Grupo Fantasma - Mentiras (Live on Austin City Limits)

SXSW (without the wristband)

It's crowded in Austin this week, and not everybody's wearing boots and little straw cowboy hats. Skinny jeans, bad hairdos, lots of black. Must be South by Southwest week!

South by Southwest (SXSW) is a multimedia festival and conference comprised of three main parts:

• The SXSW Music and Media Conference, which "showcases hundreds of musical acts from around the globe on over eighty stages in downtown Austin," and features a massive trade show and panel discussions.
• The SXSW Interactive Festival "celebrates the creativity and passion behind the coolest new media technologies."
• The SXSW Film Festival and Conference "emphasizes all aspects of the art and business of independent filmmaking."

The music festival is the main attraction. Over 1,700 bands will be in Austin this week playing one or more gigs, from unknown acts to the buzziest new bands to the biggest names: R.E.M., Vampire Weekend, My Morning Jacket, Yo La Tengo, Van Morrison, Dizzee Rascal, The Breeders ... the whole list is here.

Problem for most folks is that you need a wristband to get into most of the shows, and they ain't cheap! Lucky for those who work during the week and don't have lots of dollars, there are also a few free events going on. Thursday night, for instance, there was a free concert at Auditorium Shores. It was a beautiful night. Grupo Fantasma, a latin band that is tight enough to convince Prince to fly them to Vegas once a week to back him in concert, played first. They had the crowd dancing and smiling. Switching things up next was Del the Funkee Homosapien, long time Bay Area rapper, who performed a lively set with A Plus (from Souls of Mischief) and a funny looking white DJ named Zach Hendrix. Finishing up the night was Austin favorite Spoon, who just cleaned up at the annual Austin Music Awards. Spoon was joined by the Fantasma horn section for some of their new, horn-inclusive songs, and really pleased the people as the show wound down in the dark. As usual, I toted my camera along. More free stuff today, so come back soon to catch my pictures from the Mess With Texas Party.

Rachel ready for free tunes

Jose Galeano and Adrian Quesada, Grupo Fantasma

Matthew “Sweet Lou” Holmes, Grupo Fantasma


Timbales!


Fantasma saxes: Gene and Josh

Del the Funkee Homosapien

Some bad hair

Zilker Park Kite Festival

Zilker Park is more than just the home of the annual Austin City Limits Music Festival (ACL), which is what brought us to Austin for the first time in 2005. Zilker has it all: the wonderful waters of Barton Springs (natural fresh water swimming pool), the massive soccer fields that are a leash-free zone for dogs, great botanical gardens, the Zilker Hillside Theater, a nine hole frisbee golf (or, um, "folf") course, the Zilker Zephyr miniature train, the Umlauf Sculpture Garden, a polo field and a nature center. It is also home to tons of annual and special events:

• The aforementioned ACL


• Annual Rugby Tournament


• Zilker Gardens Festival


• Ballet in the Park


• Blues on the Green


• Freedom Festival and Fireworks


• Zilker Park Fall Jazz Festival


• Zilker Park Tree Lighting and Trail of Lights


• Austin Shakespeare Festival


• Annual Summer Musical (broadway musical) in the park


• Barton Springs diving championship

And the Kite Festival. Rachel and I went to the Zilker Park Kite Festival a couple of weekends ago. The annual festival features a bunch of different kite-flying competitions, plus vendors, demonstrations on kite building and other kite-related stuff. We were expecting to see a hundred or so kites in the air. WRONG! It happened to be probably the windiest day since we moved here, which might have been why the crowd was so huge. There must have been 500 or so kites flying at any given time. Butterflies, boats, spaceships, dragons, boxes, Spiderman, Sponge Bob and a giant whale. Plus corndogs! It was a sight to see. I pity the fools who got too close to the trees along the perimeter, some of which gobbled up 20 or more kites. Here's the picture show:

The scene at the Kite Festival

Who wants a jumbo corn dog?

Pufferfish?

40 foot whale kite

Kites beware!

