As the growth of downtown continues to explode, so does the need for commuter friendly alternatives - enter the bike. Granted nothing new, but with Lance Armstrong's recent unveiling of plans for a commuter biker shop, he really is bringing biking back. According to Armstrong: "This city is exploding downtown. Are all these people in high rises going to drive everywhere? We have to promote (bike) commuting."...

There will be a town hall meeting for Phase One of the Downtown Austin Plan this Saturday morning at the Austin Convention Center. ROMA Design Group and HR&A Advisors will present their initial proposed downtown plan, including reshaping Downtown into unique districts, achieving affordable housing and moving forward with comprehensive transportation planning. There will be an awesome slideshow and sessions on transportation, affordable housing and the districts....

Flyer courtesy Downtown Austin Alliance Holiday Sing-Along, Tree Lighting and Congress Ave. StrollSaturday, December 1Texas State Capitol (1100 Congress Ave)6-9pm[info]The annual Holiday Sing-Along, Capitol Tree Lighting and Congress Avenue Stroll takes place tomorrow evening. Here's the schedule of events, courtesy the good people at the Downtown Austin Alliance: The evening starts at 6:00 p.m. when crowds gather on the south steps of the Capitol to sing the songs of the season during John Aielli's Holiday......

Image from SpyYard Texas Book FestivalSaturday November 3 - Sunday, November 4Downtown Austin [map]Free[info]We didn't think ten tips for the Texas Book Festival were enough, so here are ten more to help complicate things and confuse you you navigate the throngs of bibliophiles stalking the Austin streets this weekend. Keep in mind that seating and space is limited at most of these events. Arrive early and often! Saturday 10:00 - 10:45 Kristin Gore (Senate Chamber)......

Several Austin TV stations were honored at last night's 5th annual Lone Star EMMY Awards. One of the evening's big winners was local PBS affiliate KLRU, which garnered 6 awards out of its initial 21 nominations, including three for Downtown (a co-production of KLRU, the Downtown Austin Alliance and Action Figure) and one for the Central Texas community-driven "collaborative collage," Docubloggers. CBS 42's investigative journalist Nanci Wilson scored two wins, for her special feature stories,......

Will Wynn renewed calls for an Austin streetcar at today's Downtown Austin Association Annual Luncheon. Moving forward would require two votes in the 2008 election - one to allow the project and another for bonds to finance it. The new plan would include connections to the airport (along Riverside), downtown, UT, the Triangle and Mueller. We are generally fans of mass transit, rail especially, and naive optimism is our default position, so a streetcar sounds......

Interested in finding out more about the actual options for living in downtown Austin? The Downtown Austin Neighborhood Association has its 4th Annual Downtown Living Tour this Sunday, September 30th, from noon to 5 pm, featuring a combination of existing residences, units in new buildings, and sales models of upcoming developments. The tour will start at noon at the lobby of the Carr-America building located at 300 West 6th Street (across from The Belmont). Non-VIP......

ACL Previews Interview: Patterson Hood Del McCoury Band, Preservation Hall Jazz Band Jon Dee Graham, Kevin Devine, and Ike Reilly Assassination Beau Soleil & Will Hoges Rail Road Earth It's Official: Bob Dylan & His Band Set to Play Stubb's Aftershow So You Wanna See An ACL Taping Trent Summar, Steve Earle, & DeVotchKa Interview: Crowded House It's Official: Bob Dylan & His Band Set to Play Stubb's Aftershow Weekly Features The Accidental Gentrifist:......

The City of Austin has posted a survey seeking local input about the Downtown Austin Plan. The planning process is being led by ROMA Design Group and is supposed to address issues such as density codes, funding mechanisms, transit routes, and affordable housing. The survey is available in English and Spanish and will be up until Oct. 12 or until they get 10,000 responses. Questions include "If I had $100 dollars to spend on......

