Austin360 blogs > Michael Corcoran's SXSW Journal > Archives > 2008 > March > 20 > Entry
This week in the Austin Agenda
In an otherwise breezy round up of SXSW 2008, Austin Chronicle’s “Off the Record” columnist Austin Powell refers to the Lou Reed tribute show at “the universally reviled Fader party.” Huh? Is that why there were continuously long lines of people trying to get into the 1,000-capacity venue on Fourth Street? They desperately wanted to get in there so they could be “reviled” by all the free booze, top flight talent and good sound.
The Levi’s/ Fader Fort, which transformed the American YouthWorks building during that charter school’s spring break, has been a sore spot for SXSW (founded by the Austin Chronicle) during the past few years because so many registrants would rather hang out at the Fort than at Grandma’s (the Convention Center). The spacious, mazelike Fort is in taunting range of the confab vortex, but what really irks SXSW organizers is that it used to be theirs every mid-March.
SXSW used Youthworks as headquarters for the volunteers and to handle various office chores. “When we tried to do music there,” festival director Roland Swenson told me during SXSW, “they said we couldn’t serve alcohol.” But when a couple of corporate interests came waving money a couple years ago, the party was on, big time. SXSW was left outside, with all the others who couldn’t get in. They let that prime real estate slip away and Levi’s/Fader rubs their faces in it every year, picking the cream of official SXSW acts to play their daytime parties. (Administrators at Youthworks, which trains “at risk” teens on job skills, won’t be back in the office until Monday and could not be reached.)
The Fort, which hosted Ting Tings, N.E.R.D., Duffy, David Banner and on and on, was the place to be, one of many, during SX. Universally reviled? Only if you’re talking about the claustrophobic universe that exists on West 40th Street, where a volleyball court separates SXSW from the Chron.
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