What's in a name?

You may be asking yourself, why did this idiot name his blog Waterloo Sunset? Well, other than it being a completely amazing Kinks song, I happen live in Austin, Texas, which was once upon a time called Waterloo. The sunset part stems from the fact that I believe that this once great city is declining. (Warning, self righteous rant follows! Read at your own peril!)

Yes, I know its listed in a whole mess of top 10 city lists. Yes, I know it's grown by leaps and bounds, not only in size and population, but in wealth and fame. However, when I speak of the decline of Austin, I speak of the city's cultural, and yes, spiritual decline.

You see, I'm a firm believer in what I like to call the "Seattle Threshold." I'm sure we all remember what a hot spot Seattle was in the early 90's. It was the place to be. However, as more and more people believed that it was not only the place to be, but the place they ought to be, Seattle lost whatever it was that had made it the place to be in the first place.

This is the exact same thing that is happening in Austin. The more people that move to Austin, the more it loses that certain special something that made it the place people wanted to move to. In the interests of full disclosure, I moved to Austin in 1990, left for 5 years, and moved back in 1999 and have been here every since. The reason why I feel like I'm entitled to complain is that I didn't feel the desire to change the place. You see, its not the act of people moving here that has caused what a believe to be its decline. Its the apparent need of these people to change the city into something akin to the places they left.

Austin now boasts unbelievably high property taxes and there is an incredible lack of affordable housing anywhere within 10 square miles of the center of town(thanks Californians). Progress evidently means shutting down long established restaurants and music venues and replacing them with condominiums (there are so many condos in Austin at the moment, that many of them have to rent the units because they can't sell them all). Our main city park is taken over every year by a corporation so that it can make money off a music festival that a bunch of out-of-towners pay to see, only to have the park closed to the public for months on end after the festival so that the city can repair the damage caused by the festival. And that ain't all.

I could go on and on, but I won't do it right now. It's late, and if I were say it all now, what would I have to rant about later. Needless to say, this will be a main topic of the blog. Stay tuned.