Austin: It's all uphill from here. Right?

We're all having the same conversation.

This is a weekly newsletter sent on Fridays. The Dispatch provides interesting news bits you may have missed and short cultural context to better understand the Capital City. Our goal is to keep you informed enough to get through a dinner party.

Looking east towards Rainey Street from the Congress Avenue Bridge, March 2016

Do you still like Austin?

There is a single, pervasive conversation that everyone seems to be having right now, and it usually begins with this question:

Do you still like Austin?

Car rides, bar stools, living room sofas, restaurant banquettes, playgrounds — these have served as the settings for deep dives into what it means to love and live in a place that has changed. In its recent 50th anniversary issue, Texas Monthly had a statistic that shocked me. Last year, Austin was the 11th biggest city in the U.S. Fifty years earlier in 1973, Austin was the 56th. By comparison, Houston changed two spots, going from the 6th biggest city to the 4th during the same time period.

One result of this growth is huge swaths of the city are now unrecognizable. Anyone who has been here for any amount of time has their own spot, the place where it suddenly dawns on them that things have changed. East Fifth Street along the railroad-turned-light-rail line. West Sixth between Congress and Lamar. South Congress south of Ben White Boulevard. The Drag. Rainey Street.