Austin, TX is opening up, and the variety of indoor experiences, including live music again, are moving and entertaining.
Trivia nights in Austin are a tradition. Held at various bars and restaurants, Geek Night, Trivia Night, and Nerd Nights were popular pre-COVID. Now that more than 50% of Austin residents are fully vaccinated, activities like trivia nights are back in full swing.
I went to the one at Baker Street Pub last night. As you might notice from the name, It's a Sherlock Holmes based theme restaurant and pub. My team is the Baker Street Irregulars, named after the street urchins and orphans Sherlock Holmes used to help him solve mysteries. The pub has other branches, but one in another city closed permanently during COVID, so we feel fortunate this staple of South Austin is alive and flourishing again.
Other trivia nights are Geeks Who Drink at Independence Brewing, and Trivia Night – Rick & Morty at
HOTEL VEGAS, 1502 E 6th St. Other events are dedicated to T.V. shows, such as Golden Girls Trivia and Mean Girls Trivia. Do an internet search for "trivia nights in Austin, TX," to find these and others.
Another more unusual indoor event is iFly Austin. iFly is an indoor skydiving activity. The cost is $92 for two "flights," where you experience all the effects of skydiving from indoors rather than having to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Although as my sister told our dad when he asked why she jumped out of a perfectly good airplane, she answered, "Dad, it wasn't such a perfectly good airplane."
Check out The Austin Chronicle for their writers' stories of their favorite venues, places and activities that are opening or open. It covers the gamut of activities and entertainment, and also the gamut of emotions.
Austin Chronicle writer Richard Whittaker writes about feeling he had come home attending his first movie in a theater after so long. Rober Faires attended the first in-person performance by the Austin Symphony Orchestra since COVID. He says, "After so much time in pandemic isolation, just looking at those instrumentalists sharing a stage that night felt like a wonder, like something impossible made real."
Music critics Kevin Curtin and Raoul Hernandez mentioned both elation and leftover anxiety. Exactly what I've felt. Kevin says waiting for live music to return has him getting enthusiastic about even sound checks. He also had a freakout when he went to an after party at the Coconut Club and found himself in a "full capacity squash of people-the kind of environment I used to thrive in, but haven't experienced in over a year." Raoul had the opposite experience, hugging everyone he could at a live music show at Far Out.
Read the Austin Chronicle for the full stories on the writers' experiences. My own experiences going out again have often brought me to tears. Sometimes I don't even know why, except, as Joni Mitchell says, "You don't know what you've lost til it's gone."
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