Austin’s 30 best reasons to stay in the Texas capital city

It’s a trendy thing to hate on Austin. It doesn’t matter if you live here, if you recently bolted for New York or Los Angeles, or if you’re merely a coastal elite with nothing better to do than take shots at somewhere besides New York or Los Angeles. It’s a popular pastime. Austin is an expensive, hot, highway-clogged metropolis, and it’s only getting more expensive, hotter, and the highways are multiplying.

But for every drawback, Austin has more than a few desirable attributes, a type of idiosyncratic magic lurking around every skyscraper corner. The haters and losers will tell you that the underground music scene is dead, that the city is a cultural backwater, that it’s an aesthetic nightmare. We’ll counter with secret punk shows in a tunnel, gorgeous public art installations, and the majesty of a Texas sky at night.

And then we’ll add in Franklin Barbecue, the state botanical garden, and the king of outlaw country. Here’s why we’re sticking with Austin.

Sorry, St. Louis, Kansas City, Memphis, and other southern cities who claim smoked meats as their own. Austin is the nexus of barbecue, and not just because a magazine that offices here says so year after year.

Between Franklin, la Barbecue, Micklethwait, Interstellar, LeRoy and Lewis, Distant Relatives, Valentina’s (it’s just outside city limits, but we’re claiming it), and about 10 new joints that’ll open to rave reviews by the time this story publishes, we’ve cornered the market.

Even Lockhart, which has been eclipsed by Austin, is still better than a majority of what’s waiting for you elsewhere.

Every trip to South Austin’s End of an Ear is a gonzo trip through recorded music history. Expertly curated with essential listening and impossibly rare vinyl, the store is simultaneously music nerd’s paradise and also where you can find the new Taylor Swift LP for your niece (or yourself, no judgment).

Not only is Scholz the oldest continually operating business in Texas, it is the first beer garden in America. It’s a gathering place for students, political organizations, watching sports, and drinking beer from (mostly) a very specific region in Europe. 

The Live Music Capital thing is overblown and probably incorrect, but if you’ve spent more than a week in Austin, you know that there is live music outside of Stubb’s, the Continental Club, and about 30 bars on Sixth Street blasting shitty white-guy blues on any given day.

Aside from even the next tier of clubs booking transgressive stuff like the recent This Is Austin, Not That Great punk and metal extravaganza at Mohawk, Chess Club, and Empire Control Room, we’re also still doing the stuff that was supposed to be gone years ago.

A barely legal Converge show in the middle of Rainey Street on a Monday afternoon? Ask-a-punk-or-raver house shows? Secret stuff I can’t divulge lest I get shunned? It’s all still here. You just gotta know where to look.

Yes, our two seasons are The Surface of the Sun and No Electricity For a Bit (with a brief, two-week period called An Outdoor Table Will Be Fine), and sure, our tangled web of highway overpasses dotted with personal injury lawyer billboards are aesthetically unpleasing, but Austinites thrive outdoors. There’s hiking on the Barton Creek Greenbelt, biking or running on the Ann and Roy Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail and Boardwalk, boat excursions on Lake Travis, paddle boarding on Lady Bird Lake, trips up Mount Bonnell or out to Red Bud Isle, and a plethora of other green-space adventures to be had in Austin.

Wood paneling and vintage Budweiser signs don’t make a dive a true dive. We have real-deal dives all over the city.

Authentic dives abound: Workhorse, Silver Medal, the Cloak Room, the Little Darlin’, Buddy’s Place, the Carousel Lounge, Barfly’s, Hole in the Wall, the list goes on. Cheap beer, Black Sabbath, and Townes Van Zandt blaring from a jukebox, no bullshit.

Can you get a Frito pie anywhere? Probably. Are there other cities where you could be served customizable versions at a birthday party, a barbecue joint, on the back patio of a bar, at James Beard-nominated restaurants, and at a wedding reception? Don’t think so.

One time, I showed up to a third job interview with the CEO of a tech company (dark times) who was wearing flip-flops and cargo shorts. He told me I didn’t need to wear a tie.

That was more than 10 years ago, but the feeling remains. One silver lining of Austin’s tech culture is that the folks migrating here from Silicon Valley don’t care to gussy themselves up. It’s also (spoiler alert) very hot here most of the year. 

