Sometimes There's a Tangle

These two poodles briefly got entangled in some kites strings when the toddler rushed the dogs. Everyone was extricated without injury.

Kites!

It's not easy to find a place to launch your kite or strategically place your blanket at the kite fest.

Shark Attack

Downtown buildings appear to be under attack during the kite festival last weekend. This is one of Austin's best. It's free and Zilker fills with lots of adults and kids, picnics, dogs and uncountably many kites.

Austin Film Festival Awards

The Austin Film Festival award for Excellence in Television went to Norman Lear this year. Here he watches the proceedings after being introduced by Mary Kay Place and accepting his award.

Austin City Limits

That mass of ants in Zilker Park at sunset? That's the Austin City Limits festival last weekend. The second weekend should be roaring now. That's Lady Bird Lake in the foreground. Thanks to our friend Jackie for the photo.

Keepin' It Something

It really seems to be a little self-conscious for a city to have a Keepin' It Weird Festival (and 5K, always a run involved!) but we do. These gents were passing by our building on their way to said event one day last month.

Hats Off (and on) to the Derby

There was a Derby Fest in the street below us for the running of the Kentucky Derby. Lots of hats, but the gents sans hats seemed to be watching me take their picture.

Flying Pig

This sign was by the booth for the Foreign & Domestic restaurant at the recent chili cook-off at Jo's on South Congress, benefiting the Sustainable Food Center. I like the flying pig logo. It's a great restaurant which is unfortunately out of our walking range.

Austin Soars

Every year while most of our SXSW and Rodeo Austin visitors are still packing their bags our signature park opens up to the Zilker Kite Festival. We always take the time to walk from our place (in the big building in the cluster on the left) to the park to take some pictures. People are everywhere. On the lawn flying kites, having picnics, taking pictures, petting their dogs, cuddling their babies. There are rock climbs and bouncy attractions. There are long lines to buy cup cakes or fill your water bottle. The trails and streets are crammed with people walking to the site, kites, coolers, dogs and kids in tow. And it's free. We made our trek again this year to take this picture with our still-changing skyline in the background.

Pause the Politics

This bus appeared at Fan Fest during F1. I figure that they didn't have time to repaint it after the election.

Just Walk a Mile!

Austin City Limits Festival was last weekend in Zilker Park. This closed street and long line of constantly running belching buses? It was taking people who parked or otherwise arrived in our neighborhood a little over a mile away to Zilker Park. It should be an easy walk for anyone who can stand or sit outside all day listening to music. I will never understand running buses from here. I guess they figure they would never get people to stay out of the traffic jam on the other side of the river and park here.

You Are An Artist!

At the Keep Austin Weird Fest there was a booth promoting painting parties. The folks will set up you and all your guests to 'create' a copy of some famous work that you get to take home with you. Which begs the question of how many copies of starry night the world needs! Still...looks like fun, huh?

Weirdly Beautiful

Here's another picture from the Keep Austin Weird Festival. These women look pretty striking (and attractive) in their costumes. That's our building emerging from the cape and the W Hotel on the right.

Super Heroes Preserving Austin's Weirdness

This family, decked out as super heroes, were preserving Austin's Weird Cred at the Keep Austin Weird Festival.

Bodies on the Street

At the risk of getting hits from people looking for something other than the 'fine art' this blog usually promotes, I offer a picture of some folks our friend Jackie encountered on the way home from dinner last night. Not sure what this has to do with music/film/interactive/comedy/fashion (the things I know they are trying to cover now in this SXSW festival) but Jackie encountered this uruly crowd of body-stockinged people who were eager to be photographed. According to Jackie: "They were advertising some sort of noninvasive liposuction (oxymoron?) called coolsculpting." She says they were trying to lure people to a WEB site to win an iPad3. (Which we all know is actually and simply 'the new iPad.') Why is that gadget the prize of choice for such come-ons? SXSW is becoming the hot bed of promotions of all kinds. This same group was projecting some film of people disrobing on the side of a building when we walked home.

Natural Grandstand

During the kite festival lots of people just come to have a picnic, meet and talk and watch kites. The boulders in Zilker are filled with people doing just that. This is one spot where you probably won't have an errant kite or string in your space.

Flying High

Family-friendly, fun, chaotic mixture of wholesome activities, picnics, dogs, people, strollers, bikes and, of course, kites at the annual Zilker Kite Festival. It was very hard to capture the spirit of it and how many people and dogs and kites there were. Finally settled on this one. Click on the picture for more detail.

Transportation to Fun Fun Fun Fest

We didn't go to Fun Fun Fun Fest but we did walk by. So many people arrived by bike that the racks provided were exhausted and bikes were also chained all along the Drake Ped bridge. This is a view of the sea of bikes attached to racks near Auditorium Shores.

Machinery

This is some of the equipment lined up near Zilker Park after ACL last month.

Hang on Tight!

As part of the fun at the Kite Festival on Sunday, there was a climbing area where, as you can see, children were allowed to show their prowess at getting up the side of some artificial trees. These four seemed to be having a lot of fun as their parents cheered them on.