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INTRODUCING THE FIRST-EVER BMW 2 SERIES.
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atx man spring | contents
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On the Cover: Orchestrating the rise of the geeks
50
Photo by Amdrew Chan.
Feature: The Nightowls Civil Society red gingham button-down shirt, $78; Kane & Unke light gray jacket, $109, available at Nordstrom, 2901 S. Capital of Texas Hwy., 512.691.3500, nordstrom.com
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atx man spring | contents
64 26
57
the buzz
style
14 The Buzz Roundup 16 The One 18 Austin Innovator: How Do You Roll? 21 Y oung Men to Watch:
5 7 Style: Spring Fashion 64 Grooming: Smooth Operator
Jay Rosenkrantz
22 Siren Songs:SXSW
the good life 26 Trailer Treats:
36
72
The Food Evolution in Austin
32 Restaurant Review: Chavez 34 Third Annual Austin Food & Wine Festival
36 Guys’ Getaway 40 G ood Deeds: Mack, Jack and McConaughey
in the know 66 Homegrown Tech: Austin-based Apps 68 Fitness: Award-winning Workouts 70 Health: Colorectal Cancer 72 Pretty Woman: Carley Dunavant 74 Sports Report: Changing of the Guard
78 Relationships: Do You Have to Pay to Play?
80 Last Word from Roy Spence on the cover: Photo by Andrew Chan. Styled by Ashley Hargrove.
6 ATX MAN spring 2014
VOLume 3, issue 4 Co-Founder and Publisher
Melinda Maine Garvey Co-Founder and Publisher
Christopher Garvey associate Publisher
Cynthia Guajardo Editor-in-chief
Deborah Hamilton-Lynne associate editor
Molly McManus copy editor
Chantal Rice Art Director
Niki Jones ad designer
Jennifer Day art assistant
Nora Iglesias operations manager
Katie Paschall Brand manager
Jasmine Vallejo Account Executives
Kelly Keelan, Alexis Arendas Contributors
Zia Anger, Guy Aroch, Rudy Arocha, Courtney Bell, Bonnie Berry, Sky Bradshaw, Leo B. Carter, Jill Case, Chris Childre, Allen Clarke, Temara Coggin, Andrew Chan, Patrick Crawford, Daniel Davis, John T. Davis, Andy East, Ellen Fate, Stephanie Finger, Nicole Gell, Kaneisha Grayson, Steve Habel, Tiffany Harelik, Ashley Hargrove, Cambria Harkey, Lisa Hause, Nora Iglesias, Sam Jackson , Phil Knolt, Matt Lankes, Eric Leech, Adam Linehan, Tom Martin, Nicole McCrary, Matt McGinnis, Dave McLaughlin, Dustin Meyer, Roderick Mickens, April Miles, Ryan Nail, Katie Richard Patterson, Hope Petersen, Annie Ray, Megan Russell, Elizabeth Shear, Leticia Smith, Roy Spence, Amanda Stronza, Cheri Thompson, Steve Uhler, Christopher Villano, McKenzy Windham, Marshall Wright
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Paige Brady, Leo B. Carter, Sam Jackson, Lindsay Medina, Hope Petersen, Ricky Rodriguez , Megan Russell ATX Man is a free quarterly publication of AW Media Inc. and is available at more than 850 locations throughout Austin and in Lakeway, Cedar Park, Round Rock and Pflugerville. All rights reserved. For submission requirements, visit awmediainc.com/ contribute. No part of the magazine may be reprinted or duplicated without permission. Visit us online at atxman.com. 512.328.2421 • 3921 Steck Ave., Suite A111, Austin, TX 78759
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ho cares about geeks? In the early years, that was a question our cover man, Hugh Forrest, director of the South By Southwest Interactive Conference asked himself often. The conventional thinking was that SXSW Music brought in the rock stars and the SXSW Film Conference brought in the movie stars, and seriously, who would pay good money to see computer nerds? As it turns out, the geeks became cool, not to mention rich, and became the stars of the show. This year, SXSWi will welcome more than 30,000 participants who cannot get enough of apps, social media, websites, games and gadgets. It seems that everyone wants to know who will become the next Zuckerberg or be the first to hear about the next Twitter, Foursquare or Gowalla—all of which got their start at SXSW. We were fascinated by the rise of the geeks and the force behind SXSWi, so we turned to the man himself to tell us the story of how it all came about. SXSW has permeated the fabric of Austin for 27 years. What started as a way to showcase emerging and independent musicians and bands with about 700 people in attendance in 1987 has grown to become the largest music festival of its kind, with more than 2,200 official performers and bands showcased in more than 100 venues, with 12,000 in attendance. We have all heard the stories of the performers who were discovered and signed contracts as a result of their performances at SXSW, so we wanted to take a look at what it takes to make it as a band today. Music writer John T. Davis takes a fascinating in-depth look at local favorite group, the Nightowls, the changing music scene and the challenges musicians face getting the music out there in front of fans and recording execs. Speaking of changes, the University of Texas Athletic Department has undergone a sea change with the departure of longtime Athletic Director Deloss Dodds and Head Football Coach Mack Brown. Both men are beloved and leave big shoes to fill, as we look at the end of an era for the Longhorns and what lies ahead for their replacements, Steve Patterson and Charlie Strong. Also in this issue, we celebrate homegrown Austin innovations, from apps and tech gadgets, to Shark Tank sushi, to an entrepreneurial poker player and chefs moving from trailers to brick-andmortar establishments, to the launch of the latest fitness videos from our own fitness columnist, Ryan Nail. Hometown favorite musicians Taye Cannon and Katie Paschall strut their stuff for us, modeling the latest in edgy festival fashions, while an award-winning bartender serves up advice from a pretty woman. The entrepreneurial, creative and artistic sides of our city are certainly thriving. March ushers in my favorite time in Austin. Everything begins to bloom. And whether it is the hopeful musicians who come to town looking to make it big, the numerous SXSW attendees who fall in love with Austin or the roadsides filled with a stunning carpet of beautiful wildflowers, the spring brings joy, hope and renewal. In Austin, we take the advice of our Last Word columnist, Roy Spence, the guy who built Idea City, and we play to our strengths. So much so that a crazy idea hatched in 1994 in the early ascension of the tech era would be embraced and become the behemoth it is today. Austin’s answer to Hugh Forrest’s question, “Who cares about geeks?” Pretty much everyone. Enjoy all the city has to offer during this most wonderful season and please let us know if you discover the next John Mayer, the next great film director or the next must-have app. Can’t wait to hear from you!
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Andy East is an Austin-based freelance writer. After graduating from Indiana University with a degree in telecommunications and Spanish, he bought a oneway ticket to adventure, accepting a position teaching English in Bogotá, Colombia. After returning to the U.S., Andy relocated to the Live Music Capital of the World and has been writing for ATX Man and Austin Woman ever since. Andy had the great pleasure of writing his first ATX Man cover story on Hugh Forrest, the director of the South By Southwest Interactive Festival. “As a fellow nerd, it was fascinating to see how SXSW Interactive got started and to look back on the panel discussions from the 1990s and early 2000s. We’ve gone from CD-ROMs being the next big thing in computing, to nearly unlimited cloud storage in 21 years, and SXSW Interactive has been at the vanguard each step of the way.” Andrew Chan is a freelance editorial and fashion photographer based in Austin. He is a native Texan and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. He works out of the Whitebox Studio located in East Austin. When not out grubbing the city’s finest barbecue offerings, he can be seen around town with Milton, his Boston terrier. Andrew had the privilege to photograph SXSWi Director Hugh Forrest for the cover story this month. As a big fan of the festival himself, it was amazing to meet and photograph the man behind everything. Veteran freelance journalist Steve Habel resides in Austin and makes his living playing and writing about golf courses throughout the world, as well as University of Texas sports, both in good times and bad on the Forty Acres. When those assignments allow, he writes about just about anything else, from business and the Legislature, to hockey and soccer and prep sports. He’s realistic about journalism in today’s world, and he has mouths to feed and two kids in college, so make him an offer and he’ll likely say yes.
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Nora Iglesias moved to Austin in 2011 to pursue a career in graphic design. While she was in school, she realized that magazine layout was her favorite type of design, and was very excited when she was offered the position of art assistant at AW Media. In her free time, she likes to hang out at coffee places with her friends, and says her favorite area of Austin is the Rainey Street District. Her passions, apart from art and design, are music and traveling, and she hopes to soon travel to Barcelona, Spain, to experience the art and architecture.
atxman.com find more exclusive content at atxman.com
18 Holes for 18 Charities. 4.4.2014. Get the scoop on the winners, the entertainment, food and fun fresh from the second annual ATX Man Golf Classic at River Place Country Club.
More SXSW
Daily coverage: Get all the latest details on the bands, the panels, the films, the events and the parties from the music, film and interactive conferences. Boys in the Band: ATX Man is on the lookout for up-and-coming breakout bands you should hear. Nightowls: Keep up with the Nightowls’ SXSW appearances and get exclusive free downloads from their new album, Good as Gold, at atxman.com.
More Festivals Photo by Cheri Thompson Photography.
Reviews of Old Settler’s Music Festival, RedFest and more!
More Food
Restaurant Review: International food roundup. Culinary Delights: Foodie report from the third annual Austin Food & Wine Festival.
More Homegrown Tech
Born in ATX: Apps, gadgets, websites and more.
Wearing of the Green Kiss Me, I’m Irish! Best places to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
the buzz
Music April 10, 7:30 p.m., Austin 360 Amphitheater Indie rockers Arcade Fire are bringing a potent live show to Austin, honed by 12 years and four albums of experience. After shattering expectations by winning Album of the Year at the 2011 Grammys with The Suburbs, Arcade Fire returned to acclaim last year with the highly anticipated Reflektor, featuring David Bowie and LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, along with a 2014 Oscar-nominated score for Spike Jonze’s film Her. Catch a show that will definitely go down in music history. Tickets range from $30 to $325, and are available at austin360amphitheater.com.
Beer lovers rejoice! Whole Foods Market has opened a new store at The Domain that has 45 beer taps in its Draft Shack, the store’s indoor oyster bar. It has more beer taps than Whole Foods has at its downtown, Arbor Trails and Bee Caves stores, and more than any other store in the world, for that matter. In fact, it’s a hell of a lot more beer taps than most beer bars have. Austin’s fifth Whole Foods Market store will be its second largest in the area, with 63,000 square feet, and will, of course, carry the fat selection of natural, organic and locally sourced eats that we’ve come
to expect. That’s all well and good, but did I mention the beer? “Austinites love their local breweries and we want our guests to know they can find them here,” says Whole Foods Market Beer Associate Coordinator Nichole Becerra. “The tap wall in the Draft Shack has 27 local Austin-area beers and four additional Texas beers, featuring Austin Beerworks, Live Oak, 512, Hops & Grain, Circle Brewing, Pedernales, Adelbert’s, Independence, Real Ale, Franconia, Saint Arnold, Karbach and Southern Star.” They plan to keep the selection fresh with a regular rotation of new and seasonal beers coming in all the time. The lineup will include nitro stout, pilsner, Hefeweizen, pale ale, porter, stout and sour beers. They will also carry hard cider on tap from Austin Eastciders. The Draft Shack isn’t the only place in the new store to chill with a draft beer. In front of the store, the Public Domain has outdoor seating, playground equipment for the
14 ATX MAN spring 2014
3/19: Brooklyn Rider, Bass Concert Hall 3/21: Leann Rimes, ACL Live at the Moody Theater 3/22: Ellie Goulding, Austin Music Hall 4/11: Mobb Deep, The Parish 4/15: Robert Cray, One World Theatre 4/15: Rob Thomas, Bass Concert Hall 4/23: Haim, Stubb’s 4/24: Chris Botti, One World Theatre 4/24–4/25: Vampire Weekend, Stubb’s 5/1: Drive-By Truckers, Stubb’s 5/9: Lee Ritenour, One World Theatre 5/10: Paramount Anniversary Gala featuring Bonnie Raitt, The Paramount Theatre
Festivals
Food and Drink Whole Foods Market Brings 45 Beer Taps to its New Domain Store
3/3: Lorde, Austin Music Hall
rugrats, firepits and a bad-ass recycled freight train shipping container that has been converted in to an outdoor beer and bratwurst bar with four beers and root beer on tap. The Public Domain will also have space for live music. Not bad for a grocery store. If you prefer to take your beer home, The Domain store will have 80 feet of beer in coolers. The beer aisle will have a fourfoot section that features 100-point-rated beers. It will also have a selection of gluten-free beers and ciders. –Matt McGinnis
Just Opened Blackbird and Henry, 3016 Guadalupe St., suite 100, 512.774.8955, blackbirdandhenry.com CRAVE Restaurant, 340 E. Second St., 512.469.0000, cravetexas.com The Hightower, 1209 E. Seventh St., 512.524.1448, thehightoweraustin.com Porter Ale House, 3715 S. First Street, suite A, 512.291.6299, porteraustin.com Vinyl, 607 Trinity St., 512.358.6202, facebook.com/vinylatx Upstairs on Trinity, 607 Trinity St., 512.358.4824, facebook.com/upstairsontrinityatx Gus’s Fried Chicken, 117 San Jacinto Blvd., 512.474.4877, gusfriedchicken.com Chavez, 111 E. Cesar Chavez St., 512.478.2991, chavez-austin.com
RedFest
May 23–25, Circuit of the Americas
For the first time ever, Jeff Foxworthy is putting on his very own festival, known as RedFest, and he’s chosen to host it in Austin. Intended to celebrate America and the outdoors, it will feature a Southern-friendly lineup comprised of music, TV and comedy stars like Tim McGraw, Duck Dynasty and Larry the Cable Guy. Tickets range from $29 to $99 and can be purchased at redfest.com. 3/1–3/16: 77th annual Star of Texas Fair and Rodeo 3/2: Zilker Park Kite Festival 3/7–3/16: South By Southwest 2014 3/28–3/29: Ninth annual Urban Music Festival 3/29: iHeartRadio Country Music Festival hosted by Bobby Bones 4/10–4/13: Old Settler’s Music Festival in Driftwood, Texas 4/16–4/27: Fusebox Festival 4/23–4/26: Moontower Comedy and Oddity Festival 4/25–4/26: Euphoria Music and Camping Festival at Carson Creek Ranch 4/25–4/27: Austin Food & Wine Festival 5/10: Pachanga Latino Music Festival
Whole Foods photo by Dave McLaughlin, DCM Photography. Arcade Fire photo by Guy Aroch. Battleship photo courtesy of Texas Parks and Wildlife.
Arcade Fire Reflektor Tour
Comedy Aziz Ansari
April 18, 7 and 9:30 p.m. April 19, 7 p.m., Bass Concert Hall You may know him as Tom Haverford from the Emmynominated TV show Parks and Recreation, and he may have even inspired you to have your own “treat yo’self” day. Aziz Ansari hits Austin for not one, not two, but three stand-up shows by popular demand. Rolling Stone put him on its special comedy issue, labeling him “the funniest man under 30.” The buzz about Ansari is only growing, with past mentions in Entertainment Weekly referring to him as one of its Breakout TV Stars, TV Guide naming him a scene stealer and People Magazine naming him 2011’s Funniest Dude in Prime Time. With a book deal, a long list
of film credits and a stand-up tour, Ansari is only getting started. More importantly, Ansari comes off as the guy next door, someone you could crack a brew—or pop bottles—with any day of the week. Don’t miss the opportunity to hear his social commentary and see why he’s everyone’s favorite rising star. Ansari’s performances will serve as a separate kick-off show to the formal Moontower Comedy and Oddity festival, beginning April 23. Tickets available at texasperformingarts.com. 3/30: Chelsea Handler, Bass Concert Hall 4/1: Amy Schumer, Bass Concert Hall 4/19: Dave Barry, The Paramount Theatre 5/2: Mike Epps, Bass Concert Hall 5/30: Joan Rivers, The Paramount Theatre
NEWSMAKERS Remembering a Texas Leader
It was a sad day when Jack Sawtelle Blanton, namesake of the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, died on Dec. 28, 2013 at age 86. A leader in the energy industry and higher education, Blanton was active in many civic organizations and contributed his efforts to advancing health care and the arts. Considered one of the top university art museums, the Blanton is home to world-renowned exhibitions and public programs, containing a collection of more than 17,000 objects. blantonmuseum.org/jack_s_blanton
Scientific Achievement
University of Texas at Austin’s John B. Goodenough is one of four recipients of engineering’s highest honor, the Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering. Goodenough, along with Yoshio Nishi, Rachid Yazami and Akira Yoshino, received the prize Feb. 18 for helping to engineer the rechargeable lithium-ion battery that powers mobile devices. Goodenough was also awarded the National Medal of Science in 2013 and the Japan Prize in 2000. The highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government to science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their research careers is going to three Austinites out of 102 recipients. The Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers is awarded to UT Austin faculty members Kristen Grauman, Mattan Erez and Jonathan Pillow. President Barack Obama has named UT Austin’s Allen Bard a recipient of the Enrico Fermi Award, one of the government’s oldest and most prestigious awards for scientific achievement. The College of Natural Sciences chemist shares a gold medal and the honor, which carries a grant of $50,000, with Andrew Sessler. Bard was selected for his significant contributions to basic research, technological innovation, teaching and service.
New Sheriff in Town
The greater Austin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which serves a projected Hispanic demographic of 657,569 people, recently named Mark Madrid as its new president and CEO. Taking the reins Feb. 10, Madrid was selected after a nationwide search. Having served as chief operating officer for the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Madrid holds a degree from UT Austin and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in nonprofit administration.
Money Matters
The Mulva Family Foundation has made a $60 million multi-year pledge to UT Austin, supporting the McCombs School of Business and the Cockrell School of Engineering. The donation will help to construct the James J. and Miriam B. Mulva Conference Center and Auditorium, set to open in 2017, and renovate the Graduate School of Business and the College of Business Administration buildings.
Centennial Sailing
Running through April 13, experience the Battleship Texas exhibit at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. Commemorating 100 years of the ship USS TEXAS, this special exhibit displays life on board the only surviving battleship that endured two world wars. This free Texas history exhibit is located on the museum’s third floor in the Rotunda Gallery. thestoryoftexas.com/exhibits/battleship-texas
Races
Spring Sprints: Triathlons For a complete list of spring races, including bike events, triathlons, half and full marathons, visit atxman.com. Life Time South Austin Indoor Tri (10-minute swim, 30-minute bike ride, 20-minute run), April 27, Life Time Fitness South Austin, indoortri.com. Georgetown Tri Doc #1 (200-meter swim, 7-mile bike ride, 2-mile run), April 27, Georgetown Recreation Center, flipflop-events.com. Lifetime Tri CapTex (various distances available depending on ability), May 26, downtown Austin, newcaptextri.com.
