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Queer Eye season six is filmed in Austin. (Netflix)
It’s been over a year and a half since the Fab Five teased Instagram feeds, cheekily posing in front of Austin’s famous El Arroyo sign, announcing they would film season six of Queer Eye in the capital city.
Though the onset of the pandemic put just over a year pause on production, the season finally made its Netflix debut on Friday to close out 2021.
The show follows beauty expert Jonathan Van Ness, stylist Tan France, foodie Antoni Porowski, designer Bobby Berk and lifestyle coach Karamo Brown as they work together to transform the image of fashionably challenged people.
The team got a bit more of Austin than they bargained for—while three of the famed cast members spent part of their quarantine in Austin, hair stylist Van Ness moved his New York home to the Hill Country while filming was postponed.
Get ready for a season of southern goodness—the Fab Five went all out in Texas, even collaborating for the new song "Y'all Means All" with Texas-born Miranda Lambert for the premiere. The group promises it will be the most fabulous thing in Texas since chaps and have the Austinites in the room going like…
Who are the heroes?
The Fab Five’s subjects are called “heroes”—the everyday people who are in search of a life change. This season, the Fab Five will focus on people of all shapes and sizes, while touching on the unique qualities that make Austin special.
Terri White, Broken Spoke dancing queen
Terri and James ran the Broken Spoke together. (Broken Spoke/Facebook)
The daughter of James White, former owner of the Broken Spoke, opens the show with a display of honky-tonk hospitality. White is a self-professed “older woman,” who isn’t afraid to show a little cleavage and loves to carry on her late father’s dancehall. White brings out a little southern charm from the Fab Five and makes sure they leave doing the two-step. Catch White in “Showdown at the Broken Spoke.”
Angel Flores, Olympic weightlifting coach
A University of Texas alumna and trans athlete in Austin, Angel Flores recently began transitioning and has struggled with her self image. The Fab Five help revive Flores in the episode “Angel Gets Her Wings.”
The prom committee, Navarro Early College High School
We could not be more excited to announce that Navarro ECHS and our Class of 2021 students will be featured on season 6 of Queer Eye.
— Navarro ECHS (@navarro_vikings) December 27, 2021
Thank you again to each of the guys and @netflix for all their love and support! @AustinISD https://t.co/LCNTf6foxI
Though the group only has a week to help bring prom to life at Navarro High School in North Austin due to COVID, Van ness was shown in the preview hyping students up about how they’re going to “slay this prom so hard.” Catch the party on “Navarro High Prom.”
Josh, cowboy and aspiring DJ
Josh, who is a father and a classic Texas cowboy, is featured in “No More Bull,” where the Fab Five strive to help him stop smelling “like a ranch.”
Chris Baker, executive director of Austin nonprofit The Other Ones Foundation
It wouldn’t be a trip to Austin without touching on some of the more serious issues that trouble the city. The group sits down with Chris Baker, who is in need of a little TLC of his own after helping people cope with homelessness. Catch the “potty-mouthed humanitarian” in the episode “Gimme Shelter.”
Todd, restaurateur
The group will work some magic in the episode “Craw-Zaddy,” which focuses on Todd, who is supposed to be retired but is still running his restaurant.
Jamie Wallace-Griner, SAFE in Austin
Being called the “Snow White of Central Texas” is no accident, as Jamie Wallace-Griner has spent her life caring for special needs or neglected animals at her nonprofit, SAFE in Austin. After being “needed at all times,” for so long, Wallace-Griner is ready to focus on herself.
Dr. Jereka Thomas, Central Texas Allied Health Institute
Dr. Jereka Thomas has been moving non-stop since she founded a COVID testing center for underserved communities. On top of that, Thomas leads the Central Texas Allied Health Institute, the only black-led medical learning institution in Central Texas. It’s safe to say Thomas is ready for a break in “Community Allied."
