People who bemoan the Waterloo Park thing are just fucking crazy. This is what it looked like before:
Not an exaggeration! It was always a dusty field with mostly dead grass with a few trees; without any appeal for anything at all, except for one or two events that the Chronicle would host every year, which is why it wasn’t a surprise when Nick Barbaro penned his infamous “what happened to are park” trial balloon a few years ago.
When I first came to Austin on a “survey trip” in late 1995 (basically, IBM flying us out to give us the tourist experience to make us happy about being moved to Austin), our group stayed at the Sheraton on 11th. We walked up Waller Creek and then through Waterloo park one afternoon (not knowing any better). It looked like this, except somehow even bleaker. It was never good. Never!
I probably came back to Waterloo a total of five times before the big redevelopment, for various festivals, and the park was always the least attractive part of the journey, bordering on a disincentive. For an ice cream festival! Standards were not that high!
There’s a certain personality type in this town that thinks “if we keep it shitty they’ll run Fun Fun Fun Fest forever” without realizing they’re too old to enjoy the experience now anyways. It was never good; you’re just remembering good times you had there. Guess what? My son and his friend had a good time there Tuesday night at the Jimmy Eat World / Manchester Orchestra show! It’s amazing how that works!