OTHER Newsmakers Jimmy Kimmel Live Comes to Austin Seems as though Jimmy Kimmel has caught on to the national trend of everyone and their mother moving to Austin. Although not permanently relocating, Jimmy Kimmel Live will host five shows at The Long Center during the 28th annual SXSW Music Festival. On bringing the show to Texas, Kimmel says, “Austin is one of my favorite cities, and there is no place more fun than SXSW. I can’t wait for March 10th. I’ll be the guy covered in barbecue sauce.” The last time Jimmy Kimmel Live went on the road was in 2012 to Brooklyn, NY, featuring guests Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Tracy Morgan, Kelly Ripa, Howard Stern, Chris Rock, David Letterman, Alicia Keys, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and Vampire Weekend. For fans wishing to gain access to the tapings, The Long Center encourages watching its Facebook page (facebook. com/longcenteraustin) and Twitter account (@longcenter) for further information.
atxman.com 1 5
the buzz
The One By Hope Petersen
Everyone knows about Austin’s worldrenowned music history, but few know its roots. Sonobeat Records: Pioneering the Austin Sound in the ’60s explores Austin’s musical history, beginning with a little-known indie label: Sonobeat Records. An independent label founded by father-son duo Billy Josey Sr. and Billy Josey Jr., Sonobeat set the stage for Austin’s musical legacy. Musician and author Ricky Stein explores the roots of Austin’s musical history through the story of this small but historical label. sonobeatrecords.com
Cd Austin-area progressive bluegrass “newgrass” band, The Greencards, received a 2014 Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album for their latest, Sweetheart of the Sun. Residing in Austin by way of Nashville and Australia, the band has topped Billboard’s Bluegrass Chart, making them the first international band to do so. They have received invites to tour with legends such as Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson. Sweetheart of the Sun is available for purchase on iTunes and Amazon. thegreencards.com
Web Tool
FMGEM is a revolutionary web app and multimedia search engine that integrates content found on popular media sites such as YouTube, SoundCloud, Dailymotion, Vimeo, Discogs and AOL On Network. The service allows you to create playlists similar to those on iTunes or Spotify, only with all your favorite videos! Best of all, FMGEM allows you to easily create and share these playlists with other FMGEM members. More information can be found at fmgem.com.
Frye Logan Flap Briefcase
Gadget
Perfect for work, school or just bouncing around town, the Frye Logan Flap Briefcase is made of lightly distressed leather for that classic vintage appearance. It features a padded laptop pocket perfect for most 15-inch laptops, an adjustable shoulder strap and a compartmentalized zip pocket for all your odds and ends. Enjoy SXSW in style this spring with a bag that’s perfect for an on-the-go Austinite. Frye Logan Flap Briefcase, $528, shop.nordstrom.com.
Featuring state-of-the-art graphics and the latest in innovative technology, the Playstation 4 is the most high-tech console of the year. Personalized content gives your console the ability to learn your likes and dislikes, and filters your content appropriately. Play-as-you-download does just that, allowing the player to play the game as the rest of the content downloads in the background. Remote play using the PlayStation Vita makes the Vita the ultimate companion device, allowing you to play games downloaded to the PS4 remotely from any Wi-Fi access point. The new PlayStation 4 app allows you to view new content from any mobile device, purchase and download the content directly to your PS4 at home. The PS4 has something for everyone, so don’t miss out on this all-in-one media device. us.playstation.com
16 ATX MAN spring 2014
Greencards photo by Cambria Harkey.
Book
the buzz Austin Innovator
How Do You Roll? Transforms Sushi Brothers Peter and Yuen Yung push the envelope on fast-casual Asian dining. By Leo B. Carter
The art of sushi, a centuries-old Japanese tradition, is one of hallowed custom and rigid rules. Brothers Yuen and Peter Yung have e ssentially turned this idea on its head. Their restaurant chain, How Do You Roll?, transforms your next meal in to a creative endeavor, allowing you to personalize sushi in a way previously unheard of. Here, tradition comes second to the cravings of your hungry stomach. If you want grilled chicken and eel sauce with brown rice in a nori cone, then you shall have it. No matter how unorthodox your wildest wishes, HDYR is determined to give you exactly what you desire. From an early age, the brothers moved a lot, and what they bring to the table reflects this international upbringing. They daringly combine ingredients and flavors to create meals that blend cuisines from throughout the world. Their menu boasts everything from signature rolls like their 3-Alarm roll with spicy tuna, jalapeño and avocado, to creations out of left field like the Fruitella, a dessert roll loaded with fresh fruit and Nutella. If these aren’t exactly what you want, they will assemble from scratch a made-to-order roll with everything you want and nothing you don’t. To top it off, their prices rival many pre-made, store-bought sushi options. Too good to be true? Think again. Their mission statement says it all: Making the world better, one stomach at a time. HDYR’s first location opened in October 2008
18 ATX MAN spring 2014
just off Braker Lane at the Arbor Walk, and since then, they have expanded with lightning speed. In addition to four locations in Austin, HDYR has started up shop in Houston, College Station and even across state lines in Florida and Arizona. After appearing on ABC’s critically acclaimed businessthemed show Shark Tank, the brothers walked away with a $1 million investment deal and a boost in popularity that has helped them in establishing a national and soon to be international brand. The two brothers sat down with ATX Man and explained their vision for the future of fastcasual dining and how they push the envelope in the industry.
Peter Yung
ATX Man: Tell us about the beginnings of How Do You Roll? Yuen Yung: My brother is a sushi chef. I was just a busy executive running a financial-planning business. One day, I had 30 minutes for lunch, but I didn’t want the usual fast food. I wanted sushi but I couldn’t get in and out at a regular restaurant fast enough. I went to the grocery store, bought a roll, went back to my desk and ate it. It felt like dating someone I didn’t like, but I guess it was better than having nobody. Then one day at Peter’s sushi bar,
Yuen Yung
I said, “Why can’t we do this in more of a fast-casual atmosphere? A place where I can get a roll the way I want it done?” That’s where the concept started. AM: What is a childhood memory that allowed you to be where you are today? Peter Yung: For me, personally, it was being in the restaurant industry. Our parents owned several restaurants. Just being there in the trenches with them, going to school and then straight to the restaurant to work. Even after high school, that was still the direction I wanted to go. After being a chef for more than a decade, I decided I needed a new challenge. That’s where this idea came in to play. YY: The defining moment for me wasn’t from childhood. It was when my second son was born. From that, this brotherhood relationship was formed. My message to my son was, “Now you guys are a team, you have to watch out for each other.” I realized then that I was really talking to myself. For me, it was that core value of family. AM: You two moved around a lot as kids. How did changing homes influence you as businessmen? PY: You are correct. I was born in Guangzhou, China, and Peter was born in New York. We did move around a little bit: New York to Houston, Houston to South Florida and South Florida back to Houston. Now I’ve been in Austin for 20 years since coming for college at UT. I believe that moving around gave us a sense that the world is actually very small, and it’s allowed us to expand far and wide because we’re not afraid of the different places that exist in the U.S. and the world. From a culinary point of view, I think what this jumping around did was help us adapt and make slight changes to our menu from region to region. AM: Being from Houston originally, what is it about Austin that made you feel it was the right environment for the venture?
YY: We feel we’re on a culinary cutting edge. What’s unique about us are the ideas of customization and personalization, which has never been done in the sushi industry. We take sushi and really modernize it and allow people to personalize it. AM: Would either of you have been able to do this on your own? Would you have had the same success individually as you do as a duo?
Custom sushi roll
PY: I’m the foodie, the experimenter, the one who comes up with the ideas on the menu. My brother is more on the business side and deals with the financial situation, making sure we continue with our company’s vision. I think we blend well together. If we were identical, then we’d probably bump heads a lot, but because our experiences are in different areas, we complement each other very well. YY: What makes it tick is the fact that we are so different. He has his world that he plays in, which is all the research and development and the culinary innovations he works on. Then I, on the business side of things, work with how we build systems and operations and deal with the direction that the company is going in and what markets we’re going to take. I’m not sure that if I was on my own that I’d be successful at all. In fact, I’m not even sure I’d do it.
PY: I think people in Austin are more receptive to new concepts. Austin is the place to start.
AM: Peter, as the culinary mad scientist, do you have any new projects, any new rolls that you’re working on right now?
YY: Austin as a town is very unique. Innovation and creativity are well accepted here. As a concept, we need to continue to innovate because that is really what the public wants. It’s a younger, hipper town and that was a better demographic for us.
PY: Well, a lot of that’s confidential. A lot of these new concepts are fusion. We can’t continue to look narrowly at just Japanese food and sushi. We need to think about how to fuse different Asian cuisines.
AM: Especially in a town like Austin, it seems there’s a new fast-casual Asian eatery every week. How do you guys define yourselves and stand apart from the rest?
YY: But continue to use authentic ingredients. That’s important. PY: We fill the demands of the majority of
customers. For instance, you’d never think to mix chicken and beef together or fresh fruits in a roll. You’d never be able to go into a traditional sushi restaurant and get something like that. If you tried to customize there, the chefs would probably stare at you, like, “There are no requests.” AM: You both seem to have a bit of a philanthropic streak in you. Tell us why you think it’s important to give back to the community and how you’re doing it with HDYR. YY: From the moment we started this company, we made a pact that our mission was to make the world a better place. We’ve never turned down a charity for donations or contributions. On top of that, we try to be proactive and lead some initiatives ourselves, focusing on children and health issues. That’s what it comes down to for us. The sushi part is almost secondary to what we stand for as a company. AM: What’s the next big move for HDYR? YY: The next step is exploring further the fast-casual genre and to see whether or not we can be successful not only on the food side of things, but also the beverage side. Until now, we’ve always focused on food and never beverage. Peter and his department are now giving some more attention to that.
Visit the How Do You Roll? website to check out the menu, start planning your own unique roll and find a location closest to you: howdoyouroll.com.
atxman.com 1 9
the buzz young mAn to watch
Jay Rosenkrantz A poker-playing entrepreneurial filmmaker who’s taking Austin by storm. By Stephanie Finger, Photo by Elizabeth Shear
When Austin-based producer Jay Rosenkrantz greets you, he smiles wide. His hand grips yours in a high-five-hand-shake hybrid and you think, after talking, it’s the gestural equivalent of his character: genuine, passionate, colorful, vibrant—all words he uses to describe Austin’s film scene. It’s no wonder he moved here for movies not quite one year ago. “Austin is the best,” he says. “There’s this genuine spirit of creativity and collaboration. And you have the Alamo Drafthouse, which is like a temple for movie fans. It oozes this feverish love for movies that’s contagious.” Rosenkrantz, age 29, was ecstatic to show his own documentary, Bet Raise Fold: The Story of Online Poker, at Alamo last December. “It was beyond cool to get that opportunity!” he says. The story of online poker is one Rosenkrantz knows well. After all, he lived it. Following film school in Boston, he moved to New York City to write screenplays while playing and teaching online poker. “I was starting to get pretty good, and I became immersed in the online poker world, which was in the middle of a multibillion-dollar boom,” Rosenkrantz says. Rosenkrantz played high-stakes online poker professionally, alongside entrepreneurial and film pursuits, until Black Friday, when the U.S. Department of Justice shut down online poker in America. Just like that, Rosenkrantz’s profession evaporated. “It wiped out many of my interests, took away my passion. My friends moved out of the country to keep playing online poker. It was traumatic for the online poker industry and devastating for the community of people who were a part of it,” he says. It changed the course of his life, career and documentary, which was wrapping production at the time. Bet Raise Fold chronicles the meteoric rise and sudden crash of the online poker boom through the stories of three young online poker pros. It opens on Black Friday with Dannielle Moon-Andersen, one of three players the film follows. She’s staring empty-eyed at
her computer screen, face bathed in its pixilated glow. “It feels like a bad dream I’m going to wake up from,” she says. Her tone, usually measured, has a new timbre, a kind of panicked, guttural shake. “This wasn’t just a game. It was my livelihood.” It’s a powerful movie moment, regardless of whether you’ve played poker. Behind the scenes and throughout the country, Rosenkrantz was steeped in a similar state of shock. Snapping out of it, he called Director Ryan Firpo. “He was one step ahead of me. Our cameras were already rolling,” Rosenkrantz says. Rattled as he was, Rosenkrantz threw himself in to rethinking the documentary’s narrative. “Suddenly, we were at ground zero of the biggest event in poker’s history. Everyone’s lives were turned upside down.” Bet Raise Fold became a story much up for an international Video On Demand release in bigger than its makers intended, and an escape from eight languages. He’s also looking forward to getting industry fallout with personal implications. the film on to subscription-based platforms like Luckily, Rosenkrantz had a hefty history of writing, Netflix this year. producing and entrepreneurship to fall back on. In But Rosenkrantz is diving in to other genres and 2008, he co-founded DeucesCracked, a video training mediums too. site that produces daily video tutorials and teaches “Scott, my younger brother, and I are working on thousands of subscribtwo short films: a horror ers how to play and “Poker had a major influence comedy we aim to submit think about poker to Fantastic Fest and a better. Soon after, he on my analytical side.” comic one for Forever produced and starred Fest. I’m also writing a lot of fiction that I’ll eventually in the G4 TV series 2 Months $2 Million, and in 2010, self-publish,” he says. he wrote and co-created The Micros, a YouTube aniKeep an eye out for Rozenkrantz’s next projects mated poker comedy about the misadventures of three (and his poodle, who he insists is “the real young man micro-stakes grinders seeking fame and fortune. to watch”). If his past productivity is any indicator, the Rosenkrantz credits the psychological and strategic wait for new and interesting stories won’t be long. In dimensions of poker for his entrepreneurial acumen. “Poker had a major influence on my analytical side. the meantime, check out The Micros, DuecesCracked and Bet Raise Fold: the Story of Online Poker at watch. Playing poker at a young age, you learn to manage betraisefoldmovie.com. money, assess risk and navigate emotions during high-pressure situations,” he says. “If I wasn’t an entrepreneur before poker, then playing poker turned me in to one.” He’s also eager to acknowledge his movie role models: George Lucas, Luke Skywalker, Buzz Lightyear and Mikey McDermott from the classic poker film Rounders. “The entrepreneurship was probably just an offshoot of the question, ‘How do I be those dudes?’ ” Though Rosenkrantz doesn’t play much poker these days, his fascination with poker stories persists. “The story of online poker is great because it’s this big and epic American story. There’s political intrigue, huge money, alluring heroes and villains. It’s exciting and fun and tragic and hilarious, and you see the entire emotional spectrum on display,” he says. He’s working on continuing the adventures of The Micros and promoting Bet Raise Fold, which is gearing
Bet Raise Fold: a feature-length documentary about the boom and bust of the multibillion-dollar U.S. online poker industry. Available On Demand now at betraisefoldmovie.com. The Micros: animated poker comedy about the misadventures of three microstakes grinders seeking fame, fortune and a sick house in Thailand. Watch at youtube.com/themicrospoker. DeucesCracked : free discussion forums and
subscription-based poker training. For $29 per month, you can take your poker game to the next level. Learn at deucescracked.com.
atxman.com 2 1
the buzz Siren Songs
Sirens of SXSW
Women to watch during South By Southwest Music Festival 2014. By Hope Petersen
Specializing in a cult jazz offshoot called “viper music,” The Jitterbug Vipers’ music is reminiscent of the jitterbug music of the 1930s and ’40s, a classic age of swing dancing. A viper is also known as a toker, and viper music is a specialty of swing, played and sung by famous artists such as Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole. Sarah Sharp, primary singer-songwriter for The Jitterbug Vipers, attended Berklee College of Music before joining the band as a sub. Her playful flow and naughty innuendo soon won over fans and critics alike. Outside of her work with Jitterbug Vipers, Sharp works under the moniker Kaliyo, crafting smart indie pop for song placements in fashion, film and TV. Check out the self-described “swingadelic viper jazz” band at jitterbugvipers.com.
Lydia Loveless
Chloe Howl With more than one million followers on SoundCloud, Chloe Howl was nominated for BBC Sound of 2014. She will release her debut studio album, Chloe Howl, in 2014. Howl was included in the New Artists 2014 list by iTunes, and in addition to her SXSW appearance, is opening for Ellie Goulding at some of her 2014 European show tours. Music and more at chloehowl.com.
22 ATX MAN spring 2014
Combining classic country, honky tonk and punk rock, Lydia Loveless’ full-length record, Somewhere Else, has a dark, poppy vibe. She has been listed as one of Five Best New Artists for January 2014 by Spin magazine. Her lyrical bent includes feminist statements as well as drinking songs. Raise your glass at lydialoveless.com.
Jitterbug Vipers photo by April Miles. Loveless p hoto by Blackletter/Patrick Crawford. Howl photo by Tom Martin.
The Jitterbug Vipers
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Casket Girls photo by ANTON. King photo by Phil Knott/Courtesy RCA Records. Olsen photo by Zia Anger.
The Casket Girls With lilting, whimsical melodies inspired by spookiness and happenstance, The Casket Girls’ sophomore album, True Love Kills the Fairy Tale, is filled with chemical hazes about love gone sour. With pysch-rock synths and a title track reminiscent of a lucid dream, The Casket Girls are sure to make a memorable mark at this year’s SXSW. Check out why they have us in a trance at casketgirls.org.
Elle King Encompassing country, soul, rock and blues, Elle King released her four-song EP debut, The Elle King EP, on RCA/Fat Possum Records. Since its release, King has toured with the likes of Monsters and Men, Train and Michael Kiwanuka. King was spotlighted as an Artist to Watch in 2012 by Esquire Magazine. The Elle King EP has gathered favorable press from Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Glamour, Perez Hilton and Vanity Affair. Listen for yourself at elleking.com.
Angel Olsen Missouri-born Angel Olsen first started out backing up indie-folk royalty Bonnie “Prince” Billy. Her haunting 2012 debut album and promising 2014 sophomore follow-up catapulted her in to fame. Her latest album, Burn Your Fire For No Witness, debuted Feb. 18, promising more of her full-throated exultation, admonition and bold, expressive melody. For more information, visit angelolsen.com.
atxman.com 2 5
good life
trailer treats
The Food Evolution in Austin From food trucks to brick and mortar. ❱❱ After In 2009, Austin saw a rise in food trucks after an economic recession left several creative people seeking a way to take control of their financial futures. Since then, the number of operating food trucks and trailers has swelled to several hundred. Most of these business owners started small, holding a vision that one day their food truck would gain enough popularity to be able to fund opening their own restaurant. To date, we have seen more than 10 of these entrepreneurs expand their humble beginnings in food trucks to sink their roots with brick-and-mortar establishments. The evolution from a food trailer to a restaurant exemplifies Austinites’ continued interest in supporting small businesses within the food community.