Sarah Lim, OMG Squee owner
Showing the severity of the impact COVID-19 had on small businesses, the Fab Five met Sarah Lim, owner of gluten-free Asian-inspired bakery OMG Squee. Lim is ready for a makeover since pandemic strain led her to focus more on her business, less on herself, in “A Legend in the Baking.”
Reggie DeVore, musician
Another pandemic-based struggle, musician Reggie DeVore said he’s starting to lose his drive and passion for art in the episode “The Mis-Inspiration of Reggie DeVore."
Other locales to look out for
The trailer opens with the cast strutting in some cowboy boots, western garb and teasing skyline views. In addition to the many Texas businesses that make up the season, you’ll also be able to spot the scenes of The Long Center and Eastside Pedal Pushers Bike Shop.
Both Fab Five member Van Ness and Porowski also adopted dogs from Austin Pets Alive!, so the furry friends are sure to make some cameos.
Season six is streaming now on Netflix.
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A Web3 meetup was held this week at Cosmic Coffee + Beer Garden. (Andrea Guzman/Austonia)
It’s hard to know what Web3 is without first understanding the original versions. The first web is the 90s Internet where people had their own random websites that didn’t link together, making it decentralized. In Web2, we saw the rise of Google, Facebook and other major players who configured standard ways for people to share and receive information.
Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood and other blockchain developers say a decentralized version of the Internet, Web3, is on the way. Web3 can be thought of as synonymous with cryptocurrency, meaning it is based on the blockchain. Platforms and apps built on Web3 won’t be owned by a central gatekeeper, but rather by users. Those in the Austin crypto community believe to see a growing presence of Web3 in Austin.
Pujaa Rajan, an engineer at financial software company Stripe and adviser for startups, describes herself as a “digital nomad.” She has traveled all over from Hawaii to New York and San Francisco, looking for the crypto community in each place.
Having been in Austin for the past month, Rajan organized a Web3 meetup this week at Cosmic Coffee + Beer Garden in South Austin open to folks working in crypto or the crypto-curious. About 30 people showed up. "Compared to a lot of other cities that I went to, it is a lot more open and community-oriented here, which is what Web3 is all about,” she said.
Pujaa Rajan, an engineer at financial software company Stripe, organized a Web3 meetup in Austin during a visit. (Andrea Guzman/Austonia)
ATX DAO member Roberto Talamas, who stopped by the event, talked about the crypto group’s expansion. Web3, in Talamas’ view, expands on the previous versions which allowed people to read, then read and write. Now, he says, people can read, write and own. To Talamas, blockchain technology has powered that ownership aspect, and it can be utilized through groups like a DAO, a group that pools together capital and goes on to make investments or take on blockchain-based projects.
“The ecosystem of work with (Web3) companies here in Austin is still relatively small,” Talamas said. “And that’s one of those things that we’re trying to deal with at ATX DAO is to do all the advocacy work needed to make Austin the best Web3 city.”
Part of that community, however, has gotten a bad rep for being “crypto bros.” Rajan acknowledged that Web3 involves both finance and technology, which are fields women have historically been excluded from. But, she says the decentralization aspect creates a clean slate and a new means to form groups. “I feel like we can kind of take back the power or create a world for ourselves,” Rajan said.
The meetup at Cosmic brought together crypto users to talk about the prospects of Web3. (Andrea Guzmán/Austonia)
Meetup attendee Jonathan Hillis also talked about the idea that Web3 creates an opportunity to start over and how this could be something that grows in Austin. Born and raised in the capital city, Hills has left his Bay Area Web2 Instacart job behind to live in a cabin outside Dripping Springs last year. He and his wife, along with a group of internet friends formed a DAO called Cabin, and he's now writing on the Web3 version of Medium, known as Mirror.
When it comes to the state of Web3, four cities stand out. “The dam broke in Covid,” Hillis said. “Everybody no longer had to live in the Bay Area for tech.”
