Welcome back to The Austin Eras Listening Room.

We created this newsletter to be something worth opening each month — a mix of the conversations, people, music, places, and ideas that make Austin feel like Austin. And increasingly, we want to bring that community off the page and into the same room.

That’s exactly what we’re doing with In Good Company on Thursday, August 27 from 4–6 PM at The Brewtorium: a laid-back gathering of founders, builders, and connectors shaping Central Texas, hosted by Austin Eras, Collective Advisors, and SOS Leadership.

Come grab a drink, meet someone interesting, and be part of what we’re building.

RSVP for In Good Company

Thanks for being here.

Brought to you by the Austin History Center Association

All Roads Lead Back to Austin

by Adam Flagg

A few months ago, my family finished something we had been chasing for years.

Visiting all 50 states together.

My wife, Brooke, and I have two kids in high school. Brooke’s family lives in Illinois, my parents live in Florida, and my sister lives in Kansas City. So from Austin, we have gotten used to long drives.

And if you have ever tried to road trip from here, you know the first rule: it takes forever just to get out of Texas.

Somewhere around 2018, we realized something. Because we had spent so many years driving to see family, taking side trips, and cutting through states along the way, we had accidentally built a little bit of a head start.

We had been to about 15 states together.

So, you know. Basically almost done.

That’s when this turned from a random family observation into an actual project. It took planning, strategy, map-staring, and, if I’m being honest, a lot of Brooke figuring out how to make the logistics work. We even got one of those scratch-off lottery-ticket-style maps of the United States, where you scratch each state after you visit it.

And once you have the map, the map starts judging you.

A state only counted if all four of us were there together. We couldn’t just drive across a corner of it, either. We had to stop. Eat somewhere. Walk around. See something. Sit with the place for at least a little while.

Not every state got the same treatment; some got museums, neighborhoods, restaurants, hikes, conversations, and a real sense of place. Some got more of a sampler platter. But we tried to treat each one like it deserved more than a gas-station receipt and a line through a checklist.

We finally finished in May with Hawaii.

Brooke and I had been before, but the kids had not, so it didn’t count yet. We saved it for last on purpose. If you’re going to ask your kids to slog through the North Dakotas, Mississippis, and the long middle stretches of America, it helps to have Maui sitting at the end of the rainbow.

And Maui was incredible.

It also nearly took me out.

If you follow me on LinkedIn, you may have seen the story. I climbed a mountain, then proceeded to fall down it five times on the way back. I hurt my rotator cuff, broke my elbow, and I’m still in rehab. So yes, we finished all 50 states with a beautiful family milestone and a very humbling reminder that gravity remains undefeated.

But even that didn’t overshadow the experience.

Hawaii is one of those places that makes you realize how big and varied this country really is. It is part of the United States, but it also feels like its own world, with its own culture, rhythm, history, landscape, and spirit. It reminds you that America is not one thing.

That may have been the biggest gift of the whole project.

Over the last several years, at a time when the country has often felt divided and loud and hard to understand, we got to see it up close.

We met people. We ate food we still talk about. We saw cities and towns, coastlines and mountains, museums and diners, and places that looked nothing like where we came from. We saw how much beauty and difference exists under one flag if you get out of your own way and go look for it.

I had already traveled to a lot of states, but seeing the country through my kids’ eyes was different.

You notice different things when you’re not just traveling for work, checking off a place, or trying to get somewhere as efficiently as possible. You notice what makes a city feel alive. You notice how people talk to each other. You notice what people are proud of. You notice what a place chooses to preserve, what it forgets, and what it is still trying to become.

And the more we saw, the more I kept coming back to the same thought.

Austin really is special.

Not perfect. Not simple. Not frozen in time. Not immune from growth pains, traffic, heat, affordability issues, or the endless debate about whether it used to be better.

But special.

Not fully baked, maybe. Baked by the sun, absolutely. But not fully baked as a concept.

That’s part of the point. Some places feel like they have already reached their peak. They are maintaining, declining, or trying to remember what they used to be. Austin still feels like it is becoming something. That can be exhilarating. It can also be exhausting. Some days, it is both before lunch.

That is what Austin Eras is really about.

Every episode asks a different version of the same question: what makes this place what it is?

Sometimes the answer is a restaurant. Sometimes it’s a venue, a neighborhood, a hidden gem, a music scene, a business, a memory, or a story that only makes sense if you were here when it happened.

But most of the time, the answer is people.

People compose the culture. Without them, a city is just buildings, roads, logos, and zoning fights.

And the people here are still really great.

That can be easy to forget when we’re all busy arguing about what Austin is becoming. Depending on who you ask, the city is either getting better than ever or being ruined by the day. The skyline changes. The restaurants change. The cost of living changes. Old landmarks disappear. New ones show up before we’ve even agreed whether we like them.

There is always noise.

But underneath the noise, I still see something here that I don’t see everywhere.

A creative spirit. A little bit of weirdness. A willingness to try something. A belief that your wild idea might actually work. An openness to people who are building, experimenting, making, starting over, chasing something, or trying to find their people.

There are a lot of places where life feels more predetermined. Where the lanes are narrower. Where the question is less “What are you building?” and more “Who told you you could?”

Austin still feels like a place where anything might happen.

And if you have lived here long enough, you can start to forget how rare that is.

We also forget how much beauty we get to live around. Yes, it is 105 degrees outside right now. Yes, summer can feel like living inside a hair dryer. And yes, we may be generous when we use the word “seasons.”

