Downtown Austin hotel the W has been undergoing renovations for quite some time, and these changes include three new restaurants and bars for the 200 Lavaca Street hotel. There’s the all-day American-French-Texan restaurant Serenade, presumably taking over what was previously the Trace restaurant. It’ll have a patio bar (aka courtyard) and two private dining rooms (one dubbed the Serenade Wine Room); expect beer, wine and cocktails from the Serenade Bar. Then there’s the new Blue Room, a reservations-only cocktail bar, taking over what was previously the hotel’s secret bar. Finally, there will be a cafe with French-ish vibes, 2nd & Roast, with coffee made with beans from Austin roasteries, bites, and pastries, along with espresso-based cocktails in the evenings. Remaining will be the Living Room Lounge, a bar that exists in all W hotels. The revamped Austin one will include an actually gold-colored bar, fireplace, and more. Everything is supposed to be completed and open/reopen in October 2024.

Tracking Austin food and drink events, pop-up edition

Hot dog pop-up Zee’s Wiener System’s got a couple dates this mid-summer on deck. First is a pop-up at Chestnut neighborhood Mexican restaurant Nixta Taqueria starting at 6 p.m on Wednesday, July 31; then it’ll be slinging franks at East Austin bar Kitty Cohen’s from 5 to 10 p.m. on Friday, August 2; and it’ll participate in creative space Canopy Austin’s Open Canopy event on Saturday, August 3 from 1 to 4 p.m. And then, it’ll cook up at West Austin cafe Better Half’s Sloppee Sunday event on August 4 starting at 3 p.m. where chef Zak Drummond will make something that is not a hot dog.

Paczki pop-up Custard Prison is hosting its next event on Saturday, August 3 at the downtown location of coffee shop and bakery Manana Dos. It’ll start at 10:30 a.m. The Polish doughnut menu includes strawberries and cream, fig leaf custard, apricot cobbler, and a take on Cinnabons.

Barbecue restaurant vacation

Central East Austin restaurant Franklin Barbecue’s annual summer vacation is happening right now. The 11th Street barbecue restaurant is closed from Monday, July 29 through Thursday, August 8, and it’ll reopen on Friday, August 9.

Chef changes

Brentwood pizza and wine restaurant Bufalina Due’s executive chef Eli Rodriguez is now the head chef of both that location and its East Austin location Bufalina.

Food truck relocations

Jamaican food truck Mr Pimento moved from its East Riverside location into McKinney neighborhood brewery Austin Craft Brewing as of July 28 at 4700 Burleson Road. Its hours are from noon to 8 p.m. Sunday through Thursday.

Nyam Sunshine Cuisine moved from its St. Elmo area location at Vacancy Brewing into nearby volleyball court Wooly’s Beach Volleyball at 514 East St. Elmo Road as of July 30.

Tracking Austin food events, guest chef series edition

Austin pitmaster Aaron Franklin and his restaurant Uptown Sports Club are collaborating with McKinney brewery Meanwhile Brewing for a summer barbecue series on Fridays from 6:30 to 9 p.m. each day rotating between Uptown Sports Club in East Austin or Meanwhile on Promontory Point Drive. August 2 will feature barbecue restaurant LeRoy & Lewis’s Evan LeRoy; August 23 will feature seafood truck Huckleberry’s Davis Turner at Uptown; and September 20 with Italian restaurant L’Oca d’Oro and pizzeria Bambino’s Fiore Tedesco at Uptown. On-site ice cream truck Besame and bakery Tiny Pies will serve desserts. The brewery is also releasing a special lager made for Uptown. All-event tickets are $165, which come with two drinks, dessert, and two dishes at each event; individual date tickets are $39 (though Franklin’s one on September 6th is sold out already). There’s also related merchandise for sale.

AUSTIN, Texas – The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is in the process of installing more than a dozen bat boxes at the Walnut Creek Bridge on I-35. The goal is to provide habitats for bats that live under bridges being demolished near Howard Lane and Wells Branch Parkway.

The multi-million-dollar Interstate 35 Capital Express North Project will come with the installation of 36 artificial roosts for the bat population in Austin. This summer, TxDOT says it’s installing 18 of those under the Walnut Creek Bridge along interstate 35.

