Living downtown Austin is great, except for a couple of items on my list. First, the crime downtown is getting a little out of hand. It ain’t al rainbows and butterflies down here. Second, and the worst of it is the street closures every weekend.  Austin closed city streets 108 times in 2008.  OMG, really? 108 times the major streets in downtown Austin were closed! This ain’t Mayberry…people got stuff to do around here.

The task force created by the City of Austin to come up with a plan was a joke. I went once to see what was going on and first of all, the owner of RunTex was the leader of this task force. Hello? Anyone say conflict of interest? It’s like asking the fox to come up with the security plan for the henhouse. ARRRGH.

Events are a part of what make Austin, Austin. However, it’s a major city now and we can’t just close the streets every weekend of the year for some marathon that is such a joke people dress up in costume to run it.

The street closures are not only publicized very well to the residents, bus riders and businesses downtown, but the barricades remain up long after the event and no one seems to think anything about closing all the East/West corridors and shutting down two of the three bridges of Lady Bird Lake.

I feel some strongly worded letters and phone calls to the Austin City Council in my future. And if just one of you hippies disagrees with position on this I will full on slap you in the face.