![]() A river ran through the heart of the city, several lakes spread out upstream, and the urban grid was laced with still-abundant creeks and springs winding through forested hills pocked with hidden valleys and canyons. Austin was about as pleasant as Texas could be in its rugged, semiarid, sun-scorched splendor. Physical location had everything to do with it. It was always an outsider's city, contrarian and tolerant by nature, a refuge apart from the state surrounding it. ![]() The creative mind and a strong sense of place made Austin Austin. Instead, we've put together a series of smaller pieces from the book that, taken together, help explain what went on, and is going on, down there. Patoski's book covers a lot of dusty ground - too much for a simple excerpt. But how did this city, one that has such an ineffable but palpable personality and spirit, become what it is - for better and worse? Joe Nick Patoski's recent book, Austin to ATX: The Hippies, Pickers, Slackers & Geeks Who Transformed the Capital of Texas, answers the question both empirically and spiritually, tracing the many people and the many places they built along the way towards establishing this weird, idiosyncratic, flat little planet. Austin is a lot more than just the annual stampede of South By Southwest currently enveloping it, which the event has done with ever-increasing intensity since 1987. ![]()
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