Who made that claim? The only thing I ever heard was that it was weird. Those bums on the street corners might have PHDs and just decided they wanted out of the rat race. The people moving in from silicon valley fucked it up because they brought more traffic, more people with sticks up their asses, and higher housing costs. Beyond that though, I cannot answer.
I did. Austin was just.. very unique in the 90s. Keep in mind I lived in the thick of it at the time: Barton Springs and South Lamar, 78704, liberal hippie heaven. But there were no hipsters, though everyone was very environmentally conscious so everyone kept everything clean and fought hard for it - eg: Barton Springs itself. It's hard to put into words, maybe it was just growing up there.. but you could walk south lamar from barton springs all the way to ben white (when ben white was just a 2 lane road with lights) and just enjoy all the unusual, unique things that didn't exist anywhere else at the time.. the Saxon pub suit of armor, the medieval inn bar (now closed), thundercloud subs was THE hangout for all of us in high school to just bum around except when we wanted a phily cheesesteak and then we'd hang at delaware subs (both locations now gone, bulldozed, and replaced with condos). Planet K, one of the first locations, was there on South Lamar.
Alamo Drafthouse started in 1997, here in Austin. That shit was fun to go to when it was new, as the concept of food and beer in a theater was a whole new deal. Whole Foods Market, while started in the 80s, started to actually go outside of Austin in the 1990s. Austin had one of the very first "whole food" healthy type markets in the nation. The live music scene blew up in the 90s in Austin and there were some INCREDIBLE live music clubs that would blow your mind. La Zona Rosa was awesome but went to shit after 2000 and is closed now. The continental club! Grey Ghost and other amazing blues artists performed live there. It's lost a lot of it's flair since the 90s but it's still pretty good and has
live music shows every single day. Liberty Lunch, Antone's, and other AMAZING live music venues, since bulldozed for condos for California hipsters. Many memories of
Liberty Lunch.
You had some fun shit like Aquafest, which was actually fun. Red Bull gets credit for Red Bull Flugtag, but honestly Aquafest was doing shit like that since the 1970s. Today you have SXSW which I guess is fine,
if you dont mind paying over $1,000 for a ticket. Austin was always a high-tech mecca, mainly thanks to Dell, but even without it was a very busy place for technology. Used to be "Second Saturday" downtown Austin where there was a massive flea market for used computer parts. Good times. Showplace lanes, right there on 35, awesome bowling place. Treaty Oak was a news story.
I dunno, I just can't stand it today. Its so much traffic. So many condos. So crowded, and so many hipsters. The price of living in Austin is thru the roof. It's just a typical urban sprawled mess now.