Source

I had my first deep tissue massage yesterday, people.

It was pretty extreme.

You know that pain, the kind that comes from stretching or soreness, that makes you go “ahhhh it HURTS!!” But, you also love it? That was this, times ten thousand.

The particular massage therapist (he works at Myo) had come recommended to me from a friend. I was whining on Saturday night about having uneven hips, immobile shoulders, lower back pain – basically, I was practicing for when I’m 85 years old.

“I can’t lift my right leg in a front attitude!” I said, with the same amount of distress one might reserve for their right leg falling off.

“Go see my guy,” said Fannie. “He’ll change your life.”

+++

When I met Barton, I told him I was an aerialist.

“Ah, yes,” he said knowingly. “I see a lot of you. Let me guess. Shoulders?”

“It’s like I can hardly move them!” I yelped.

“Noted. What else?”

“I’ve been stretching my right hip out for years and it’s still horribly uneven. Also, when I bend forward, like this?” I demonstrated, “my lower back is stiff and sore.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” Barton said, nodding. “Your uneven hips are probably creating pressure on your back, so we have to adjust you. So I’ll let you get ready. Be right back.”

I disrobed, limped over to the massage table and crawled underneath the covers. Barton re-entered the room, and turned on some music.

“Let’s begin,” he said.

+++

Now, I’ve had several simple relaxation massages before. But this was the first time I had ever booked a sports injury type of massage, the kind that don’t necessarily feel pleasant.

I mean, they can, but their real purpose is to work some shit out.

“What are you-OH MY GOD-what in the world are you doing to my hip?” I asked Barton early in the massage.

“Well, I’m basically moving your fascia around and bulldozing through some trigger points,” he said, “which are located pretty deep down in there. Feel that?”

“YES!!! Yes I feel that! Owwweeee!”

It made me wonder how many interesting sounds the front desk lady at Myo Massage hears during her day.

Anyway, in between feeling extreme pain (the good kind) and relief, I would get ticklish when Barton was pressing down on trigger points. He said it was because they were little masses of contracted muscle, gripping onto tension either because of excessive use or because of sitting.

“We weren’t really made to sit,” he said. “Wait, what is it that you do again?”

“I’m a writer,” I groaned. “And I just started teaching yoga.”

“So basically you’re really really active, or, sedentary?”

“Yes,” I moaned sheepishly.

“I see,” said Barton. “Hang on, this is going to hurt.”

“AHHHHHHolySHITohmygodohmygodohmygod!” I cried. “What the hell is happening back there?”

“Whew! Big knot in your back, but we got it,” said Barton, brushing his hands off like a surgeon.

After our hour was up, Barton left to get me some water. I rolled off the table, and stood.

My shoulders could move again. My lower back was almost pain-free. The right hip wasn’t perfect, but it was better.

“Yeah, you might hurt a bit tomorrow,” warned Barton.

But I skipped out like a kid with a lollipop.

+++

As I type this, I am so freakin’ sore.

My whole lower back is achy, and my right hip feels like somebody has been punching it. Which I guess is what Barton did, in slow motion.

Right afterward I was languid and sleepy for most of the day, and my aerialist friends told me it was because my kidneys were working so hard to process the toxins that massage releases. I mean I honestly felt like I was in a mini coma for a solid three hours so it’s possible I have a really toxic body.

“I try to only sit for 15 hours a week,” said Susan, my aerial partner.

As a writer, it’s hard not to sit. And it almost seems like any white collar job where one is financially successful and makes lots of money involves sitting. Unless you do a standing desk. (Do you do a standing desk?)

I’m wondering now if it’s all the sitting, and not all the aerial, that’s jacking up my body. Probably a little bit of both.

Or, maybe it’s just being a human being. Our bodies are still evolving, and they’re pretty damn efficient, but they’re not perfect. We can think our way out of most problems, but all that thinking gets stored in the secret recesses of our bodies, little capsules of anxiety and worry and memory that twist our muscles this way and that, until the Bartons of the world go in and release them.

I wonder what having a perfectly free body is like.

Source

Eight years ago, in college, I wrote my English honors thesis about the “New Woman:” a character trope in late Victorian literature that was kind of a proto-feminist.

In novels, this character was usually single, middle class, and either employed or trying to get a job. She walked around without a male escort (gasp!), and sometimes, she cross-dressed. For Victorian England, this meant wearing a pair of pants.