San Francisco is still rooted in Web2 traits with Big Tech and software as a service venture. New York is financial technology. Miami is another major player. But with Austin, Hillis sees a lot of potential.
“Austin is great at being a place for independent online creators of many types—musicians, but also artists,” Hillis said. “What excites me about Web3 is the opportunities for putting creators at more of the center of the value capture.”
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(Philip Taylor/Flickr)
For Carson Stanch, who moved to Austin from Brooklyn, New York, to be near family, Austin's lower cost of living was just an added bonus. According to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, a $100 bill is worth $98.20 in Austin when compared to the national average in 2020, while it's worth just $84.53 in New York.
Houston native Carson Stanch moved from Brooklyn, New York to Austin just before the pandemic. (Carson Stanch)
Stanch soon realized she was a trendsetter—or perhaps a fortune teller—as the pandemic hit a few months after her move. No longer willing to spend extra money on their more expensive apartments, Stanch said many of her friends and other New Yorkers left the city amid COVID lockdowns.
"It's so expensive to live there (and) all of the reasons why you live in New York, you couldn't really do anymore," Stanch said.
Garrett Watson, a senior policy analyst with the Tax Foundation who wrote a 2018 report on the value of $100 in U.S. metros, told Austonia the report factors in the costs of goods and services with residents' incomes and compares them to the national average. The result is price parity, a number that varies drastically across the country—for instance, a $100 bill won't get you near as far in Austin as it would in more rural parts of the Hill Country.
While a Ben Franklin note was worth $4 more in New York in 2020 when compared to 2018, a $100 bill decreased by $1.60 in value in Austin. Austin's cost of living also saw the 12th-highest increase among U.S. metros from the 2010 to 2020 census.
And as the pandemic's nationwide housing boom gained extra momentum in Austin, peaking at a median home price of $575,000 in June 2021, Watson said the value of $100 could have dropped even further.
"There's just been a chronic hunger for building houses on the coasts and in certain cities in the heartland," Watson said. "Especially this year, we're seeing more and more discussion about that in Austin, and so that is a big, big factor."
Price parity bleeds into other factors as well—in San Francisco, where the value of $100 sits at $82.63, residents are nearly 18% poorer than their higher incomes suggest. But with higher incomes than the U.S. average, they may find themselves more flush with cash when moving to a cheaper city like Austin.
Many out-of-towners have used that extra change to make housing offers much higher than the asking price, Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather told Fox7 Austin.
"All those migrants are bringing with them high-paying jobs who are used to much more expensive housing and they’re willing to pull out all the stops to win these homes and move to Austin," Fairweather said.
But Austin is catching up to those traditional hotspots: the area was predicted to be the most expensive metro outside of the Golden State by the end of 2021.
In just two years, Stanch said she's seen some signs.
"I feel like I look around certain areas of Austin (and) they do feel more similar to downtown Brooklyn," Stanch said. "Some businesses I see might tend to cater to folks who have a little more income."
So why not move to, say, Florence, Alabama, where money is almost 20% more valuable?
Watson said the difference comes down to the value of amenities—something the study can't track.
"Part of the value in New York City is all the amenities that you're near, the value of Broadway, the value of being able to get food delivered to your door," Watson said. "So that may be reflected in people's willingness to pay higher prices... there's a lot of really great reasons why people may want to be in Austin from an identity perspective that you can't get in other parts of Texas."
In Austin, tech salaries rose 5% from 2020-2021 as big-name corporations like Oracle and Tesla—alongside Tesla's billionaire owner Elon Musk—flocked to the nation's new "boomtown." With an ever-increasing job market, eclectic culture and reputation as one of the world's best cities for move-ins, Austin's appeal might still offset its price.
But for Stanch and many others, there may still come a time when price wins over location.
"If I was to the point where homebuying was more important than being near friends and family, then I would move to get the home," Stanch said. "I think that's kind of part of my plan."
