British journalist and author Alex Hannaford first heard about the legend of Austin in 1999, fittingly enough, during a road trip with a friend.
“So we sort of jacked our jobs in and planned this 8,000-mile up and down, East-to-West road trip,” Hannaford said. “When we were in Philadelphia, a guy we met in a bar had said, ‘Oh, well, you’re going to Austin.’ We said, ‘No, we’d never heard of it.’ And he said, ‘Well, you can’t go through Texas without going to Austin.’”
During his week in the city, he became enchanted by the live music, the cultural landscape, and the warm and welcoming people around every corner. It was after that week that he knew he had caught the Austin bug.
“Austin really sort of got under my skin. Honestly, everything about it seemed fantastic,” Hannaford said. “I sort of felt protected from the excesses of America. It felt like we weren’t really in America. It was America-lite. Everyone was happy, the food was great, and the cost of living was cheap.”
After returning home, he made it his mission to work in Austin. A few years later, he would come back for good, this time writing for outlets like The Guardian and The Telegraph. Soon after, he would meet his wife there, and together, they would start a family in the Violet Crown.
“I was living proof that you could be a freelance journalist, earning really not very much money back then,” Hannaford said. “My wife as well, who was working for a company downtown and really not earning that much money, but we could afford to buy a home in Austin four miles from downtown.”
Now, Hannaford has released a book about the city that he called home: “Lost in Austin: The Evolution of an American City.” Hannaford and the book will be featured at the upcoming Texas Book Festival this weekend.
In “Lost in Austin,” Hannaford delves into the transformations that the Texas capitol city underwent.
They’re changes that came as the city boomed with the start of 21st century, Alex noticed something was wrong. Increasing cost of living and gentrification had begun to drive out the musicians and artists that defined the city’s culture. Car-centric infrastructure and urban sprawl made it harder for people to travel from place to place.
The issue that was the final straw for Hannaford, however, was the increasing threat of gun violence.
In 2019, 23-year-old Dalton Broesche was arrested in Pease Park after unlawfully carrying a handgun without a license. An initial 911 call described him as moving towards a party near the park’s splash pad with a scoped assault rifle, causing parents to run away holding their children.
He had a previously outstanding warrant in Harris County for a domestic charge, in which he hit his girlfriend, grabbed a knife, and threatened to stab her father. A background check failed to flag him when he purchased the rifle.
Hannaford once held a birthday party for his daughter at Pease Park, and the school she went to regularly held events for children at the same splash pad.
“That, for us, was a line in the sand,” Hannaford said.”You know, who knows what he was going to do that day? I can’t speculate. My mind can only wonder. But I’m telling you, with a kid in elementary school, your mind does more than wander.”
Hannaford said that Austin, as a city, is no longer accessible to the communities whose contributions put it on the map. In Alex’s view, the city and state government must invest in progressive policies that will convince them to stick around.
“You have a problem because of the city, and the people who live there, who don’t want their property taxes to go up. So they don’t want to invest in real meaningful public transport that actually goes to places that actually mean something to people,” Hannaford said.
“You’re going to end up with a city that’s not the one that people who say they used to love Austin want to live in.”
