Austin native Rebecca Rosenberg has been living in South Korea teaching English, and she wants to share her experiences abroad with all of Austin. Austinist believes that we could all use some Korean culture. The other morning I woke up with one of those hangovers belonging in a special class. I call it a please, someone, shoot me in the face morning. Sure, it was a Sunday after the Boryeong Mud Festival [dear lord,... more ›

LAist is experimenting with blogging dates from J-Date, but finds the best men are found offline. Some date vicariously online and that is one reason why porn is big -- really freaking big -- so they ask if they should cover XXX since the heart of it lays in the city's San Fernando Valley. A writer grapples with her food porn photography obsession, another gets censored on Flickr, one gets scooped by the LA... more ›

If you're hiking, consider charging up your iPod, as Seattlest finds out that a man lost during a hike was found by the glow of his iPod. That cleverness seems to be devoid in cops who were using police cruiser instant messaging clients - although we imagine IMs "so are you nakie" to be included in cop shows, just for realism. If only the cops were busting the Hummer-driving jerk who made a poor... more ›

Austin Earth Month continues this weekend with Austin Nature Day, a "celebration of the beauty, vitality, and diversity of natural resources that contribute to our high quality of life." All around town tomorrow, over twenty local eco-conscious and/or cultural organizations have set up various events -- and, holy crap, there's a lot going on! Some of the events that we think you outta check out include the Xeriscape Garden Tour (Umlauf Sculpture Garden, 3:30pm-4pm), Westside... more ›

The park will also have some parking, a restroom and eventually a pump house to provide for irrigation. The $9.2 million project is being funded by a 1998 bond that provides the city money from a tax on car rentals. Take that, ya damn tourists. more ›

Northwest Austin's Bull Creek Park is a, idyllic, quiet refuge replete with ancient trees, a bubbling brook and a nearby hiking trail that winds lazily through the hillside. On Saturday mornings we like to take our dog there for a dip in the water. It's a nice spot to reflect quietly on the week's insanities. And, evidently, it's also a great place for wild group orgies. Yesterday Austin police arrested 16 people after an... more ›

With the weather finally cooling down, this weekend affords the perfect opportunity to venture out to Texas Hill Country, which will be playing host to several wonderful Fall-flavored events: more ›

[This post by future Austinist contributor Ami]Have you ever been hiking on the greenbelt and noticed all those crazy people climbing the rock faces along the way?  Well, we have.  Not only that, but we’ve also noticed all their cool gear and how much fun it looked like they were having.  So we decided that we, too, wanted to learn to rock climb, dammit.  To that end, we signed up for lessons at Austin Rock Gym and boy, did we learn a lot in just four weeks.  Although climbing at an indoor gym is very different from climbing outdoors, the introductory class was an excellent way to learn the basics and get all kinds of essential information so that hopefully, down the road and with enough practice (and when the daytime high temperatures drop, say, another twenty degrees), we can transfer our newly-learned skills to the greenbelt or other outdoor climbing venue.  The class we took was called “Climbing 101”, and met once a week for four weeks.  There are two Austin Rock Gym locations, but we opted for the south gym because we heard it focused more on the use of ropes, and that seemed really cool to us.  The cost of the lessons was a bit steep, but included a one-month membership at the gym as well as use of their harnesses and shoes during lessons.  And hey, we rationalized that, since we’ve been told for years by the media that we’re worth L’oreal makeup and we don’t wear makeup, we could spend the money that we would have otherwise been spending on overpriced cosmetics to take this climbing class.  If you don’t wear make-up, feel free to use this rationalization for yourself.  more ›

Drive north out of Austin, past the Round Rock suburban enclave, past the Americana kitsch of downtown Taylor, and finally past the somber, looming corn refineries in Circleville, and you'll find Granger Lake. A large manmade lake fed by the San Gabriel River, it's fairly well known for good fishing and boating. What's not as often recognized is that it offers a spectacular hiking trail as well. Known as the Comanche Bluff Trail, the... more ›

This weekend's sunny respite from last week's uncharacteristically muggy weather offered Austinist another chance to head out to the Hill Country for some Spring trail hiking. This time we headed out to Inks Lake State Park, about an hour and a half's drive northwest near the city of Burnet and Canyon of the Eagles. more ›

High on Austinist's list of things we love about this city are our countless lakes, springs, and rivers. Diving into Barton Springs is the perfect remedy for a scorching summer day, and in any season Town Lake provides the ideal backdrop for an early morning run. On a higher level, we feel that natural resources like these serve as the cornerstones of our outdoor community. Without them, we'd likely be as desolate and dry as, say, everywhere else in Texas. Consider just for a second Austin stripped of our hiking trails, swimming holes and green fields and you quickly see that we'd be giving up a significant part of our identity, as well. That's why we're happy to have the Save Our Springs Alliance, whose chief purpose is to protect these environmental resources (namely, the Edwards Aquifer, Barton Springs and the greater Hill Country region). more ›

This past weekend, exhausted from all the goings-on of Friday and Saturday nights, Austinist temporarily fled Austin to seek refuge in the Great Outdoors. We headed out west along HWY 290 to Pedernales Falls State Park, where we hoped to go on the 4-Mile Loop hike. Upon arrival at the Park's Headquarters, we were dismayed to learn that the river was too dangerous to traverse, what with all the recent rain we've had. As a decent alternative, we opted to try out the 8-mile Wolf Mountain Trail. more ›

For a couple of months, we've noticed that when police or fire trucks pass nearby, there is a cacophonous response from Blunn Creek preserve in Travis Heights. It seems that there is an urban coyote population in Austin, and it's not just in North Austin. more ›