Main Street.
I spent a lot of my teenage years with my friends in our market square. I grew up in New England and lived in Belfast, ME as a child and Portsmouth, NH as a teenager. We always lived in walking and biking distance to down town and school. It was something important to my mom who wanted me to be independent and not have to drive me everywhere. I greatly appreciated this freedom and could easily walk from the park, to a friend’s house, to my part time jobs, to the store, and to school. My mom dug up the sidewalk around our house and planted vegetables. We had compost in the back as well. Having grown up this way I see the benefits of urban living with amenities at a close walk or bike ride away. My small city also had grocery stories, individually owned businesses in town, a post office, and library all with in walking distance. I have been think about the design of Austin and its town center a lot. Everything is so spreed out!
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I have been thinking about how spread out Austin is too. And how many pockets of qirkyness exist - but sometimes its such a pain to get from one pocket to the next. I visited the monkey Wrench book store that you suggested for instance... I never even knew about that line of shops! The area was exciting to find, but I would probably not go back often because I can't walk there and biking up lamar invites little pleasure. I loved Santa Fe so much because different, quirky spots could be found all over - and they weren't too far to comfortably walk or enjoyably bike between. Also Santa Fe air is clean and dry. Car exaust and construction noise did not interfere so much either!
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