Kebabalicious
Restaurant location: 1311 E. Seventh St. (at Navasota) Favorite item on the menu: The beef-lamb kebab, traditional beef/lamb shawarma on a warm pita topped with fresh lettuce, tomato, onion, tzatziki and spicy red sauce. Owners Chris Childre and Kristian Ulloa launched their first food trailer in San Marcos, bringing the Euro-Turkish tastes they found on a snowboarding trip to Switzerland home to Texas. Now with two trailers (at Seventh and Trinity as well as at Seventh and Congress), Kebabalicious has added a storefront location at Seventh and Navasota. Their menus are kebab-centric, featuring fresh and high-quality kebabs. But they also feature specialty items, such as their hand-cut zucchini fries and baklava. Kebabalicious is known for its tantalizing ingredient combinations. Here’s why:
26 ATX MAN spring 2014
Pistachio Watermelon Salad with a Jalapeño Orange Balsamic Vinaigrette As printed in Trailer Food Diaries Cookbook: Austin Edition, Volume 2, courtesy of Kebabalicious. Yield: 4 servings Ingredients: 1 small seedless watermelon 1 8-ounce block of feta (sheep milk) 10 ounces arugula 1/2 red onion, sliced thin 1 bushel of fresh mint, diced 10 ounces grape tomatoes 7 ounces roasted pistachio nuts, chopped
Jalapeño Orange Balsamic Vinaigrette Ingredients: 2 tablespoons Düsseldorf mustard 2 1/2 tablespoons aged balsamic vinegar 1/4 cup of fresh-squeezed navel orange juice 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil 1 teaspoon pure wildflower honey 1 small roasted jalapeño Salt and tellecherry pepper to taste
Directions: Take the watermelon and cut it into 1-inch slices (like big discs) then cut those in half. Take a small paring knife and remove the red flesh of the fruit from the green shell. Once complete, cube watermelon into 1-inch pieces and set aside in the refrigerator to chill. Next, cube feta into half-inch bite-size pieces. Set aside. Heat a pan and add chopped pistachio nuts and toast lightly. Now grab a big bowl and fill it with the washed arugula, thinly sliced red onions, grape tomatoes, feta and diced fresh mint. Give it a good toss and put it in the fridge. Let pistachio nuts cool in pan. While that chills, start the dressing. Take the small jalapeño and roast it over a gas burner until black. Wrap it in cling wrap and let it sweat for about five minutes. Meanwhile, grab a blender and add the mustard, freshly squeezed orange juice, balsamic, honey, a pinch of kosher salt and tellecherry pepper. Blend until homogenous, and then very slowly, stream the olive oil into the blender while on low. Next, unwrap the jalapeño and peel off charred outer coating. Cut off the stem and cut jalapeño in half to remove the seeds. Add jalapeño to food processor and liquefy. Taste. Add salt and pepper if needed. Lastly, take the watermelon out of the fridge and add it to the bowl of salad. Then sprinkle toasted, chopped pistachio nuts and serve with the dressing drizzled over or on the side if you prefer.
Watermelon photo by Bonnie Berry Photography. Storefront photo by Letitia Smith. Trailer photo by Chris Childre.
By Tiffany Harelik
East Side King Restaurant location: 2310 S. Lamar Blvd., suite 101 Favorite item on the menu: Fried Brussels sprout salad (it’s vegetarian and can be served vegan and gluten-free), fried Brussels sprouts, sweet-spicy sauce, shredded cabbage, alfalfa sprouts, basil, cilantro, mint, onion, jalapeño.
Thai Chicken Kara-agé and original ESK trailer photos by Marshall Wright. ESK SoLa interior photo by Nicolai McCrary.
Their tag line says it all: “So good, make your eye roll back.” Austin’s own culinary god, Paul Qui, alongside business partner and local musician Moto Utsunomiya, opened their fifth location in the ESK dynasty. And it all started as a food trailer that was a side project.
Thai Chicken Kara-agé As printed in Trailer Food Diaries Cookbook: Austin Edition, Volume 1, courtesy of East Side King Yield: 4 to 6 servings Ingredients: 13 pounds chicken legs, boned and cut into large bite-size chunks 8 ounces Thai chicken sauce 4 ounces white onion, sliced thinly 2 ounces jalapeño, sliced into thin rounds 3 ounces cilantro, picked and washed 1 1/2 ounces mint, picked and washed 1 1/2 ounces Thai basil, picked and washed 2 cups cornstarch 4 cups vegetable oil
Directions: Lightly toss the cut chicken in the cornstarch until each piece is evenly coated and there are no moist spots. Preheat oil to 375 degrees. Fry chicken until golden brown and cooked throughout. Move the hot chicken to a large bowl, add the onions, jalapeño and herbs then add the sauce. Toss gently, and be sure to coat all pieces with a good amount of sauce. Transfer to a serving dish and enjoy!
Thai Chicken Sauce Ingredients: 4 ounces water 4 ounces white vinegar 4 ounces white sugar 1 ounce sweet chili sauce 2 ounces fish sauce 1 1/2 ounces garlic/Thai chili, minced
Directions: Combine ingredients in a bowl and whisk until all ingredients are fully incorporated.
Sweet Chili Sauce Ingredients: 4 ounces white vinegar 2 ounces white sugar 1 ounce chili flakes Directions: In a small saucepot, combine the vinegar and sugar. Allow the mixture to come to a boil without stirring. Add the chili flakes and stir.
atxman.com 27
Torchy’s Tacos Restaurant location: 10 locations in Austin, four in Dallas, three in Houston, one in Fort Worth, one in Allen and one in Southlake. Favorite item on the menu: The Trailer Park
Baja Shrimp Tacos
Directions: In a mini food processor, blend the mayonnaise with the chipotle and 1 tablespoon of buttermilk. Season with salt and pepper and refrigerate. Heat a large skillet until very hot. Add the butter, cabbage and Ingredients: carrots and cook over high heat until the cabbage is browned in spots, about two minutes. Season with 1/2 cup mayonnaise salt and pepper and transfer to a bowl. In a large 1 chipotle in adobo, stemmed saucepan, heat 2 1/2 inches of vegetable oil to 350 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon buttermilk degrees. In a medium bowl, toss the shrimp with Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper the remaining 1/2 cup of buttermilk. Put the panko 1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter in another bowl. Coat each shrimp with the panko 1/2 (about 3 cups) small green cabbage, shredded and fry in batches until golden, about two minutes 2 large carrots, shredded per batch. Drain on paper towels. Spoon some of the cabbage into the center of each tortilla and top Vegetable oil for frying 24 large shrimp (1 1/4 pounds), shelled and deveined with two fried shrimp. Drizzle with the chipotle mayonnaise and sprinkle with some of the pickled 2 cups panko (Japanese bread crumbs) jalapeños, red onion, cilantro and queso fresco. 12 corn tortillas, warmed Serve with lime wedges. 4 pickled jalapeños, thinly sliced 1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced 1/2 cup cilantro leaves, coarsely chopped 1 1/2 ounces queso fresco or mild feta, crumbled Lime wedges
Curly’s Carolina photos by Jay Yates. Torchy’s Tacos photos courtesy of Torchy’s Tacos.
As printed in Trailer Food Diaries Cookbook: Austin Edition, Volume 2, courtesy of Torchy’s Tacos Yield: 4 to 6
Curly’s Carolina, TX Barbecue Restaurant location: 112 E. Main St. (Round Rock) Favorite item on the menu: Texas brisket with fried okra and wasabi coleslaw. “And remember, life is too short for mediocre barbecue,” is Curly’s message to barbecue lovers. Jay Yates, formerly of Curly’s Perfect Pig food trailer, teamed up with John Brotherton, formerly of Hall of Flame BBQ trailer, to open Curly’s Carolina, TX Barbecue in the fall of 2013. They have received an overwhelming positive response in the media and among the food community as some of the best barbecue in Texas.
Banana Pudding As printed in Trailer Food Diaries Cookbook: Austin Edition, Volume 3, courtesy of Curly’s Carolina, TX Barbecue Ingredients: 1 8-ounce block cream cheese, softened 1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk 1 3.4-ounce package instant vanilla pudding 1 3.4-ounce package instant banana cream pudding 4 cups milk 1 12-ounce container whipped topping 1/2 box Nilla Wafers 3 to 4 ripe bananas, sliced
Directions: Place cream cheese in a large mixing bowl. Begin mixing with an electric mixer on medium speed. Slowly add in the can of sweetened condensed milk and continue to mix cream cheese and condensed milk until the mixture is smooth. Add in the packages of instant pudding and the milk. Continue to mix the ingredients until the mixture is once again smooth. Once there are no clumps in the mixture, let the mixture stand for five minutes so it begins to set up. After five minutes, gently fold the whipped topping into the pudding mixture. In a separate dish, place a layer of Nilla Wafers. Add a layer of sliced bananas and top with half the pudding mixture. Repeat layers of wafers, bananas and pudding. Finish with a layer of Nilla Wafers. Place in refrigerator for two to three hours to allow the cookies to become soft.
atxman.com 29
good life
trailer treats
Gourdough’s Restaurant location: 1503 S. First St., 2700 S. Lamar Blvd. Favorite item on the menu: The Flying Pig, a doughnut topped with bacon and maple-syrup icing.
Makers Mark Bourbon Caramel
As printed in Trailer Food Diaries Cookbook: Austin Edition, Volume 3, courtesy of Gourdough’s
Yield: about 2 quarts. (You can drizzle what you don’t use on the doughnut over other snacks like ice cream.)
Ingredients: 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast 1 1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees) 1/2 cup white sugar 1 teaspoon salt 2 eggs 1 cup evaporated milk 7 cups all-purpose flour, divided 1/4 cup shortening 1 quart vegetable oil for frying
Ingredients: 2 cups sugar 1/2 cup Bourbon 1 ounce water 3 tablespoons butter 1/4 cup cream 1 tablespoon maple syrup (corn syrup, dark or light can be substituted) 1 teaspoon vanilla
Directions: In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add sugar, salt, eggs and evaporated milk and blend well. Mix in 4 cups of the flour and beat until smooth. Add the shortening, and then the remaining 3 cups of flour. Cover and chill for up to 24 hours (three hours will work if you’re in a hurry). Roll out dough to 1-inch thick. Use the top of a drinking glass to cut doughnut circles and use a butter knife to cut out holes in the middle. Fry in 350-degree hot oil for about five minutes, turning frequently. If doughnuts do not pop up, oil is not hot enough. Drain on paper towels.
Candied Bacon (Four to five slices will be enough to top one doughnut and to have some to snack on later. Gourdough’s uses thick cut.) Ingredients: 4 or 5 slices thick-cut bacon 1/4 to 1/2 cup brown sugar Maple syrup Cracked black pepper Directions: Turn oven on to 300 degrees. Place parchment down on a half-sheet pan. Arrange bacon neatly on parchment so that the pieces are not touching. Sprinkle brown sugar all over the bacon. It’s OK if bacon is not covered completely. Drizzle maple syrup all over bacon. Place bacon in oven for 15 minutes at 300 degrees. Remove and let cool.
30 ATX MAN spring 2014
Directions: Pour the sugar into a pan that’s not a non-stick pan. It doesn’t come out right if you use a non-stick pan. Add 1/4 cup of the Bourbon and save the rest for later. Add the ounce of water. Place pan on stove over medium heat. With a whisk, stir until ingredients just start to come together and make a sugar paste. Wait until sugar looks like the color of the Bourbon, approximately five to 10 minutes. (If you take it off before the color change, you’ll accidentally make a praline.) Take pan off of heat and add 1 tablespoon of butter and the rest of the Bourbon. While adding Bourbon and butter, whisk quickly. Note: The mixture will steam and bubble. While still whisking, add in the rest of the butter, cream and vanilla. Let cool slightly and serve. Can be held in airtight container for one week. To build the doughnut: Glaze the doughnut with the caramel sauce. Chop bacon in rough chunks and sprinkle over the caramel topping.
❱❱ For more food truck recommendations, check out trailerfooddiaries.com, or follow along on twitter @trailerfood.
Applause for more food trucks that have opened restaurants: Say laV Stinson’s Odd Duck The Flying Carpet Hey! Cupcake Man Bites Dog Verts Mighty Cone (Hudson’s on the Bend) Additionally, Lucky J’s Chicken and Waffles started as a trailer and opened a brick-andmortar location, but they eventually closed it and went back to refocus and redefine their efforts on the trailer. The Peached Tortilla is proud to announce their restaurant opening fall 2014 at 5520 Burnet Rd.
Photos by Sky Bradshaw.
Sticky Kentucky Swine
FRESH LOCAL Finn & Porter is fresh and modern. Locally sourced and exquisitely presented. Known for the freshest seafood, steaks, sushi and produce the state of Texas has to offer. Prepared by Chef Peter Maffei, with his talent for selecting the best of the season and allowing it’s flavor to shine.
Serving dinner Monday - Saturday 500 East 4th Street Austin, TX 78701 www.finnandporteraustin.com
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good life
RESTAURANT REVIEW
Chavez Elegant yet simple cuisine comes full “Cirkiel” at the innovative chef’s new endeavor. By Steve Uhler, Photos by Dustin Meyer.
❱❱ A few ground rules: You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind. And you don’t refer to Shawn Cirkiel’s newly opened eatery, Chavez, as a “hotel restaurant.” Long celebrated as the innovative chef and restaurateur behind such local favorites as Olive & June, Backspace and Parkside, Cirkiel has left his mark lingering on the palates of discriminating and grateful foodies throughout the Lone Star State. When word began spreading last October that he’d be opening a new eatery, expectations were high and appetites whetted. But upon learning the location would be at the former site of the old TGI Fridays at the Radisson Hotel on Cesar Chavez Street, many locals did a quizzical double take. Shawn Cirkiel running a hotel restaurant? Well, no, not a “hotel restaurant,” project reps were quick to clarify, rather, a restaurant in a hotel. What’s the difference? Plenty, according to Cirkiel. “This was never approached as being a hotel restaurant,” Cirkiel insists. “In many hotel restaurants, there’s a designer from out of state that makes a decision on the style, and the food and drink menu and the program. And you have out-of-state consultants that build the kitchen and design the space and select a theme put together by a consultant or someone in Vegas or L.A. This is very much an organic restaurant conceived and built in Austin, Texas. It’s our food, our design. It’s who we are. Chavez is built upon the premise of us doing a restaurant that we thought would be a good fit for downtown, and for the food we like to cook and eat. So when I say it’s not a hotel restaurant, that’s what I mean.” Leave it to Cirkiel to fly in the face of conservative preconceptions and emerge triumphant. This is, after all, the visionary who introduced Austin to the upscale gastro pub concept with his successful and casually sophisticated Parkside, planted in the unlikely garden of East Sixth Street. So if Shawn Cirkiel wants to open a restaurant in a hotel—or in a gas station, for that matter— who are we to question his instincts?
herb-crusted mahi mahi If the lunch crowd of impressed diners during a recent afternoon at the newly opened Chavez is any indicator, Chef Cirkiel has little to worry about. Chavez is not only inviting, it’s intoxicating. Working with design studio FODA and architect Michael Hsu, Cirkiel has manifested an environment that perfectly evokes his approach to food preparation and presentation: open, simple and elegant, with particular attention lavished on small details. The open and bright dining area overlooking Lady Bird Lake offers diners an unobstructed view through expansive panoramic windows facing southward; tickets could be sold for the sunset. Minute signature touches and motifs adorn countless niches discernible to the attentive eye: Mesoamerican textiles are delicately scattered and integrated in to the design like the Da Vinci Code, and the beautiful overhead light fixtures subliminally suggest the letter C. The room seems to physically adapt to its occupants, whether it’s a corporate business lunch or an informal and romantic têteà-tête. “Every detail is just immaculate,” raved an admiring first-time diner, overheard whispering to her companion at a neighboring table. “It’s really all simple stuff,” Cirkiel says. “One tile wall, one wood wall and that’s effectively it in the whole restaurant. But it’s all pieces that are very textural and emotional.” Of course, an enticing environment means little unless the food measures up to the inherent promise
food, our design. “ It’s our It’s who we are. ”
32 ATX MAN spring 2014
of the surroundings, and Chavez does not disappoint. The thematic focus is on traditional Southwestern fare re-imagined in to new and adventurous configurations, and elevating simplicity and freshness over flash. In Cirkiel’s hands, simple ingredients combine and morph in to complex, layered sensations that reveal themselves leisurely on the palate, layer after layer. We experienced that delectable alchemy of simplicity and sophistication firsthand during a recent visit for lunch on a particularly chilly Thursday. We began our meal warming up with a generous bowl of chicken fideo soup enhanced with winter vegetables and a pinch of oregano, topped with exquisitely crunchy croutons. Velvety and bracing, it was an enticing harbinger of things to come. Chavez emphasizes shared plates—small servings designed to be shared. My dining companion and I enjoyed a diverse sampling, starting with the recommended Texas board, a tray artfully garnished with a delectable sampling of fresh cornbread, a half-dozen finger-sized hand-rolled house corn tortillas and a trio of spreads, including lardo, spicy butter and marrow. The bean and cheese empanadas arrived delicately flaky on the outside with a mildly spicy black bean and Oaxaca cheese filling, topped by a tartly fresh salsa verde as a finishing grace note. We also dove in to the impressively stacked sopes de carnitas, layered with pork, black beans, a tart tomatillo and a fragrant hint of lime. Both dishes were a beguiling marriage of Texas-bred comfort food and nouveau cuisine, and our server was attentive and knowledgeable about our questions, despite the fact that the restaurant had opened mere days before.
baby back ribs
cafe con leche The baby back ribs (officially listed as an appetizer but tempting to justify as a meal) fell off the bone at a mere desirous glance, melting on the tongue in a sweetly harmonious chorus of corn-fed Angus, Manzanilla olive, carrot escabeche and agave glaze. And though the butter tamals we sampled were a little, well, little, they were more than flavorfully redeemed by their lingering afterglow on the palate, brightened by a snappy peanut mole. The exquisitely prepared corn husk wrapping came complete with a petite hand-tied bow.
We requested the herb-crusted mahi mahi as an entree, even though the dish was not officially on the lunch menu, but listed on the dinner menu. The kitchen staff didn’t flinch, and were polite enough not to mention our faux pas. Again, elegant simplicity dominated the plate; the fish was fresh and flavorful, the crust restrained and the salsa negra garnish made for an ideal complement. Our meal was topped off with a perfectly presented dessert: the dangerously decadent cafe con leche. With its harmonious integration of dovetailing elements—cafe cake, cajeta, chocolate espresso sauce and cocoa-nib ice cream—the combined confectionery whole surpasses the sum of its parts, in essence, four desserts combined in to one sensory ensemble of flavors, ideal for sharing. Kudos to Pastry Chef Steven Cak, one of Chavez’s most formidable secret weapons. (Cirkiel himself claims to have no sweet tooth. “I like things bitter,” he smiles. “Like me.”) Cirkiel’s trademark emphasis on simplicity and freshness is in ample evidence in every aspect of Chavez. “Some things are just what they are,” Cirkiel explains. “A simple masa that we make by hand every day. Fresh black beans and tomatillo. It’s really simple. It’s also taking the extreme of doing it by hand, making it from scratch, doing it to order, all these processes that most people just don’t do because the timing of it is too hard. Something like the mahi mahi, which is a little more stylistically nouveau, at the end of the day is just an awesome salsa and fish. That’s really all it is. Same with the ribs and escabeche. You can kind of take apart the bricks and put them back together, and they become more
complex. The point of it is, in the way we talk about food, it’s like building bricks. We build those techniques and efforts in to layers, and over time, you can build a Sistine Chapel or you can build a simple brick wall. Either way, it’s structurally sound.” You can’t be all things to all people, especially in the middle of a bustling downtown hotel, but Chavez comes within a hair’s breadth of that goal while still artfully establishing its own distinctive aesthetic identity. “Everyone who comes in has a different expectation,” Cirkiel observes. “Some people don’t want to be bothered; they want to have a conversation with friends, and dinner is literally a backdrop for that. You have people coming in that, for them, this is a show. They’re going to order and everything needs to be perfect because they’re going to take pictures and post the photo on a blog, and eating out is a special occasion. Then you have someone coming in who’s in a bad mood or hiding from the world who just wants a warm soup, sitting at the bar while they’re traveling. Each table has its own set of rhythms and emotions. Our goal is to kind of match who we are that night to those expectations. When we don’t, that’s when we have problems. When we do, that’s when people say we’re great.” Consider this diner’s expectations fulfilled. Cirkiel’s seductive mix of simplicity, elegance and impeccably prepared cuisine has found an ideal if unlikely home, complete with a stunning view. Cue the sunset, and save room for dessert.