Because of the New Woman, I spent many late nights in the computer lab, and the computer lab probably spent lots of money replacing the keyboards that I drooled on. I found my old thesis online the other day, all 50 painstaking pages of it, and totally dorked out over my beloved New Woman. What a fascinating character! Just like we make fun of hipsters today, everyone made fun of the New Woman – who, in addition to a fictional trope, was also a real person walking around in England. Magazines did cartoons of New Women riding bikes and wearing huge ugly bloomers, smoking cigarettes and looking generally dudely. Some male novelists went the other way, portraying her as kind of a slutty harlot. That happens in Dracula, when one of the characters, Lucy Westenra, starts sleepwalking in her sexy underthings and eventually turns into a sexy vampire.

So basically, the New Woman was any woman who challenged female gender convention. Edith in Downton Abbey? Classic New Woman.

Anyway, I got to thinking about all this the other day because we are experiencing a New Man. Aren’t we?  Yeah. We are.

I see him in Austin all the time.

+++

Recently, I have absolutely fallen in love with WTF with Marc Maron, a delightful little interview podcast. Have you listened yet? Oh. SO GOOD.

Anyway, what makes Marc so compelling is his feelings. Which he talks about, all the time.

You know who else does that? Louis CK.

And? Mike Birbiglia.

Three comics who have been in the game for a while, but they all made their names recently by being deeply confessional. Personal. They each reach into their soul’s crevasse, and pull out something extremely intimate for us to stare at.

We (and by “we” I mean Fox News) always talk about masculinity in crisis, and while that makes me giggle, it’s also maybe true. Are uber manly men en vogue anymore?

The stoic ones, the Don Drapers? The Vin Diesels?

We just don’t see them around as much anymore, do we?

+++

The Internet has made us all more confessional, so maybe that’s a part of it. We’re letting it all hang out a little more, so maybe this New Man, this personal version with all the feelings and the reflection, just makes sense for our time. At first I thought it was just me, that I in particular was attracted to these kinda guys – but no. It’s bigger. The whole Judd Apatow comedy complex is populated by guys, guys like Seth Rogen and Jason Segel, who wear their hearts on their sleeves and a dopey grin on their faces. We as movie goers pay millions of dollars collectively to watch those guys do their thing.

So, is it that? The Internet?

Or a deeper cultural shift?

When the New Woman came along, it was largely an economic thing. Finally, a middle class woman could go out and get a job, and not have to make her way in the world financially via a dowry and strategic marriages. But it’s something different with the New Man – I just can’t put my finger on it.

And like I said earlier, I see these New Men in Austin every day. Hell, I’m pretty sure they’re all my friends.

So I’m thrilled that they exist. I just can’t figure out why they exist. Why now? Why this very moment?

Explain it to me, men.

Especially you New ones out there.

(Listen to two of my favorite New Men, Marc Maron and Seth Rogen, talk to each other on WTF.)

Moi

Guess what you guys! I’ve got three aerial shows lined up this summer. If you have ever wanted to witness this crazy art form, now is your chance.

I’ll give you the dates first, then share some thoughts after. Deep thoughts.

Sunday, June 9
Dance to Breathe, the Austin Choreographer’s Ball
Emo’s East: Tickets 

I went to this show last year and loved it: Think beautiful stage dance, but in a gritty rock n’ roll atmosphere. It’s a round-up of various groups in Austin, from modern to hip-hop to silks, and my friends and I submitted a piece we choreographed last fall. Those two friends, Susan Harkey and Kari Lehman, both danced in Blue Lapis Light’s most recent production of Heaven~Earth~One, so I’m incredibly honored to be working with them! This is a more pop-oriented, athletic routine, so if you saw Heaven~Earth~One, this will involve some of the movement you saw but in a more kinetic way. We are wearing tons of neon.

Wednesday, June 26
Velvet Dust Magazine Issue Release Party
The Parish

An edgy, very rad fashion magazine based in Austin, Velvet Dust, invited my duo Vayu Aerials to do a piece for their issue release party! The party itself will be creepy carnivalesque, so expect something in that vein. Right now, we’re thinking slinky mimes. (As opposed, of course, to miming slinkies.)

Details to come.

