Cross-Country Road Trip! Day 15-16, Mile 3224: Food and Music in the Land of Confusing Roads.

Austin is a green gem in the heart of the Texas hill country. Again the hill part is pretty funny to us westerners: the city has an elevation of just 720 feet.

But it's a relatively pretty town with lots of tree-lined neighborhoods and a highly developed food and music scene.

What isn't well-developed here is highway planning. Freeways run parallel to surface streets so closely that the GPS has a hard time telling them apart. Off ramps cross on ramps making merging off or on the freeway a constant high-speed struggle. We missed a lot turns before we began to get wise to the way things work (or don't), and then we missed a few more.

We cursed the road planners while thinking maybe it was just us that had the problem. Nope. On the internet there are lots of articles about Austin's confusing roads. The Texas Department of Transportation (apparently they do have one) rates Austin worst in the state for traffic.

But then there's the food.

We'd had a great meal the night before, and we started our day with lunch at a taco truck.

I had four tiny street tacos: suadero (brisket), two carnitas, and longaniza (chorizo). They were all delicious, but the suadero was so good, I had to have another. O had three mini tostados and some delicious beans in a green chile sauce.

The Cuantos Tacos truck doesn't look like much, but it delivers a lot of flavor. And the tree-shaded dirt lot has plenty of picnic tables. 

After lunch, we headed to downtown Austin and the Museum of the Weird. It was so weird we had to check it out.

It's a strange, fun amalgam of sideshow, cabinet of curiosities, and dime museum. Shows like this were very popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This is a tongue-in-cheek, but affectionate recreation of those bygone attractions.

It's all crammed into a funky old two-story building that the perfect venue for weird.

I don't know any women who can't relate to sparring with an entitled cock.

A mummy from the famous mummy museum in Guanajuato. We visited there in 2018.

The yeti hand of Pangboche.

Austin is bisected by the Colorado River (no, not that Colorado River). We took a short but lovely walk along the banks, before turning north into the historic downtown.

Turtles were enjoying the warm spring sun. The temperature was about 77. Perfect weather.

Critics of this downtown building complain that it looks like a bird. I think it resembles one of the eggs from Alien beginning to open.

Built in 1886, The Driskill Hotel is the oldest continuously operating hotel in Austin.

Old man Driskill perches at the apex of the facade. One of the cows with which he made his fortune selling to the Confederate army waits below.

The story goes that Driskill's ambition was to build the finest hotel in Texas. He succeeded, but the cost and his profligate ways soon left him broke. Shortly after the hotel was finished, he lost the deed in a poker game and died soon after.

The hotel is well-maintained, and the public spaces are suitably grandiose.

But beware--the place is famously haunted, by the cigar-smoking ghost of Driskill himself, a jilted bride who shot herself in Room 329, a child who fatally fell down the stairs while chasing a ball, and by the shades of LBJ and Lady Bird who apparently really liked the place.

This creepy painting is also supposedly haunted by a sinister presence that follows people until they leave the building.

Leaving sinister presences behind, we went to dinner at a small restaurant/butcher shop/deli. The delicious smell of wood smoke told us we were in the right place.

Dai Due prides themselves on sourcing almost everything on the menu, including wine and beer, from Texas. Since we had never tasted Texas wine we ordered a couple glasses of alglianico from Duchman Cellars, about thirty miles from Austin. They specialize in Italian varietals, and their alglianico is superb.

 

Feral pigs have apparently become quite a problem in Texas. The chef here has decided to do his bit toward eradicating the pests by serving as many of them as possible at his restaurant.

I helped by ordering wild boar confit with ginger bone broth, kale, cilantro, and peanuts. It was crispy on the outside and succulent inside, and the broth was exceptionally tasty.

O had the cold meat board with chicken liver mousse and strawberries, antelope mortadella, wild game nduja (a sort of spreadable chorizo), pig ham, and wild boar summer sausage, accompanied by pickled vegetables, toasted rye bread, and spicy seeded mustard. The nduja was a little too spicy for O, but I loved it. She delights in chicken liver, and though she usually won't eat mortadella, she liked the antelope version. I thought it was to die for.

But really all of it was quite good.

That morning I found an espresso place near our hotel called Kick Butt Coffee. I noticed that they had a stage set up in one corner and asked the waist-long dreadlocked barista who was playing that night. A six-band punk show, he replied, adding there was a $10 cover to benefit the Southern Poverty Law Center in their fight against racism.

Contributing to the fight against racism, as well as helping eradicate feral pigs in the same night appealed to us, so we swung by around 9:30.

The place was rocking, if a bit sparsely. Austin is filled with small music venues like this. Which is why it's a mecca for aspiring musicians

Here's the lineup. 

We'd already missed Headgasket, Bosh, and Yikes, but Noogy was kicking ass and taking names when we walked in.

They were great--raw, intense, and clearly passionate about their music. Young, dumb, and full of cum, as they say. The singer announced the they'd just been hired to open for the Adolescents (a famous old-line SoCal punk band, no longer adolescent, alas). They were so excited and hopeful about their big break, it was heartwarming to watch.

The lead singer had a Black Flag (another pioneering SoCal punk band) tattoo. It's great to see young people who appreciate the classics.

Next up was Hazard of the Industry, a name that sounds like trying too hard. They were good, but their energy seedmed more assumed than real, especially after the pure raw power of Noogy. They did, however, do a cover of Blitzkrieg Bop I think Joey would have approved.

The Scoundrels, on the other hand were great. Not quite at Noogy level, but full of aggression and exciting noise. O and I kept looking at each other with grins of pure pleasure. Love the Nazi Punks Fuck Off t-shirt.

We also missed the wonderfully-named Hans Gruber and the Die Hards.

Between sets, O talked to members of the band, offering heartfelt words of encouragement because that's how she rolls. They were gracefully grateful for the pep talk.

Several young women in the audience were dressed in full-on 80s punk gear. O asked if they were consciously dressing up or if the style was coming back. It was dress-up night, and they were having fun, as girls just want to do.

I liked that the bands, when their set was over, mingled with the crowd and cheered on the other performers, instead of slinking away in a spate of adolescent angst. They were all loudly and happily supporting each other. 

Noogy's drummer was wearing a rather unexpected backpack.

Band stickers were pasted everywhere. Waterproof, I assume.

Last up was Audio Sex Drive. They have a way to go, but they were trying hard to get there. We wished them good luck and bid them farewell mid-set, around midnight.

What a fun evening!

Next day, we slept late and lay around until almost 11. We decided to go wine tasting in the surrounding hills. 

We stopped for lunch at a Tex Mex BBQ food truck about five miles from Austin. Great menu, wonderful smells.

Long line. Always a good sign.

It moved pretty quickly, though, and soon we were feasting on smoked brisket and smoked carnitas tacos.

And smoked chicken tostados with vinegary cole slaw, pickled onions, and Mexican rice laced with cumin seed.

That was as far as we got, though. O developed a slight headache and didn't feel like drinking wine, so we headed back to town. 

We flirted with the idea of visiting one or more of the museums downtown, but decided a nap sounded better.

In fact, the more we thought about it, the less we felt like doing anything. O wasn't feeling great, so we canceled our dinner reservations, grabbed some soup dumplings and noodles at a nearby Chinese place, and called it a night.

San Antonio beckons.

P.