Austin TX entertainment, events, food, movies, music

Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2008 > February > 10 > Entry

Reading Week No. 1

By Michael Barnes | Sunday, February 10, 2008, 10:16 AM

Except for a sudden curtain of fog, the Surfside sky has held its pale, midwinter shimmer.

Three enormous meals so far, one feast titled “My Bloody Valentine,” and every dish contained blood oranges. (See intentionally spattered beginning of the meal below.) Like so many Paul Talley-inspired meals, it took hours and hours to prepare. Appetizers at dusk. Dessert after midnight. Divine.

Twenty guests, two children, two dogs, hundreds of books and magazines. Some guests arrived as late as Saturday afternoon, others left as early as Sunday morning. A lucky few will stay all week, after the masses have departed. Only one completely new guest this year: Clay Smith of the Texas Book Festival.

My first book of the week: “The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art and Music Drive New York City.” Elizabeth Currid expands on established urban theories of Jane Jacobs (density, diversity, organic change); Richard Florida (creative class) and Malcom Gladwell (social connectors) to propose that glamour is the third or fourth biggest industry for NYC. Her most potent arguments deal with “weak links” among creative types who meet informally, often accidently in the same cool coffeeshops, of-the-moment restaurants and ultra-clubs.

Sound familiar? This territory is not far from the Out & About beat, only set in downtown Manhattan, not Austin. (Austin plays the briefest of cameo roles.) Currid knows her strengths, saying little about the theater and other performing arts, concentrating on art, fashion and music. She also makes a plea for saving the nightlife infrastructure from the city’s ongoing development, a problemmatic policy strategy. Quick read, though; interesting stuff. (Thanks to Mark Holzbach for the lend.)

Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Travel