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CEO of Tequila 512 has surprising plans for the iconic yellow building. (Laura Figi/Austonia)
Want to know what’s going on in that big yellow building on the corner of Mopac and Lake Austin Boulevard? Spoiler: It’s not the tasting room or merchandise store you thought it might be.
Tequila 512 CEO Nick Matzorkis and business partner Josh Keller have spent months preparing for the big reveal. The building, which has frequently changed hands over the years, made headlines in September when it debuted a cheeky billboard poking good fun at Elon Musk. Now, its billboard reads “2❤️22,” foreshadowing a host of surprises that will come to be revealed over time starting in January.
The building won’t host a tasting room and won’t even sell its Jalisco-made tequila—instead, 2201 Lake Austin Blvd will serve as an “interface with Austin culture and all the things that people equate with Austin, from fitness and running, to stand-up paddling to Tequila 512,” says Matzorkis. Instead of a sales-driven venue, the building will be a community hub with different access for “friends of the brand” as well as the average Austinite.
“We're going to protect this little intersection of Austin. If you look downtown Austin is changing dramatically day by day—everything around Austin is changing—this intersection has not changed a bit” Matzorkis told Austonia in an exclusive interview. “This building is here to be that physical representation of those brands and to open it up to the value that it has in terms of its proximity to things.”
While he said he isn’t ready to divulge the full extent of what is in store for the building, Matzorkis said a few things are certain for now.
What will the building be used for?
A better question is, what won’t the building be used for? The space is divided into two sections: Austin by day, which will be a community water sports hub, and Austin by night, a private stage and studio that will allow local musicians to host a jam session.
Sometime in the first three months of the year, a SUP ATX truck will park outside and provide paddleboards free of charge to anyone, with seating out front inviting you to relax after a day out on the lake.
A love of water sports led Matzorkis, who is originally from California, and Keller to create SUP ATX when he missed the ocean upon moving to Texas. When it started in 2007, the surf shop and paddleboarding company raised awareness about the sport on a road trip from Malibu to Austin.
“I'm very much an ocean beach guy and I love Austin,” Matzorkis said. “I just wanted to bring the ocean surfing culture to landlocked states (and) to have a vision for turning every lake and river across the country into a place where you can experience the many joys and benefits of interacting with water via surf-shaped boards.”
Matzorkis is currently working on getting all 300 of its branded paddle boards moved to the building so he can share them with Austin. (Laura Figi/Austonia)
Additionally, a RunTex truck will park on the other side, featuring running clinics starting in January by Paul Carozza. Coming full circle, Carozza originally welcomed SUP ATX into the building when it was still occupied by RunTex.
SUP ATX got its start parking in the RunTex lot and is now repaying the favor. (Courtesy of Nick Matzorkis)
Union Square Media HQ
The corner building will also serve as the faceless HQ of digital marketing company Union Square Media, which Matzorkis and Keller started after they met back in 2005, when they created the “world’s first internet band,” the ClipBandits. After a viral stint with features on Good Morning America and The Tyra Banks Show, the pair continued their business together by starting the media company in Keller’s home state of New York, with Matzorkis holding down the fort in Austin.
The media company grew exponentially, with offices in Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Austin. It has since gone entirely remote and moved its home base to Austin—Matzorkis said that it has also grown to double the revenue with 10% of the workforce when compared to fellow Austin-based creative agency GSD&M.
“This building right here is actually the world headquarters for Union Square media. It's faceless, for now,” Matzorkis said, teasing an undisclosed surprise.
Since Union Square Media, soon to be named USM ATX to christen its Austin placement, is all remote, the building will not serve as an office but rather a shared space to Tequila 512 sister brands who can use it.
A big billboard
Though the yellow exterior is striking, Matzorkis and Keller plan to use it as a backdrop to promote the things, artists, musicians and companies that are near and dear to Austin’s collective heart.
The exterior underwent a full makeover for ACL season, promoting Jack Harlow’s set. Matzorkis, who spent years as a promoter in the music industry, discovered Harlow years ago at the beginning of his music career and said he wanted to give him the recognition he deserved.
“That was the first example of the use, which was letting a friend of the brand use the building to promote something locally that we believed in,” Matzorkis said. “In that case, we believed in him as an artist and that he would make it.”
Harlow's set drew over 35,000 people—the largest crowd he had ever played.
What’s the catch?
It may sound too good to be true but there doesn’t seem to be a catch—the facility will only be open to the public on specified occasions but anyone is welcome to grab a board or take a running clinic.
With COVID taking a toll on the fun of life in Austin, Matzorkis said he just wants to give back to the community that he has loved and has loved him in return.
“It's all just love, just trying to bring positivity into the world. We're trying to build off of that, specifically with the heart,” Matzorkis said. “This whole thing is about something much larger than just the promotion of these brands, we're really trying to make it mean something more.”
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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."