Friday, July 12
Brass Ovaries E-LOVE-Vation Show
The ND 

Lydia Michelson-Maverick, my aerial friend/employer at Four Elements Yoga + Fitness, and I submitted an audition video for this show – and we got it! We’re choreographing a piece to “Stay” by Rihanna, which I had never heard until it was assigned to us for the show, but is a pretty gorgeous piano ballad. I’m looking forward to this piece because it’s a lot slower than the stuff I’ve been working on lately. I tend to gravitate toward smiley/happy/JAZZ HANDS! routines, but this song is, well, heavy. Longing. A side of myself I don’t typically tap, at least not publicly, anyway. This show will mostly feature pole dancers from the Brass Ovaries community, but we’ll be on cloth. Details to come.

So!  That’s it for now, on shows.

+++

It’s so funny, you guys. How your creative dreams change and evolve. For most of my life, I’ve wanted to write a book. And you know what? I still do.

But these days, I feel so…bodily.

Like my brain melted out of my head and slid down into my arms and legs, and that’s where I think now.

I’ll be honest with you. I wasn’t a natural with the silks. It took me forever to build up the strength to climb up and down the silk, and the first time I successfully did, I nearly collapsed on the floor from exhaustion. “HOLY SHIT,” I remarked to my friend Kim, who was in my class at the time. “Are you kidding me? That was so hard.”

So strength was one thing; learning moves was another. Guys, it still takes me ages to learn a single trick. I have to watch it over and over again, then try and fail and try and fail and try and kind of get one part of it right then get stuck then start over then try and FINALLY get it, albeit unattractively. I have friends who can watch a trick once, then hop up on the silk and bust it out immediately! Don’t know how they do it.

However, despite not being a natural, and despite the fact that I always assumed writing would be my lifelong, #1 creative jam, I have this weirdly pleasurable relationship with silks now where it’s like I just can’t stop, and I don’t know where the end point is.

One of my editors was on the phone the other day, while I was wringing my hands over what to do if I got pregnant all of a sudden and had silks shows lined up. He asked a very reasonable question: “Well, like, what’s your goal with this whole thing Tolly? Do you want to be a professional silks dancer or something?”

It sounded so funny coming out of his mouth. Is that my goal?

I don’t know. I don’t know if I have a goal.

All I know is that silks fills me up with this wild joy. In my world, of blogging/self-employment/entrepreneurialism/yada yada, it’s common to have a business plan, or at least a freakin’ Pinterest inspiration board, that says to the world: “this is my official dream! Here is how I am going to accomplish it!”

And yes, I’ve had several dreams before.

But silks is something different. The problem with dreams is that once I accomplish them, I tend to check them off the list and never look back. Little ego boxes that seemed so enveloping at the time, so quaint once I’m on the other side.

I think silks may have started out that way: a cool little hobby that I could say I tried. A collector of beginner ability, I amass just enough shallow knowledge to hold my own in small talk.

Then something unexpected, and here I am with silks.

I am in unexpectedly deep. And I truly have no idea where things are headed.

But I’m enjoying the submersion.

A Pack of Boozy She-Wolves, A Sorority for Thirty Year-Olds, A Ragtag Band of Aspiring Thelmas and Louises –

These are my beautiful, profane, dancey girlfriends. We all went to South Padre a couple of weeks ago; sort of an annual thing for us. We pack up our things, hop in a car, and drive!

I always come back from South Padre just a bit dreamier than before I left, fully ensconced in summer mode. This year we took a bar hostage, frightening our seated, fellow patrons, but also took full (full) advantage of the cover band, and hopefully made said band’s night.

It certainly made mine.

All photos by the unbelievable Nicki Lemon.

Ever since I wrote that ethical shopping post, I’ve been thinking about something.

Is it just me, or are hipsters saving Made in the America?

+++

It dawned on me while I was visiting HELM Boots for one of my writing clients. Run by the founder of Progress Coffee, Joshua Bingaman, HELM is flat-out beautiful: Inventory displayed artfully and with restraint, white like a gallery, vintage-looking darts placed just so. That’s right. Darts.

