When March rolls around, hundreds of music makers roll out to the city of Austin, flanked by armies of fans, suits, marketers and drunkards for the biggest weekend of live music in the world’s set list of mass performance. Parks become stadiums, bars become concert halls and holes in the wall live out their namesake in epic fashion as the entire city transforms into a boundless channel of song. The metamorphosis at once defies and embodies all commercial logic, tightening America’s proud grip on a culture of music that continues to grow new sets of wings as its body sinks further and further into the abyss created by its own evolution. In four short days, the amplified sound of this paradox fades away, vans and trailers fleeing into the desert as surely as they arrived for the onslaught.

I spend these four days not in the clubs of Austin, but on the streets, giving away free ice cream to springbound music lovers. Our mission is as improbable as that of the musicians: the massing and merging of happiness and commodity without a second thought given to profit. Bouncing between venues and street corners, we wave the banner of unwarranted happiness that has enveloped Austin. After 1,500 performances and over 11,000 free ice creams, South by Southwest 2008 has come and gone. It is a tiring triumph. All that remains is breakfast.

The Homesick Texan has already written extensively about her great big state’s great little secret. While central Texas at large has much to offer in the way of smoked meats, I shudder to think of anyone visiting the city of Austin with his hopes pinned on its mediocre BBQ offerings. The breakfast taco, distant Tex-Mex cousin of California’s breakfast burrito, is the capital’s true currency of flavor. Prepared on the daily at restaurants, taquerias and fast food outlets throughout Austin, these sunny pockets of the Lone Star fold any combination of eggs, meat, potato, beans and cheese into a wondrously bite sized building block of satisfaction. Whether they’re consumed as a prelude to a long day, in epilogue of a long night, or in the back of a 1969 Chevrolet Step Van atop a mountain of emptied ice cream boxes, breakfast tacos offer the diversity, value and convenience that cumbersome breakfast burritos only pretend to offer. They are the minutemen of hunger, bacon and chorizo peeking out from under a blanket of eggs and salsa, ready to offer their Tex-Mex style comfort at a moment’s notice.

After taking what may be my final bite of Austin for a full year, I throw my bags into Bessita and stretch out for the twenty hour drive to San Gabriel Valley. There’s gotta be a better way for me to tie this post into Supertramp’s Breakfast in America, but seeing how I’m still recovering from the trip, I’ll quit while I can still think.

Related posts:

1. Bacon the Question in Snook, Texas Like most delusional minds, I’ve always prided myself in...
2. Off the Wookiee at SXSW I’m headed once again to South by Southwest, where Ice...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 12:22 am and is filed under Austin.