Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2009 > February > 04 > Entry
Leadership Austin Engage Breakfast: Cracking Austin’s Glamour Scene 4
You already have my opening remarks for the Engage Breakfast held by Leadership Austin at Chez Zee yesterday. The group, which trains Austin’s next round of community leaders in business and nonprofits, is so well organized, my thoughts were solidified and published online — posted in three parts as “Cracking Austin’s Glamour Scene” (follow the “Style” category link below — well in advance and employed for my print column yesterday.
Jeanne Guy, Lulu Flores, Megan Spencer
So instead, I’ll focus on three subjects that came up in the discussion and will be explored for future columns.
Paul Jaquez, Anish Michael
First, economist Jon Hockenyos took my idea of the glamour scene and added the concept of a “glamour class,” which he defined as people who move to Austin without needing a job here. They either come with settled means or they can work long-distance. So you don’t attract this class with a semiconductor plant or a construction job because they are here, instead, because they could live anywhere, but prefer Austin’s physical, social and cultural attractions. (He reminded everyone that the Texas Hill Country was listed as the No. 1 destination listed in the New York Times travel story earlier this year.)
Maria Adame, Edward Kargo, Liz Craft
Asking a familiar, but always important question, theater producer Jason Neulander asked if all the new downtown density and development would price artists out of Austin. This is a claim that Hockenyos and I had heard for years, but when I ask artists fed up with the cost of living here, where they are headed, they usually say “New York” or “San Francisco” or someplace with double, triple or quadruple our cost of living. I threw out the unquantified supposition that Austin hangs happily onto the lowest rung of “destination cities” for America’s young and restless. You could probably name 12-15 other places people say they like to move to — cost of living is higher in all of them. Must explore.
Bill Noble, Jane Garrison
One last question, asked by moderator Jim Walker, choked me up. In documenting Austin’s new cafe society — clustered around movies, fine dining, arts, nightlife, music and fashion — am I finding this to be a “white” scene, leaving out the city’s minorities? I can truthfully respond that I expected that, but instead I’ve been deeply gratified to find it not the case. Granted, those on the lowest end of the economic spectrum cannot usually participate in the glamour scene, but the there is gorgeously heterogeneous when it comes to race, age and sexuality.
I credit a younger generation, which doesn’t appear to classify people the way my generation did. And I am so beholden to them.
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