“I am upset about the entire project. It has affected my neighborhood because I live on the east side close to the highway, so I don’t think they have given enough attention and thought and sympathy to humans, but I am glad they are doing something about relocating the bats,” says Austin resident Steve Wilson.

TxDOT plans to demolish a pair of bridges that the bats live in the crevices of during the construction of the project that was created to improve the flow of traffic.

“We have bats on bridges, two bridges, Howard Lane and Wells Branch Parkway,” says TxDOT biologist Tracy White.

According to TxDOT, the bat boxes range from $3,000-4,000 and are capable of providing roosting and maternity colony opportunities for thousands of bats.

“You pop it in, and you wedge it in, so these struts kind of lodge up against the beam so they fly here, land here, and then crawl up in roost. These bat boxes can last anywhere from upwards of 10 years, even 20 years,” says White.

“It looks like a nice system they have figured out for their relocation to get them started, it sounds like some type of artificial colony that would help them maybe jump start a new home here,” says Wilson.

TxDOT says the Walnut Creek Bridge was selected because it is distant from humans and close to natural resources in the area.

“I think it would be a reliable source of water and mosquitos for them and plenty of places to kind of perch and fly around without much hassle and confusing light at night,” says Wilson.

“They eat tons and tons of insects annually. They help farmers, we want a good functioning ecosystem, and we want to take care of our natural resources, which are these bats,” says White.

The latest installations will support the Brazilian free-tailed bats. TxDOT says it may take some time for the bats to find their new accommodations.

Construction for the I-35 Capital Express North project started in March 2023 and is expected to be completed in late 2028.

Austinites who want to catch a glimpse into the lives of the one percent may be surprised to learn that the pre-tax income required to be considered one of the highest earners in Texas amounts to $762,090 in 2024. So says a new study from SmartAsset that analyzed the top one percent income floors for all 50 states.

Compared to SmartAsset’s 2023 report, Texans now need to make $130,241 more in 2024 to maintain their status as one of the highest earners in the state. Last year, the income threshold was $631,849. For the second consecutive year, the Lone Star State maintains the 14th highest pre-tax salary needed to be considered in the top one percent of earners in the U.S.

To determine the income needed to be in the top one percent of earners in each state, SmartAsset analyzed 2021 IRS data for individual tax filers, which is the most recent year where data was available. Income data was then adjusted to June 2024 dollars.

Texas’ one percent income threshold is not too far off from the national average, which is $787,712.

The study further revealed 126,128 Texans are within the top one percent of earners. For more context, the U.S. Census Bureau says over 30 million people lived in Texas as of 2022, and Austin’s population grew to nearly 980,000 residents in 2023.

Connecticut continues to lead the nation with the highest income threshold required to be in the top one percent, with residents needing to make over $1.15 million pre-tax.

If Austinites aim to be within the top five percent of earners in Texas, the pre-tax income threshold is substantially lower, at $280,676. For many Austin residents, however, even achieving a “middle class” status means making between $59,604 and $178,830 a year, according to a separate SmartAsset report.

Meanwhile, the study says the median income in the U.S. comes out to roughly $75,000, and half of Americans are making even less than that. The income disparity is plainly obvious when high-income earners make (at a minimum) 10 times more than the national median income.

The report goes on to say top-earning Americans make up a “disproportionately large part of the tax base,” as their income results in paying a 37 percent federal tax bracket rate. (That is, if these high earners are even paying taxes in the first place, considering America’s wealthiest are already evading over $150 billion a year in taxes.)

“While state and local level taxes may impact the spread of high earners in those areas, the cost of living can also be drastically different nationwide,” the report said. “As a result, what it takes to be considered a top one percent income earner can differ by over $500,000 from state to state.”

The top 10 states with the highest thresholds to be considered in the top one percent of earners in the U.S. are:

• No. 1 – Connecticut ($1,152,254)
• No. 2 – Massachusetts ($1,113,662)
• No. 3 – California ($1,035,673)
• No. 4 – Washington ($989,649)
• No. 5 – New Jersey ($975,645)
• No. 6 – New York ($965,645)
• No. 7 – Colorado ($865,700)
• No. 8 – Florida ($852,206)
• No. 9 – Wyoming ($843,121)
• No. 10 – New Hampshire ($811,098)