'd be about as accurate as anybody else's prognostication for 2008, and probably more interesting.

And so, without further ado, here are my predictions for the futuristic year of 2058.

(With apologies to Eric Arthur Blair)

The run-up to the 2058 mayoral election will see Austin’s first competition between two ‘green’ candidates. No, I mean literally. Competition for the mantle of ‘most green’ will compel contenders to start taking a chlorophyll-based diet supplement that gives their skin a greenish pigmentation. On the downside, both candidates will be notoriously unproductive after sunset.

Pecan Terrace, the last neighborhood in East Austin to retain it’s native ‘color’, will attempt to preserve that feature by imposing an indefinite moratorium on home sales, first to people who drive Scions and Honda Elements, and later to everybody else. After criminalizing wireless internet connections, white belts, most male hair products, Stella, produce from Whole Foods, and people who ‘d.j.’ with iPods, the neighborhood will officially declare itself an ‘irony-free’ zone.

12 years after his death, former U.S. president Rick Perry will have his first bad hair day.

So many people will live and work and play exclusively in high-rise, multi-use condos, it will become its own subculture. By 2058, many condo dwellers will be shocked by the revelation that a large number of people also live ‘down there, in the view.’

Unchecked development will radically toxify the Colorado River, periodically making the city’s tap water hallucinogenic. Austin will be kept sufficiently ‘Weird,’ however to a degree many find uncomfortable. Additionally, ‘Keep Austin Weird’ t-shirts will no longer be allowed in Pecan Terrace’s irony-free zone.

In a bold attempt at conservation (intended to offset the fauna-specific ill effects of the aforementioned extra-dense development), UT geneticists will hybridize the Congress Avenue Bridge bats with the Barton Springs salamanders. Sadly, the attempt to simultaneously save both species from extinction will fail, as there is no moss growing under the Congress Avenue Bridge, and the bottom of Barton Creek has no flying insects, nor air. However, the devastation this Frankenscience wreaks upon the local food chain will also result in the sudden die-off of all grackles, and so the effort will be considered, in the aggregate, a success.

With the now finished U.S./Mexico border fence, and the near-complete destruction of America’s remaining civil liberties, Austin police will now simply round up all Mexicans west of Mopac who do not have a green card or cannot show proof of lawnmower. Each night after sunset in East Austin, any African American males under the age of 30 caught outdoors will invariably be enlisted into the cops’ own version of ‘The Most Dangerous Game.’

After a lightning storm, an ‘intentional community’ next to Pecan Terrace will unintentionally burn down, due in large part to the lack of water pressure in their Earth-friendly plumbing system. This will cause the infuriated residents of Pecan Terrace to riot, protesting the most egregious violation yet of their beloved irony-free zone.

And finally:

A man whose failed suicide attempt in 2011 left him in a coma for over four decades will unexpectedly wake up, only to discover that calling people ‘douchebag’ has newly come back in fashion. He will run screaming into the streets and fling himself on the light rail tracks. Only he’ll live, because there won’t be any light rail trains, as the tracks are the furthest the city’s progressed on that idea on the last 60 years.