I stumbled upon a few old maps of Austin that illustrate this fact, but they also tell an interesting story about the names of our highways today versus what they were called then.

Here is Austin, 1940. Population 87,930!

Today:  Highway 290 runs through Southwest Austin via Ben White Boulevard, about 4 miles south of downtown, then runs along IH-35 northward through the central corridor, then vectors northeastward about 5 miles north of downtown, heading for Houston.

Then:  Highway 290 ran along what is now Lamar Boulevard (then called Fredericksburg Road), then eastward on Barton Springs, overlapping with Highway 81 on Congress for a few blocks before aligning itself along East 1st Street (aka Cesar Chavez) before taking the current alignment of south Highway 183.  This map says it still leads to Houston, so it must have connected with the current alignment of 290 somewhere further east of Austin.

Other interesting things to note:

• While Hghway 81 still exists in much of the US, running through North Texas and West Central Oklahoma, it no longer exists in the Austin area.  It is roughly the north-south arterial route that Interstate 35 would come to occupy — some Austinites might remember as late as the early 1990’s that the Highway 81 designation could be seen on signage along the IH-35 frontage road.   In 1940, Highway 81 ran along Congress Avenue, Lavaca/Guadalupe (which may have been erroneously listed on this map as Guadalupe Boulevard; it is actually Guadalupe Street, at least today), then followed Georgetown Road past the city limits.  I believe 1940’s Georgetown Road is now today’s North Lamar Boulevard past the Triangle shopping center / 45th Street area.
• State Highway 29 no longer comes anywhere near central Austin, but did back then.  Today it runs from Georgetown (30 miles north) to the city of Burnet (60 miles northwest), and was appropriately named Burnet Road.  Today’s Burnet Road no longer takes you to the city of Burnet, but remains a large arterial road through North Austin.  29 also goes southeastward on this map, emptying out near today’s Bergstrom Airport.  Where it eventually would lead in 1940, I have no idea, as this is no longer the street’s designation (it is now 183).
• Highway 81 was paired with Highway 79, which now ends in Round Rock, 20 miles north.
• State Highway 20 no longer exists, at least anywhere near Austin.  It was also known as Manor Road, which is still a major road today.
• East Avenue is the road that would become Interstate 35.  However, it ended at Manor (at least in naming) and became Cameron Road.  Cameron Road still exists today, but due to the freeway being built out now begins at 51st Street, 2 miles north of where it did in 1940.
• Dam Road is now known as Lake Austin Boulevard.
• There is a road called State Street, roughly where Perry Lane is today, that I believe no longer exists in name (or may take the alignment of other roads).
• Airport Road seems to be the same thing as today’s East 51st Street and also appears to be different from the current Airport Boulevard, which runs along the railroad tracks northwest/southeastward.
• Mansfield Dam (on Lake Travis) was known as Marshall Ford Dam, and the way to get to it was via Hancock Drive (this likely connected as it does today to Ranch Road 2222).

Let’s fast forward to Austin 1953:

The differences in just 10–15 years:

• Lamar Boulevard is named and built out as it is today.  It is still, however, the alignment of Highway 290 on the south side of town.
• The “Interregional Highway” is partially built.  That is today’s Interstate 35; the alternate name Interregional was popular in usage until the 1980’s.  Old school Austinites like myself remember it from maps and street signs, but it is probably an unknown name to many people — Interregional generally only refers to the original build-out of IH-35 from the Colorado River to Cameron Road.
• Highway 290 East now follows its current path, picking back up right past Cameron Road as it does today.
• Highway 183 is built/designated, although it now follows what was Highway 29’s alignment (Guadalupe/Lavaca) in North Austin, and now follows East 7th out of town.  From the Colorado River southward, 183 today is pretty much the same as it was then.
• Highway 71 appears, at least on the east half of the city (overlapped with 183).
• Airport Boulevard is built out.
• Balcones Road seems to follow the current path of Mount Bonnell Road, along the Dry Creek canyon.
• The Yacht Club, which may or may not have existed in 1940, appears on this map where the current Westlake Drive is.
• Barton Springs is listed as Zilker Springs on this map.  That may have been a factual error, or perhaps it was also known as such back in the day.
• Guadalupe Street is actually labeled “THE DRAG”, the enduring popular nickname for the portion between 19th/MLK and 29th.

And finally, here’s a 1956 Humble Oil map of Austin:

• The Interregional Highway now crosses the Colorado River, but does not carry the Interstate 35 designation just yet.
• Highway 183 is now aligned along Airport Boulevard.  Today, 183 is about 2–3 miles east of Airport, but also follows a NW/SE track.
• East 7th Street is also designated as Business 183 and Highway 71.

