Burgers + Blues: On Saturday, Fall Creek Vineyards hosts a "Burgers + Blues" Independence Day celebration from 11am to 5pm, which includes a lunch service from noon to 2pm. For $16, guests can pair a wine tasting with a Bubba burger, sweet potato fries, cole slaw, and a brownie, while kids can participate (sans wine) for $8. Advance reservations are requested (325.379.5361) but not required. Blues music from Bill Rives and Corporal Punishment will also be featured throughout the afternoon. Fall Creek Vineyards is located in Tow, TX - about 85 miles NW of Austin. more ›

On Saturday, July 4th, the Austin Yellow Bike Project (YBP) held a free concert and released seven hand-painted, sunshine-yellow bikes at Wooldridge Square Park. People decorated the bikes with streamers, hand-made flags and pithy statements like: “Have Fun or Die.” The refurbished bicycles - “Free to Ride, but Not to Keep” - will serve as sharable public transportation. Pete Dahlberg, who drives a pedicab, organized the bike giveaway. The concert by The Invincible Czars closed with the 1812 Overture (minus the cannon sounds) and attracted a crowd of around a hundred. Grant brought his brown duck, Puddles, who rides around in a cage strapped to the back of his bike. “They make great pets,” he said. “You throw her up in the air and she flies right back.” That is how yellow bikes are supposed to work: once freed, they should stick around. more ›

Oh say can you see Francis Scott Key sitting on a picnic blanket nursing a michelada on the velvet green meadows of Auditorium Shores tonight as the Texas National Guard Salute Battery's 70 millimeter cannons (!) keep time with the Austin Symphony and a fireworks display to rival the decadent aerial ordinance of the Hunan Dynasty explodes overhead? We can. more ›