Austining

The experts of cool themselves, Forbes, are at it again. In July, they spoke up to put Houston, San Antonio, Fort Worth, and Dallas ahead of Austin in their Coolest Cities list, sparking a lot of whining on the internet, and a response from me about how it doesn’t matter how cool we are, because Austin was way cooler in the Cretaceous Period anyway. Now, Forbes has deemed East Austin (like, all of it?) the 7th hippest neighborhood in the country.

East Austin has unseated South Congress and Travis Heights as Austin’s newest hipster home base, according to Nextdoor.com. It not only touts some of the most highly rated Mexican eateries in the country but also coffee shops, a farmers market, and food trucks like the East Side King parked outside of bars and music venues every night.

There you have it. If Forbes says it, it must be true!

This write up is annoying, but what’s worse are the responses following the release of the list. Writings about East Austin’s hip factor very often ignore the generations of families that have lived here, the small businesses that are maybe less than “hip,” the causes and negative impacts of gentrification, and the history of structural violence that led to the area’s historically low-income, minority population. They invisiblize the communities that exist here, often presenting a decrepit, impoverished area of town in need of revitalization, whose only merit comes from the new and hip.

An article at KVUE claims that the ranking was based “on a handful of qualities including those who live there, known by some as ‘hipsters.’” It also includes a quote that praises the overhaul of “dives with crackheads and you name it” into new, hip bars. The quote continues, “Now it’s great. Things have changed over here and it’s a great neighborhood.” Surely East Austin is more than just a haven for drug addicts and their ilk, waiting to be salvaged by the ultra hip? The article also states, “New business is bringing new life to the area. It’s a place where residents ditch the car to ride their bikes or walk to coffee shops, food trucks and bars.” Articles such as this one invisibilize the traditional members of this community, as though the only residents are the hipsters themselves. Any non-hipsters that do earn a mention are demonized, painting a picture of an unfavorable, corrupt mass that should and can be slowly pushed away by fusion food trucks and bars that serve drinks in mason jars.

I was hoping for a critical response from KUT, but their article is anything but. Culturemap’s write up was equally bland.

I’m also reminded of this Austinist article about the 78702 zip code, which acknowledges gentrification on the East Side, but then goes on to say that “this could be an incredible opportunity to achieve actual diversity,” because hipsters are going to eventually have (white) babies, and those babies will live here and do East Austin things and hang out with the minority babies from non-hipster families, and then Austin will finally have a diverse neighborhood. I’m not kidding. That’s what it says. Pukefest. There is nothing even remotely critical in the article – if you want to read anything of the sort, scroll down to the comments.

While I don’t expect an in-depth analysis on gentrification, a manifesto about race, or pages upon pages on the history of the East Side to make their way into articles about the Forbes list, the blatant erasing and/or dismissal of the area’s historically low-income, non-white residents is disheartening, insulting, and getting really fucking old.

I’m not hating on the hip aspects of East Austin – I ate a sandwich from The Vegan Yacht yesterday, I’m in love with Vintage Heart Coffee, I’m going to Cheer Up Charlie’s for a film screening on Sunday (and I’m going to ride my bike, nonetheless), I drink Hops and Grain beer, and I like to write little blog posts about such things. I love it here and I think that you should too, but there’s no need to pretend that East Austin is just one thing, and that the shifts here don’t have complex causes and a myriad of effects on the many types of people that live here.

Also: fucking Forbes? Really? Can we stop now?