Subtle things to note on all maps:

• Dean Keeton/26th does not yet exist as built out today, so there was no northern connector road on the UT campus.
• Koenig Lane (2222) does not exist on any map, and therefore was probably just a local street or non-existent until the mid 1950’s.  Given the architecture of the houses/businesses on this street, which are late 1950’s-early 1960’s in origin, it might have just been a residential street that they picked because it connected with 290 at Airport.
• Do Alice Avenue (near 45th and Lamar) or Forest Trail exist anymore?
• Mopac is not even shown as a railroad track much less a proposed highway.  It was not built until the late 1960’s-late 1970’s.
• West Lake Hills or Rollingwood do not exist on the map (and I am not sure if there were any subdivisions in this part of town yet).
• Austin was balanced in terms of east vs. west.  Today, the west and north sides sprawl many many more miles than the east or south sides do.  There are suburbs in continuous development for 25 miles north and west, but Austin pretty much ends about 6–7 miles east and about 10 miles south.

In 1940, Austin had 87,930 people; in 1950, 132,459 people, and in 1960, 186,545. As a frame of reference, Austin’s city population is 757,688 today (as of the 2007 census estimate), and the metropolitan area is 1,652,602, the 2nd fastest growing in the nation.

The problem is that what you are ready to return to doesn’t just reappear in front of you — a night full of friendship, a romantic interest or two, sex, places to be. I have none of that right now. So many of my nights resemble the nights of my early 20’s — just me, my car, my music, and endless empty sleepless nights. Like then, I had just one close friend. Back then, it was Farah, who worked at a restaurant, who I’d drop in on often, and then we’d go back to her place and laugh at how funny but lovely Kate Bush is. Today, it’s my friend Hunter, who works at a restaurant, who I drop in on often, and we go back to his place and sing, “rolling the ball, rolling the ball, rolling the ball, to me?”.

I don’t know how I got past those early 20’s without Farah, and I don’t how I’ll get past these proverbial “six months in a leaky boat” without him, either. They reminded me, during dark moments that I always thought would be the last and the end, that I’m a nice, funny person whose presence is not wholesale rejected. For those like myself who have suffered from chronic depression, socialization difficulties and mood disorders for most of their life, someone like myself never assumes that they’re loved, or even liked. I can’t stress that enough to those who are “mentally sound”. I wake up almost every day wondering who’ll have me back in their lives, and I only go to bed happy if I feel like I’ve earned that right. It almost resets itself daily. Don’t try to question it if you don’t understand it. You don’t have to — besides, it doesn’t hurt to show others you care, right?

I know my time is yet to come, but for now, I just sleep all day and drive my convertible into the sunset, wondering when the proverbial phone of life will ring. Wondering if someday the left turn I take down this road or that road will be the last. I look forward to the day when I can ride off into the sunset, with a good excuse and a future waiting.

“I get up in the evening, and I ain’t got nothing to say
I come home in the morning, I go to bed feeling the same way”

(For the record, it’s located off of Rittiman Road just west of Loop 410.)

It is a neighborhood where all the streets are lovingly named after failed and/or obscure European automobiles.  And not your Ferraris or Mercedes, we’re talking the Hillman, the Austin Allegro, the Renault Dauphine, Alfa Romeo, and Fiat.

Heeeeere’s Fiat!  They improved the warranty because they had to.

At least this Austin Allegro didn’t have the quartic (read: square) steering wheel that came standard in the UK.

Alfa’s weren’t all that obscure, being favored by the quirky, swinging, polygamist, condo-dwelling middle-aged people who usually bought Saabs.

It actually unlocks its own doors for you!  But not much else.  C’est tellement de luxe, n’est-ce pas?

Dauphine, French for princess!  Even though the French abandoned the monarchy in the 1700’s!

Hillmans were lower-range cars made by Rootes, which was a second banana British car manufacturer.  Their biggest impact on America was the design of the Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon, two hideously ugly early 80’s hatchbacks.

And check out the kreepy kid in the back seat!

I have been so exhausted and depressed that I sleep 12, 14, 16 hours a day sometimes. The only way I can motivate myself to stay awake is to drive, as if I’m pretending to leave Austin for good. I’ve been doing a lot of pretending lately. I fantasize that I drive down Interstate 35 only to never, ever return. Could I be harsh when I say that I’d like to never see this place again?

Other cities boundaries end where Loop 610 is located, thus allowing them to be judged based solely on their pre-war contents, which are, as you know, very hip things these days. To put it in geographical perspective, pretend to start talking about how great Williamsburg is, and mention that it’s on Long Island, and you start to see how large boundaries tend to obfuscate the good and bad that is present in any metropolitan area. To play reverse psychology, we would have to start saying “Webster, We Have A Problem.” Compton would be judged as a neighborhood of LA and not as an independent bedroom community. So why do we judge Houston on that which is really not “Houston” but Cinco Ranch, Kashmere Heights, Greenspoint, South Park, and Klein? We look at the Houston area’s smog, its menacing freeways leading to freeway spurs and limited-access parkways, we look at its religious nutbags, we look at its poverty-stricken industrial neighborhoods, and we insist we can’t see the Menil Collection, the joggers in Memorial Park, the universities, the theatres, the housing, the bayous, and we do ourselves a disservice.

