austin city [limit]?

this was year [eight] for my annual pilgrimage to austin to attend the austin city limits festival. more importantly this was the eighth year to enjoy a weekend catching up with some amazing friends.

as always the weekend was filled with good music, great food and wonderful conversation.  some highlights of this year include a discovery of a great east austin bar, the yellow jacket social club, after typing in "hip bar" into the yelp app.  this year also found me meeting up with a great architect, who is more of a mentor than he probably realizes.  a guy who became a friend while i was a student on my architectural internship 10 years ago.  i also added yet another "decemberists" concert to my list, as well as a performance from leon bridges. an artist who evokes otis redding and sam cooke. a fantastic musician i hope to see again.  also tacos...lots and lots of tacos!

as good of a time as we always have, for the first time we discussed the possibility of trying something else out.  we all love the music, but at the root of the weekend is the fact it's three friends making a commitment to stay in touch.  we've done acl, maybe it's time to move on.  who knows if i'll be writing about acl in 2016, but i can guarantee, i will for sure be writing about a wonderful adventure between three friends. hopefully it will include music...and tacos.

it gets harder and harder to capture new and fresh images of the festival each year, but i hope you enjoy this years batch.

a la [cart]

wichita just got a lot more urban, hipper, and tastier. we've moved up from hot dog carts to taco trailers. now, although we have a long long way to go before catching up with portland or austin, i love seeing more carts like this showing up around downtown.

if you're able to find this trailer, i recommend the carne asada taco's.

[acl] tradition

i operate under the general assumption that whenever an event takes place for a third year in a row, it becomes a tradition. that said, heading to acl is now on the list, and the third time was a charm. not too hot, not too muddy, just right. call me goldilocks, because i felt it was just perfect.

as much as the general schedule seems to be the same each year, each trip has had a different feel to it. this year seemed to be the year of new discoveries in both music and taco carts. with the line up consisting of many bands i'd never heard of before, it was a great opportunity to discover some amazing artists. also, for some reason, i seemed to have tried out several taco carts, both at the festival and around town.

some of the bands i really enjoyed:

those darlins
spoon
mayer hawthorne & the country
local natives
edward sharpe & the magnetic zeros
matt and kim
yeasayer
the national


some taco's i really enjoyed:

green chile pork taco - torchy's tacos
bahn mi taco - the peached tortilla cart
tinga verde taco - el naranjo cart


as amazing as the music and taco's turned were, the highlight of this [tradition] will always be spending time with some wonderful friends. more photos can be found here.