This is a part of the city of Austin that was bustling in 2023, right before the city re-elected a segregationist mayor who considered it his job to give the city over to greedy white men. This was not the only business on South 1st Street, which was a very popular area with a lot of long-term, thriving businesses. My family spent time on this street when I was a child and as an adult, and a lot of people enjoyed living close enough to Congress Avenue and the downtown area, but far enough to feel comfortably separate from the crowds. Parking became more of an issue, but in Texas, car culture is a real thing shared by multiple cultures, not just the dominant narrative.
This is the same building two years later in 2025, on the same prime real estate that made the building attractive in the past. Obviously, the business shut down, but more than that, it is no longer surrounded by a strip of healthy businesses. I recently returned to Austin to handle some business, and it was depressing watching the bus go past all the areas that used to house so much life, regardless of what day it was. This was during SXSW, when people were supposed to be crowding into the city and making it more of a party than a place to be, and filling up buses. People might think that the change was due to the imperial transition, but as I tried to find pictures of being out in public in 2024, I could only find flower pictures because I was so busy working overtime from January through May, and even parts of July. Two people worked themselves to death and died onsite at my previous job, which was when I decided that I was limiting my time and getting out while I still could. The “Greed is Good!” mentality only works when there are ways to achieve equilibrium and not follow such a mentality.
Eventually, when it becomes so expensive that a decent life is impossible, there comes a time when people ask themselves what the point is. Part of living in a community is the capacity to build, and if there is no way to build anything for a long enough time, the area starts to not feel like home. Humans are social creatures, and if companionship is impossible because of a lack of the oxygen of money, and if all the jobs keep one just barely surviving, one can survive elsewhere. There is nothing special about struggling in on location versus another.
Again, this is not simply an issue with “liberal” versus “conservative,” because Austin has been a city run by Democrats for decades. Schools were forced to be integrated by the courts in 1983, but this city has been hailed as a “liberal bastion” since the 1990s, when Dell was making an international name for itself–which I remember, because I was there. This is simply what happens when money matters more than community, and how short-sighted individuals take the life out of anything they touch. By the way, the following picture was also taken in 2023.
Chasing A Dying Empire 