David Owen has an interesting article in last week's New Yorker (the Aug. 20 issue - only the abstract is online) discussing light pollution. The bottom line is that leaving the lights on all the time (mainly streetlights and building-exterior lights) not only brightens the night sky, but is also economically wasteful, environmentally damaging and probably causes cancer. It also doesn't decrease crime or have any other real benefits. Lights like the "glare bomb"......

Two weeks ago, Katherine Gregor's Chronicle column discussed a recent study by professors Louise Harpman and Jason Sowell from UT Architecture, sponsored by the Downtown Austin Alliance. The study concluded that Wooldridge Square Park (between Guadalupe/San Antonio and 9th/10th Street) needs more community support, event programming, and landscaping improvements. Wooldridge Square, along with Republic Square and Brush Square, was one of four public squares included in the original grid for the city of Austin......

Remember how Beyonce fell on her ass at a concert and said she didn't want anyone posting videos of it? The folks at Shout Mouth have compiled their Top Ten Most Embarrassing Stage Falls (with video accompaniment, of course). Do you remember the last State of the Union when Bush honored Julie Aigner-Clark, founder of Baby Einstein (a series of infant educational programs)? Yeah...those programs don't actually work. Scary: Shitload of Germans pile on......

The 81-year-old Austin Athletic Club is set to be demolished to make way for a skate park Dennis Wayne Harvey Jr., a carjacker who shot a woman in the chest last November while attempting to steal her car and subsequently forced another woman to drive him to Downtown Austin, was given a life sentence [Edited -- see comments] A toddler in Kyle was killed after being accidentally run over by his mother Austin's quirkiest......

Downtown Austin played host to a minor car chase this past weekend, when a man who'd approached several people at gunpoint attempted to flee in his SUV. A some point around closing time early Saturday morning, a 9-1-1 caller alerted police that a man waving a gun had been hassling a group of folks in the Red River District, between Sixth and Seventh streets. Police later tried to flag down his Ford SUV after they......

TUESDAY [24] party • KLRU, Downtown Austin Alliance and Action Figure host a party for Season 3 of "Downtown" at Seaholm Power Plant (7:30pm, Free, Bring a Canned Good) POSTPONED books • Rob Neyer and Jim Baker present Baseball Prospectus 2007 at BookPeople (7:00pm) comedy • Tig Notaro and Steve Burr at Cap City Comedy Club film • AFS Essential Series: "Funny Games" at Alamo Downtown film • "Shaft" with Free 40! at Alamo......

Austin-based Peel have been together since late 2004, and Austinist writers have recommended that you catch their show for almost two years! A youthful blend of indie pop with noisy drums, keyboards, and multiple vocalists, Peel wouldn't sound at all out of place on late 80's college radio. Their self-titled debut album finally arrives in early April. Last week, we spoke to Peel's Allison Moore about favorite bands, dive bars, and the business of......

First Night Austin Schedule 2-5pm Family Festival 5:30-6:30pm Grand Procession 7pm Family Finale at City Hall 7-11:30pm Evening programming Midnight Grand Finale First Night Austin takes over downtown this Sunday, kicking off the second annual festival with three hours of family-friendly activities, performances, and art installations. From hip hop freestyling to Appalachian-style clog dancing, there promises to be enough culturally-rich distractions to entertain even that obnoxious nephew of yours who'd rather stay home to......

First Night Austin Schedule 2-5pm Family Festival 5:30-6:30pm Grand Procession 7pm Family Finale at City Hall 7-11:30pm Evening programming Midnight Grand Finale First Night Austin takes over downtown this Sunday, kicking off the second annual festival with three hours of family-friendly activities, performances, and art installations. From hip hop freestyling to Appalachian-style clog dancing, there promises to be enough culturally-rich distractions to entertain even that obnoxious nephew of yours who'd rather stay home to......

First Night Austin Schedule 2-5pm Family Festival 5:30-6:30pm Grand Procession 7pm Family Finale at City Hall 7-11:30pm Evening programming Midnight Grand Finale First Night Austin takes over downtown this Sunday, kicking off the second annual festival with three hours of family-friendly activities, performances, and art installations. From hip hop freestyling to Appalachian-style clog dancing, there promises to be enough culturally-rich distractions to entertain even that obnoxious nephew of yours who'd rather stay home to......