❱❱ Chavez 111 E. Cesar Chavez St. 512.478.2991 chavez-austin.com
atxman.com 33
FOODIE FESTIVAL
Third Annual Austin Food & Wine Festival A taste of Texas featuring culinary all-stars. ❱❱ For a third year, the Austin Food & Wine Festival will bring a bevy of culinary all-stars, including world-class chefs, sommeliers, cocktail experts, culinary personalities and rising stars to Austin. From April 25 through 27, the festival will offer more than 40 events taking place during three days, including hands-on grilling demonstrations, interactive firepits helmed by an all-star lineup of Texas chefs, panel discussions, Grand Tasting tents offering food, wine and cocktail tastings, live music and book signings.
Highlights: A New Addition Feast Under the Stars will be hosted at Austin’s Butler Park. This pre-festival dinner will be a separately ticketed event, held April 24. Feast Under the Stars is an intimate, outdoor celebration featuring five Texas chefs preparing an al fresco dinner. The collaborative, familystyle menu will be prepared by Chefs Tim Love, Tyson Cole, Kent Rathbun (Abacus), Chris Shepherd (Underbelly) and Jodi Elliott (Bribery). Tickets for Thursday’s Feast Under the Stars are $185 per person, and include paired wine and parking. They can be purchased separately from the festival pass at austinfoodandwinefestival.com/tickets.
Kick-off The 2014 festival kicks off April 25 with the Taste of Texas, held at Republic Square Park in the heart of downtown Austin, with a performance by Escort. With a lineup showcasing the Lone Star State’s brightest chefs, the Taste of Texas will feature Tatsu Aikawa (Ramen Tatsu-Ya), Alexis Chong (Sway), Jason Dady (Jason
34 ATX MAN spring 2014
Dady Restaurant Group), Todd Duplechan and Jessica Maher (Lenoir), Omar Flores (Driftwood), Terrence Gallivan and Seth Siegel-Gardner (The Pass & Provisions), Diego Galicia (Mixtli), James Holmes (Lucy’s Fried Chicken and Olivia), Matt McCallister (FT33), Wayne Mueller (Louie Mueller Barbecue), André Natera (Village Kitchen and Toko V), Hugo Ortega (Hugo’s Restaurant and Backstreet Café), Jesse Perez (Arcade Midtown Kitchen), Blaine Staniford (Grace), Philip Speer (Uchi and Uchiko) and Justin Yu (Oxheart).
Rock Your Taco Competition Saturday evening’s Rock Your Taco competition brings out the competitive side of all participants. With live music from JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound, the event features chefs who will square off against one another to create the ultimate taco. Winners will be chosen by an esteemed panel of judges, including Christina Grdovic, Graham Elliot (Graham Elliot Bistro) and Andrew Zimmern (television personality). Two-time Rock Your Taco champion Tyson Cole will defend his crown against the likes of Rick Bayless (Frontera Grill, Topolobampo, XOCO, Tortas Frontera and Frontera Fresco), David Bull (Congress, Second Bar + Kitchen and Bar Congress), Richard Blais (author, Juniper & Ivy, FLIP Burger and The Spence), John Currence (author, City Grocery Restaurant Group), Bryce Gilmore (Barley Swine and Odd Duck), Mike Lata (FIG and The Ordinary), Tim Love, Georgia Pellegrini (chef and author), Monica Pope (Sparrow and Beaver’s), Kent Rathbun, Chris Shepherd, Ming Tsai (Blue Ginger and Blue Dragon) and Tandy Wilson (City House). Jeni Britton Bauer (Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams) will offer a sweet end to the night.
Take to the Pits The festival grounds at Butler Park will once again be activated with interactive live-fire stations, where Texas chefs will cook over firepits and offer tastes to attendees throughout the weekend. Due to the overwhelmingly positive response from last year, the 2014 program will feature two firepit stations, showcasing four chefs each day, each offering a front-row experience cooking with live fire. Chefs include Tim Byres (Chicken Scratch and Smoke), Jason Dady, Ned Elliott (Foreign and Domestic), Aaron Franklin (Franklin Barbecue), Bryce Gilmore, John Russ (Lüke San Antonio), Paul Qui (Qui and East Side King) and Andrew Wiseheart (Contigo).
Chefs’ Showcase The Chefs’ Showcase features a dynamic roster of chefs serving tastes of their signature dishes to attendees. On
Saturday and Sunday, mix and mingle in the tents while enjoying bites from Chefs’ Showcase participants John Bates and Brandon Martinez (Noble Sandwiches), Stefan Bowers (Feast Restaurant), Shawn Cirkiel (Parkside, Olive & June, Chavez and The Backspace), Kassie Harris (Whip In), Chris Hurley and Jennifer Costello (Bonneville), Allison Jenkins and Janina O’Leary (LaV), Josh Jones (Salt and Time), Lawrence Kocurek (Trace), Rick Lopez (La Condesa), Jeff Martinez (El Chile), Sarah McIntosh (Épicerie Café and Grocery), Scott Mechura (Goodall’s Kitchen), Sandi Reinlie (Vespaio), Josh Watkins (The Carillon) and Kevin Williamson (Ranch 616).
Drinks to Consider A star-studded collection of sommeliers, beverage directors, mixologists and craft beer experts rounds out the Austin Food & Wine Festival lineup, including Master Sommelier Devon Broglie, Master Sommelier Craig Collins, sommelier Jill Gubesch (Frontera Grill), Food & Wine’s Executive Wine Editor Ray Isle, sommelier Vilma Mazaite (LaV), author Mark Oldman and Nate Wales (La Condesa and Sway). Tickets for the 2014 Austin Food & Wine Festival are available in two options: Taste ($250) and Savor ($850). The Taste pass includes access to more than 40 demos, hands-on experiences, seminars and tastings, and daily Grand Tasting events. Attendees who purchase the Taste pass also have the option to add on tickets for Friday night’s Taste of Texas event ($150) and/or Saturday night’s Rock Your Taco competition ($150). The Savor experience includes priority access to all demos, tastings and hands-on experiences, private Grand Tastings on Saturday and Sunday, access to a VIP lounge with a bar and additional tastings, and access to both the Taste of Texas and Rock Your Taco evening events. Tickets for Thursday’s Feast Under the Stars are $185 per person, including paired wine and parking, and are purchased separately from the festival pass. All tickets available at austinfoodandwinefestival.com/ tickets.
Photo by Cambria Harkey.
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good life
guYS’ GETAWAY
These three resorts help make the Alamo City one of the nation’s best places to tee it up and get away. By Steve Habel
San Antonio is known for many things, among those, its friendly people, its unmatched River Walk entertainment district, its great food and its importance as a cultural crossroads between the United States and Mexico. San Antonio is also famous for its missions (the Alamo, Texas’ greatest shrine, is the most renown), which were established in the early 1700s and have become a link to the region’s past.
Big Fun at the Hyatt Hill Country Resort Resort golf is sometimes a bit blah, as the game’s innate challenges are often muted by the need to pander to the high-handicap golfer and to get players around the course in a reasonable amount of time. To counter that movement, many resorts have gone to the 27-hole layout, and the three distinct nine-hole courses at the Hyatt Hill Country Resort & Spa have established the standard for that notion. The three Arthur Hills-designed tracks (called
36 ATX MAN spring 2014
Creeks, Lakes and Oaks) are set on more than of the tracks is obscured by homes, there are just 200 acres of wide-ranging terrain with stands plenty of mesquite trees, native grasses, cacti, a of trees, rolling meadow, steep hillsides, ravines few streams and ponds and plenty of rolling hills and tree-shaded plateaus. Interspersed is a series and vistas, as the Hill Country Golf Club meets all of lakes and ponds that add not only excitement the standards of a truly great golf facility. and challenge to the round, but provide a Aside from the 27 holes of Arthur Hillstranquil beauty. designed golf, there are two spectacular pools Each nine plays to a par of 36 and to as much as separated by a cascading waterfall, a 950-foot 3,502 yards based on the four tee choices. Opened Ramblin’ River water feature, a fully equipped as an 18-hole golf course in exercise center offering massage rolling meadow, steep hillsides, 1993 and expanded in 2005, and an outdoor whirlpool, a ravines and tree-shaded plateaus world-class spa and five fine the facility—unlike most courses with additions— restaurants, to boot. didn’t just add another nine. It integrated the In 2013, the Hyatt Hill Country completed a holes to give the entire golf course and resort $35 million enhancement project that modernized a new feel. every room in the resort and added a wave While it’s difficult to pick a favorite of the three machine and tower waterslide to the property’s nine-hole tracks, the toughest of the three is the ever-popular water playground, which was Oaks layout, which plays to 3,438 yards from the expanded from four to five acres. back tees and offers a nice balance in length of Hill Country is the first Texas hotel and only holes. As the name implies, golfers have towering one of three hotels in the United States to have oak trees to contend with, and there are definitely a FlowRider wave machine, which simulates a preferred sides to the fairways to help set up for barrel-less wave, complete with a sloped wave the approach shots in to the par-4s. surface with 40,000 gallons of water being driven The Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort & Spa up at a rate of about 18,000 gallons per minute. is located on what was once the Rogers-Wiseman It is a great place to golf, a great place to stay Ranch just off Highway 151, directly across from and an excellent vacation destination for the Sea World of Texas. A true resort course, none entire range of traveler.
Photo by Christopher Villano.
Finding Great Golf in San Antonio is ‘Mission Possible’
La Cantera is Twice the Fun and Double the Challenge
Photo courtesy of La Cantera Hill Country Resort.
Any talk about golf in San Antonio must include the La Cantera Hill Country Resort, a 1,600-acre master-planned development that includes two championship 18-hole courses, a gorgeous hotel built in 1999 and modeled after the famous King Ranch’s “Big House,” two stunning clubhouses and an academy of golf to help hone the golfer’s game. La Cantera has consistently been ranked one of the best resorts in America by Golf Magazine. The resort recently dropped its affiliation with the Starwood family of hotels and resorts and is now being managed by Englewood, Colo.-based Destination Hotels & Resort. But the bottom line is that the property across the street from Six Flags Fiesta Texas still rocks hard. The digs are nice at La Cantera, but it’s the golf courses that are the resort’s biggest draw, and they are supreme in every sense of the word. La Cantera features two courses: the Resort Course, designed as the final work of the team of Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish, and the Palmer Course, fashioned by—you guessed it—Arnold Palmer, with help from longtime collaborator Ed Seay.
The Resort Course opened in 1995 and offers No. 18 at the Palmer Course is a spectacular a handful of natural water features, 75 sand par-4 finale that plays 490 yards and slightly bunkers and an up-and-down ride that sports half up and then down an 80-foot slope, providing a dozen holes with panoramic views of the city incredible views of the clubhouse and waterfalland the surrounding Hill Country. Its beauty and fed lake. challenge are created with rock outcroppings, The main difference between Resort Course running streams, mature trees and holes that and the Palmer Course at La Cantera is that the work their way through and over land that was Resort Course has many more open fairways once a stone quarry. and not as many blind shots. Even though the Players never forget the thrill of teeing it up Resort Course is the one that formally hosted the at the Resort Course’s seventh hole, a severe PGA Tour’s Valero Texas Open, it is much more downhill par-4 whose green playable for the average golfer seems to lie just beneath than the Palmer Course. dramatic waterfalls, beautiful that main rollercoaster There are times on the Palmer views and mind-blowing landscape of the aforementioned Course that you will feel like you theme park and is perhaps the city’s most famous are standing at the highest point in San Antonio individual golf hole. as you look down at the city in the distance, Located just down the street from the hotel, the holes from the adjacent Resort Course the Palmer Course was built and added to the La below your feet and jets flying into the nearby Cantera family in 2001 and features a variety of international airport whizzing by you holes touched with dramatic waterfalls, beautiful on a seemingly equal plane. views and mind-blowing landscape. Playing to a par Fun and fair, the golf courses at the La Cantera of 71 at 6,926 yards from the tips, the Palmer Course Hill Country Resort pull in players with thrillis full of blind-tee shots, carries over canyons and packed golf, first-class service and amenities. up-and-down and sideways-sloped shots. That’s a great mix for all involved.
atxman.com 37
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Tapatio Springs Moving Strait Up the Charts
on 12 of the resort’s 28 holes, and more than 60 sand bunkers are placed around the routing. Country music legend George Strait and his partner The Lakes nine features memorable back-to-back and Hill Country entrepreneur Tom Cusick bought par-4s. The 371-yard fifth hole plays through a chute Tapatio Springs Hill Country Resort in Boerne (about of trees off the tee down to a fairway at least 40 feet 30 minutes west of San Antonio) in April 2011, and set below, with ever-present Frederick Creek looming upon a schedule to stake the three-decades-old resort on the left. No. 6 is longer, at 396 yards, and features to the top of the list of area golf destinations. another downhill tee shot that must be lengthy in In the nearly three years since Strait and Cusick took order to give the player a reasonable approach uphill charge, they’ve made huge strides at Tapatio Springs. over the trees and creek to the slightly elevated The first step in the resort’s renovation included putting surface. renewing its 112 rooms, updating the lodging and The Valley nine brings water in to play on virtually clubhouse exteriors (done with more than 1,000 tons of every hole, including the fine stretch that begins at rock and columns) and modernizing its 20,000-square its 158-yard par-3 uphill third. No. 4 is also uphill feet of meeting facilities and its expansive golf pro shop. and short (293 yards) but the tee shot is blind and The resort also opened the fabulous La Cascada the fairway tends to move shots not hit to the perfect restaurant to bring complete resort amenities to spot either left or right in to Tapatio Springs. Other dining amenities memorable back-to-back par-4s trouble. The 559-yard par-5 include Five Points Grill in the center of fifth is downhill and doglegs the golf course. left to the creek then turns back uphill through a The biggest part of reviving Tapatio Springs was to make the golf offerings the best they could be after chute of trees and bunkers to a narrow green. years of neglect because of the lack of water. The This fall, Tapatio Springs unveiled its new PureSol water issues have been solved and parts of the Bill Salt Cave Spa. The resort shipped in 22 tons of Johnson-designed course, which, in May 2013 was salt for the cave; it is the only true salt cave spa reduced from 27 to 18 holes, have been resodded and in the region. brought closer to the pristine conditions Strait and If you love golf and want to stay outside the hustle Cusick (and resort golfers) expect and crave. and bustle of the big city, this is a great place for you. The resort’s original Lakes and Valley nines, And like a great song that becomes more recognizable opened for play in 1981, were once ranked among the and robust with age, the experience at Tapatio Top 10 Golf Courses in Texas by the Dallas Morning Springs Hill Country Resort is one that will grow News. Water comes in to play in some shape or form on those that venture inside its canyon walls.
Charity Rules at the Valero Texas Open Another top Alamo City resort, the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort (whew, that’s a real mouthful) will host the 92nd Valero Texas Open March 27 through 30. The Valero Texas Open is the sixth oldest professional tournament in golf worldwide, the third oldest on the PGA Tour and the longest held in the same city, making San Antonio the oldest host city on tour. Eight different golf courses in San Antonio have hosted the Texas Open, including the A.W. Tillinghast-designed track at Fort Sam Houston, the only military base golf course to host a PGA Tour event. Since 2010, the event has been contested at the AT&T Oaks Course at TPC San Antonio on the grounds of the massive JW Marriott San Antonio.
Photo courtesy of Tapatio Springs.
The tournament’s list of champions includes some of the greatest names in golf history: Walter Hagen, Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Ben Crenshaw, Lee Trevino, Justin Leonard, Zach Johnson and Adam Scott, to name a few. Since Valero became title sponsor in 2002, the tournament has become the annual leader in charitable fundraising among all PGA Tour events, with more than $81.5 million donated to charity in those 12 years. The 2013 Valero Texas Open—won by Martin Laird—together with the Benefit for Children Golf Classic, contributed $10 million to local and regional charities.
atxman.com 39
good life
Good deeds
Mack, Jack and McConaughey The second annual MJ&M fundraising event promises repeat success, with an all-star lineup, including Sheryl Crow. The Mack, Jack & McConaughey fundraising event is back, announcing nine-time Grammy Award-winning artist Sheryl Crow as the gala headliner. This two-day event in Austin raises money for nonprofit organizations that dedicate themselves to empowering children. Past organizations that have received support from the MJ&M fundraising event include The Rise School of Austin, just keep livin Foundation, HeartGift, CureDuchenne and Grounded in Music. With last year’s record-breaking event raising nearly $1 million, Mack Brown, Jack Ingram and Matthew McConaughey have set a huge bar for 2014. Kicking off the weekend is the gala, live auction and live performance by Sheryl Crow at ACL Live at the Moody Theater the night of April 24. Last year’s live auction saw special appearances by University of Texas Football alumni such as Vince Young and Colt McCoy, as well as Roger Clemens, former New York Yankees starting pitcher. Crow has released eight studio albums, a quadruple-platinum greatest hits collection and a Christmas album. America’s songbird sweetheart previously lived in Austin during her relationship with Lance Armstrong. Her long-awaited return promises a night of chart-topping hits and songs from her new album, Feels Like Home, a country record she is currently touring with. Friday promises a full day of golf, fashion and more music. The Celebrity Classic Golf Tournament will be held at the Barton Creek Country Club and is open to the public. The Neiman Marcus fashion show begins with a private VIP reception with dinner. Finishing off the weekend is the annual performance by Jack Ingram with a VIP dinner and after party. The concert is open to the public with a purchased ticket. Sally and Mack Brown say they are ecstatic for this year’s MJ&M event full of fun for a great cause. “Sally and I are committed to making 2014 an even better year,” Mack Brown says. “We are so excited to see friends and experience another year of excellent music, terrific golf, a once-in-a-lifetime fashion event and VIP parties.” The VIP golf tournament, along with VIP receptions, dinners and the after party to the Jack Ingram concert are available with sponsorship packages. These event packages range from individual events to bundled packages and are detailed on the newly re-launched MJ&M site. Tickets for the Sheryl Crow concert are on sale and available online. For more information, visit mackjackmcconaughey.org or email info@mackjackmcconaughey.org.
40 ATX MAN spring 2014
Photos courtesy of MJ&M.
By Courtney Bell
SPONSORED EVENTS Amplify Austin: I Live Here, I Give Here March 20 and 21 For 24 hours, Amplify Austin raises funds online for local nonprofit organizations, and since they reached $2.8 million last year, they’re looking to surpass $4 million this time around. Prizes will be given to donors, so get online and get involved. For more information, visit ilivehereigivehere.org/programs/amplify_austin.
Ride Drive Give March 29, Circuit of the Americas The Center for Child Protection presents Ride Drive Give, a fundraising event that gives you a front-row seat as you experience the thrill of the world-renowned COA track. Get suited up for an adrenaline-producing ride in a modified F1 racecar, drive your own car, take a hot lap in a supercar and test your driving prowess during an autocross program, all to benefit abused children in Travis County. For tickets and more information, visit centerforchildprotection.org.
Fight for Air Climb April 26, Frost Bank Tower Join the American Lung Association for the 2014 Fight for Air Climb, a unique athletic and fundraising challenge open to all fitness levels. With each step taken, you are climbing for lung-cancer research, those who can’t quit smoking, asthma education and laws that improve air quality, both indoors and out. For tickets and more information, visit fightforairclimb.org.
