Welcome to AUSTIN

Austin is the capital of the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 15th-largest in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in the nation from 2000 to 2006. According to the 2009 U.S. Census estimate, Austin had a population of 757,688. The city is the cultural and economic center of the Austin–Round Rock Metropolitan Area, with a population of 1,652,602 as of the July 2008 U.S. Census estimate—making it the 36th-largest- and 2nd-fastest-growing metropolitan area in the nation.

The area was settled in the 1830s on the banks of the Colorado River by pioneers who named the village Waterloo. In 1839, Waterloo was chosen to become the capital of the newly independent Republic of Texas. The city was renamed after Stephen F. Austin, known as the father of Texas. The city grew throughout the 19th century and became a center for government and education with the construction of the Texas State Capitol and the University of Texas. After a lull in growth from the Great Depression, Austin resumed its development into a major city and emerged as a center for technology and business. Today, Austin is home to many companies, high-tech and otherwise, including three Fortune 500 corporations, Dell, Whole Foods Market, and Freescale Semiconductor.

Austin was selected as the No. 2 Best Big City in "Best Places to Live" by Money magazine in 2006, and No. 3 in 2009, also the "Greenest City in America" by MSN. According to CNN Headline News and Travel & Leisure magazine, Austin ranks No. 2 on the list of cities with the best people, referring to the personalities and attributes of the citizens. Austin was also voted America's #1 College Town by the Travel Channel. Austin was ranked the fifth-safest city in part because there are fewer than 3 murders per 100,000 people annually.

Residents of Austin are known as "Austinites" and include a diverse mix of university professors, students, politicians, musicians, state employees, high-tech workers, blue-collar workers, and white-collar workers. The main campus of the University of Texas is located in Austin. The city is home to enough large sites of major technology corporations to have earned it the nickname "Silicon Hills." Austin's official slogan promotes the city as "The Live Music Capital of the World," a reference to its status as home to many musicians and music venues. In recent years, many Austinites have also adopted the unofficial slogan "Keep Austin Weird"; this refers partly to the eclectic and progressive lifestyle of many Austin residents but is also the slogan for a campaign to preserve smaller local businesses and resist excessive commercialization.

History

Prior to the arrival of settlers from the United States, the area that later became Austin was inhabited by a variety of nomadic Native American tribes, including the Tonkawa tribe, the Comanches, and the Lipan Apaches.

When the Texas Congress formed a commission to seek a site for a new capital to be named Austin, Mirabeau Lamar, second President of the new formed Texas republic, advised the commissioners to investigate Waterloo, which was then indeed chosen. Edwin Waller was chosen by Lamar to survey the village and draft a plan laying out the new capital city. The original site for the capital was narrowed to 640 acres (2.6 km²) that fronted the Colorado River between two creeks, Shoal Creek and Waller Creek, which was later named in honor. The fourteen-block grid plan was bisected by a broad north-south thoroughfare, Congress Avenue, running up from the river to Capital Square, where the new Texas State Capitol was to be constructed. A temporary one-story capitol was erected on the corner of Colorado and 8th streets. On August 1, the first auction of 306 lots was held. The grid plan that Waller designed and surveyed now forms the basis of the streets of downtown Austin.

Initially, the new capital thrived. But Lamar's political enemy Sam Houston used two Mexican army incursions to San Antonio as an excuse to move the government to Washington-on-the-Brazos. Remaining Austin residents responded to the threat by forcibly keeping the national archives in their city in defiance of President Houston's attempts to bring them to Washington (Texas Archive War). Once the annexation of the Republic of Texas by the United States became official in 1845, delegates wrote a new state constitution in which Austin was again named the seat of state. The Texas State Capitol was completed in 1888, and claimed as the 7th largest building in the world.

In September 1881, Austin public schools held their first classes. The same year, Tillotson Collegiate and Normal Institute (now part of Huston-Tillotson University) opened its doors. The University of Texas at Austin held its first classes in 1883.

The Austin music scene began attracting national attention in the 1970s with artists such as Willie Nelson and venues such as the Armadillo World Headquarters. Today, Austin is known as much for its cultural life as its high-tech innovations.