That means unless you’re going to the Austin Symphony or getting married, you can follow the guidance laid out by the Alamo-obsessed Phil Collins: no jacket required.

There’s a reason Barton Springs is the first thing everyone recommends to visitors other than our intemperate climate: it’s a natural wonder.

I have jumped in mid-winter during freezing temps and many times when it’s triple digits outside, and every time I do it, I am refreshed to my core. Also works for hangovers.

A (special) sub-set of the dive bar with a distinctly Central Texas flair. Between Donn’s Depot, the Broken Spoke, and the White Horse, and beyond, there are any number of tried-and-true halls in which to two-step with a stranger or your special sweetheart.

I know, I know. The war between San Antonio and Austin over eggs inside a tortilla will last longer than the Crusades, but please move to Chicago or New York or Los Angeles and report back on the breakfast tacos.

Just as I don’t make my Brooklyn friends try The Good Pizza in Austin when they visit, neither do they attempt to woo me with migas tacos when I’m on the East Coast. There’s a reason Austin expats need to scratch this itch at Veracruz or Mi Madres or Pueble Viejo directly upon landing in our fair city. 

Richard Linklater’s Austin Film Society is both an essential arthouse theater and a boon to local filmmakers through training and mentorship. 

And yes, SXSW catches a lot of (sometimes deserved) flack, but the film portion regularly holds world or U.S. premieres for enormous films. The 2023 Best Picture Winner Everything Everywhere All at Once had its world premiere at SXSW 2022. The buzzy Ben Affleck movie Air held its surprise world premiere in March. Everything from Knocked Up to A Quiet Place had its first screenings right here in Austin.

Too often is this world-class, still-retro-feeling burger joint recognized merely as the filming location for Matthew McConaughey’s catchphrase. In a city of fantastic burgers, Top Notch is a cut above, and for our money still one of the tastiest and most unique burger joints around.

Yes, our airport sometimes runs out of fuel, loses power, or otherwise does not function normally due to a rapidly increasing population and multiplying festival weekends. But it’s still a top-tier major airport.

It’ll never be Long Beach, the greatest airport in America, but it has a few things going for it. Designed by former UT architecture dean and current UT professor Lawrence Speck, the Barbara Jordan Terminal is characterized by an abundance of natural light and designed with intuition in mind. Visitors to Austin, particularly ones coming from LAX or JFK or other enormous, hectic airports, relish in the (mostly) chill nature of ABIA.

And criticize Tacodeli all you want, but at least the airport makes an effort to fill the main terminal with local food options, save for the lone Starbucks.

No one will ever consider Austin as a city rich in fine arts collections, especially not with Houston’s Menil Collection and Rothko Chapel, the Dallas Fine Arts District, or San Antonio’s McNay, the first fine arts museum in Texas.

The Blanton, UT’s art museum, was, for its first 50 or so years, most famous for a fight between the university and its soon-to-be-famous architects redesigning the building over some red tile roofing. But since that dustup, the university has added two gorgeous permanent installations to campus: the Blanton’s “Austin,” a modernist building designed by Ellsworth Kelly, opened in 2018, and James Turrell’s “The Color Inside,” one of the artist’s Skyspaces located atop the Student Activity Center.

Speaking of UT —  no, not the University of Austin, a very real college — for all its faults and shortcomings, having a top-tier liberal arts institution in the heart of the city is good for, well, a lot of things.

Having a downtown research institution is good for the local economy, and in Austin, it’s largely responsible for Austin’s emergence as a Big Tech City. (Locals are, of course, split on whether or not that is a net positive.) The COVID-19 vaccine was developed in part due to research by UT Austin professor Jason McLellan. Hell, in a year, it’ll be an SEC school, if chanting a conference name is your thing.

The campus also boasts a presidential library, those aforementioned public art pieces, the still-kicking Cactus Cafe, the new Moody Center for basketball games and concerts, and broadcasts news and live concerts on campus from KUT and KUTX, Austin’s NPR affiliates.

His deep and robust musical catalog aside, Willie Nelson is an unassailable symbol for all that is righteous into his home state and adopted city. Nelson has raised his voice for LGBTQ+ rights, cannabis legalization, free speech, voting rights, and against discriminatory policies. And every year, just outside the city, he throws a big public party with his friends, who include Terry Allen, Willis Alan Ramsey, Charley Crockett, Weyes Blood, and many more, at the Luck Reunion.

