EMO’S IN AUSTIN IS CLOSING ITS DOORS

(photo credit: Brooklyn Vegan)

The outside stage of the famous Emo’s club in Austin, Texas has rocked for the last time. After a 19-year run, the venue is shutting its doors and moving to a new location on East Riverside Drive, too far from downtown to walk. The indoor stage of Emo’s will remain open for the time being (and through SXSW 2012), but the writing is most certainly on the wall.

As a SXSW reveler for 4 out of the past 5 years, I’m bummed to hear this news. I’ve seen several metal shows at Emo’s; the setup is great, the sound even better, and the venue just has a great vibe of old Austin to it. But I’m sure longtime residents of Austin are way more bummed, even angry. I can relate. The forces that are causing Emo’s to close — and likely many other beloved downtown music venues — are the same that have caused mass change in New York City over the past decade and a half. It’s the same old gentrification story: old areas with character, hospitable to artists, are taken over by newer, shinier, higher-class institutions with way more money and a higher-fallutin’ clientelle at stake after the artists have put in the groundwork to make an area cool and appealing. So go the tides of change. I’m over getting upset about these things because there’s nothing we can do about them. Still, it sucks.

Read more at The Daily Texan Online [via Zena Metal]. The new venue is supposedly “State of the Art” and holds 1,700 people, but at 2.2 miles from the old location the chances of anyone from SXSW making it out there for anything other than a blockbuster event are unlikely. That’s quite a walk, even for us New Yorkers, and the cab situation at SXSW is absolutely dismal — people will only go if they plan to spend the whole evening there. R.I.P. Emo’s.

-VN