Unless you already worked from home, in which case we salute you, this whole coronavirus pandemic thing is shaking up your daily routine. For reasons unknown, the world has collectively agreed to use videoconferencing software Zoom for conducting business while distancing ourselves socially, and one nice feature those folks give us is the ability to load…
architecture
At Eighth and Congress, Demolition’s Underway for the Hyatt Centric Tower
After a brief pause in local construction due to pandemic-related concerns, work is spinning back up at sites around Austin — and one of them is really, really visible, smack in the middle of downtown at the corner of Eighth Street and Congress Avenue. Internal demolition and construction work at the future site of the 31-story, 246-room…
In 1918, Austinites Fought a Pandemic by Getting Drunk and Doing Heroin
“Avoid crowds, coughs and cowards, but fear neither germs nor Germans!” That’s the sort of helpful social distancing advice you’d find between the pages of the Austin American-Statesman circa 1918, when the Spanish flu pandemic’s chilling effect on city life briefly rivaled the closing days of World War I for prominence in local news. Social gatherings of any…
Cocktails to Go Could Save Your Favorite Bar. Texas Isn’t There Yet.
The allegedly business-friendly, freedom-minded inclinations of the Texan government fall apart pretty fast when you take stock of our state’s alcohol regulations, a bizarrely complex assortment of laws dating back to Prohibition and informed by, no joke, the 1930s public policy research of a eugenicist think tank. We got a nice reminder of these laws and their general backwards-assedness earlier this month, when…
See the City’s Silent Streets as Austinites Stay Home
Downtown resident Andrei Matei got some attention in the news last week for his candid photos of a bizarrely empty Austin, as the city effectively shuts down to prevent the spread of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak — and just in time for our new shelter-in-place orders, which took effect in Travis and Williamson Counties last night, Matei has released a new…
Current Events Aside, Downtown Austin’s BBVA Tower Plan Is Extremely Narrow
If keeping up with the news over the last week has you more than a little burnt out, we’re here with a welcome distraction — the 60-story apartment and office tower planned by BBVA USA and developer Ryan Companies at 321 West Sixth Street in downtown Austin is extremely narrow. How narrow, you ask? Very. But you wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell that…