If one is to look at the sense of ‘place’ and ignore the political sharpie maneuvers that make up American suburbanization, Houston stands on its own. It’s not the BEST city in the US, and most of what everyone accepts as truth is in fact truth. But what’s also true is that Houston has neat stuff, too, not “neat for Texas” but unique.

To be fair, Houston is a live and let live city. If you can handle the flat terrain, checkerboard development, and if you can handle a city that repeats its own basic recipe over and over in 8 directions, then you can enjoy the fruits thereof — affordability, flexibility, mobility. It’s laughable to say that Houston resists urbanization, true urbanization, when Houston’s generally eager to please and let itself be the largest test grounds for suburbia. Big lots, small lots, McMansions, tax abatements, great rooms and phase III’s, they form a type of classification all their own — suburbia’s sub-suburbs.

But Houston loves skyscrapers, and puts them wherever it can fit them. If you want a 40-story tower, Houston assumes you must need one if you’re asking to build one. If you want a rowhouse downtown, or a high-rise with a view of another downtown, Houston has a place for you. It’s not picky, and it has one of everything just in case.

It is a place of Southern gentility, of art deco chutzpah, of black families between railroad tracks and power lines, of black families in colonials, of Republican businesswomen who dine with their gay “best friends” at a restaurant that allows you to park in front.

I like Houston, and I don’t know why more people don’t. You won’t find a catchy disco theme song with TV’s Patrick Duffy in the credits, and you might be hard pressed to catch Renee Zellweger proudly professing her nostalgia for Katy.

But I’ll profess my nostalgia for the Katy Freeway, the now 26-lane-wide freeway that makes straight lines and cruise control seem like a conveyor belt to a suburban death squad, priced from the 180’s. This is Houston’s Champs-Elysees to many who reach Houston from a western approach. It is ugly, but it is also AMAZING. You drive it wondering what was below the main lanes before they were added; was it a frontage road, a pine tree, a warehouse, or was it just an empty lot like all the other empty lots in Houston? It is a driving tour of what America sometimes feels like to the old-world provincial — bewildering, seemingly unncessary, brash, brutal and overly functional, but serving a perverse function at that, evacuating middle class money as far away from downtown as possible.

But then you look at the other side of Katy Freeway and you see people in smaller cars, people with Obama stickers, people with parking garage tags to places between traditional downtown and traditional exurbia, places with phase numbers and building numbers and small, discreet corporate logos on the top right margin. It works both ways in Houston, including rush hour, commuting, new money and old money. People get to go where they want to go in Houston — they can live downtown and work downtown, or live downtown and work in the Woodlands, or they can live in the Woodlands and work in Conroe. If you want a 15 minute commute, you can have one. If you want a huge huge huge house, you can have one (but you might not have a 15 minute commute.) You may escape blacks and Latinos, once living in Sharpstown, but then the blacks and Latinos move up too, and then someone else takes over. Houston reinvents parts of itself in a modest way that is never showy.

Houston is nothing if not daring for carrying a speculative and deregulated environment to its most literal conclusion. I like Houston despite its blatantly ugly appendages, and despite its curried favor by Republicans with duallys and minivan-driving Vietnamese women who hiss at you under their breath.

I feel like I fell in love with the only one who’d accept the ring when I say that I like Houston and might consider moving there. I do know that I could take my pick of high-rise, low-rise, garden apartment, or loft and work in the energy industry, in the shipping industry, in the tech industry, in the puppy boutique industry, in the French business magazine industry, in the widget industry, or in the heroin trafficking industry. I can take my pick in Houston.

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I don’t know about you, but I need to get out of town; I am getting so tired of photographing the same things over and over!

A friend of a friend asked me where I liked to go out in town. I told him that I really didn’t have a place I loved, but named a few places like Rio Rita, Shangri-La, and the stuff on Red River. He asked me why I didn’t like going to the gay bars, to which I replied, and which applies to the entire act of going out in Austin - “once you go out in New York and have the best time of your life there, nothing is the same.” Hopefully I didn’t insult him when I admitted that half the reason I don’t go to the gay bars is because I rarely meet someone like myself. In return, they responded that the point of going out is to look cute above the noise of the music and laughter. That’s cold comfort for me, who is far more intelligent than they are good looking. I am slightly hard of hearing and don’t speak very loudly, so it’s very rare that I can strike up a nice conversation at such a place. It’s rarer that I find someone in the crowd that I want to talk to, either. Is talking even the point? I think it is, but others disagree.

I know it’s perhaps my own fault for not adjusting, but I have never been the same since I left Brooklyn, and I may very well be missing out on the finer things in life by remaining unchanging and uptight, but I can’t get beyond that mental block at this late stage. When I look at the geographic distribution of my blog’s readers, it’s still a strong #2 for New York — the fact that I barely have any Washington readers shows how much of an impact I made on anyone’s life there. But the fact that I am still close to many of my New York friends reminds me that a big part of me has remained behind with them in spirit. It’s been two years now since I left. When will I finally be ready to go back?

• Fleetwood Mac — Monday Morning