I felt 18 again the moment I arrived at my parents’ house in Austin, Texas. While I raided the fridge, which only housed a fruit cake and a mysterious Christmas log, my parents grilled me about why I needed to borrow the car. 

“I’m going to a party,” I said. “And yes there will be alcohol present, and possibly a few floosies.” 

The party was hosted by a coffee bar named Spider House, a local Mecca for hipsters, artists and musicians like my best friend Travis. In a town filled to the brim with coffee houses, Spider House is the cat’s meow. On the same block, the owners of Spider House also operate an environmentally friendly laundry mat, Ecowash, an eccentric video store called I Luv Video and an art gallery/music venue (all businesses in the city double as music venues).  

This year’s employee party was held in the unfinished gallery, The United States Art Authority. Travis originally reserved his +1 invitation for his girlfriend, but as he was in the process of trading her in for a mysterious online girlfriend, I was Travis’s date for the night. Wall-sized art pieces divided the space into a room big enough to be a roller derby arena and a bar with Lone Star on tap. (Yes Lone Star is a shitty beer, but it’s cheap, it tastes at least as good as Bud Light, and it’s billed as the national beer of Texas). A table was also set up with piles of fajita-beef strips, tortillas and several different severities of salsa. I finally felt at home.                

It was an unwashed kind of art party: tangled hair, dark rimmed glasses, guys in tight pants, girls in black tights, and beards. Not quite hippie but at least as disheveled as an early ’90s grunge rock show. Fitting most people’s impression of Texas, there were plenty of cowboy hats, boots and belt buckles, but these accessories were more products of Rock-a-billy than rodeos. There was also a fair share of people who were doing their part to “Keep Austin Weird.” Two separate people claimed their name was Pony.  

This article appears in Jan 2-8, 2008.