As my friend Lauren rightfully pointed out a few months ago, “we all have different definitions of the word hipster.” So let’s dispense with some of those definitions right now:

hip.ster / “HIP-ster:” noun: A typically white, left-leaning, young individual of privilege who embraces a craft/homespun/throwback lifestyle. Usage: “Did you hear about Mark’s small-batch fruit canning business? What a hipster.”

hip.ster / “HIP-ster:” noun: An individual younger than oneself whose clothing and tastes are not readily understood but are suspected to be emergent and tangentially cool and therefore provoke insecurity. Usage: “Yeah, my new social media intern rides her single-speed bike to work now instead of driving and parking in the employee lot like the rest of us. What a hipster.”

hip.ster / “HIP-ster:” noun: A social media and/or gadget-proficient individual who possesses deep knowledge of smart phone apps, often missing key vowels (ex: Snappr, Eatr, Tiny Dancr). Known to engage in said social media and/or gadget-usage while in the company of others. Usage: “We were all hanging out eating dinner and next thing you know, Mark checked us all in, shot a short video, uploaded it to Vine, and created a pictorial essay of our food on Instagram!  What a hipster.”

hip.ster / “HIP-ster:” verb:  A bar, restaurant, or store known to espouse a craft/homespun/throwback ethic, with care and attention paid to quality ingredients and/or materials and priced to reflect a clientele of at least modest privilege, except when said bar is a dive bar (see: The Brixton, Shangri-La). Usage: “This bar is so fucking hipster.”

It’s always pejorative; nobody likes hipsters and nobody wants to be called a hipster. Me?  The only hipster that truly bugs is the social media/gadget one, the one checking Facebook on his/her phone while we’re hanging out. It’s like…I guess I’m not entertaining enough for you? But that’s another post for another day.

ANYWAY. So we’ve established that the term “hipster” is derogatory, kind of like “douchebag” or “yuppie.” My personal theory of hipster hate is the fact that people assume/resent the fact that a lot of these kids come from means, and yet embrace lifestyles that call forth a thrifty era, as if they needed to be thrifty. Rather than eat out, they garden! Rather than drive and buy gas, they bike!* In short, we think they’re posers.

And maybe some of them are. Or, maybe they simply find mass market stuff boring.

Either way, I am thankful to hipsters these days, and here is why: They are saving Made in America.

+++

I remember, when I was very little, watching Wal-Mart commercials that proudly proclaimed, “Made in America.” I also remember that sophisticated people ate imported stuff. Wines. Cheese. Whatever.

Now, it has flipped. Wal-Mart makes/orders things from overseas because it is cheaper. Sophisticated people eat local things.

Which proves that Made in America can be made to scale. If Wal-Mart did it all those years ago…I mean I’m not saying their stuff is CUTE, I’m just saying it can be scaled.

Anyway, Wal-Mart shocked us a few years ago when they started stocking organic produce. Remember that? Some of us were all, “really???? Didn’t know you had it in ya, Wal-Mart!” and others were all, “greenwashing! Greenwashing! Don’t believe them! Their organic is fake organic, the bastards!” It stirred up a lot of capital-s Stuff.

Scaleable, organic food is hardly a perfect system. But – as important to perfecting that system, and imbuing it with industrial integrity, is making organic mainstream to the masses. To shake off the notion that organic is elitist, and more importantly, to make organic affordable for all.

But before Wal-Mart, whither organic food?

Farmers markets. Whole Foods. Small, local grocers. I.e., the domain of hipsters.

And those hipsters with money, or “yupsters” as I’ve heard them cleverly called, created enough of a market demand for organic food for it to get Wal-Mart’s attention.

So I think we’re just beginning to see the first teeny tiny, baby bird yelps from the hipster camps regarding Made in America clothes. But once those hipsters get older, and start raising families, and start shopping for those families at the emerging Whole Foods equivalent of a clothing store…maybe Wal-Mart will catch on again.

+++

Back at HELM, everything I saw was US-made. I slid my fingers along boots made in Maine, touched the caps of American Zippo lighters, heard Joshua talk about his original business, located right down the street.

I wondered then if it was possible to make stuff like this to scale. Crafted, locally- or US-made stuff. Was it like organic food? Could you make it affordable? Could you make it available to not only Austinites/Brooklynites/Seattleites/Portlandians, but everybody?

Could you make it (gulp) Wal-Martable? Should we make it Wal-Martable?

I’m asking because I don’t know the answers to these questions. But I would genuinely like to find out.

“Our stock has moved surprisingly well,” said Joshua when I asked him about the business.

