To know Sam is to love Sam. You know that guy who rides his horse in downtown Austin? That’s Sam Olivo, the 6th Street Cowboy.

If you saw Olivo riding on a horse alongside someone else at the recent Texas Book Festival, that someone else was me. He was kind enough to let me tag along on a peaceful jaunt down Congress Avenue, as he told me his story and sang a few songs.

Our journey had us trotting through downtown Austin, and culminated with an intensely personal Native American ceremony at a sweat lodge. Along the way, Olivo told me about his second shot at life, why he rides his animals downtown and what his mission in life is now.

Olivo’s story is an important one. It’s the story of a man with an old world mentality, living in a city growing at a breakneck pace and struggling to maintain its identity. Olivo refuses to change, in a city that’s constantly changing. [Read more…]

When my husband and I started The Austinot in our living room at the end of 2011, we had no idea what it would become. The last thing I expected is that I’d be celebrating 1,000 articles after three and a half years, written by an extraordinary collection of volunteer Austinites who caught our vision.

Our vision took time to develop. Like I said, I had no idea what The Austinot would become. Despite our online marketing background, The Austinot started out as more of a personal hobby blog. We published silly articles we never would now, like this one. Even the name of our blog was chosen on a whim, using an online name generator called Wordoid. Yes, Austinot is a play on “astronaut” because we’re exploring the city. But then, why didn’t we spell it Austinaut? (Answer: because [Read more…]

When you see a gentlemen biking through Austin in a beige colored g-string and you don’t do a double take, is when you know you’re a true Austinite. In Austin, we see some crazy things: dogs being pushed in baby strollers, hipster beards for days, festivals for everything and endless tacos. So many tacos….

In the spirit of “a picture’s worth a thousand words,” check out these posts from Twitter and Instagram, all of which sum up Austin beautifully.

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It’s a sleepy Saturday morning during South by Southwest and the city of Austin is not fully awake yet. The sun is minutes away from making its debut when I meet Christopher Sherman, of Over Austin fame, just south of the river next to the Zach Theatre. We have a perfect vantage point to do a little flying and capture beautiful panoramas of the downtown Austin skyline. [Read more…]

As the new year begins, we’re taking a moment to look back on 2014 and celebrate the articles our community loved most. Walk with us down memory lane as we present Austinot.com’s 10 most popular articles of 2014.

#10 Top 7 Grilled Cheese Sandwiches in Austin

You’ll enjoy our list best with a local snack in your hand, and we have just the thing you need. We rounded up the best 7 grilled cheese sandwiches in Austin, from greasy spoon joints to [Read more…]

I miss you when you're not here, I said. My words failed to penetrate as you continued to gaze deep into the small screen in your hand.

— Very Short Story (@VeryShortStory) August 12, 2014

Five years and nearly 200,000 Twitter followers ago, Sean Hill created a Twitter account. He wanted to test out some of his improv skills in a burgeoning format, so @VeryShortStory was born.

At first, Sean tried to craft longer stories with other Twitter users writing back and forth, but it never quite flowed right. “So I started asking my followers to suggest a noun and I kept all of them in a file. I had a batch of nouns ready for whenever inspiration struck,” Sean Hill told me. Two or three nouns were more than sufficient to create a story within 140 characters that left a lasting impression. This was still the early days of Twitter, when a simple and elegant idea was enough to grow a massive following.

[Read more…]