SXSW 2009: Welcome to Austin, Spend Your Money, Then Go Home

Now is that any way to behave at a rock and roll concert?

Jim Morrison, The Doors, “Absolutely Live”

No, indeed. There’s just certain ways to behave at a rock show. Of course, Jim may not have been so right about that plan to get fat, grow a beard, produce an insipid album of poetry, move to Paris and die in the bathtub after using heroin. Even Keith Richards thinks that plan may not have been well thought out.

Anyway, like Jim said, there’s a right way and a wrong way to behave at a rock show, but sadly, many of you seem not to know it. The plague of van-driving guitar strangler groups, recording industry swine, hipster dufuses, and directional school spring breakers known as South By Southwest once again is poised to blight the People’s Republic of Austin, making this an opportune time to review the rules for concert and festival going. Actually, the cash-in-on-the name movie and interactive festivals have already begun, and with them the proliferation of twenty-something slackers garbed in black, mobbing Jo’s Coffee and squirrelishly darting across traffic to get to the next event on the day’s agenda. Austin already is awash with B- and C-level celebrities, industry events, faux ninja-dressed Yankees and Californians, and smug Austin Chronicle self-aggrandizement. But hey, if it weren’t for hucksterism, you couldn’t have art now could you? Signed, Andy Warhol.

Everyone knows just how much I love SXSW, having long sung its praises. But like Sondheim, observing that art is an attempt to bring order out of chaos, I feel compelled to remind all of you visitors that this is not Vietnam, this is a festival. There are rules. These rules protect us, the locals, and you, the visitors, by keeping us from wanting to run you over with our pickup trucks.

Basically, the two rules are that you need to act like a guest, and plan ahead. Don’t put us out or impose on us to the point where we have to go vigilante on you. These two basic principles have many applications.

As you move about the streets from club to club, don’t dart out in front of traffic to cross the street. There’s plenty of cheap beer wherever you’re headed, and another band's going to come on stage when this one stops. Don’t roll up on us and ask where Sixth Street is, or South Congress. Some place more obscure? OK. But dammit, find out where a town's main attractions are before you go. Like life, have some rudimentary idea where you’re headed before you start. Would you stop someone on Columbus Avenue and ask where Central Park is? Probably not, well, not successfully at least. That’s what the guidebook you should have brought is for. Likewise, know where the gig is before you leave your hotel or your buddy's van. Don’t cut across private property, particularly people’s yards, and don’t lead the parade down streets with your 12 best friends from Seaside Heights or East Hanover. Don’t roll into private businesses asking to use their bathrooms, and if you should happen upon some free to the public restrooms, don’t move in. Don’t clog restaurants to the point where a place that normally takes 10 minutes to get a table turns into two hours. People-nothing is worth waiting two hours for, and there’s probably another place just as good that’s not a two hour wait. Don’t pack our own bars (particularly those that aren’t on the SXSW list), and if you do feel obliged to crash, leave your slurred boasting about your own hometown for another time. I’m talking to you, Southie guy. No one wants to hear about Jonathan Papelbon or how the Sox are going to be a wicked pissa this year. Leave our women alone too. If you want to work your game on another festival-goer, go right ahead. That’s just “assumption of the risk.” But leave non-combatants alone, kind of like the proverbial farmer’s daughter. Do not engage in spontaneous celebrations or demonstrations out of character with where you are. No mass high-fiving, jiving, and profiling when you’re standing in line at Popeye’s. I don’t care how cool you look playing the bongos Mom gave you for your 15th birthday that you brought for the trip. And lay off the cell phones. No one thinks you’re calling your office back in LA, and for the most part, wouldn’t care if you were.

Going to and from the festival sites also implies certain additional rules. Don’t stand around clogging the way selling your crap, which probably violates copyright laws anyway. Don’t wear stupid costumes or outfits. The music festival hasn’t started yet and I’m already done with the hordes wearing all black. Look, I know you think you're so Joey Ramone, but you really look like someone that got kicked out of a Cheap Trick cover band. To that end, don’t go native on us either. I know you’re dying to cowboy up with those “genuine” cowboy boots you bought at a gift shop in the American terminal at DFW, but leave the boots in your hotel room. Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny thinks you look ridiculous. Don’t wander in and out of traffic. That’s a real street and those are real cars, not a video game. When driving, don’t slow to a crawl at every downtown intersection so you can read the street sign, turning a long line of cars behind you into your own modern wagon train. No careening across three traffic lanes so you won’t miss that turn. In a parking garage, it is permissible to go faster than five miles per hour, and spaces aren’t going to magically open up if you go slow enough-this isn’t the Hackensack Bloomie’s outlet and the rest of us have somewhere to be.

And for God’s sake, Corey Hart wanna-bes, I don’t care how cool you are, don’t wear your sunglasses at night.

So if you’ll just follow these very simple rules, we’re all going to get along just fine. Welcome to Austin!

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Tonight as I wrote this over some dinner at Central Market, I was surrounded by a ladies' "knitting circle." Are there any women over the age of 25 who don't knit? Did I miss something? And is there a transition period or do you go from "Ladies' Night" to "knitting bee" in one fell swoop? Mental image of the scene in Gone With the Wind of the ladies knitting at the table at Ashley Wilkes's house as Melanie reads aloud from David Copperfield. Life isn't nearly as exciting as it used to be.