“It’s like more people see what we’re trying to do here. I guess word is getting out.”

Photos: Me, attributed to The HUNT Guides. All shots of HELM Boots.

*For further reading: Stuff White People Like.

Source.

I had an interesting conversation with someone last night about being different.

This someone is a designer, who creates websites for, among others, photographers. Lots of photographers.

“And so they all say this,” my companion said. “They say they view photography as an art, and they want a site that reflects that. So we design something for them that is unique, right? Something artistic, something out of the box? Different?”

And then what happens? I asked.

“Well,” long sigh, “they’ll get the design. And then, they’ll come back and say, ‘yeah…actually, we just really want our site to look like X famous photographer’s site.’”

His gaze clouded.

“If we push back, explain why this design will help distinguish them and make them NOT look like all the rest, then suddenly a “branding expert” friend will appear and back up the client and say that, yeah, what the client really needs is a site that looks just like X famous photographer’s site.”

At this point, he put his head in his hands, and made the sound one makes after one too many frustrating clients.

+++

Twice by my high school peers, I was voted “Most Changed.” Once during my sophomore year, and again just a couple of years ago, at my high school reunion. Both times, it made me happy, then uncomfortable.

The first time, I had recently gone from a dork like everybody else, all elbows and Cole Haan loafers, to suddenly having boyfriends. It shocked everyone. Especially since said boyfriends weren’t my fellow dorky brethren, but jocky, cocky guys (who all dumped me, but that’s another story). If Rachel Leigh Cook had been a conservative Christian wearing tapered khakis from the Gap instead of being a shy, secretly cool/sexy artist, then you might say my story was a little like She’s All That.

The second time, well, ten years had passed since I saw all those people. And it was lovely! Seriously. But I had bright red hair and was wearing a loud outfit, and everyone I saw was like…whoa! What happened? Where are your Cole Haans? You live in Austin? Are you a liberal? I felt like a unicorn.

Then I was voted “Most Changed” again at the reunion, by my old peers, and couldn’t help but think: “I need to do a better job of communicating who I really am.”

Anyway, just like when I was fifteen, I also thought: “yay! Recognition!” (Isn’t that sad? Twenty freaking eight and still needing the popular kids to like you?) and then almost immediately I was like, “WAIT. You’re making fun of me, aren’t you! Fuck! I fell for it.”

Therein lies the rub: Needing approval ≠ being different.

The reason all those photographers want to look like their more famous peers even though they want to be seen as unique and interesting isn’t so surprising, when you think about it. They (like 15 year-old, 28 year-old, and most likely 76 year-old me) crave that pat on the back, that reassuring “YAY! You’re doing it right!” approval. But approval comes with a price.

I worry that the Internet is slowly making visual and textual automatons of us, or more specifically, me. Trends subconsciously enter my brain, and then my creative output is just like everybody else’s, and sometimes I think the only way to fight that is to forcibly prevent the Internet from getting into my computer, a la Jonathan Franzen.

So I started making this list, because things have been super writer’s blocky for me lately. This happens either when I start caring too much about what the recipient (my client, my editor, you) thinks, or when I experience the occasional wash of apathy that drains the color out of everything I do. So when I crave freshness, to create something different, what exactly do I mean by that? And how to accomplish it?

Here are some ideas I had.

8 Ways to Be Different:

1. WELCOME BOREDOM BACK INTO YOUR LIFE. Being the one person in a public space without a smart phone automatically makes you the most interesting one. I know a guy named Evan who works at the Natural Gardener, grows things, plays French horn, sings, plays ukulele, looks you in the eye when you talk to him…and doesn’t own a cell phone! Not, “doesn’t own a smart phone” – we’re talking NO cellular device of any kind.

I don’t know what Evan does when he’s bored, but whatever it is, it’s not happening on a phone. When he gets bored, he probably goes and does something awesome. Everybody loves Evan.

2. TAKE COMFORT IN BEING THE SAME. I subscribe to the Austin Kleon School that artists, all of them, steal things. Ideas, techniques, identities. By admitting that we’re all basically made of the same stuff, it forces you to focus instead on mastering skills. Which maybe anyone can do, but few have the patience for.

