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It's been 33 years since I was last in Austin. Looks like things haven't change much since...
What It’s Like to Be Black in Austin
By JOSHUNDA SANDERS
MARCH 22, 2018
I am good at leaving places, but it was hard to leave Austin.
In 2005, I moved to Austin from San Francisco to work as a reporter at The Austin American Statesman and to attend graduate school at the University of Texas. I am a native New Yorker, but somehow I fell in love with Austin: with the open sky and the people I worked with, with my fellow Longhorns, with Torchy’s breakfast tacos, queso and good margaritas.
I bought a house and thought I might stay for five years. I lived there for eight, the longest I have lived anywhere at a stretch.
I left in 2013 for a lot of reasons. I started to realize that in a place like Texas, you needed kin, but I lost mine. In the space of two years, I lost both my parents, one to suicide, the other to cancer. In my grief, I tried to write through it, but it was more than I could power through alone.
And in Austin, I felt a loneliness that was hard to explain. I wasn’t just a New Yorker in Texas. I was a tall, dark-skinned black woman with natural hair. I was an outsider in a place that is supposed to value weirdness, but I never felt like the right kind of weird.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/opinion/joshunda-sanders-black-austin-bombing.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=What%20it%27s%20like%20to%20be%20Black%20in%20Austin&utm_campaign=OOR%20-%203.23.18
By JOSHUNDA SANDERS
MARCH 22, 2018
I am good at leaving places, but it was hard to leave Austin.
In 2005, I moved to Austin from San Francisco to work as a reporter at The Austin American Statesman and to attend graduate school at the University of Texas. I am a native New Yorker, but somehow I fell in love with Austin: with the open sky and the people I worked with, with my fellow Longhorns, with Torchy’s breakfast tacos, queso and good margaritas.
I bought a house and thought I might stay for five years. I lived there for eight, the longest I have lived anywhere at a stretch.
I left in 2013 for a lot of reasons. I started to realize that in a place like Texas, you needed kin, but I lost mine. In the space of two years, I lost both my parents, one to suicide, the other to cancer. In my grief, I tried to write through it, but it was more than I could power through alone.
And in Austin, I felt a loneliness that was hard to explain. I wasn’t just a New Yorker in Texas. I was a tall, dark-skinned black woman with natural hair. I was an outsider in a place that is supposed to value weirdness, but I never felt like the right kind of weird.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/opinion/joshunda-sanders-black-austin-bombing.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=What%20it%27s%20like%20to%20be%20Black%20in%20Austin&utm_campaign=OOR%20-%203.23.18
2 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
It has become a maze of toll road and nightmare of traffic but it is still the most charming place in the State. She mentions Torchy's. It was originally Taco Truck(s) and now there are Torchy's in all over Texas, Oklahoman and Colorado. I ate at the C.S. Torchy's yesterday. mmmm good or as the motto says Damn Good!
I'm proud to say it but I don't know where they got the picture but the logo is my baby picture 