Back from Bonaire

In case you wondered why Rachel and I haven't posted in a while, it is mainly because we spent a week in Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles, hanging out with my family and enjoying a little sun and surf. Bonaire is one of the "ABC Islands," along with Aruba and Curacao. It is a small island of about 14,000 people, who are happy, laid-back and friendly. There aren't tons of tourist attractions, but it is a great place for scuba diving, windsurfing or kiteboarding. The main language isn't Dutch, English or even Spanish, but Papiamento -- so next time you're in the vicinity, don't forget to tell the people you run into "Bon Bini."





Rachel came down with a cold, so we didn't get to do everything we had wanted to, but we did enjoy seeing much of my family for the first time since we left CT. Despite the health setback, we did manage to tour the island, take lots of pictures, take a sunset sail on the Samur, have great family meals at Capriccio, Mona Lisa and Antriol, and feast on the 10+ pounds of Salt Lick barbecue we brought with us on the plane.

So now we're back, and the posts should be coming again.

Here are a few highlights from the trip.




Juliette (niece) enjoying some sand by the Sand Dollar resort


Beckett (nephew), Cameron (niece) and Jackson (nephew), along with Urs (owners' son), on the Samur


Myself and Chris (bro-in-law) getting ready for the Salt Lick meat-down


Urs climbing the Samur's rigging


Flamingo


Gabe (nephew), flashing some sweet bling


Tiny former slave huts


Iguana, surveying the sea by the Sand Dollar


Family shot, Samur

Art on Deck: Skateboard Art

Skateboarding to me is more artform than sport. It doesn't hurt to be a good athlete who can jump high, but the aim of a true skater is to be smooth, stylish and innovative.

An often overlooked part of this "art of skateboarding" is the artwork that graces the bottoms of decks (the wooden platform of a skateboard). If you've skated, when it came time to buy a board, you probably remember being drawn to a certain one. Maybe it was the shape, maybe it was the skater who endorsed the board, but more than likely the artwork was why you picked that board to skate. Whether it be a simple pattern (like my second board -- a Brand X), the all-too-common bones and skulls imagery, or a more abstract graphic, every board makes a unique statement.

This underappreciated form of art was the subject of a unique art show held this past weekend. The show, called Art on Deck, was at a small gallery called the United States Art Authority. There were perhaps 200 decks from a variety of eras, including a few very old boards from the pre-Dogtown age. Most of the boards were from the present back to the mid-80s, when I used to skate. There were lots of decks from skaters I admired: Steve Caballero, Tony Hawk, Mike McGill, Natas Kaupas and Christian Hosoi. My favorites were the boards painted by the great classic street skater, Mark Gonzales. Not too many skaters did the artwork on their decks. Mark Gonzales was an exception. Gonzales always skated with as much style as he put into the designs on his boards. Not surprisingly, he eventually moved on to painting on more traditional media (Donald Trump and Sean "Puffy/Puff-Daddy/P-Diddy/Diddy" Combs are two collectors).

Here are a few pics I took at the show. Sorry about the glare!


Some folks checking out the show in the bare-bones space of USAA


A wide selection of music-inspired decks (above and below)



A couple of the oldest boards (above and below)



Signature of a legend


Dogtown's iconic logo



A selection of Powell & Peralta Mike McGill decks (my first board was a McGill)


Some of Gonz's decks


The artwork of Mark Gonzales


Closeups of Gonzales' decks (above and below)

That lovely February weather

A friend of ours promised that once February arrived, the weather would get really nice: lots of days in the 70s and plenty of sunshine. So far, it seems he was right. It was a beautiful week here in central Texas. Hard to stay indoors, so Lester and I took our first trip to Auditorium Shores park. Auditorium Shores, located across the river from downtown, has one of Austin's dozen or so leash-free dog areas. The park features walking/running trails that are part of a network that runs through downtown and beyond. We walked the section from South First Street over to Zilker Park and back. I was happy to finally get a look at the Stevie Ray Vaughan statute. Lester was more happy about swimming in the (other) Colorado River.


Dog central at Auditorium Shores


Lester in the Big City


Pictures of the Stevie Ray statue