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livingdebToday I got a magazine in the mail, addressed to me by name, called Austin Monthly. I don't know why I got it. And it's very, very odd. If it didn't say Austin on the front, I would be almost unable to tell it was about the place I have been living for all but one of the past 22 years.
The magazine makes the city look like a place full of rich people who care about fashion and mansions. On second thought, it's full of add from people who want us to learn to care about this sort of thing.
Even ignoring the ads and near-ads, it has a lot of very odd quotes.
Page 64: "[30] Approximate number of brightly colored painted signs that read 'Please be kind to cyclists,' which have been posted along popular cycling routes in Austin." Doesn't sound familiar.
Page 115 lists 107 fun things to do in the summer. One of them is "Austin Fire Museum." Huh? (Page 127 explains: "housed in two rooms in the Central Fire Station ... open by appointment and on Austin Museum Day.")
Page 205, the first page of the restaurant guide, lists five restaurants, only one of which (1886 Bakery) I've ever heard of. "When Sandra Bullock decided to open her own restaurant, the novice restaurateur hit it right on the mark. ... The cuisine is best described as classic European meets the Old South. Not to be missed are the Bess chopped salad and macaroni and cheese gratin." Sounds good.
Page 212: "You can get almost any kind of cuisine from a trailer in this town: smoothies, crepes, snow cones, and, of course, tacos." Crepes? Where? I want trailer crepes!
I also learned a little bit about the history of Amy's Ice cream from the article on Amy Simmons. For my more Austin-ignorant readers, Amy's sells very rich ice cream in many flavors, maybe 25 on any given day. Some flavors are there every day like "sweet cream" (plain), Belgian chocolate, and dark chocolate. Most are available only sometimes, like hazlenut or banana pudding, and some perhaps only once like avocado or Guinness.
Then you can pay extra to add chopped nuts or strawberries or crushed candy or cookies to your ice cream, and they will mix them in for you, putting on a show similar to the show put on by Japanese grill chefs at Benihana's. They make a lot of noise and maybe throw it around a little more than you'd expect.
It turns out that Amy served ice cream through college at Tufts and then took a job opening new stores for Steve's Ice Cream. For my more Boston-ignorant readers, Steve's also has many flavors of ice cream with extras you can add (though I don't remember if they did a whole dance routine before serving it to you--I mainly remember a different ice cream store in Boston which was my first favorite super-ice-cream experience. They gave you a scoop of ice cream and then you had a whole salad bar area filled with ice cream toppings instead of salad fixings. You could have however much you could pile into your cup.
Back then I could eat my whole thing and then finish up the ice cream for four of my less able companions. Nowadays, I just order the "tiny" at Amy's, which is too small for mix-ins, but it's plenty yummy anyway.)
When I first moved to Austin, I was very happy to see that they had a Steve's. That place is gone now (I think a tanning salon is in its place). It turns out that it was when Steve's sold the company that she and her assistant manager decided to open up their own store.
(My apologies for anyone I have hurt with my horrifying use of parentheses spanning two paragraphs. Sleepy.)
(P.S. Who knew "restaurateur" has no "n"s? But even LiveJournal's spell check has heard of this word somehow. Weird.)
The magazine makes the city look like a place full of rich people who care about fashion and mansions. On second thought, it's full of add from people who want us to learn to care about this sort of thing.
Even ignoring the ads and near-ads, it has a lot of very odd quotes.
Page 64: "[30] Approximate number of brightly colored painted signs that read 'Please be kind to cyclists,' which have been posted along popular cycling routes in Austin." Doesn't sound familiar.
Page 115 lists 107 fun things to do in the summer. One of them is "Austin Fire Museum." Huh? (Page 127 explains: "housed in two rooms in the Central Fire Station ... open by appointment and on Austin Museum Day.")
Page 205, the first page of the restaurant guide, lists five restaurants, only one of which (1886 Bakery) I've ever heard of. "When Sandra Bullock decided to open her own restaurant, the novice restaurateur hit it right on the mark. ... The cuisine is best described as classic European meets the Old South. Not to be missed are the Bess chopped salad and macaroni and cheese gratin." Sounds good.
Page 212: "You can get almost any kind of cuisine from a trailer in this town: smoothies, crepes, snow cones, and, of course, tacos." Crepes? Where? I want trailer crepes!
I also learned a little bit about the history of Amy's Ice cream from the article on Amy Simmons. For my more Austin-ignorant readers, Amy's sells very rich ice cream in many flavors, maybe 25 on any given day. Some flavors are there every day like "sweet cream" (plain), Belgian chocolate, and dark chocolate. Most are available only sometimes, like hazlenut or banana pudding, and some perhaps only once like avocado or Guinness.
Then you can pay extra to add chopped nuts or strawberries or crushed candy or cookies to your ice cream, and they will mix them in for you, putting on a show similar to the show put on by Japanese grill chefs at Benihana's. They make a lot of noise and maybe throw it around a little more than you'd expect.
It turns out that Amy served ice cream through college at Tufts and then took a job opening new stores for Steve's Ice Cream. For my more Boston-ignorant readers, Steve's also has many flavors of ice cream with extras you can add (though I don't remember if they did a whole dance routine before serving it to you--I mainly remember a different ice cream store in Boston which was my first favorite super-ice-cream experience. They gave you a scoop of ice cream and then you had a whole salad bar area filled with ice cream toppings instead of salad fixings. You could have however much you could pile into your cup.
Back then I could eat my whole thing and then finish up the ice cream for four of my less able companions. Nowadays, I just order the "tiny" at Amy's, which is too small for mix-ins, but it's plenty yummy anyway.)
When I first moved to Austin, I was very happy to see that they had a Steve's. That place is gone now (I think a tanning salon is in its place). It turns out that it was when Steve's sold the company that she and her assistant manager decided to open up their own store.
(My apologies for anyone I have hurt with my horrifying use of parentheses spanning two paragraphs. Sleepy.)
(P.S. Who knew "restaurateur" has no "n"s? But even LiveJournal's spell check has heard of this word somehow. Weird.)