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Joe Rogan is one of many big names in stand-up to make their way to Austin. (Big Laugh Comedy/Twitter)
An influx of talent is both creating an Austin comedy renaissance and dividing the local stand-up community.
The California migration to Texas is influencing politics, culture and the makeup of the state capitol. With big names like Joe Rogan coming to town, it's also shaking up the entertainment industry, 11-year Austin comedy vet Chris Tellez said. Tellez is co-host of Shit's Golden, Austin's longest-running monthly stand-up show.
"There's no denying it, seems like over 100 comics moved here from New York, L.A., and everywhere in between. It's like a funny science experiment," Tellez said.
Chis Telles is a co-host of comedy monthly Shit's Golden in Austin. (Chis Tellez)
The new class is enthusiastic. "It's like we're all freshmen in college coming from different cities; making friends and having fun," Adam Hartle, booking manager for Sunset Strip in downtown's Sunset Room, said. Hartle splits time between Florida and Austin and leaned on Los Angeles connections for initial Sunset Strip bookings, he said.
The Sunset Room is host (The Sunset Room)
New-to-Austin comic and Detroit native Genivive Clinton said Austin affords opportunities harder to get in saturated markets. After failing to get on the Kill Tony podcast in L.A. she succeeded on the first attempt in Austin, which led to her being booked for more work with Hinchcliffe and the Death Squad Secret Show. Secret Show was created by Brian Redban, the man also who helped create Kill Tony and The Joe Rogan Experience. "Local shows kept asking me to do sets too," Clinton said.
Comic Genivieve Clinton was awarded new opportunities when she moved to Austin. (Genevieve Clinton)
Some Austinites applaud the fresh blood. Round Rock native and three-year comedy vet Allison Wojtowecz says watching experienced new performers is a master class on the art of comedy. The richer landscape also means she can aspire to make sustainable career. "I loved the Austin scene," she said, "but there wasn't an opportunity to make living money here. Now there's four new places and Rogan is opening a room. There's ample stage time that actually can pay you now."
Comic Allison Wojtowecz said she can work towards a sustainable career in Austin after the new comedy boom. (Allison Wojtowecz)
Four venues have been opened or dedicated to comedy in the post-pandemic Austin comedy frenzy: The Creek and the Cave, Vulcan Gas Company, Sunset Strip at the Sunset Room, and The Romo Room in the Domain.
Joe Rogan, whose move to Texas and talk of opening a club has injected new attention to the scene, has also come at a cost. In May, Rogan and his associate Tony Hinchcliffe experienced a culture clash with locals with what critics denounced as anti-trans and racist jokes.
Brandon Lewin, Big Laugh CEO and booking manager at Vulcan, said he doesn't condone the jokes and knows Hinchcliffe learned a lesson. "What he learned from it is if you tell a joke it has to be good," Lewin said.
Brandon Lewin is a longtime comedian and CEO of Big Laughs in Austin. (Brandon Lewin)
Some local comedians are not so sure it's all water under the bridge. Pushing political buttons is no substitute for a real act, said Brendan K. O'Grady, co-host of Sure Thing, a weekly comedy showcase running for nine years and counting. Shock jokes are also lazy, said Andrew Murphy, ten-year Austin comedy performer and winner of 2019's Funniest Person in Austin award from Cap City Comedy. "With the comics that I grew up with, no one ever wanted to do normal or generic comedy. If you're not trying new things to be exciting or different, you're not gonna make it here," Murphy said.
Comic Brendon K O'Grady said shock jokes are lazy and repetitive. (Brendan K O'Grady)
Out-of-town comedians who worked in the early pandemic also raised eyebrows with some locals who felt safety was sacrificed for self-promotion. "We need to have standards for what is acceptable behavior for physical safety in the pandemic and how men treat women," O'Grady said. Fallout Theater, where he co-hosts Sure Thing, plans to cap attendance at half capacity and require proof of vaccination from audiences and performers.
But some locals performed in the early pandemic too, and rule books don't exist for conducting safe pandemic events. "Especially when places were closed, people were opportunistic about doing comedy in bars," Tellez said, including himself among those who worked.
Despite their differences, many believe the two worlds can coexist and find success in the newly-energized scene—so long as they take notes.
Arielle Norman has performed stand-up in Austin since 2015 and co-hosts a monthly heckling-welcome show called Off-Script. Norman is proud to be a woman on too-often male dominated lineups and said her presence means misogynist jokes from unseasoned strangers don't go unchallenged.
She's energized too. "I was so bored here before the pandemic and now with Joe and everyone moving here and all the clubs opening, I don't have to move to L.A. or New York. I can't wait to see what Joe does with the new comedy club."
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(Pexels)
If you are a committed, grunge-wearing resident of the Pacific Northwest, it is easy–almost automatic–to look at Texas as an extraordinarily dry, hot and culturally oppressive place that is better to avoid, especially in the summer. Our two granddaughters live with their parents in Portland.
Recently we decided to take the older girl, who is 15, to Dallas. Setting aside the summer heat, a Portlander can adjust to the vibes of Austin without effort. So let’s take Texas with all of its excesses straight up. Dallas, here we come.