NFL Alumni Golf Classic May 2, The Hills of Lakeway Signature Course Teams will compete on The Hills of Lakeway Signature Course in a scramble format with adjusted handicapping, followed by an alternate shot, sudden-death playoff to support the Center for Child Protection. Four-person teams, each captained by a former NFL player, will compete for a trip to the 2015 NFL Alumni Super Bowl of Golf Tournament. More information and tickets at centerforchildprotection.org.
Karma’s Challenge Golf Classic May 5, River Place Country Club Four-person teams plus a celebrity will compete at the River Place Country Club in a scramble format with a shotgun start. This golf tournament is Central Texas Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ (SPCA) first celebrity golf tournament, helping to raise funds to continue SPCA’s mission to end euthanasia among animals. For more information and tickets, visit centraltexasspca.org.
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42   ATX MAN spring 2014
Hugh Forrest | the Force Behind SXSW Interactive
Orchestrating the rise of the
geeks by andy east photos by andrew chan
Barbecue worth the wait: Franklin Barbecue was named styled by ashley hargrove one of the top 20 restaurants in America by Bon AppĂŠtit
atxman.com 4 3
| As
the South By Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi) gears up for its
21st installment, tens of thousands of übercreatives, up-and-coming tech tycoons and venture capitalists are set to once again turn the Live Music Capital in to a launch pad for tomorrow’s movers and shakers of the tech world. Although more than 30,000 people attended SXSWi last year, the annual “spring break for geeks” has not always been the headline grabber it is now. Buckle up as ATX Man winds back the clock to give you an inside peak at how Hugh Forrest, the director of the SXSW Interactive Festival, transformed a conference for geeks in to the hottest ticket in town, as we preview this year’s slate.
| The Right Technology at the Right Time
money from him for the newspaper and I think his idea was that maybe this would make it cheaper and I wouldn’t be borrowing Landing a job is never easy, and landing a job directing a tech so much from him. conference with Texas-sized ambitions sounds like no exception. “But I was in my early 20s and, of course, I said, ‘You don’t It would be no stretch of the imagination to envisage fierce comknow what you’re talking about,’ ” Forrest continues. “But after petition and an arduous interview process before being handed two or three months, as most things happen, you realize that the reins of a conference like the South By Southwest Interactive your dad probably understands more about this stuff than you Festival, but as Hugh Forrest, the director of South By Southdo. We ended up getting a LaserWriter and a Mac Plus computer, west Interactive Festival, recounts, his path to heading up SXSWi and that was my entry in to South By Southwest.” could not have been more different. In fact, according to Forrest, The year was 1988 and Austin, much like the U.S. technological he got the job simply because he owned a computer. landscape, was very different. The population of the Capital After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in English from KenCity had just eclipsed 460,000, less than 15 percent of American yon College in Ohio, Forrest, a native Austinite, returned to Aushouseholds owned a computer and SXSW tin in 1984 and founded The Austin Challenger, was a nascent music festival, showcasing an alternative newspaper that competed with nearly 200 bands and attracting about 700 The Austin Chronicle. By nature of me having registrants in its inaugural year. Even though “I always joke that it was mainly alternative this Mac Plus and this attendance had surpassed expectations, because it never really came out when it was LaserWriter, I got tagged SXSW was a far cry from the three-fold supposed to come out,” Forrest says. “But if spectacle it is today, as SXSW Interactive you remember what the print industry was as the tech person, which and Film were not yet on the drawing board. like 30 years ago, in the mid-80s, one of the is a complete misnomer “South By Southwest was using The Austin biggest expenses of doing a newspaper or a because I can barely Chronicle’s typesetting machine for storing magazine was typesetting.” all of their records,” Forrest says. Typesetting is the art of creating and arturn my computer on. “I knew the folks at The Austin Chronicle. ranging text to later be printed, often in mass Our publications were friendly competitors, quantities for publications like newspapers or and about 10 days before the second South By Southwest, I got magazines. Although it may be hard to imagine what the typea call from them. ‘Can we put our database on one computer?’ setting industry was like before the click-type-and-print days of they asked. And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s what computers are for.’ Then ubiquitous desktop publishing software, typesetting was often there was a pause in the phone conversation and they say, ‘How viewed as an expensive, tedious and painstaking process. about your computer?’ “Typesetting machines took up entire rooms and you had to go “I got hired more because I had the computer and the Laserto a typesetting shop and they would output your copy and you Writer than for other stuff. At that point, there was this one Mac would get back these galleys and you would wax them down,” Plus computer that was essentially powering all of South By Forrest says. “And my dad had at one point said to me, ‘There is Southwest. I often say that was our early lesson in the importhis new thing called a LaserWriter that will output fairly printtance of having the right technology at the right time.” friendly copy.’ My dad said this because I was borrowing a lot of
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Released in 1986, the Mac Plus was a revelation in the computing world. It sold for $2,599 and boasted an 8-megahertz processor, a 3.5inch floppy drive and one megabyte of RAM. Although at the time it was cutting-edge, it contained approximately 162 times less processing power than the iPhone 5. “I remember walking We were very lucky that in one day and there was smoke coming out of the we became an epicenter top of the thing,” Forrest for social media. says. “But we somehow recovered from that and despite the smoke coming out of the top of the machine, I guess I had impressed Roland Swenson [co-founder of SXSW] enough that he wanted to bring me on full time year round. “By nature of me having this Mac Plus and this LaserWriter, I got tagged as the tech person, which is a complete misnomer because I can barely turn my computer on. And in ’94, when we added on to the music event what was a combined film and multimedia conference, I was tapped to help lead the multimedia portion of this event.” This offshoot of the music festival, christened the SXSW Film and Multimedia Conference, marked a turning point in the history of SXSW, and would later blossom in to one of the largest tech conferences in the world.
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| Rise of the Geeks On March 16, 1994, nearly 300 registrants descended upon the halls and conference rooms of the Hyatt Regency Hotel on the corner of Barton Springs Road and South Congress Avenue to attend the inaugural SXSW Film and Multimedia Conference. Registration was $125 for the threeday event and there were eight panel discussions and 36 speakers on topics ranging from CD-ROMs, to the future role of multimedia in creative industries. “We were very focused on how this new, burgeoning field of multimedia was going to improve education. A lot of those early panel sessions and presentations were focused on how technology and how specifically multimedia and how specifically CD-ROMs, which were the most cutting-edge at that time, were going to make education better,” Forrest says. “In some ways, we were very far ahead of our time by combining multimedia and film in to one event. In fact, so far ahead of our time that after one year, we split them off in to two separate events.” The next year, the geeks reappeared under a new name, the SXSW Multimedia Conference, and showed immediate potential for growth, with attendance more than tripling from 300 to Seven For All Mankind Austyn Jean, $169; Ermengildo Zegna purple paisley tie, $205; Segna navy check sport coat, $2,050, available at Neiman Marcus, 3400 Palm Way, 512.719.1200, neimanmarcus.com; belt, model’s own.
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SXSWi
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touted as the first modern social networking website. Although it has since been supplanted by social network juggernauts like MySpace and Facebook, Friendster is still around, having made inroads in Southeast Asia after being bought by Malaysian e-payment firm MOL Global, and later revamped in to a social gaming platform. While the names and faces have changed, once ignited, the social media revolution was implacable, and in the early 2000s, it was just beginning to rev its engines. “Our ultimate tipping point was in 2007 when Twitter essentially launched here. You have said ‘essentially’ because they didn’t really launch here. They had been out for eight months beforehand but they hadn’t achieved much usership at that point,” Forrest says. “When they came to South By Southwest, they had a big spike in usership and, given what Twitter has become years later, I think that the history of Twitter finding its mojo and audience at South By Southwest has been a huge factor in our growth. “For the people who were there in 2007 when Twitter made their mark, it was a really neat thing, but I would say that no one in 2007 could have possibly imagined what Twitter would eventually grow to, and that’s fairly typical of an event like South By Southwest, meaning that there will be a technology that catches on with the registrants here and registrants think it’s the coolest thing in the world, but maybe it never catches on with the outside world. And I think the same thing can be said on the music and film side. There’ll be a band
that plays here and they’re the greatest band in the world and they are going to go out and conquer the world but for whatever reason, it doesn’t happen. This is one of the cases, with Twitter, that wow, it did happen.” During the 2007 SXSWi, Twitter reported that its web traffic increased three-fold from 20,000 to 60,000 messages (or Tweets) per day. By 2010, the Twittersphere was buzzing with more than 50 million Tweets per day, and as of last year, that number had mushroomed to more than 500 million (about 5,700 Tweets per second). By 2008, the social media pandemonium was hitting its stride, sparking a hodgepodge of new innovations, ideas and startups, many of which would appear at SXSWi and rival some of the defining moments in the conference’s history, even though not all of these moments turned out as planned. “There have also been some defining moments that haven’t been necessarily great. Mark Zuckerberg [co-founder, chairman and CEO of Facebook] was our keynote speaker in 2008,” Forrest says. “And unfortunately, it didn’t go as well as anyone would have liked it to go. But for better or worse, it got a ton of attention and helped get the South By Southwest name out there. “What was fascinating about this from a cultural and technological perspective was that it was an early and powerful demonstration of how connected devices can change a crowd dynamic. And what I mean by that is that in previous years and previous decades, you might have gone to the speech and said, ‘This is kind of boring,
HAVE “ GEEKS BECOME COOL. ”
Gaming Expo photo courtesy of SXSW. SXSW Create photo by Lisa Hause. Cory Booker photo by Amanda Stronza.
more than 1,000. Nevertheless, the noobs on the SXSW scene were still third string behind the rock and film stars. But the sagely patience of SXSW management to let SXSW Multimedia find its groove would pay dividends, placing SXSW at the epicenter of an unprecedented tech revolution just a few years later. “When we were really struggling to grow and find our voice, I remember telling people on my staff, my friends and my family, ‘There’s no way. We can’t even compete against ourselves,’ ” Forrest says. “South By Southwest Music brings in rock stars. Film brings in film stars. All I have got are these geeks and who cares about geeks? “There have been many, many factors for our success, one of which was that we didn’t have the pressure in that first year of ‘it’s got to fund itself.’ If it was a standalone event, I don’t think it ever would have survived. South By Southwest Music was essentially paying the bills for many, many years for Interactive.” As the SXSW Multimedia Conference continued to shuffle through names before settling on the SXSW Interactive Festival in 1998, the conference continued its surge in to a new millennium, echoing the meteoric rise of the Internet and the incipient convergence of once disparate creative industries, until 2004, when SXSWi ventured in to a new arena: social media. “The first big push in to social media was in 2004,” Forrest says. “We were very lucky that we became an epicenter for social media. Jonathan Abrams was one our keynote speakers in 2004 and founder of this website called Friendster, a precursor to MySpace and Facebook.” Founded in 2002, Friendster is often
but maybe it is just me.’ But with the Zuckerberg keynote, what was different was that people were communicating in real time via their smartphones, saying, ‘This isn’t good.’ All of a sudden, you had people in the audience talking to each other via smartphone or computer realizing that it’s not just me, it’s them. About halfway through the talk, a lot of the audience got up and left. We’ve been lucky enough to grow a lot in the last decade, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have lots and lots of improvements we have to make. South By Southwest is a work in progress.” While the Zuckerberg keynote may have disappointed, it did not dissuade the growing base of dedicated attendees from returning, and with tech startups springing up like Starbucks, SXSWi was able to cast an increasingly wider net and reel in even more high-tech innovators. “In 2009, Foursquare and Gowalla did actually launch at South By Southwest. Those were big things. I don’t think that Foursquare has achieved the same mass adoption that Facebook or Twitter has, but it made a fairly large dent and continues to have lots of possibilities,” Forrest says. “That startup mythology has such a powerful message in our society. Who is going to be the Mark Zuckerberg? Who is going to be this teenager who develops a new technology that changes the world? We have benefited very strongly from the power of that message.” Since 2009, word-of-mouth has kept spreading and attendance has kept soaring. In 2010, the geeks reached the apex of SXSW, surpassing SXSW Music and SXSW Film in attendance for the first time, with more than 14,000 registrants. Since then, attendance has doubled, with more than 30,000 registrants from 57 countries attending SXSWi last year. “Geeks have become cool,” Forrest says. “There has been this complete shift in the last 10 or 15 years in which people like Mark Zuckerberg, the founders of Twitter, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs have become cultural icons that so many people look up to. Fifteen years ago, I would have never imagined this popularization and romanticization of geek culture.”
| All Tomorrow’s Party If the sky was once the limit, SXSW Interactive must have stormed past it years ago. While the conference’s rise to prominence has made headlines throughout the world, its precipitous growth has also prompted debates on the event’s size and speculation on what the future has in store. “We’ve begun to hit some real limits in terms of our growth. When I say that, I just mean hotel and lodging capacity. But you also have to say, wait a second, in 2015, we have this new JW Marriot opening up downtown, and we’ve got the Fairmont that will be theoretically online in 2016. The city is growing in part due to events like South By Southwest, Circuit of the Americas
or ACL Fest. In the long term, I think there can be a little more growth,” Forrest says. “But I think the challenges, problems and issues that we have in terms of growth at South By Southwest Interactive are kind of a microcosm of Austin in terms of growth. Austin is this great city, it’s one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S. and everyone wants to move here, but how much does that rapid growth decrease the things that made Austin special? Those are the same questions we have at South By Southwest Interactive. When you continue to grow, does that in any way weaken the experience that people have at South By Southwest? “Personally, I think that Austin and South By Southwest Interactive have scaled pretty well. As crowded as it can be at times and as difficult as it can be to get around the city during South By SouthWho is going to be this west, what the city has at teenager who develops that time of the year that it doesn’t have as much of at a new technology that other times of the year is a changes the world? factor of density. And that is what all of these startup and tech companies want. They want to be able to every 15 feet run in to another [venture capitalist] who can potentially fund them, or a developer who may want to help work on their startup or their nonprofit.” During its 21-year history, SXSWi has constantly been in flux, adding an ever-evolving slate of festivities under its auspices, including the SXSW Web Awards in 1998, SXSW Gaming Expo in 2006 (originally titled SXSW ScreenBurn), the SXSW Startup Village in 2012 and this year’s inaugural SXsports programming track. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that Forrest is constantly on the hunt for ways to expand and improve, but he has his eyes set on not only expanding the event physically, but also virtually. “We have to become more of a virtual event and allow more people to experience the event virtually. We’re doing some of that now. We tend to stream some of the keynotes and some of the other sessions, but probably not as much as we need to move to. In some ways in the future, it will be easier to attend and participate in events like SXSW virtually,” Forrest says. “With that said, there is no small degree of irony that as much as we are an event that focuses on new technologies and gadgets, we are in many ways, totally old school. While it’s great to see this new technology, what people really like about it is the chance to have face-to-face meetings with people who can help their career move forward. As much as there is value being able to Tweet or email someone, to date there is no technology that replaces the value of having coffee, a beer or dinner with someone. Those types of connections are what an event like South By Southwest is all about.” Visit sxsw.com/interactive for more information and to register for the 2014 SXSW Interactive Festival.
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timeline 1994 SXSW Film and Multimedia Conference: Attendance: 300 people, no keynote speakers Topics ranged from CD-ROMs to the effect of multimedia on creative industries. Many of the companies showcased were based in Austin, including Human Code.
1995 SXSW Multimedia Conference Attendance: 1,000 people The first ever keynotes are musician Todd Rundgren and Richard Garriot, video-game designer and astronaut who created the Ultima role-playing game series in the early 1980s and is credited with popularizing the phrase “massively multiplayer online roleplaying game.” Microsoft also made its first appearance. 1997
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2000
1999 SXSW Interactive Festival Attendance: 2,200 Adobe PhotoShop and eBay are featured in sessions for the first time, and Mark Cuban and musician Philip Glass are among the keynote speakers.
2000 SXSW Interactive Festival Attendance: 3,700 Mp3.com is showcased, as well as the future role of the Internet in political campaigns with georgebush2000.com. The NASDAQ dot-com bubble bursts on Monday of the conference and Rob Burgess and Kevin Lynch of Macromedia are among the keynote speakers.
SXSW Multimedia & Interactive Festival Attendance: 1,400 people Dell, Macromedia, Yahoo! and Apple Computers Inc. are showcased at the conference. Pioneering computer scientist Jaron Lanier is among the keynote speakers. 2001
2001 SXSW Interactive Festival Attendance: 3,100 Larry Page, the co-founder of rising star search engine Google, is featured in a session. At the time, the future tech giant had just moved out of its original office—a friend’s garage—two years prior. Musician DJ Spooky and Ian Clarke of the Freenet Project shed light on the art of remixing. 2007
2007 SXSW Interactive Festival Attendance: 6,800 Twitter, a new messaging app, surges in popularity among registrants. Dan Rather is a keynote speaker and last.fm, Pandora Internet Radio, Mozilla and WikiTravel are also at the conference for the first time.
2006 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival Attendance: 4,700 Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia interviews Craig Newmark of Craigslist. Squidoo and Flickr are also at the conference for the first time. 2008
2009
2008 SXSW Interactive Festival Attendance: 9,000 Facebook Co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is among the keynotes, nearly ending in a smartphoneinduced riot after disappointment in the crowd due to an awkward interview dynamic. Doubleclick and Island Def Jam Music Group were also present at this year’s SXSWi.
2009 SXSW Interactive Festival Attendance: 10,800 Location-based social networks Gowalla and Foursquare launch. DC Comics and Xbox are also featured in SXSWi sessions. 2010 2010 SXSW Interactive Festival Attendance: 14,000 Co-founder of Twitter, Ev Williams, and Daniel Ek, the founder of music streaming service Spotify, are among the keynote speakers. Pixar Animation Studio, Youtube and Netflix are also showcased during this year’s sessions.
2004 2004 SXSW Interactive Festival Attendance: 3,200 Social-network pioneer and founder of Friendster, Jonathan Abrams, marks one of SXSWi’s first dabblings in social media. Legal music downloading service, iTunes, and Sun Microsystems make their first appearance at the conference.
2005 2005 SXSW Interactive Festival Attendance: 3,300 Tom Anderson of MySpace (he was probably your first friend on MySpace) stops by. Happy Cog founder Jeffery Zeldman and author Malcolm Gladwell are among the keynote speakers.
2012 2011 2011 SXSW Interactive Festival Attendance: 19,000 Apple releases the iPad 2 in an impromptu store on Congress Avenue, and innovative accommodation website AirBnB and Rebox are also at this year’s conference.
2012 SXSW Interactive Festival Attendance: 24,500 Startups get their own home for the first time at the inaugural SXSW Startup Village. 2013
2013 SXSW Interactive Festival Attendance: 30,000 The 2013 installment includes more than 1,800 speakers and 1,000 sessions. Shawn Fanning, co-founder of Napster, is featured at the conference. Founder of SpaceX and TESLA Motors, Elon Musk, athlete Shaquille O’Neal and television host Rachel Maddow are among the keynote speakers. SXSW reaches new heights, giving Austin’s economy a $218 million boost (approximately $11,000 per minute). 48 ATX MAN spring 2014
Clinton photo courtesy of Chelsea Clinton. Assange photo by Allen Clarke. Tyson photo by Roderick Mickens. Savage photo courtesy of Adam Savage. Savoca photo by Diana Levine.