3. REMEMBER THE FEELING YOU HAD WHEN YOU SAW SOMETHING THAT BLEW YOUR MIND. For me, it was discovering Hyperbole and a Half all those years ago. I opened up the site and thought…whoa. I’ve never seen anything like this! Maybe there was a whole underworld of Paintbrush comics out there, but wherever they were, I hadn’t seen them.

So if, like my friend’s photographer clients above, being creatively different is a fear thing, think back to your personal creative paradigm shifters and the way they made you feel.

4. READ THIS BOOK.

5. GO OUTSIDE FOR LONG, EXTENDED PERIODS OF TIME and don’t Tweet it. Let those memories be your secret stash. (Every writer needs a secret stash.) I totally violate this rule all the time. But I’m getting better.

6. ABSORB INFORMATION/ART IN SINGULAR WAYS. I.e., in ways that don’t allow you to get distracted, like the good ol’ newspaper. My designer friend with all those photographers cited a super interesting-sounding story about brain research, and the depth of knowledge that sinks in when you read things on paper vs. online. (If you are out there designer friend, send me the link to that!) From your deep knowledge comes richer output.

7. GET INSPIRED BY EVERYONE HERE.

8. KISS YOUR THOUGHTS GOOD-BYE. Easier said than done. But when I need to clear all the BS away, and start channeling the ghost of creativity, nothing works like a good mind-quieting meditation. And you all know my favorite place for that.

If all else fails, you could always cannonball on top of a manatee and most certainly achieve notoriety, if not creative freshness! (Though I’m not sure I’d recommend that.)

This beautiful thing:

…is my friend Katie.

Katie is an artist, an expert kale preparer, a jewelry designer, and possibly a life coach.

She and her shop, i was made — antiquey, gilded baubles of animal bones and old-timey illustrations — will be at Renegade Craft Fair this weekend.

THIS is her stuff:

Renegade Craft Fair is like offline Etsy: tables and tables and tables of delightfully handmade stuff, hawked by the artists themselves. It is also free, and goes on 11a-7p this Saturday + Sunday at Palmer Events Center.

If you are there, look for Katie! Look for Citygram too, one of the official event sponsors!

Hello, old sport!

(Bear with me, Reader. I haven’t even seen Baz Luhrmann’s Great Gatsby yet, but as you can see, my inner English major is rearing its dorky head. Just like how people dress up as hobbits for Lord of the Rings screenings, what would you think of me going to see Great Gatsby dressed as Daisy Buchanan and speaking only in 1920s slang? I’m only halfway kidding about this.)

Courtesy of the very generous Simi Wines, Megan and I went to the Austin Food + Wine Fest a few weekends ago. Now, I’ll be honest with you. I have a hard time writing about stuff like this. Whenever I’m supposed to interview a chef or something, it’s like I figuratively curl up in their lap and say “tell me a story!” And then I write about their story, and that’s that.

Much more difficult, I find, to describe just the food itself in a way that isn’t immediately obvious. “This taco is meaty!” “This cake is sweet!” No joke, that is how I would write about all food, were it not for my trusty thesaurus.

Which is why I always loved Josh Ozersky when he and I were doing that food show last year. Remember that? He was always so descriptive with food, narrating each bite with a historian’s sensibility, and he could tell you for example which New York hamburgers’ meat patties were served exactly flush with their buns, and which were not. That, my friends, is some serious attention to detail.

Anyway, it’s also hard to write about Austin Food + Wine Fest because, let’s face it — it’s people eating and drinking all day. As I overheard one attendee say, “this seems like an event the Real Housewives would go to.” So true! And like a Real Housewife, it’s all too easy to get tipsy and not remember any of the specific, delicious samples that you tried, lost in a haze of Pinot Grigio. So let’s hold lacquered hands, and try to piece things together.

Exhibit A: Sampling champagne slushees.

Early on at the fest, we ran into my Citygram editor Chris Perez, there on the left. He was there with My Well Fed Life blogger and freelance food writer Veronica Meewes, who possesses an amazing tattoo.

Banksy!

So we joined forces, Megan, Chris, Veronica and I, and behaved like one does at these things:

“DID YOU SEE THAT PORK SLIDER WALK BY? I must have that pork slider.”

“No – the beet taco! Turn away from the slider! Get in this line with me and let’s eat a beet taco!!”

“F-k the beet taco, I’m eating this jalapeno-infused chocolate drizzled with a balsamic white wine reduction.”

