Never in all my years of reading blogerati coverage about South by Southwest have I seen actual pictures and/or video of Austin places and happenings and pseudo-landmarks. Well, Hollywood Elsewhere is here with a Canon Elph SD1400, and that shit stops tonight. But what is Austin on Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 10:27 pm? I don’t know. I’m just at some bar on Sixth Street, nursing brewskis and uploading photos on my Toshiba. It’s dark and loud and noisy and packed with hee-hee 20somethings, like a thousand other bars in cities all over America and Europe and Southeast Asia.

For a New Jersey/New York guy like myself, Texas used to be an exotic place to visit. It used to be about shitkickers and Texas accents and honky tonks and country music and pick-up trucks. The vibe on Austin’s Sixth Street isn’t “Texas” — it’s overflowing with white 21st Century hip-hop homies dancing to the same tunes and rhythms that you’ll find in bars in San Francisco’s Union Street or in some Boston Back Bay bar or on Ninth Avenue in the 40s. The entire under-35 hip social world has become homogenized and corporatized. Nothing is different or dangerous. Or so it goes on Sixth Street, at least.