It feels like Friday...but it's only Thursday.
We've been down that dusty road on other blogs before and it wasn't very exciting then either.
Tomorrow starts an event which always leads to one of Austin's big traffic jams of the year. Yep. It's the Austin City Limits Music Festival. A chance for ticket buyers to sit in the dirt in the blazing sun and watch bands endeavor to deafen 100,000 people while killing off the grass at Austin's most cherished public park, all for the profit of C3 Productions, and lesser profit for all the vendors they attract.
I wouldn't care one way or another if I could not hear the monotonous bass beat of the music until 10pm every evening. We have three days this weekend and three days of next weekend to "enjoy" this. And we're already mapping long, long workarounds for the blocked roads. Be on the alert for out of town drivers!!! And whatever you do, don't park on the street in Rollingwood, Texas (the neighborhood adjacent to the park) because the police there will write such big parking tickets that even the one percent will twinge...
Will I go down and photograph this mess? Not a chance.
The plan to hold a huge event in the park was okay 20 years ago when "big crowd" meant 10-20K visitors. Now? Not so much. I thought that's why the taxpayers subsidized Formula One's race track on the far east reaches of town. As a new "mass" venue. They've got the parking, the seating, the space and no close in neighborhood to torture. The only thing they don't have is any profitable programming beyond Formula One. Travesty.
Boring.
If you bought a watch this week, Kirk, tell us about it. I loves me some wrist watches.
ReplyDeleteHi Biro, It's no big deal. I got into the habit a couple of years ago of buying myself an inexpensive watch on the month my birthday falls in. I can be a bit rough on watches. Some don't survive the pool even though most of them are rated to 20 ATM and have screw down crowns. This year I bought an Orient Komasu Mako III. It's a dive watch that features both automatic winding and the open to hand wind. No batteries need apply. A nice bezel in 120 clicks. It has a deep blue face and matching color on the bezel. About $215. Not bad. Not outrageous. I love the hand wind-able mechanical watches and this one, at 41mm, side to side is just right. It survived this morning's swim just fine...
DeleteI have an iWatch and I'm sort of addicted to it, especially for the alarm functions. It also relays messages from my cell phone so I can just glance at my wrist and read them. It also tells me what altitude I'm at (my house is at 7,500 feet exactly) the day and date, there's a compass function and sunrise and sunset, all on the same face. Regular Veblen-goods wrist watches...I have one, and once had two, but my wife stole one and had some links taken out, and they'd give you a somewhat accurate estimate of the time, but nothing else. Or maybe the date. Anyway, I like my iWatch. I also think that talking about watches is basically boring. -- John Camp
ReplyDeleteJC, I have an Apple Watch around here somewhere. Got it as a birthday present a few years back. It got boring really quickly. I wouldn't call a $200 watch a Veblen good but I'll let you argue that one with MJ. I like analog watches. They are easy to read at a glance. And I don't have to keep charging the damn thing all the time. I have enough camera batteries to charge. It's like magic when watches can work in perpetuity without batteries or charging of any kind. Mine never tell me the altitude but I live about 450 feet above sea level so knowing exactly is hardly mission critical....
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