“Wha?? Where did that come from?”

“Too late, let’s wash everything down with 18 wine samples.”

“Good idea.”

I’m serious, Reader – this is how people, people like myself, talk at these things. It’s overwhelming. But incredibly tasty.

Take, for example – the beet taco! Doesn’t that sound…odd? It was, in fact, our favorite sample of the day. Another surprise? It came from Hickory Street! I had no idea they were foodie-ish.

We swung by Simi’s booth, and chatted a bit with Chef Kolin Vazzoler, who has a terribly exciting last name. Don’t you get excited when you see double z’s? I do.

Kolin served us a fried chicken skin — a chip-like substance — topped with mushroom puree and dried cherry. He also handed us glasses of pinot noir to pair it with, prompting Megan and I to pretend like we were very knowledgeable oenophiles. “An excellent choice!” we cried. And we weren’t lying. It was excellent.

Now, given the choice between salty and sweet, I’ll take the former any day. I don’t have a sweet tooth; I’m like a horse with a salt lick. Which is why I breezed straight past all the cake balls/tiny pies/cookies on sticks/champagne slushees/etc. and made a beeline for anything covered in salami or cheese.

As you can see, I was successful:

Salami courtesy San Francisco-based Columbus, who I had to look up on the Internet because I was too busy stuffing my face to write their name down.

But for me, the main delight of the Austin Food + Wine Fest were wine demos by bad boy sommelier Mark Oldman, who got busted in Austin last year for jaywalking:

A warrant for Mark’s arrest, proudly displayed on his demo table.

Oh, I wish I had a good picture, or better yet a video Reader, of Mark Oldman! I went to his AF+W demo last year too, and it basically consists of every person drinking five glasses of wine each while Mark tells jokes and makes champagne bottles explode with a sword. He does educate you, too, pointing out various wine regions and why the price points of some wines are more or less than others, but I go because he is so damn entertaining, the anti-snob of the wine world. If he comes back next year – provided he isn’t in jail – you’ll love him.

I suppose that’s the reason I go to Austin Food + Wine Fest, because the people are interesting. To have such singular focus, on a type of food, a type of wine, and work at it for years. Don’t get me wrong: I go for the samples, too. But when your taste buds inevitably exhaust, you start looking around at all the people making it, and wonder: What brought you here? What piqued your interest in salami / wine / tiny pies? Do you ever tire of it? Are you in it for the artistry of food? Is there an artistry of food? Or is it just a lizard-brain type of thing, a pleasure response rather than an intellectual one? Are you in it for the service? The way people close their eyes and get dreamy when they bite your food? Is it weird when people grab your samples and jam it in their mouths without saying thanks? Or are you over that? Is the real joy in slicing a sharpened knife through a slab of cured meat, feeling the slices fall cleanly away?

Maybe it’s all of these things.

My yoga class is here!

Starting this coming Wednesday, I have a weekly class at Four Elements Austin, a jaw-droppingly gorgeous studio in downtown Austin (here’s a pic). Light-filled and perched two floors above street level, Four Elements is both a floor yoga and aerial yoga space! For now I’m just teaching floor, but possibly down the road, aerial yoga too.

My Wednesday night class is happy hour time, starting at 6:30p. It’s called Tech Detox Yoga, and is the kind of yoga class I always wanted someone to teach me: Poses, mantras, and breath work to flush out all those technology particles that build up during the day, and to work out any stiffness in your hips/butts/shoulders/wrists that come from sitting at your desk!  I know that whenever I’ve been working at a computer all day, or even just after a good plunge down the social media rabbit hole, I feel off, and so that’s what this class is designed to address. This is an all levels class, with modifications you can tailor to your own body, so bring a friend! Bring Grandma! (Never underestimate Grandma.)

Sign up here. 

**A NOTE ON PARKING**

If you work downtown and are in walking to distance to Four Elements, that’s ideal. If you don’t, it’s street parking on Congress, so give yourself plenty of time to find a spot. You’ll want to park near Manuel’s, between 3rd and 4th (or as close as you can get).

**STUDIO ENTRANCE**

Is right next door to Manuel’s – literally to the right if you’re outside facing the building. The door to Four Elements doesn’t face outward the street, but is tucked into the entryway, so just look for all the yoga-y looking stuff on our front window. Open door, walk up stairs to second floor, and there you are!