First Night Austin Schedule 2-5pm Family Festival 5:30-6:30pm Grand Procession 7pm Family Finale at City Hall 7-11:30pm Evening programming Midnight Grand Finale First Night Austin takes over downtown this Sunday, kicking off the second annual festival with three hours of family-friendly activities, performances, and art installations. From hip hop freestyling to Appalachian-style clog dancing, there promises to be enough culturally-rich distractions to entertain even that obnoxious nephew of yours who'd rather stay home to......

Official Poster of First Night Austin 2007 by Peat Duggins After the tremendous success of last year's inaugural festival, First Night Austin returns to downtown this New Year's Eve with an all-day program full of music, art, theatre, dance, and more. Begun in Boston back in 1976 as a massive public gathering to ring in the new year through "art, ritual, and festivity," First Night events are now held all over the world, from......

It took an official study paid for by the Downtown Austin Alliance and City of Austin to conclude the obvious: East Sixth Street has an overabundance of bars. Washington, D.C.-based consultants at ERA/Downtown Works, already working with the city on other downtown retail strategies, recently conducted a survey of the college-friendly span of Sixth Street from Congress Ave to Red River. According to their findings, the five-block-long area has a whopping 57 bars -- most......

We've all been there: every weekend at every bar in Downtown Austin, men are faced with the same questions. Do I look up? Do I look down? Could I pop my neck without some guy punching me in the face? It's that great social complex of the public bathroom, and it's been confusing men worldwide since the introduction of the urinal. We tried to find out who invented the urinal and were unsuccessful. But,......

Completion of the first leg of the new Capital MetroRail is less than two years away. The 32-mile-long Red Line will run between Leander and Downtown Austin, with stations positioned strategically near the new Northwest Austin development, Highland Mall, Lakeline Mall, Plaza Saltillo, and more. Currently, both the rail vehicle and many of the stations are still being designed, but they're already promising that the former will include Wi-Fi connections. Over the next two weeks,......

Wanna check out "the finest improv comedians in Austin" (Austin Chronicle) who "kick some serious ass" (Austinist...hey, that's us!) as they dish out this week's news with an improv slant? God knows, with the riptide of outrageous news this week -- from yet another drunken Bush to stories of idiot mamas (oh wait, was that redundant?) -- there's so much spoofable news, you're sure to catch a big, fat, snarky wave. Wanna go for......

Austin's fifth annual Pride Parade, hosted by the Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, kicks off this Saturday evening and serves as the cornerstone for a bunch of events happening all weekend. Last year's parade drew about 40,000 spectators and 1,300 participants, with this year's roster looking much the same. The parade route starts and ends on South Congress just north of riverside, making its way north to 4th Street before lopping over to San......

Beginning at 9:30am today, Downtown Austin will be wireless. That’s right folks, no more sitting at coffee shops acting like you’re working on your masters thesis when you're really just surfing MySpace or playing Halo. Or whatever the hell it is all of y'all are doing. Now you can do it in Republic Square Park next to a urinating transient in the shade of a lovely tree. In preparation for next week’s World Congress on......

When permit issues kept the TXRD Roller Girls out of their very own Thunderdome they went in search of the ultimate space for their next bout. Well, they've found it; the Austin Convention Center. Not only in the heart of downtown Austin, but during the heart of SXSW 2006. While they continue to work on issues with the Crockett Center so they can move home, they have been able to procure an awesome temporary......

M O N D A Y [ 2 1 ] music · Elizabeth McQueen and Jason Robards at Threadgill's music · MC Chris (Adult Swim), Snmnmn, The Ergs, America is Waiting, Bring Back the Guns and Karaoke Underground at Emo's music · Redrum and Music Lab put on Battle of the Bands 3! holidays · Marble Falls' Walkway of Lights kicked off last weekend, but you can see it through December 2nd - "meander through......