Our 15-year-old granddaughter and her sister, 12, have spent summer weeks with us, usually separately so that we could better get to know each individually. In visits focused on Austin and Port Aransas, the girls seemed to be developing an affection for Texas.
Houston and Dallas are two great American cities, the 4th and 9th largest, each loaded with cultural treasures, each standing in glittering and starchy contrast to Austin’s more louche, T-shirts and shorts ways.
Three hours up I-35, Dallas loomed before us as a set of gray skyscrapers in a filmy haze, accessed only through a concrete mixmaster of freeways, ramps and exits. I drove with false confidence. Be calm, I said to myself, it will all end in 10 minutes under the hotel entrance canopy. And it did.
The pool at the Crescent Court Hotel in Dallas. (Crescent Court Hotel)
We stayed three nights at the Crescent Court Hotel ($622 a night for two queens), a high-end hotel in Uptown, patronized by women in white blazers, business people in suits, and tall, lean professional athletes, their shiny Escalades and Corvettes darting in and out, and other celebrities like Bill Barr, the former attorney general who shoe-horned his ample self into a Toyota.
Each morning as I walked to Whole Foods for a cappuccino, a fellow identified by a bellman as Billy the Oilman arrived in his Rolls Royce Phantom. Where does he park? “Wherever he wants to. He likes the Starbucks here.”
We garaged our more modest set of wheels for the visit. We were chauffeured for tips by Matt Cooney and Alfonza “The Rev” Scott in the hotel’s black Audi sedan. They drove us to museums, restaurants and past the enclaves of the rich and famous. In Highland Park, The Rev pointed out the homes of the Dallas Cowboys' Jerry Jones and Troy Aikman along with the family compound of the Hunts, oil and gas tycoons.
The Dallas Museum of Art’s “Cartier and Islam” exhibit (until Sept. 18) attracted an older crowd; the nearby Perot Museum of Nature and Science was a powerful whirlpool of kids’ groups ricocheting from the Tyrannosaurus Rex to the oil fracking exhibit. Watch your shins.
A Geogia O'Keeffe oil painting called "Ranchos Church, New Mexico" at the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art. (Rich Oppel)
For us, the best museum was the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, a 50-minute, madcap drive away via a 75 mph toll lane along I-30. Don’t try it during rush hour. The Carter has an exquisite collection of Remington paintings and sculptures and an excellent array of 19th and 20th-century paintings as well. Pick one museum? The Amon Carter. Peaceful, beautiful, uncrowded, free admission and small enough to manage in two hours.
The Fort Worth Stockyards, a place of history (with a dab of schmaltz), fun and good shopping, filled one of our mornings. The 98 acres brand the city as Cowboy Town, with a rodeo and a twice-daily (11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.) cattle drive. We shopped for boots, drank coffee and watched the “herd” of 18 longhorns. So languid was their progress that if this were a real market drive the beef would have been very tough and leathery before it hit the steakhouse dinner plate.
The cattle drive at the Fort Worth Stockyards. (Rich Oppel)
But we could identify: the temperature was 97. “I saw a dog chasing a cat today,” said the emcee, deploying a very old joke. “It was so hot that both were walking.”
With limited time, we chose three very different restaurants:
- Nobu, in the Crescent Court Hotel; Jia, a modern Chinese restaurant in Highland Park; and Joe T. Garcia’s in Fort Worth. Nobu’s exotic Japanese menu set us back $480, with tip, for four (we had a guest), but it was worth it.
- Jia was an ordinary suburban strip mall restaurant, but with good food and a reasonable tab of $110 for four.
- Joe T.’s is an 85-year-old Fort Worth institution (think Matt’s El Rancho but larger), a fine Mexican restaurant where a meal with two drinks was $115.
Sushi at high-end restaurant Nobu. (Crescent Hotel)
It was all a splurge for a grandchild’s visit. Now we will get back to our ordinary road trips of Hampton Inns, where a room rate is closer to the Crescent Court’s overnight parking rate of $52. And to corner cafes in small towns.
Did Dallas change our 15-year-old’s view of Texas? “Yes. I think it’s a lot cooler than I did. The fashion, the food.” So, not only Austin is cool. Take Texas as a whole. It’s a big, complex, diverse and wonderful state.
(Tesla)
Giga Texas, the massive Tesla factory in southeast Travis County is getting even bigger.
The company filed with the city of Austin this week to expand its headquarters with a new 500,000-square-foot building. The permit application notes “GA 2 and 3 expansion,” which indicates the company will make two general assembly lines in the building.
More details about the plans for the building are unclear. The gigafactory has been focused on Model Y production since it opened in April, but the company is also aiming for Cybertruck production to kick off in mid-2023.
While there is room for expansion on the 3.3 square miles of land Tesla has, this move comes after CEO Elon Musk’s recent comments about the state of the economy and its impact on Tesla.
In a May interview with Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, Musk said the gigafactories in Berlin and Austin are “gigantic money furnaces” and said Giga Texas had manufactured only a small number of cars.
And in June, Musk sent a company wide email saying Tesla will be reducing salaried headcount by 10%, then later tweeted salaried headcount should be fairly flat.
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