I’m so excited, you guys. It’s going to be like this! Not really, but how awesome is that little kid?

Ugh, as if!

Last night on Fresh Air, there was an interview that gave me a lot to think about.

In light of the pretty horrifying Bangladesh clothing factory collapse, Terry Gross spoke with Elizabeth Cline, author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. They talked mostly about the human rights and environmental cost of living in a fast fashion culture, and how many of the industry’s problems echo similar problems the same ones food had — and the huge locavore / organic movement that sprang up in response.

I was riveted for the whole interview, and thought about the relationship I have with clothes. It’s not all that great.

Unlike food, I don’t really have any hard and fast clothing policies. Nothing’s off limits, and there are plenty of garments from China / Bangladesh / etc. hanging in my closet. Part of the reason for this is because we’ve really come to value clothes as a deeply-held expression of our individuality and artistry, so we shop more than we did a generation ago. We crave variety as a result: I eat up style blogs like the next person. I like it when I think my outfit is unique.

One thing Elizabeth said in the interview really struck me. She said that when she started the book, she owned 350 items of clothing. “Three hundred fifty!!” I sputtered. Then, I counted the clothing in my closet and drawers.

Turns out, I own 150 pieces of clothing.

Which BLEW my mind. I consider my closet on the smallish side, and I don’t shop all that frequently. But sifting through pieces, I also realized how much of my closet was filler. Clothes I’ve long stopped wearing; clothes I never should have bought in the first place.

I remember when my friend Indiana wrote a moving, heartfelt post on growing up poor and getting addicted to cheap clothing, which led to maxed out credit cards, rented storage to contain all of her garments, and a rock bottom moment of sorts that forced her to reassess her relationship to clothing.  It was one of the first times I had ever read a style blogger say, “hey, maybe all these outfits aren’t what they’re cracked up to be,” and I really admired her for that, because I think it’s an unpopular stance to have in the style blogging world. To call attention to all that consumption.

I’ve spent years trying to figure out “my style,” and I think it’s an ever-shifting thing with no center. But I’m attracted to the idea lately of just being a classic dresser, something I never thought I’d say, simply because it’s easier to invest in a few, ethically-made, quality pieces and be done with it. You know?

I’ll admit: fashion is fun, trying on different identities and pretending to be various people. Am I a hippie today? How about a 60s mod? Etc. But, I’ve always felt a little sheepish getting ridiculously cheap clothing, and now I know why. Elizabeth mentioned that the Bangladesh factory she went undercover in paid their workers $37/month. And then that factory collapsed on people, and that’s the real cost.

Which brings me to Austin. There are tons of places to eat ethically. But where can you shop ethically? It’s tough. Here’s a starter list:

-Noonday Collection (WOW)

-Good & Fair Clothing, who visited with Austin Eavesdropper last year

-ATown, which carries Raven + Lily, a conscious clothing brand

-Purse & Clutch

-Hill Country Hill Tribers

-Ten Thousand Villages

-Tons of Austin handmade shops on this Etsy Austin page

-And from Lauren Modery at Hipstercrite, a great case for shopping at American Apparel

(There’s also fabric to consider too, which seems to be the larger ethical challenge. We find our local clothing producers, but a local fabric-maker? THAT is a tall order. I’ve been Googling around, and haven’t found any in Austin. If you are aware of any, let me know.)

Here’s the last point I want to make about this. Like food, some people can only afford to buy cheap clothing. I get that. I grew up positively begging my mom to take me to GapKids, and my wish wasn’t granted until I was in 5th grade because we couldn’t afford it. Until then, Mom made a lot of my clothes, which I thought was super uncool then, but which I think is ridiculously cool now.

So there’s no need to demonize people on a tight budget. This is simply about shifting one’s relationship to clothing: to think the next time we swipe our card at Zara (gah, a store whose style I admittedly crave) or H&M, just like we started thinking about GMO’s and factory beef and things like that. I know we were all so jazzed to get H&M here last year so I feel like the preachy grandma for raining on our parade. Sorry!

But, I’m going to start putting a little more thought into this. I don’t put any thought into the ethics of my shopping now, so anything will be an improvement.

I’d also really love to know what you guys think about all this too. What’s your relationship to clothing?

PHOTO // Via Glamour