Travel

Carnaval Brasileiro

It all began around 1975. At that time there were many Brazilian scholarship students at UT taking a six-week long intensive English course. Faced with the prospect of a February without Carnaval, they decided with their local friends to hold their own celebration. Carnaval '75 took place in a small room at Austin's Unitarian Church. The two hundred or so revelers had planted a seed.

For the next several years the party moved further downtown, drawing ever larger crowds. Carnaval '76, held at the Bucket (a bar) on West 23rd Street, drew over three hundred, who struggled to keep their footing in the spilled beer. A highlight of that evening was the thunderous collapse of a low stage under the weight of fifty wildly drumming Brazilians. They just looked at one another for a second, saw no one was hurt, and partied on! A group of devoted "Brasilianistas" continued to organize a Carnaval that began growing rapidly beyond their control.

The last party to retain the original University focus was held at the Dobie Center in 1977, with over five hundred participants. The size of the crowd and problems with the home-style sound system pointed up the need for a large hall with professional sound equipment. As the number of scholarships dwindled, the Brazilian students were gradually submerged into a Carnaval that Austinites were making their own.

At this point Mike Quinn entered the picture. Quinn, the producer of Horizontes, a daily radio program dedicated to the music of Latin America on KUT-FM (Austin's NPR affiliate), was in 1978 a salesman at Discount Records. Quinn undertook the organization of Carnaval '78 as an outlet for his own creative interests in Brazilian music.

The celebration, held at the double-tiered Boondocks Club (later Club Foot, and even later a parking lot) on East 4th Street in downtown Austin, was the take-off for Carnaval Brasileiro as it exists today. Carnaval '78 packed in over a thousand bodies, sweating and gyrating to the drumming of Austin's first Carnaval group: an ad hoc assembly of local musicians including ethnomusicologists from UT and members of Beto y Los Fairlanes, all under the direction of Dr. Gerard Behague of the UT Department of Music. Though the drumming was improvised, the atmosphere was magic and it set the stage for the live music featured at every Carnaval since. That party went on until 4:00am, and the club had to repaint the dance floor the following week!

Accordingly, in 1979 Carnaval moved into the legendary Armadillo World Headquarters (now defunct), where Austin's first Brazilian band, Os Imperialistas do Samba (later Unidos de Austin), played to a capacity house of 1800. The night's three-dollar tickets were scalped outside for as much as twenty-five dollars.

In 1980 Carnaval Brasileiro finally moved to the warehouse-like Coliseum, which, despite two sojourns at Austin's 7,000 capacity Palmer Auditorium (1981 and 1984), has become its home. The 1980 Carnaval also inaugurated the classic series of Austin artist Guy Juke's poster and T-shirt designs. The event continued to grow in size and sophistication throughout the '80s.

Meanwhile, organizers have searched for the right formula to make the party sizzle. The earlier costume contests were dropped because they interrupted the flow of the music and dancing.

Pecan Street Festival

Originally produced, funded and conceptualized by French Smith III it was taken over through legal action by the Old Pecan Street Association in 1997. Roadstar Productions, Smith's company, continued to produce it for eight more years. In the fall of 2006, the Old Pecan Street Association selected Special Events Management to run the festival.

Film

Austin hosts the annual Austin Film Festival, which draws films of many different types from all over the world. In 2004 the city was first in Moviemaker Magazine's annual top ten cities to live and make movies. The 2007 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival included Pete Townshend, Iggy Pop, Tom Morello, and Rickie Lee Jones.

Austin has been the location for a number of motion pictures, partly due to the influence of The University of Texas at Austin Department of Radio-Television-Film. Films produced in Austin include Man of the House, Secondhand Lions, Waking Life, Spy Kids, Dazed and Confused, Office Space, The Life of David Gale, Miss Congeniality, Doubting Thomas, Slacker, Idiocracy, The New Guy, Hope Floats, The Alamo (2004 film), Blank Check, The Wendall Baker Story , A Scanner Darkly, and most recently, Grindhouse, How To Eat Fried Worms and Bandslam. In order to draw future film projects to the area, the Austin Film Society has converted several airplane hangars from the former Mueller Airport into filmmaking center Austin Studios. Projects that have used facilities at Austin Studios include music videos by The Flaming Lips and feature films such as 25th Hour and Sin City. Austin also hosted the MTV series, The Real World: Austin in 2005.