But we have trees. We have water. We have greenbelts and trails and patios and swimming holes and parks and places where the city still lets nature into the frame. And for most of the year, we actually get to use them.

That matters.

So does the food.

I don’t want to pretend Austin is the only city in America with great restaurants. It isn’t. We had some unbelievable meals across the country.

But I will say this: we are spoiled here.

When our family travels, we are always looking for the place to eat, the thing to try, the neighborhood to walk around, the local favorite that tells you something about where you are. And plenty of times, people gave us their best recommendation, the place they were proud of, the spot they told us we had to try.

And plenty of times, we would walk out and quietly think: Austin would beat this.

Handily.

Maybe that sounds obnoxious. Maybe it is. But if you live here, you know what I mean.

It’s not just that the food is good. It’s the creativity. The mixing of ideas that should not work and somehow do. The food trucks that become institutions. The tiny concepts that turn into consumer brands. The chefs building something between a restaurant, a clubhouse, and a personal worldview.

Austin may not have the full cultural density of New York or Los Angeles or Chicago. But it has this strange creative voltage. People here take pieces of things and combine them in ways that feel a little risky, a little weird, and often better than they have any business being.

You see it in food. You see it in drinks. You see it in music. You see it in the consumer brands that keep coming out of here. You see it in the little scenes that form around whatever someone is obsessed enough to build.

That is part of the magic.

And you feel it when you leave.

When people find out you’re from Austin, they almost always have a reaction. If they’ve been here, they have a story, and that story usually makes them smile.

Maybe it’s tasting Franklin Barbecue for the first time. Maybe it’s a bachelor party that got a little too ambitious. Maybe it’s a scooter story. There are always scooter stories. Maybe it’s a lake weekend, a concert, a conference, a restaurant, a night that got away from them, or a weekend they still talk about years later.

People have adventures here.

That is not true everywhere.

If they haven’t been here, they usually say they want to go. They have a trip planned, have been meaning to come forever, or have a cousin who moved here and won’t stop talking about it.

That’s fun. It is fun to be from a city people are curious about. It is fun to be an ambassador for a place that still carries a little spark in people’s imagination.

Austin has a pull.

It has charisma. It has a heartbeat. It has something people can feel even if they can’t quite define it.

We don’t have the Louvre. We don’t have the Statue of Liberty. We don’t have some single monument that explains the city in one photo. People don’t come here because there is one landmark they have to stand in front of.

They come because of a feeling.

That feeling is harder to protect.

You can’t leave it only to politicians, commissioners, developers, school boards, business leaders, or anyone else with an official title. They all play a role. But the culture of a city belongs to the people who live it.

We have to be guardians of it ourselves.

We have to notice what is still good. We have to support the places that give the city character. We have to show up for the music, the restaurants, the small businesses, the artists, the neighborhoods, the parks, and the people who make Austin feel like Austin.

We have to tell the stories before they disappear.

That is part of why I started Austin Eras. I wanted to talk with people I respect for what they have brought to this place, and understand what kept them here, why they haven’t left, and why they probably won’t.

What I keep hearing, again and again, is that people may get frustrated. They may talk about traffic or cost or change or how things used to be.

But they stay.

After all 50 states, I understand that even more.

There are beautiful places everywhere. There are great cities everywhere. There are people worth knowing everywhere.

But there is still only one Austin.

And somehow, after all those miles, all those meals, all those roads, all those places, and one very questionable mountain descent in Maui, all roads lead back to Austin.

Not because it is perfect.

Because it still feels possible.

A few Austin things that crossed our desk this month:

This month’s guest picker is one of our latest podcast guests, Will Boyce! Check out his picks below along with our team’s: Adam - Host and Executive Producer, Mel - Showrunner and Producer, and Iliana - Marketing and Media Intern.

Adam’s Pick :: “Beaches in Tennessee” - Cage the Elephant

Mel’s Pick :: “Freedom Bus” - Sheryl Crow feat. Jesse Welles

Iliana’s Pick :: “Little Bit More” - Mk.gee

Mk.gee is an artist I discovered a few years ago, and I finally had the chance to see him live at ACL in 2025. I bought a last-minute Sunday Weekend One ticket from a friend of a friend and ended up right on the barricade for his set. He played “Little Bit More,” and I remember walking away after the concert completely in awe and maybe even a little teary-eyed. Mk.gee is a guitar synth wizard who creates this hazy, almost futuristic world with his music, and this song captures that perfectly. I couldn’t be happier to recommend him, and hopefully he leaves you with the same feel that I had leaving ACL.

Will Boyce’s Pick :: “La Lune” - Christophe Maé

Adam’s Pick :: “On the Road Again” - Willie Nelson

Mel’s Pick :: “Nothing Can Change This Love” - Sam Cooke

Iliana’s Pick :: “On The Other Hand” - Randy Travis

Will Boyce’s Pick :: “Hier Encore” - Charles Aznavour

Adam’s Pick :: “Reeling in the Years” - Steely Dan

Mel’s Pick :: “Hold On” - Wilson Phillips

Iliana’s Pick :: “Cheri Cheri Lady” - Modern Talking

Will Boyce’s Pick :: “Bande organisée” - 13'Organisé

These lists will GROW. We’ll continue to add tracks so be sure to save to your library to keep coming back!

There are beautiful places everywhere.
But there is still only one Austin.

Maybe the magic isn’t something we inherit.
Maybe it’s something we keep making.

See you out there.