SXSW Interactive Chelsea Clinton
Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson
March 11, Exhibit Hall 5, Austin Convention Center, 2 p.m. Be sure to join the ex-first daughter and current vice chair of the Clinton Foundation as she brings the 2014 SXSW Interactive Festival to a rousing close with the goal of inspiring creatives in attendance to use their world-changing ideas to change the world for the better. Clinton’s work at the Clinton Foundation includes the Clinton Health Access Initiative and Clinton Foundation Day of Action program.
A Conversation with Julian Assange March 8, Exhibit Hall 5, Austin Convention Center, 11 a.m. With the rise of the Internet during the last 20 years and recent leaks detailing global infringements on communication privacy, never have transparency, privacy and online rights been so important. Don’t miss Julian Assange, the founder of controversial international nonprofit organization WikiLeaks, as he discusses some of the most pressing issues of our times. Assange will speak via video conference from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been holed up for the previous 19 months in an effort to avoid extradition to Sweden out of fear of later being extradited to the U.S. to face charges stemming from the role of WikiLeaks in the release of nearly a quarter million classified U.S. diplomatic cables in 2010.
March 8, Exhibit Hall 5, Austin Convention Center, 2 p.m. Hitchhike the galaxy and the vast depths of the Universe with People Magazine’s Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive. A regular guest on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Jeopardy!, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is the Frederick P. Rose director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and the author of several books, including the New York Times best-seller Death by Black Hose and Other Cosmic Quandaries. With 19 honorary doctorates under his belt (and a master’s degree in astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin in 1983), Tyson is sure to impart his knowledge and infectious passion for the mysteries of the cosmos.
Adam Savage March 10, Exhibit Hall 5, Austin Convention Center, 2 p.m. Don’t miss out on special-effects artist and executive producer and co-host of Discovery Channel television series Mythbusters, Adam Savage, as he delivers a riveting talk on the scientific method and the creative process. Besides Mythbusters, Savage has also worked on several feature films, including Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and The Matrix Reloaded.
SXSW Music Lou Reed Tribute Concert March 14, Paramount Theatre Come out and take a walk on the wild side in honor of the late Lou Reed. Although Reed lost his battle with liver disease in October, his music and influence will undoubtedly live on, and SXSW Music’s tribute to the former Velvet Underground frontman and 2008 SXSW Music keynote speaker is sure to capture the spirit of a true rock-’n’-roll legend.
Exit/In March 14, Parish Underground The Music City meets the Live Music Capital in this rollicking lineup of musical acts from the Volunteer State. The famed 500-seat Nashville venue Exit/In has been regaling audiences for decades with acts including Johnny Cash and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, and will continue to do so with a SXSW Music Showcase featuring the next generation of musicians from the Athens of the South. The lineup is chock-full of punk and garage rock acts, including The Sword, Dum Dum Girls, Diarrhea Planet, The 1975 and many more.
Jarvis Cocker March 12, Austin Convention Center Room 18ABC, 12:30 p.m. Don’t miss the chance to learn about the art of crafting songs with the frontman of famed Britpop band Pulp as he sheds light on the art of songwriting.
Breaking Great Art Requires Breakthrough Thinking March 13, Austin Convention Center Room 12AB, 2 p.m. The times, they are a-changing. The music industry certainly is not the same as it was 20 years ago. Join a panel featuring Steve Savoca, the head of Spotify’s label-relations team, Gerald Casale of new wave band Devo and several others as they discuss how to make money in this brave new world of music.
SXSW Film Neighbors March 8, Paramount Theatre Be sure to check out the world premiere of the highly anticipated comedy starring Seth Rogan, Zac Efron and Rose Byrne. Director Nicholas Stoller’s (Fun with Dick and Jane, Get Him to the Greek) new film is sure to be all laughs as a fraternity moves in next door to a couple with a newborn baby. From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series March 8, the Vimeo Don’t miss the chance to catch a prescreening of Robert Rodriguez’s new horror television series based on the 1996 cult classic From Dusk Till Dawn. The series is set to debut on Rodriguez’s English-language television station, El Rey Network.
COSMOS: A Space Time Odyssey March 7, Paramount Theatre Boldly go where no man has gone before, as host Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson takes you on a spellbinding journey through the history of space and time, covering nearly 14 billion years in 13 episodes. Jason Blum: CEO of Blumhouse Productions March 9 and March 10, 11:30 a.m. Come out and meet the man behind some of the most successful thrillers and horror films in recent years. From Paranormal Activity and Insidious to The Purge, Blumhouse Productions has mastered the art of producing commercially successful films on a tight budget. Paranormal Activity cost a mere $15,000 to make and grossed nearly $193 million worldwide, and several other films from Blumhouse Productions have followed suit.
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the Nightowls As the SXSW Music Conference enters its 28th year, ATX Man looks at what it takes to make it as a breakout band in today’s Live Music Capital of the World.
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Photo by Nicole Gell.
By John T. Davis
Screenwriter William Goldman’s famous dictum about Hollywood— “Nobody knows anything”—applies in spades to the music business, and success therein, circa 2014. What does “success” mean to an Austin musician these days, anyway? Giving up the day job? Headlining on the Austin Ventures Stage at the ACL Music Festival? Seeing your new single in heavy rotation on KGSR? Reigning as most-blogged-about at South By Southwest? Or maybe success means something as simple and satisfying as taking your shiny nine-piece band out for a spin on an unseasonably balmy and sun-drenched Sunday afternoon in January.
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Though they have a new CD of original material, Good As Gold, under their belt, on this day, the Nightowls are leaning heavily on the Motown/Stax-Volt soul music canon: Martha and the Vandellas’ Nowhere To Run; Fontella Bass’ one-hit wonder, Rescue Me; Dusty Springfield’s Son of a Preacher Man and—for a giggling cohort of tipsy girls out for a bachelorette party—a leering version of Marvin Gaye’s belly-rubbing anthem, Let’s Get It On. Though they’ve only been together a little more than two years, the band is tight, the horns vamping on cue, the rhythm section nailing down the bottom. And the slightly built vocalist at front and center is bringing it home with wounded fervor on a song from the new album: “I woke up this morning on the wrong side of the bed. Just gonna be one of those days.” The singer is named Ryan Harkrider and, along with his musical and business partner, guitarist Amos Traystman, he assembled the Nightowls in 2011. With their tight-knit sax, trumpet and trombone brass section, their call-and-response female vocalists—one of whom, Ellie Carroll, is Harkrider’s wife—and their overriding affection for the lyrical joys and
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good as gold Released December 3, 2013 Produced by Jake Langley Label The Nightowls Music Texas Music Magazine called the album “a smooth, addictive blend of pop, R&B and funk. … The sound is contemporary/vintage, resembling music of a bygone era yet somehow feeling fresh and exciting.”
Photo by Nicole Gell.
That’s where we find the Nightowls, holding down a weekend residency at Icenhauer’s, in the heart of the Rainey Street District. They’re crammed on the tiny outdoor stage, the keyboard almost poking in to the neighbor’s yard, the horn players swiveling in tight lockstep, the singers practically sitting in the laps of the throng of hipsters sipping Lone Star tallboys and fruit jars full of sangria.
sorrows of classic R&B, the band fits nicely in to the timeless yet freshly fashionable fusion of pop, funk and soul popularized by the likes of Sharon Jones, John Legend and Adele, as well as locally, to greater and lesser extents, Nakia, T-Bird & the Breaks and Akina Adderley. Good As Gold was produced by Jake Langley, whose production credits include Roberta Flack and Bobby “Blue” Bland, and was released in December on the band’s own label. Texas Music Magazine called the album “a smooth, addictive blend of pop, R&B and funk. … The sound is contemporary/vintage, resembling music of a bygone era yet somehow feeling fresh and exciting.” Now the question becomes: How the hell do you let people know about it? There are the band’s own gigs, of course—20 or so a month in Austin and cities throughout Texas. The 20th century dinosaur standbys of newspapers, magazines and commercial radio still exist in uneasy juxtaposition to social media like Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and Buzzfeed. And there is satellite radio, along with online music services like iTunes, Spotify and Pandora. Plus, roughly a jillion music blogs and websites, not including the band’s own. It’s exhausting and a little dispiriting. There’s never been more music at the fingertips of consumers and it’s never been harder for a musician or a band to break through the static. If standing out is the first imperative of making a successful career, how do you stand out? “Good question! I have no idea,” says Harkrider. It’s a few days later and Harkrider is sitting in the foyer of his publicist’s office. Good question or no, it’s clear that, despite his disclaimer, he’s given the matter a lot of thought. “Being a dance band, we try to put on great shows and try to promote the album. That, for us, has been the best thing. We like to connect with people, and if we can get them out of their seats and moving, they can connect with us as a band, and that will connect them
Photo by Daniel Davis.
with our album,” Harkrider says. “We work hard on the shows. Getting them there is one thing, but if you can’t get them there and impress them, it’s kind of all in vain,” Traystman adds. That’s the classic old-school work ethic talking, but in the meantime, the band utilizes Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as well, not just to promote their gigs and music but, as Harkrider stresses, to create a personal connection. For instance, on a recent road trip to Houston, the band made a stop at Hruška’s, the beloved gas station and kolache emporium on Highway 71. They posted a photo of the joint on Instagram and fans responded. “It’s a story,” Harkrider says. “Not only the story that the Nightowls are going to Houston to play a show, which is the information we want to convey, but also we want people to say, ‘I know that place! I love the kolaches!’ They can envision us driving in the van, listening to music, spotting the sign. … We want to create a narrative. There’s nine of us, so we try to have real stories.” Spreading the band’s stories is a job for a publicist. “We have to have a band that’s out there already playing and building their fan base before we can work with them. Bringing fans are the key. If they’ve got the wheel moving, we can grow that,” says Jill McGuckin, the founder of Austin-based McGuckin Entertainment PR. In addition to the Nightowls, the company has worked with Patricia Vonne, Reckless Kelly, Ruby Jane, the Greencards and others. “The one thing that sticks out for me with
the Nightowls is that they’re not afraid to work hard, and Ryan is very dedicated to making the band successful,” says Publicist Heidi Labensart, McGuckin’s associate. “The challenge for us is to find the right outlets to promote the band.” McGuckin and Labensart are constantly vetting regional and national media outlets to track which are legitimate news purveyors and which are just
says. “They have helped us see what it is and what’s actually going on and getting those CDs to the right people who can help.” Those people who can help naturally include radio station music directors. Radio, whether online, via satellite or over the airwaves, still has an important role to play in an artist’s development, says Jeff McCord, music director at KUTX.
piggybacking on other social-media feeds. “A lot of media are lurkers,” McGuckin says. “They pick up as much from Twitter and Facebook as they do [from original sources].” “Jill and Heidi have helped us “We work hard on the shows. Getting them there is one because they can have an outsider’s thing, but if you can’t get them there and impress them, point of view of the it’s kind of all in vain.” band,” Harkrider
“The vast majority of listeners get their new music from radio, although that’s something we worry about with the younger demographic,” McCord says. “All we can do is counteract the reality that people have millions of pieces of music at their fingertips. Spotify has millions of songs, but if you don’t know where to go. … That’s where we feel we have the leg up. We spend a lot of time curating.” McCord, like every other music director, is inundated with submissions every day.
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ELLIE CARROLL - Vocals TARA WILLIAMSON - Vocals OSCAR INTERIANO - Keys ROB ALTON - Bass RYAN HARKRIDER - Lead Vocals BEN PETREE - Drums AMOS TRAYSTMAN - Guitar Jonathan McNutt - Saxophone
“There’s not enough time in the not on social media all the time, but if “The vast majority world to listen to everything,” he something goes viral, somebody tends of listeners get acknowledges. to talk to me about it. Or, I hear about it So he winnows the field in timefrom my son.” their new music proven, old-fashioned ways: He Musicians are sometimes their own from radio, talks to friends and peers whose worst enemies, he notes. although that’s opinions he respects. He reads the “I have to go after bands I’ve heard something we trades and keeps up with relevant about, but they haven’t sent the station worry about websites like Pitchfork. He peruses anything. Radio’s not on their radar, or with the younger articles people send him about barely so,” McCord says. demographic.” trending bands. (“If something’s That’s not a mistake the Nightowls are going crazy, you hear about it,” he apt to make. says.) He talks to folks at parties “We have a very grassroots, DIY apand in the clubs. proach to radio and press,” Harkrider says. “We’re al“I cobble all those things together and do the best ways walking it around, trying to make good contacts I can to keep up,” he says with a rueful chuckle. “I’m wherever we play. We work with the club owner: Who
54 ATX MAN spring 2014
do you talk with? Who do you work with? Who can we give this to? We want to help you help us promote the show.” How do you make an impression on a club owner or a booking agent? “A band’s ability to promote, and how much effort they put in to their own shows goes a long way,” says Kristyn Ciani. She should know. As a talent buyer for Austin entertainment giant C3 Presents, she booked the Nightowls at Stubb’s for the first time. “Some artists don’t do much more than list a show on their blog or web page. Others take it to the next level. They’re out there on the streets with flyers and posters, they’re doing Facebook campaigns and getting their fans involved and engaged,” Ciani says.
Photo by Nicole Gell.
JUSTIN SMITH - Trumpet
“They’re trying to work the press and the radio. Something good will eventually happen.” Where the Nightowls were concerned, Ciani was impressed by their sharp-looking live show (“a tight, fun sound,” she says.) and an evident willingness to put in the effort to sell that show. Harkrider acknowledged—with humor—that, like Goldman’s Hollywood, no one knows anything when it comes to knowing absolutely what works and what doesn’t . When a reporter pointed out facetiously that he knows as much about what succeeds as, say, the president of Sony Music, the Nightowls frontman responded, “Yeah, you know as much as he does and as little as he does. It’s empowering and terrifying, both.” Harkrider, like most of his peers, came of age in a different cultural universe, when MTV still played music videos, the local record store was the place to hang out, cell phones were just phones, not media hubs, and hit singles on the radio ruled the roost. An Austin native, the 28-yearold singer grew up in a musical environment. His parents were both church choir directors and he studied music, vocal performance and composition at the University of Texas. He started writing songs halfway through college. Ironi-
cally, for an Austin musician, Harkrider missed some of the pivotal years of South By Southwest because the acapella group he performed with in college went on the road every spring break. He began his musical career as an Americana-style singer-songwriter and, indeed, he has a solo album in the can, but soul music had beckoned ever since he got a copy of the Jackson 5 Ultimate Collection album as a kid. “Not only does singing soul music pair you with these fabulous musicians, but you learn firsthand how those songs are constructed and what works and what doesn’t, as far as song structure,” he says. Harkrider and Traystman polished their soul music chops with the Matchmaker Band, an ensemble that runs on a parallel track with the Nightowls. The Matchmaker Band is an all-covers 10-piece group that plays mostly weddings and private parties. Harkrider and Traystman perform with both groups, although the Nightowls is a forum for original material, penned mostly by Harkrider, with arrangements by the band, versus the Matchmakers’ all-the-hits catalog. “The approaches to the two bands are different, but the mindsets we have in terms of infrastructure are very similar,” Traystman says. “Everybody has different strengths. Ryan and I are more on the administrative/visionary side.” Moving from the cover-band world to the indie/ original material world has been “a learning curve,” Traystman adds. “The biggest thing we have to set ourselves apart is that we’ve found a niche, stylistically. We want to put our own take on things but not compromise what makes that classic music so great.” In addition to Harkrider and Traystman, the Nightowls also include vocalists Tara Williamson and Ellie Carroll, horn men Justin Smith, Jonathan McNutt and Javier Stuppard, bassist Rob Alton, drummer Ben Petree and Oscar Interiano on keyboards.
My favorite South By Southwest star-is-born story goes like this: It was late one night in 2002, and I was at that point that every SXSW-ophile invariably reaches each year: tired, probably over-served and on the receiving end of way, way too much mediocre music. So when, in my third-and-long state, someone came up and asked, “Hey, Ravi Shankar’s daughter has a midnight showcase. She’s from Dallas and she’s playing upstairs over an Indian food restaurant. Wanna come with?” my answer was not only no, but hell no. And that’s how I came to bail on Norah Jones’ SXSW debut, right after the Billy Ray Cyrus (1988) Lucinda Williams (1989) Dixie Chicks (1991) P (with Johnny Depp) (1993)
Hanson (1994) Jonny Lang (1997) The Flaming Lips (1999) Black-Eyed Peas (2000)
Now, with their CD out and word-of-mouth spreading, Harkrider can focus on the next rungs on the ladder. “We’ve got to be realistic with it. This is our first album, our first mark on the world. We haven’t showcased at South By Southwest, but we’ve got our name in the hat this year,” he says. “I’m from Austin, so I want to play at ACL and Blues on the Green. Those are my most immediate attainable goals. A year from now, the next piece of the puzzle, we would love to find a touring band—Raphael Saadiq or Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings would be great—and jump on with them, or put together our own tour.” For the time being though, the Nightowls’ success is measured one new fan or successful gig or CD sale at a time. And that’s not something you can delegate to a publicist or a radio DJ or a social-media website. “Amazon and iTunes are great platforms to connect with people all over the world,” Harkrider acknowledges. But you can’t autograph a download at the end of a sweaty night onstage and put it in someone’s hand. “It’s just real. To me, having a CD and being able to give it to you and look you in the eye and say thank you is something real and very important.” “I think it’s the only way bands can make it these days,” says KUTX’s McCord. “They can’t wait around and rely on anything to happen. They’ve really got to have the smarts and the wherewithal and know the bases they need to cover. They’ve got to realize they’ve really got to work their butts off to do this.” To paraphrase George Clooney’s character in A Perfect Storm, it’s not a work ethic, it’s just work. They may look sharp onstage, but Harkrider and the Nightowls aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. In the immortal words of Marvin and Tammi’s 1968 Motown hit, there ain’t nothin’ like the real thing.
release of her first album. You know, the one that sold 18 million copies and won eight Grammys. Something like 2,500 bands performed at the music portion of SXSW in 2013 (versus 172 at the first event in 1987), and you will never hear of most of them again. But every year, seemingly, there is a breakout artist who springboards from the festival and in to the platinum-selling stratosphere. Here’s a by-no-means-complete list of hit makers who got some of their first significant exposure at South By Southwest:
Coldplay (2001) Norah Jones (2002) John Mayer (2002) White Stripes (2004)
John Legend (2005) Amy Winehouse (2007) Katy Perry (2008) Janelle Monae (2009)
Spoon (2010) Foster the People (2011) Lana del Rey (2012) Kendrick Lamar (2013)
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Woman's Way Business Awards
AW Media is proud to present our first annual Woman’s Way Business Awards designed to honor women-owned businesses and the women who mean business.
Award Categories include: Best New Company Best Service Provider Most Customer Friendly Most Socially Conscious/Non-Profit Best Product Best in Health & Wellness Spirit Award
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April 29, 2014 6:30pm · Fiat of Austin
2014 Woman's Way
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spring
Style
Young, Wild and Free Navigate the season of festivals in spring styles with musicians Katie Paschall and Taye Cannon. Photos by Annie Ray. Styling by Ashley Hargrove, dtkaustinstyling.com. Hair by Ellen Fate and Temara Coggin, J.COCO Salon & Day Spa, 5400 Brodie Lane, Ste. 295, 512.891.0420, jcocosalons.com. Makeup by McKenzy Windham, Kiss n’ Makeup, 4402A Burnet Road, 512.388.1150, kissnmakeup.com.