Iconoclastic and tough as nails, the women of the Texas Roller Derby have been smashing into each other and wowing crowds for more than 20 years on its banked track. Texas Roller Derby re-ignited the worldwide roller derby craze in 2001, and as such, garners an extreme level of respect in the sport worldwide, providing the settings for both the 2005 reality show Rollergirls and the 2009 film Whip It.

Y’all like wildflowers? In 2013, Hill Country Reporter named the state botanical garden, located in Southwest Austin, the best place in Texas to see them. Between the Field of Light installation and ongoing programming for adults and families, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower center is an underrated Austin gem. We just wish Athena was still around to see it.

And Austin Animal Center runs the largest no-kill shelter in the United States — in the state with the most number of animals killed in shelters. Despite overcrowding, the city-run shelter manages to keep more than 18,000 animals safe each year. It’s the same story at Austin Pets Alive and the Austin Humane Society, and at smaller shelters throughout Austin. 

Journalist and Texas-ologist Stephen Harrigan once called the Balcones Escarpment enormous mass of craggy limestone “geology’s most fateful mark upon the surface of Texas.” Harrigan also wrote about how the 300-million-year-old geological wonder, which runs roughly down I-35 between San Antonio and Austin, is essentially the gateway to the west. 

Speaking of, the Balcones Escarpment created the Hill Country as we know it, a nebulous, beautiful expanse of land that reaches Austin. And it has everything: Devil’s Backbone, Johnson City, Texas wine country in Fredericksburg, Luckenbach, gorgeous rolling hills as far as the eye can see, infinity breweries, scorpions, swimming holes, towering live oaks, and, as the song goes, big, bright stars at night.

Now clustered downtown, some are in danger of losing leases with impending development, in particular Coconut Club, Neon Grotto, and the Iron Bear. (Oil Can Harry’s, Austin’s longest currently operating gay club, is in a temporary space due to downtown development.) But the spirit of the community is still alive at the aforementioned venues, and at bars like Cheer Up Charlie’s, which books diverse, queer musicians, drag performers, and more.

Y’all like trees? When they aren’t knocking our power out for a week at a time, we have some pretty majestic ones. Our most famous of all, the 500-year-old Treaty Oak, was, according to some accounts, a sacred location for Central Texas Native tribes. It’s even in the American Forestry Association Hall of Fame for Trees, declared in 1927, “the most perfect specimen of a North American tree.” And we have a lot of ’em.

The 2012 opening of Circuit of the Americas means that Austin is one of just a handful of U.S. cities that hosts Formula 1 races. If watching cars whiz by isn’t your thing, for a fee, you can drive your own car on the track during allotted days. Most days, you can race go-karts on the massive track. Hell, on Bike Night you can cycle under the stars on the F1 track.

Have a rebellious spirit? You can go yell in front of the Texas Capitol or Greg Abbott’s house or Ted Cruz’s office on any day of the week alongside dozens or thousands who feel similarly. The blueberry in the tomato soup is where all the magic (weird, regressive legislation) happens.

Stargazing in Austin used to mean a quiet night on Mount Bonnell (also a good thing to do). But because of all these reasons I have listed above, Austin has become a place to rub elbows with famous folks — and it’s not just Matthew McConaughey and a few extras from Friday Night Lights anymore. 

Elon Musk surfs on couches and owns a ton of businesses. Joe Rogan opened a comedy club. I promise I’ll get to the good ones soon. Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness lives here, Emma Stone has a big house in West Austin, James Marsden calls the city home, and a little birdie even confirmed to me that Kate Moss lives here now. We lost Sandy to Los Angeles recently, but she still calls Austin perfect. She’ll be back.

Perhaps I’m pandering here, but the Alamo City is about an hour away, depending on traffic. Do with that information what you will.

Making fun of Austin? That’s been an Austinite rite of passage since before Elon Musk or Joe Rogan were born.

We get that we’re a (relatively) Normal City surrounded by lawmakers who want to make reading books other than the Bible or The Fountainhead illegal. It’s part of our daily lives navigating clogged highways, losing power when Old Man Winter rears his head, and paying $7 for a breakfast taco. Do we like it? No! But the gallows humor is to die for, and most other cities take themselves way too seriously.

And if you move away, your rights are revoked.