I moved to Austin 18 years--jeez, half my life--ago this month. For the most part, Austin has been good to me; that time has gone by pretty fast.*
Eric and our friend John also moved here in the summer of 1993. A few years ago the three of us drank some beer and, after about an hour of brainstorming and good-natured arguments, came up with a list of things we hadn't done in Austin yet.
The criteria for a list item: it had to be a place or activity unique to Austin. It had have been around since at least 1993, be something none of us had done, and be something all three of us would actually want to do.
I found the list yesterday when I was cleaning my office. I don't know about John, but Eric and I still haven't done any of these things!
As I recall, the idea was that we would all go together and knock everything off the list over the course of a year or two (and probably write a series of blog posts about it). But John is often out of town on business, sometimes I'll go a month at a time without a day off from work, and, well, it's hard to get three adults together to do things they apparently aren't that excited about to begin with.
Anyway, here's what we came up with:
Chain Drive
Matt's El Rancho
County Line BBQ (kind of a chain now, maybe?)
UT Tower (tours weren't allowed until 1999, but I think it made the cut because the tower itself was here)
Lamme's Candies (now that I think about it, I have since been to the location at 38th and Lamar, but I'm pretty sure we were talking about the Airport Boulevard store. Damn, I wish I had a pecan praline stuck in my molars right now.)
Poodle Dog Lounge
House Park (I'm assuming we meant the BBQ place, not the football stadium)
Shoal Creek Saloon
Deep Eddy Cabaret (we pass by here all the time on the way back from Deep Eddy Pool, but I always want food with my beer after swimming)
Duck Tour (have these really been around since 1993?)
Velveeta Room (amateur stand-up frightens me, but I'm open to it)
Austin Zoo (I'm going here as soon as the heat breaks; it's stupid not to)
It was difficult to come up with even this many, and while I'm surprised we haven't done a lot of those things because they sound tasty and/or fun, there's nothing on there that seems like a truly egregious omission. I'm glad I found the list and posted it, though. It'll be a nice starting point for the days we're casting about for something to do.
*Please watch this too (NSFW).
Edit, 8/8/11, 11:41 p.m.: On the advice of my friend Larry, I'm adding the Blunn Creek Nature Preserve to this list (unless John has been there already, of course). It's been around since 1982 and I can't wait to go there because it sounds fantastic.