Vuka 411 W. Monroe St., 512.761.3842, vukaaustin.com. The word Vuka means “to awaken,” and is exemplified in its stunning decor. An eclectic mixture of interior furnishings and one-of-a-kind artwork ranging from classic Americana to contemporary and Asian style influences are placed throughout the event space, creating an intimate setting for visitors to exchange ideas. This 70,000-square-foot venue is an avenue for creative expression, credited to its founder, Brian Schoenbaum, who’s visionary eye has won Vuka both local and national acclaim. –Ricky Rodriguez
Sway 1417 S. First St., 512.326.1999, swayaustin.com. For more on Sway, go to Page 50 of the March issue of Austin Woman.
On Taye: Bonobos Henry gingham sport shirt, $85, available at Nordstrom, 2901 S. Capital of Texas Hwy., 512.691.3500, nordstrom.com; JBrand Tyler Core dark wash jeans, $172, available at Co-Star, 1708 S. Congress Ave., 512.912.7970, costarstyle.com; Converse John Varvatos snake sneaker, $170, available at Neiman Marcus, 3400 Palm Way, 512.719.1200, neimanmarcus.com. On Katie: Flying Tomato lace and fringe wrap, $50, available at Maya Star, 1508 S. Congress Ave., 512.912.1475, mayastar.com; Jealous Tomato smocking top romper, $47, available at Co-Star, 1708 S. Congress Ave., 512.912.7970, costarstyle.com; MinneTonka fringe suede wedges, stylist’s own.
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spring
Style
T A Y E C A NN O N Getting his start with Austin dark-wave punk band Mocktigers, Taye Cannon shifted his focus to put together Roxy Roca, pursuing his true love—soul music—and has since performed in shows with B.B. King, Fitz and the Tantrums, Mayer Hawthorne and T-Bird and the Breaks. Recruiting members one by one, Cannon serves up lead vocals for the now eight-piece Roxy Roca. With a horn-heavy, funky soulful sound, Roxy Roca’s vibe is downright groovy. The high-energy performances Roxy Roca gives are infectious, making it impossible not to dance. “We’re a party band. We get people going. The songs are about love, freedom and liberation of the spirit,” Cannon says. “I play every single show like it’s my last show. I leave it all on the stage every time. You never know when it’s going to be your last show, so I try to keep that in mind. It’s always going to be real and it’s always going to be fun.” Cannon joined singer-songwriter Katie Paschall to model the latest spring trends suitable for Austin’s dynamic festival season. “My own personal style is very American, rugged. … In the band, we wear suits and dress really sharp. In Roxy Roca, we call that, ‘game tight,’ ” he laughs. In fact, you can follow Cannon’s game tight fashion picks on Facebook at facebook.com/ roxyroca. -Molly McManus
Robert Graham GEEP floral shirt, $268; Robert Graham Yardarm black pattern jacket, $998; Diesel black safado pant, $198; Converse John Varvatos snake sneaker, $170, available at Neiman Marcus, 3400 Palm Way, 512.719.1200, neimanmarcus.com. 58 ATX MAN spring 2014
On Taye: Gant Rugger selvage madras shirt, $115, available at Nordstrom, 2901 S. Capital of Texas Hwy., 512.691.3500, nordstrom.com; JBrand Tyler Core dark wash jeans, $172, available at Co-Star, 1708 S. Congress Ave., 512.912.7970, costarstyle.com; Cole Haan Martin Chuckka boot, $278, available at Neiman Marcus, 3400 Palm Way, 512.719.1200, neimanmarcus.com; blue and white frames, $10, available at Nordstrom, S. Capital of Texas Hwy., 512.691.3500, nordstrom.com; watch, model’s own.
On Katie: Collective Concepts floral dress, $75, available at Maya Star, 1508 S. Congress Ave., 512.912.1475, mayastar.com; Cognac sandals, $29.99, available at Target, target.com; Deux Lux Bellini metallic wallet, $49.99; CocoBelle brushed silver elastic belt, $28, available at Y&I Clothing Boutique, 1113 S. Congress Ave., 512.462.0775, shopyandi.com; ring, $13, available at The Lash Lounge, 10601 RM 2222, 512.346.5274, thelashlounge.com. atxman.com 5 9
spring
Style
On Taye: Calibrate navy patriot shirt, $59.50; Bonobos Redrums slacks, $88; EDIT green/blue floral tie, $25; Cole Haan LunarGrand longwing shoe, $228, available at Nordstrom, 2901 S. Capital of Texas Hwy., 512.691.3500, nordstrom.com.
60 ATX MAN spring 2014
On Katie: Amanda Uprichard swan dress, $234, available at Co-Star, 1708 S. Congress Ave., 512.912.7970, costarstyle.com; Billabong oatmeal wrap, $54, available at Y&I Clothing Boutique, 1113 S. Congress Ave., 512.462.0775, shopyandi.com; Ugg Josie tall boots, $250, available at Nordstrom, 2901 S. Capital of Texas Hwy., 512.691.3500, nordstrom.com; vintage hat, stylist’s own; Mossimo cognac fringe messenger bag, $19.99, available at Target, target.com; necklace, $22, available at The Lash Lounge, 10601 RM 2222, 512.346.5274, thelashlounge.com.
APRIL 24-25, 2014
is back for another year – and it’s only getting bigger! Visit mackjackmcconaughey.org to purchase your tickets today before it is sold-out.
MJ&M
On Katie: Alice & Olivia black leather tank, $158, available at Co-Star, 1708 S. Congress Ave., 512.912.7970, costarstyle.com; Gianni Versace vintage couture check skirt, $125, available at Co-Star, 1708 S. Congress Ave., 512.912.7970, costarstyle.com; Jimmy Choo GINO metallic pumps, $625, stylist’s own; snake cuff, $35.75; black leather wrap, $35.75, available at The Lash Lounge, 10601 RM 2222, 512.346.5274, thelashlounge.com.
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spring
Grooming
Smooth Operator Shed your rough skin for spring. Photo by Rudy Arocha 64 ATX MAN spring winter 2014 2013
Clockwise from top left: Kiehl’s Since 1851 Epidermal Re-Texturizing Micro-Dermabrasion, $41; Kiehl’s Since 1851 “Ultimate Man” Body Scrub, $15; Omorovicza Gentle Buffing Cleanser, $85; La Prairie Cellular Mineral Face Exfoliator, $125; Clarisonic Mia2, $150; Kiehl’s Since 1851 Facial Fuel Energizing Scrub, $20; Omorovicza Body Buffing Balm, $75; Omorovicza Copper Peel, $160, available at Neiman Marcus, 3400 Palm Way, 512.719.1200, neimanmarcus.com.
Photo by Rudy Arocha
Supporting access to quality health care www.CentralHealth.net since 2004 @CentralHealthTX
In the Know
➜
homegrown tech
Putting Austin on the App A roundup of Austin-based companies that are proving why our city is on the cutting edge of technological trends. By Megan Russell
TOWNIE TECH TOOLS Atlas Wearables
What it is
How it works
Apps it works with
More than just a glorified heart-rate monitor, Atlas Wearables has created the “ultimate fitness tracker.” With a single on-wrist device, Atlas can “track your body on the x-, y- and z-axes,” which means it can tell what exercise your body is doing when it’s doing it. The tracker is so precise, it knows the difference between push-ups and triangle push-ups, bicep curls and alternating bicep curls, and squats versus deadlifts. Atlas logs your workout with almost zero user action and keeps track of your heart rate so you can see how each movement affects your body.
The analytic engine built in to Atlas learns your movements, so no matter what movements your workout consists of, Atlas can track them and turn your workout in to data that can help you achieve your goals. Atlas is packed with a suite of inertial sensors similar to those used in smartphones. The Atlas sensors see your movement in a 3-D trajectory and identify the specific motion fingerprint of each exercise you’re doing. Atlas then sifts through a sea of data and picks out the pearls that are valuable to you.
Most fitness apps, including MapMyFitness and Fitocracy.
Austin-based company Adonit designed the Jot Script Evernote Edition Stylus, the most recent of many different types of styluses available on their website. This stylus, which feels more like your favorite pen with its metal finish and ribbed grip, has the smallest tip on the market, measuring 1.9 millimeters.
The stylus works in conjunction with Penultimate, Evernote’s handwriting app. The zoom feature enables dynamic interaction between app and stylus. As the Jot Script’s fine tip approaches the screen, the app responds by enlarging the writing space for better visual feedback. And as you write, the digital paper drifts along, mimicking the natural feeling of handwriting.
Atlas is available for preorder at atlaswearables.com.
Not only do you have a complete digital log of your specific exercises, Atlas enables you to see how your body is affected. You can see how rest affects each exercise, how quickly your heart recovers, the quality of your form and more. Plus, you can measure your explosiveness, find your max thrust and improve your workouts. The Atlas platform builds on a community of data that will enable everyone to learn the different benefits of each exercise routine.
Adonit Penultimate by Evernote. The Jot Script is $74.99, available at adonit.net.
AUSTIN APPS Academy Sports and Outdoors Live Fit
Ferris Developed with help from your favorite radio host turned businessman, JB Hager, Ferris is a video app like none other. Sure, creating your own video and exploring others’ content isn’t new, but Ferris has come up with a unique, dynamic, fun way of capturing life’s moments and sharing them. By stitching together an ever-changing fabric of videos from throughout the world, this app allows you to peek under the covers to see real, raw footage and unique perspectives from places, events, topics and moments in time. By adding hashtags, your clips will link with videos with the same hashtag to create a fluid video with everyone’s clips sewn together, making this the perfect app for weddings and parties. Just hashtag the event and all the video will seamlessly combine to create beautiful, memorable content. Ferris is free and available at the Apple app store.
66 ATX MAN spring 2014
Live Fit is the new app created by a popular fitness app in conjunction with Austin’s go-to sports and outdoors store. MapMyFitness joined Academy Sports and Outdoors and Austin’s Rocksauce Studios to create this fitnesstracker app. It allows you to track your workout, running, walking, cycling and other fitness activities while staying up to date with current fitness trends. You can even compete with friends, family or yourself to stay motivated on your fitness journey. Live Fit is a free app available for both Android and iPhone.
oYeah! Sometimes we need a nudge reminding us to take action on something right after we show up for work or before we’re ready to wind down after a long day. oYeah! is a task manager in which your to-do lists are tied to your arrival and departure times at specific locations. You can chain up to 10 reminders together in this customizable app that is sure to keep you productive and on top of your life. oYeah! is 99 cents and available at the Apple app store.
Crank up the giving.
You look like a philanthropist—perhaps it’s the heart? We’re making donating easy for philanthropists like you on
March 20-21, 2014. Just go to AmplifyATX.org and choose from hundreds of Central Texas nonprofits to make a donation. With your help, we can raise $4 million, making it a rocking good day for your favorite charities.
Do te
Fundra
#amplifyATX
In the Know
➜
fitness
Award-Winning Workouts Workouts made easy with no equipment required. By Ryan Nail Photos by Rudy Arocha
68 ATX MAN spring 2014
When I entered the fitness world, I had two goals. The first one was to change lives and the second was to change the way fitness is done forever. I believe I have achieved this on a local level, but my overall goal was to do this internationally. As I strive for these goals, I have spent the last two years of my life focusing on creating a special universal program that could benefit everyone, no matter where you are in your fitness journey, and that could be done in your home or as you travel. I took 10 of the best workouts that I have won awards for here in Austin and put them together to create a special at-home training program. I then took it a step further and cut them down in to three distinct workout sessions with an additional bonus workout. Even better, I made this program one that uses no equipment; all you need is yourself and the will to work out! The testimonials we had from our test group were amazing, and I am proud to finally introduce to you CorefitX, the next level of Corefit Training. CorefitX is an at-home fitness program with three one-hour workouts plus a bonus workout. That’s right, you don’t need 30 DVDs to get in shape. You only need three. It includes a nutrition plan and some fun extras to help you find success in your fitness journey. Within CorefitX, I have created a unique method called Integrated Core Intensity (ICI), which was formulated to give you immediate results. ICI is a special program design in which the exercises you do back to back complement each other, and the final exercise of each series implements the movements you just did, giving you immediate results. I have also implemented a new way to do cardio at home or on the go. The first workout—one of the most fun workouts I have ever created—is Boxing and Bear Crawls. The second workout consists of continuous ICI and the third is called Rapid Results, which incorporates a chair to simulate an incline and decline, giving you rapid results. Finally, the last one is a free bonus workout called Sweat & Stretch that will keep your body loose and metabolism up, helping you lose weight and keep it off. CorefitX was created for all fitness levels, from beginners to fitness pros. There are modifications and progressions for each movement, making CorefitX a living workout with which you can keep pushing yourself to the next level. You will be able to download this training program from the web so you can do the exercises on your portable device, or you will have the option to purchase DVDs. Get ready for dynamic results and to have fun while doing it. For more information and to pre-purchase the workout, visit corefitx.com.
RYAN NAIL is the owner of CoreFit Training. For more information, visit traincorefit.com.
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In the Know
➜
health
Colorectal Cancer Awareness Screening is the key to prevention. By Jill Case
You probably didn’t wake up this morning thinking about colorectal cancer. In fact, it’s probably something that never crosses your mind until someone you know is diagnosed. March is National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, and it’s designed to get you thinking, talking and learning more about this largely preventable cancer. According to the Centers for Disease Control, “Among cancers that affect both men and women, colorectal cancer (cancer of the colon or rectum) is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. Every year, about 140,000 Americans are diagnosed with colorectal cancer and more than 50,000 people die from it.
What is Your Risk? Dr. Subhakar Mutyala, radiation oncologist with Scott & White Healthcare Temple, says, “nine out of every 10 people [who get colorectal cancer] are age 50 or over.” This has led to the recommendation that everyone should be screened at age 50, unless they have other risk factors. “If you have a first-degree relative (a parent or sibling) who was diagnosed with colon cancer, but was over the age of 60, that doesn’t actually change your risk,” Mutyala adds. “If you have one first-degree relative who was diagnosed with colorectal cancer under the age of 60, or if you have multiple first-degree relatives with colorectal cancer, regardless of age, that changes you to a high-risk patient. You should start screening at the age of 40 or 10 years younger than the earliest diagnosed relative. So if you had a parent who was diagnosed with colorectal cancer at age 45, you should start your screening at 35.” Other things that place a patient at risk are having certain conditions such as inflammatory
70 ATX MAN spring 2014
bowel disease (IBS), Crohn’s disease or genetic syndromes like familial adenomatous polyposis or Lynch syndrome. “African Americans should start at age 45 because they have a higher risk factor for colon cancer,” Mutyala also notes. People of Ashkanazi Jewish descent are also at higher risk. These risk factors are not something that you can control, but there are things that you can do to reduce your risk. “Diet seems to be a risk factor,” Mutyala explains. “Heavy red meat, processed meats like hot dogs. A lot of vegetables in your diet actually seem to protect you from colorectal cancer. That being said, the fiber supplements have not been shown to be equivalent to eating a leafy diet.” In addition, there are four risk factors—smoking, heavy alcohol use, obesity and lack of physical activity—that people can affect by changing their behavior and habits.
What are the Symptoms? Colorectal cancer and precancerous polyps do not always cause symptoms, making the screenings that much more important for detection. If you do notice any of the following symptoms, seek a doctor’s advice: blood in or on the stool, stomach pain
or persistent cramps that do not go away, pencilthin stools or unexplained weight loss. You can be asymptomatic and still have polyps or cancer. This is exactly why everyone, whether you feel sick, should have a screening. “Ideally, the benefit of this screening, and it’s been proven to be effective, is you are finding a cancer before it’s even a cancer, like a polyp, and then removing it, so you actually have less chance of developing a cancer,” Mutyala says. “Or, if you do find cancer, you find it at an earlier stage where it’s much easier to get treated. Those are the main goals of it: that you are preventing cancer if you are removing the precancerous polyps or finding the earlier stage cancer.” The first step is awareness. The second and most important step is your call; schedule a screening today if you are older than 50 or in the at-risk category. Dr. Subhakar Mutyala is a radiation oncologist with Scott & White Healthcare, sw.org. He also serves as the associate director of the Baylor Scott & White Cancer Institute. For more information: Centers for Disease Control: cdc.gov/cancer/ dcpc/resources/features/colorectalawareness/ American Cancer Society: cancer.org/cancer/ colonandrectumcancer/overviewguide/colorectalcancer-overview-what-is-colorectal-cancer
Colonoscopies: Everything You Wanted (or Didn’t Want) to Know! Let’s face it, nobody ever looks forward to having a colonoscopy, but once you know how truly important and valuable this test is to your life and your health, you will realize there is no reason to avoid it. ATX Man spoke to Dr. Melvin Lau to find out what you need to know. AM: Why is it necessary to do the prep, which is the part of the procedure many people dislike, before having a colonoscopy? Dr. Melvin Lau: The bottom line is we expect to find at least one polyp in about 25 percent of men during a routine colonoscopy. For us to do a colonoscopy and find these polyps, the colon has to be clean. The wall has to be clean enough so we can look for these polyps, whether big or small. The cleaner the colon, the better the physician can detect the polyp. We also know that colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in America. Often times, patients who present with colon cancer have avoided a colonoscopy early on. One thing that people don’t realize is that you don’t develop colon cancer overnight. It takes many years, beginning with a growth on the wall of the colon, called a polyp. That polyp basically stays there and grows over time. What we really want is to find and remove polyps so as to prevent colon cancer. AM: What can you tell me about the anesthesia used for the procedure? ML: There are two types of sedation involved with colonoscopies. The first one, commonly known as “twilight sleep,” is also known as “moderate sedation.” That’s where the gastroenterologist gives intravenous medicine during the procedure to keep patients comfortable. The patient is often sleeping but may wake up. The medicine has a slight amnesiac affect, so they often do not remember much. Throughout the whole procedure, we are monitoring the patient’s heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen saturation. The other sedation is called “deep sedation.” This is where an anesthesiologist or a nurse anesthetist would give propofol. Patients are still sleeping on their own, but they are in a much deeper sleep, so they definitely don’t remember anything. AM: What happens if the doctor finds polyps during the procedure? ML: The goal of every colonoscopy is to find every polyp and remove them. We have many tools to remove polyps of different shapes and sizes because we know that if we fail to remove a polyp, there is an inherent risk that the colon polyp can transform in to colorectal cancer in the future. AM: What are the possible complications of the procedure? ML: Serious complications are rare. If you go to the literature, and even in our institution, it’s about three per 1,000 cases performed. Those are for serious complications, which include bleeding, perforation, infection and a cardio-pulmonary event, which can occur during the procedure. I would say that like any other procedure, these are inherent risks. However, by completely avoiding the procedure, one will lose the benefit of polyp detection and may develop colorectal cancer in the future. It’s all a matter of risk and benefit. I would say that in our experience, of those serious complications, bleeding is probably the most common. AM: Is there any way to reduce the risks of complications during the procedure? ML: I think everybody does have individual risk, so someone with heart or lung diseases may be more susceptible to a cardio-pulmonary event. In any case, we do recommend that patients who do have serious medical history speak with the person doing the colonoscopy prior [to having the procedure]. AM: What is your best advice for someone who is avoiding having a colonoscopy?
