Hear Ye! Year Ye!
Birds Barbershop Calls All Barbarians,
Centaurs and Beastmasters for 3rd Annual ManfestOn Saturday, Dec. 5th from 2 to 7 p.m. Birds Barbershop on S. Congress Ave. and PartyEnds.com will bring Austin its 3rd annual Manfest. The merrymaking kicks off a month-long promotion at all Birds locations, where men will get half-off hair product all December long.
Moving from S. Lamar to its new location at Birds on S. Congress, this installment in the series leans more primal than Manfests of yore, with a parking lot overrun with olde tyme fixtures like smoked turkey legs, live action role players (LARPers), a jousting competition and a Conan-era photo booth featuring a real-live Centaur.
Birds will offer free “Barbarian Blowouts” inside, while Lone Star Beer and Cazadores Tequila sponsor with spirits served in Manfest signature steins. Attendees who arrive in full barbarian-through-renaissance gear will receive a drink line “Fast Pass” as a reward. In other words, if you wear chain mail or a loincloth, you get a dedicated bartender and no lines for all that free man milk. Come hither all you Stygian wizards, Seraglio concubines and Cretan Minotaurs: this Manfest’s for you.
All My Friends, our favorite LCD Soundsystem cover band, gets even the manliest of men to dance at dark, while a confidence rock DJ fills in the gaps throughout the day. Manfest the Third is located at 1902 S. Congress Ave., 445-0500. Sat. Dec. 5 from 2 to 7 p.m. For more details, visit birdsbarbershop.com.
The Gen Y Guy: Jason Dorsey @ BookPeople
Jason Dorsey, local author and friend of Downtown Austin Blog, is launching his latest book, Y Size Your Business, tonight at BookPeople. Jason is known across the globe as the “Gen Y Guy” from his 1800+ keynote speeches on engaging and retaining Gen Y in the workplace. Come on out and support a local author. If you’re interested in generational dynamics, and/or interested in new and effective tools to improve your company’s corporate culture, you will be impressed with Jason’s message. I hope to see you there!
Location: Bookpeople
Date/Time: Tuesday, December 1st @ 7pm
-Jude
Will The MACC Build A Tower In The Rainey Street District?
It’s called Nahua Tower, and it’s a mixed-use tower design by Bercy Chen Studio. “Bold” is an appropriate adjective to describe this design. Perhaps this is simply a conceptual exercise. But, if this or something like it were to ever get built, I believe it could be a showpiece for the city. Click the image and you’ll be taken to the Bercy Chen website where you can watch video of virtual ‘fly overs’ of the rendered building.
The Nahua Tower is being designed in collaboration with the Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC) in Austin Texas. The tower will be built as an annex to the existing cultural center and provide an extension to the MACC’s existing facilities as well as residential condominiums. The base of the tower contains event, retail, and restaurant spaces, while the upper 28 floors are primarily residential condominiums.
The project takes inspiration from pre-colombian pyramidal architecture and incorporates these vernacular precedents into a modern tower using many traditional materials such as copper, onyx, and pit-house style bermed construction.
Thanks to KevinFromTexas for the heads up – the Nahua Tower concept/vision has been on the books for a while now.
The December Discount
I’m sympathetic with contrarian investing practices. You’ve likely heard that, in the real estate market, spring and summer are the “buying” seasons. If that’s true, then there is an economic case for improving your purchasing power during the non-buying seasons.
Taking a two mile radius from downtown Austin, we show the average-discount-from-list-price ratio of sale price to list price (subtract from 1 to get the discount) for real estate sold in June and December. The data is obtained from the MLS and goes back to 2004. On average, since 2005, you can buy central Austin property for less in December than you can in June. Last year if you purchased in December then you saved an additional 3% from asking price.
I call it the “December Discount”.
This chart affirms, at least in part, that in recent years buyers purchasing in the “off season” are getting slightly better deals than buyers in spring and summer. Since 2005 you can see the December Discount increasing with each year. With the FHA loans currently filling a void in the credit markets, and a tax incentive bringing more buyers to the table, this year we might not see a continued divergence beyond 3%.
Green Water Treatment Plan: Pics Of Water Tower
Thanks to DANA’s Greg Anderson for these great photos of the the falling water tower at GWTP. SkyscaperPage’s KevinFromTexas has some great pics, too.
