Love, love, LOVE the new “off leash” signs in Austin parks.
So, we’re not allowed to use a leash on the other side of this sign?
That authoritarian city council strikes again.
Your Editor often walks the doggies along Shoal Creek to take in all the flora and fauna, especially when as today it is running strong after a nice rain. However, in passing under the bridges, save one, olfactory sensitivity is no asset. The sense of smell triggers memories like no other, and the Shoal Creek bridges powerfully evoke the threshold of a dank alley in downtown San Francisco. If you know what we mean.
The great exception, of course, is underneath the 10th Street bridge. There it is redolent of bacon, which overwhelms the ambient residue of humanity, and this is the view as one emerges on the north side, shimmering like an oasis calling a thirsty man:
Doing its best to knock Austin off that Vegan top-ten list, no doubt.
Last night Mrs. Editor and I saw the awesome Lucinda Williams at Hogg Memorial Auditorium on the UT campus. This either means something to you, or it does not. No matter, we in the Blueberry Town household are big Lucinda fans, and will brook no judging in that regard.
None of this is to say that we are unqualified fans of fans of Lucinda. Especially fans who sit in front of me wearing big hats tilted up so as to occlude my view of the stage, to wit:
Please don’t do that.
If there is a “top 10” internet list that exemplifies Austin exceptionalism, at least within Texas, it might be this. Yes, this brisket-loving city is, according to the self-hating humans at PETA, one of the “top ten Vegan-friendly cities” of 2016.
We are not, it should be said, sympathetic to PETA in this respect. Sure, we rescue baby opossums and schlep them to the wildlife rescue folks, and give money to Austin Pets Alive! and so forth, but virtue-signalling stops where millions of years of primate evolution begins. Or, as the Editor’s brother has pointed out, if God didn’t want us to eat animals, He wouldn’t have made them out of meat.
Regardless, we note that PETA’s list, which ranks the supposedly vegan meccas of Detroit and Nashville ahead of Austin, includes no other Texan city. We warm our hands over small fires.