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ML: Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the U.S., and it need not be that way. I want people to know that colon cancer is very preventable. Unlike any other cancers, we have a way to detect and even remove colon polyps, and by removing colon polyps, we can essentially prevent colorectal cancer. Dr. Melvin Lau is a gastroenterologist with Scott & White Healthcare in Round Rock, sw.org, and an assistant professor at Texas A&M University Health Science Center.
512.264.1979 www.handhtileandplaster.com
In the Know
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pretty woman speaks her mind
Carley Dunavant Austin’s bar scene is looking better than ever. By Adam Linehan, Photo by Richard Patterson
Hailing from Memphis, Tenn., Carley Dunavant has been a very welcomed addition to the Austin bar and restaurant scene since she arrived here two years ago. A graduate of Ole Miss, Dunavant started bartending in college, but it wasn’t until moving to Austin that her career took a turn in a more serious direction. Now, after winning the Bombay Sapphire Competition in Austin and competing in Bombay Sapphire’s annual Most Imaginative Bartender in Las Vegas—where her experience was documented in the GQ miniseries America’s Bartender—she has earned a place among the city’s top mixologists. In the same way young, ambitious chefs have invigorated Austin’s culinary scene in recent years, bartenders like Dunavant are helping to steer the city’s cocktail scene in a fresh and exciting direction with their artisan approach to drink making. Despite all of the positive attention she’s garnered since appearing on America’s Bartender, Dunavant, who bartends at drink.well., acknowledges that she still has plenty of room to grow.
“We have a couple of regular customers who know so much more about cocktails than I do,” she says. “And they challenge me, like, ‘OK, I don’t want anything you’ve ever made me before.’ They’re so specific. You really have to put on your chef ’s hat.” Dunavant’s eagerness to continue developing her craft is just as much of a testament to her unique potential as everything she’s already managed to accomplish in the relatively short time she’s been in the business. With devilish good looks to boot, Dunavant epitomizes what we always hope to find on the serving side of a bar, and that’s why we asked her to serve us up a little piece of her mind. On the Joys of Bartending “I like that it’s something different every day. I like to make people happy, and I like to make people laugh. I like people to sit down and have a conversation. You make friends and you can change their night.”
and into something really cozy and quaint. You go in there and the fire is going with pizza, and you can get a nice glass of wine. It’s an intimate setting but there’s enough going on. That’s the perfect place to go on a date in Austin.” On What Makes a Man Attractive “They have to be funny. I’m kind of a smart ass, so somebody who can laugh with me and joke around and not be so serious all the time. Life is serious enough. Being smart and witty—those are my two favorite things. Put those together and you got it.” On How a Man Should Dress “I’m not super picky, but I do love a man who has really nice shoes, like a good pair of leather boots, but not cowboy boots. I spend time having nice shoes, so I want a man to have nice shoes. I also like a good pair of jeans, but nothing too fancy. I’m a big fan of plaid, and also a good-looking black hoodie. But not too hipster; you have to be able to look nice. There better be a suit in your closet. You don’t have to wear it all the time, but it better be ready.”
On What Makes a Quality Drink “You have to start with really good ingredients, and you have to start with a good spirit. If you’re using juice, it has to be fresh. It’s balance and quality. It has to be fresh and it has to be good. You can’t take the cheapest gin and store-bought simple syrup and sweet and sour, and make a really good drink out of that. It has to take time. It’s the difference between a cake from a box and a cake from scratch; it’s the same thing with a cocktail.” On Date Spots in Austin “I think the perfect date-night spot is Backspace, which is actually in the middle of the craziness. It’s on dirty Sixth, but it’s a little tucked-away spot. You feel like you’re stepping out of Austin
Low Sex Drive? Can’t Lose Weight? A man’s sexual function and weight loss needs are different from a woman’s. They are usually tied to low testosterone or other hormonal imbalances. Symptoms of low testosterone include: • Low energy and sex drive • Decreased muscle mass and strength • Weight gain • Erectile dysfunction • Depressed mood and forgetfulness
Call our office today for a complimentary consultation.
Ruthie Harper MD Nutritional Medicine Associates
3901 Medical Parkway, Ste. 100, Austin, TX 78756 512-343-9355 ruthieharper.com
In the Know
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Sports Report
Changing of the Guard for the Texas Longhorns With longtime Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds and Head Football Coach Mack Brown gone from the Forty Acres, it’s new and unexplored country for the Longhorns. By Steve Habel
The changes during the past six months in the Athletic Department at the University of Texas caught many casual fans by surprise. After all, the Longhorns are so successful in all aspects of intercollegiate athletics that UT is the only school in the nation with a dedicated television network. But insiders and those who conduct business day in and day out with the movers and shakers of Texas sports might have predicted that changes were not only imminent, but needed for the Longhorns to continue the successes on the field that the program feeds upon. The winds of change started to blow in Oct. 1, when DeLoss Dodds, the man who built the Texas Athletic Department in to a huge, money-making machine with his determination and connections in the college sports universe, resigned as athletic director after 32 years on the job. Come the second week in December, the changing of the guard was complete, as Mack Brown stepped away from the Texas program, saying UT football needed to move “in a different direction.”
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By the first week of January 2014, Texas had hired not only a new athletic director, Steve Patterson, but also a new head football coach, Charlie Strong. Both have already taken steps to begin a new era with fresh direction for the UT Longhorns. Only time will tell if Patterson and Strong can have even a touch of the impact on Texas athletics that Dodds and Brown did during their respective tenures.
Dodds’ Retirement Marks a Major Change in the Landscape of UT Athletics.
When Dodds retired Oct. 1 after most of four decades in charge at Bellmont Hall, it marked a paradigm shift in the way the business of athletics would be conducted in Austin, and perhaps elsewhere across the landscape of college sports. Under Dodds’ direction, the University of Texas grew to national acclaim and championship success, winning 14 national championships and 108 conference (Southwest Conference and Big 12) titles in nine
different men’s sports. “DeLoss Dodds is one of the giants of college athletics,” University of Texas President Bill Powers says. “His vision reshaped the University of Texas and the entire NCAA, and it’s been an honor to both work with him and call him a friend for so many years. I know that we will never truly be able to replace DeLoss Dodds. But the house that he built will remain strong for future generations of Longhorns.” Dodds’ retirement as men’s athletics director is effective Aug. 31, 2014, but he will continue to support the University of Texas as a consultant until 2020. He says he wants to spend more time traveling with his wife and driving a rarely used tractor around his property in Marble Falls. “I love the University of Texas, and I love the people,” says Dodds, 76. “We’ve had a great run and I have been contemplating this decision for a while. This is something I am ready to do at this time.” Dodds became Texas’ ninth athletics director in the fall of 1981, and in the 32 years since, UT men’s athletics has enjoyed some of its most vibrant times. The football program’s fourth national title at the 2006 Rose Bowl after the 2005 season highlights a decade of excellence that featured at least 10 victories in nine consecutive seasons, five straight bowl victories and appearances in the national title game in 2006 and 2010. Additionally, men’s basketball advanced to a school record 14 consecutive NCAA tournaments, including a Final Four appearance in 2003, Sweet 16 appearances in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2008 and three Elite Eight appearances in 2003, 2006 and 2008. The Horns’ baseball team has earned berths in the NCAA Men’s College World Series seven times since 2000, winning national championships in 2002 and 2005. Under Dodds, Texas became the most profitable entity in college athletics, one valued at the start of
2013 at $761.7 million. UT has enjoyed eight consecutive years of leading all collegiate licensing royalties and amassed the first-ever season of more than $100 million in football revenue. Dodds was also a central figure in forming the Big 12 Conference, which began competition in 1996-1997, born out of a melding of the Big Eight and Southwest Conferences. UT has been a member of the Big 12 since its inception, and Dodds’ vision helped guide the Big 12 through the unstable climate of conference realignment in the summer of 2010. In January 2011, the University of Texas and ESPN announced the creation of the Longhorn Network, the first sports network devoted to a single school. Dodds was Texas’ key power player in the formation of the network, which will bring the university $300 million in 20 years.
and law degree from the University of Texas, will be responsible for managing a budget of more than $150 million and the eventual building of a new arena and practice facilities for the Texas basketball teams as the Erwin Center and its surroundings are engulfed by UT’s new medical school. The new AD says he will take some time to evaluate the culture, the people that are at Texas and where the organization is heading before making any decision on changes. “I don’t see this as an organization that’s over in the ditch,” Patterson says. “It’s a place that has had tremendous success for many years and it’s got all the resources it needs. Texas has some great people that have been working in the organization for a long time, and I just hope to continue to grow that.”
Patterson Hired to Replace Dodds.
Brown Steps Down Before Alamo Bowl.
On Nov. 7, Patterson was introduced as the Longhorns’ new athletic director. He comes to the Forty Acres after a 17-month stint as AD at Arizona State, which was his only experience as a college sports administrator. Patterson and West Virginia AD Oliver Luck were the final two candidates for the Longhorns job, but Patterson eventually got the nod because of his marketing and business experience. Prior to running the athletic department at Arizona State, Patterson, 55, worked in professional sports for more than 20 years as an executive for the NBA’s Houston Rockets (he was general manager from 1989 to 1993) and Portland Trail Blazers (team president, 2003 to 2007), the NFL’s Houston Texans (senior vice president and chief development officer from 1997 to 2003) and the Houston Aeros hockey team. “Steve has the right values [and is a] stand-up person,” Powers says. “Everybody speaks so well of him, and he’s been very successful. That was what we were looking for, and that’s what we found.” Thanks to Dodds, Patterson inherited one of the marquee programs in all of college sports. He is the seventh UT men’s athletics director. “How do you follow somebody like DeLoss, who’s really built this program?” Patterson says. “He’s built [Texas] in to the envy of college athletic departments across the United States. I look forward to continuing that tradition. We want to compete for championships day in and day out. We want to continue to graduate our students and do it with great ethics.” Patterson, who earned both an undergraduate
After months of speculation and denials and fits and starts, Mack Brown announced Dec. 14 that he was resigning as head football coach at Texas, effective immediately after the 2013 Valero Alamo Bowl on Dec. 30 in San Antonio. Brown’s announcement ended a sad saga that overshadowed many of the on-the-field achievements for the Texas football team in 2013, and set in motion a mad scramble to find a replacement for Brown and a new direction for the Longhorns, on and off the field. Some will say Coach Brown’s tenure on the Forty Acres was all but decided by an early season swoon by his 2013 team, a squad that seemed poised to break back in to the upper echelon of college football, only to flounder in September, and sink in November and December to finish at 8-5. There were several tributes to Brown before, during and after the Alamo Bowl. Afterward, a majority of the normally fickle Texas fan base jammed the Alamodome, stood and chanted Brown’s name and cheered when he led his team to the south end of the stadium, his hook ’em Horns raised high for the final time as Texas coach. Brown’s accomplishments dwarf those of all but a handful of his contemporaries. From 2001 to 2009, Texas never won fewer than 10 games, claimed a national title (2005), played for another (2009) and won two other BCS bowls (the Rose in 2004, the Fiesta in 2008). The Longhorns finished in the top six of the polls in six of nine seasons. But Texas earned just two Big 12 Championships with Brown as coach, and in the past four seasons, the Longhorns have won just one more conference game (18) than they’ve lost (17). “It’s been a wonderful ride. Now the program is again being pulled in different directions, and I think the time is right for a change,” Brown says. “It is the best coaching job and the premier football program in America. I sincerely want it to get back to the top. I hope with some new energy, we can get this thing rolling again.” Brown’s program was as unrelenting as a wrecking ball at its peak, helped by the coach’s ability to bring great players to campus. In total, 16 first-round draft picks and 52 All-Americas played under Brown at Texas.
Strong Breaks Barriers as New Texas Football Coach.
A new era on the Forty Acres began Jan. 6, when former Louisville Head Coach Charlie Strong was introduced as the new face of Texas football, becoming the 29th head coach for the Longhorns and instilled with the mantra to return UT to the upper echelon of the sport. Strong, 53, was two-time Conference Coach of the Year at Louisville, where he posted a 37-15 overall record in four seasons that included a 12-win campaign in 2013 and bowl wins the past three years. Strong is the only coach in Louisville history to win three bowl games; prior to his arrival, the Cardinals had won just six bowl games in the program’s 100-year history. During the past two years, Louisville has been one of the nation’s winningest programs, posting a 23-3 record (88.5 percent). “I am humbled [by being chosen for the Texas coaching position] and so happy and proud,” Strong says. “We’ll always strive for excellence on the field. We’ll strive for excellence off the field. It’s never about me; it’s always about the young men. I want to make sure this is all about building them and making sure they represent this university the right way.” Strong was handpicked for the job by Patterson and with blessing of Powers and a prestigious eight-person selection committee. Strong was interviewed by Patterson in his Louisville home on Jan. 3 and chosen after a number of other high-profile coaches—including Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher, UCLA’s Jim Mora Jr. and Baylor’s Art Briles—said they were not interested in coaching at Texas. “Charlie is the only one we offered the position to,” Patterson says. “We wanted somebody who was bright and an ethical leader, somebody who was physically and mentally tough, somebody who could really recruit and evaluate talent. And then once that talent is here, we wanted somebody who is a great coach and teacher who can really help our young football players grow both on the field and off.” Strong is also the first African-American head coach at Texas, in football or in any other men’s sport. “There is always going to be a first somewhere, so this had to be the first,” he says. “Whenever there is a first, we’re going to make it good. We’re going to do what we have to do, and we’re going to work to make it better. I don’t ever want to look at it as being the first. I want to look at it as I’m a coach and that’s the way I want to be treated.”
atxman.com 7 5
In the Know
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relationships
Do You Have to Pay to Play? Date night expectations. By Eric Leech
In this issue of ATX Man, we asked our ATX Man and AW Relationship columnists, Eric Leech and Kaneisha Grayson, to go head to head in a “he said/she said” showdown, answering one reader’s question on expectations of who pays on a date and what it means to the relationship.
I am newly single and things have changed in the dating world in regard to finances. Who pays when you are on a date, and if I pick up the check as a gentleman, what are the reasonable expectations about what comes next?
Answer: A first date is a lot like buying a used vehicle to a guy. He will look around for signs of damage and excess mileage (baggage) from the previous owner. He will take her out on the road, and may even put his foot all the way down on the accelerator (sexual tease) just to see what kind of a reaction he gets. He’ll wonder what’s under the hood, but will settle for listening to the purr of her engine (imagining the sound of her voice in bed). Assuming the check engine light does not make an early appearance, he’ll end the evening having made the decision to buy (make a second date), lease (recommend to a friend), rent for the day (one-night stand) or go home and think about it (“I’ll call you”). Regardless of what he decides, at no point during a date does a worthy man expect sex. In fact, there is an unspoken rule that the person who initiates the date should also be the one who foots the bill. Period. End of story. However, in Texas, where the buffalo once roamed and the gentleman cowboy still exists, a first date may be a man’s way
to demonstrate generosity, reliability and his willingness to be a team provider in the relationship. This does not mean that a woman should assume the man should pay. Many men actually enjoy the moment when we have to insist. This allows a woman to demonstrate her independence while also allowing the guy to override that with a bigger statement as to the value of her company. In today’s modern world, women are growing increasingly insistent to go Dutch because they feel like a guy is looking for payback after the date. However, what she is sensing is his assumption that she wants him simply because he’s a sexy beast. This is according to Scientific American, which has suggested almost every guy a woman has contact with will at some point assume she would sleep with him. It’s just the way men think. So, what can a guy do to ensure a woman is comfortable with the idea of him paying for a date? First, he can loosen up, be relaxed and just have a good time. Next, he should avoid trying to impress her with a lavish plan, and instead focus on finding a quiet (inexpensive) place to get to know each other. Another important point is to learn to pay attention to signs of disinterest, so he’ll know whether she wants to extend the evening. The problem is most guys are terrible at reading signs.
“Worthy men don’t think they’re entitled to sex on a first date”
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This is why it is important for women to also understand the signals they are giving off. In the primate kingdom, an exposed rear end is like a cattle call, screaming, “Come and get it!” Your average guy understands provocative dress to mean there is a chance he’ll get lucky. A woman should focus on flirting with their mind rather than attracting a man with her assets if she wants to avoid giving him the wrong idea. Men are also drawn to a woman’s touch to his arm, hand or shoulder. Men assume this is an open invitation to touch her back. Many Austin gentlemen enjoy paying for a first date. It is instilled in his heritage. However, to avoid any date becoming a play for power, a man may be insistent once and then demonstrate compromise after that. Generosity is only valued if it is welcome.
Kaneisha’s response: Though I’m throwing huge amounts of side eye to the comparison of women and used cars, I believe Eric and I on the whole agree. Worthy men don’t think they’re entitled to sex on a first date, and as a more than worthy woman, you will encounter many men who want to sleep with you—but it’s not because they paid for your date; it’s simply because straight men like to sleep with women. That’s what they do. To read AW Relationship columnist Kaneisha Grayson’s full response, go to Page 84 of the March issue of Austin Woman.
Grayson photo by Nick Paul.
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The Last Word
The Secret to Happiness, Meaning and Purpose. Playing to your strengths. OK, Austin people. My hero is Aristotle, for he was—and probably still is—the most enlightened person that ever existed on the planet. Aristotle wrote extensively on the meaning and purpose of life, and he concluded that, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” He also wrote about the ideal of living life with a goal of doing good. I am all in, but I would like to share with you how knowing and being appreciated for your innate talents and strengths can accelerate one’s happiness and sense of purpose and meaning. Although I have been blessed to go off and do some interesting and exciting stuff in my life, I am simply still a kid from Brownwood, Texas, who, because of my most amazing mother, Ruth Spence, experienced a thunderous epiphany in that small Central Texas town when I was 14 years old about life and living a life playing to my core strengths. My mom was a high-school history and civics teacher when I was growing up. She was
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the best ever. To this day, after more than 30 years of retirement and with her now passed away (God bless you, Mom), I still run in to people who come up to me and say, “Your mom was the best teacher I ever had. She changed my life.” Anyway, I was in eighth grade and we had to do an in-class essay test on Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom I love. After writing the in-class essay, I turned it in and when I got it back, I had nine misspelled words with big red circles everywhere and a big C on the right side of the paper. Cs were not celebrated in the Spence home, but my mom said nothing. I thought, “Wow! I got away with that one.” The next year, in ninth grade, we were studying another great American poet and another in-class essay test was required. When test time came around, I said, “Mom, I can’t do this paper! I will get another C!” She said, “Roy, just do the best you can.” So I turned in the paper, and when I got it back, the whole paper was covered with red circles around misspelled words. I looked up, and on the top right side of the page was a very small
A-. I ran home and held the two papers in front of my mom. “Mom, I don’t get it.” She paused and stared at the two papers, each covered with a sea of red circles, and looked me straight in the eye. “Son, you can’t spell.” Long pause. “But you can write. So here is the grand bargain I am going to make with you at 14 years of age. I want you to try hard, study hard and do the very best you can at everything in school. But in life, I do not want you to waste any of your precious time or talent trying to be average at what you are bad at. I want you to spend your life becoming great at what you are good at. Play to your strengths in life, serving others and the greater good and you will be happy and fulfilled, and the world will be just a little bit better.” So, I am passing on the wisdom of my mother, Austin men and women. Play to your strengths. Serve others and the greater good, and you won’t have to spend a lot of your life searching for purpose, meaning and happiness. You will find that purpose, meaning and happiness will meet you where you are.
Photo by Matt Lankes Photography.
By Roy Spence
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2/17/14 1:10 PM • Feb 17