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Exploring the Secret Underbelly of Austin
I have to be careful as I tell this. So pardon the occasional vaguery or redaction, butit is only through secrets that the true story of Austin, Texas, can be told, and they must be handled with care. There's a lot that you're not supposed to know and, frankly, I'm not supposed to know either. These secrets, though, are what squirm inside the gut of the city, defining its constitution.Work was my excuse to come here to SXSW for the first time, but what I do and where I'm from depends on who asks. I grew up in Boston but the industry took me to LA. I'm a seller at a digital media/events company, a writer at a music magazine, a bassist, songwriter, vocalist, whatever. Or, I'm just some guy hustling like the rest of us. Regardless, for me, it was fortunate that to get the most out of my experience, all I needed to know was the right time to say "yes," and the right time to say absolutely nothing.In Austin, metaphorically speaking, there's this "thread" you can pull from the dark sketchy places that you're not supposed to know about. It unearths itself, and weaves behind and into the full-blown corporate branded activations that have come to define SXSW in the last decade. You are allowed to transform just about any space in Austin and let it become, well, the best party you can think of. You just do you. If you build it, they will come…but keep it cool.Los Angeles is about who you know. Boston is about what you know. New York is about what you do. Austin…seems to be about what you don't know, thriving on the thrilling potential of not knowing – or at least, uncovering just enough to know there is so much more. Like lifting up a rock in a forest clearing and seeing all the bugs and worms that crawl out, knowing that they are swarming all around beneath your feet.Continue after the jump
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