You Play, You Pay

The 2011 South by Southwest festival – “SXSW” in its better branded mode – is in full swing here in Austin.  The Interactive portion just wrapped up with around 20,000 geeks, nerds, techies, and social media icons (real and imagined) having descended on our fair city.  The film portion continues on, and the main event, the music festival, goes full on starting right…. about…. now!

It’s been an interesting thing to watch how locals – myself included – have started to really embrace SXSW.  Admittedly there was more than a little animosity at the thought of thousands of out of towners rolling into and taking over our downtown area for the better part of two weeks.  Yeah, we get the economic impact, especially in recent hard times.  But we also get the traffic grief, lines and more lines for everything, and just the general feeling that it’s not “our”town as opposed to when ACL Festival rolls in later in the year.

But times they are a’changin’ and I see many locals out and about, enjoying the panels, trade shows, movies and now of course the music.  The explosion of free events outside of the official ones has definitely given the locals and attendees things to do outside of the official gigs that often involve standing in line for hours, hoping you’ll get in to the venue (Note: I do NOT do this. Ever. I’d rather go somewhere else and not stand in line…)

And that brings me to the point of this little ditty: you play, you pay.  Some fortunate folks take vacation during SXSW, while most locals just decide to suck it up and make it happen, night and day.  One of the few times Austin isn’t jamming this week is between 730-10am, the downtown area only missing a few tumbleweeds before the ghosts of the night before start lurking for their Starbuck’s fix.

But I think that’s fair, and won’t accept anyone’s excuse that they tore it up the night before and then couldn’t perform the following morning (or afternoon, as it may be).  Simply put, you play, you pay.  Im looking forward to playing for sure as SXSW rolls on.  Ciao for now – Xb…