Abandoned Austin: photos of neglected structures in the city of Austin

by Elizabeth Seward on

Life might sway to a slower beat in the South, but, compared to other cities in the United States, Austin, Texas‘ growth over the span of the last decade or so hasn’t been slow at all. Steady job growth and population growth have worked together in Austin to create a sort of surreal union between urbanity and rurality. A succinct but steadfast downtown area in Austin is only a couple of miles away from artists’ communities developing on the outskirts of town. These communities are budding and blossoming a short bike ride away from the city’s center, but these communities, like East Austin, are still rural enough that you’ll find chickens roaming the streets and newly-converted living and work spaces being created from has-been barns. This is usually the way these things work.

Artists seeking more affordable housing in New York sought Brooklyn and found homes in vacant factories–vacant anything, really. With dilapidating real estate, supply often meets demand in communities that are attractive for one reason or another to creative thinkers–innovators. It takes a visionary to see the worthwhile in what’s been neglected, and Austin seems to have plenty of visionaries. Upon close inspection, Austin’s framework is still falling apart at the seams in some places. It’s a safe bet that these abandoned and broken-down buildings will be renovated or replaced in due time, but for now, during an economic shift like the one taking place is Austin, these boarded up buildings belonging to abandoned Austin represent the transition of a city to me.

%Gallery-145676%Austin is no abandoned city, but the bygone buildings in Austin are all that much more interesting because of this. Some of the most notorious neglected buildings in Austin are, as summarized in an article in the Austin Chronicle: The Cabin, The Walls, The House, The Restaurant, The Tracks, The Kiln, The Athletic Club, The Rock, Robertson Hill, The Hog Farm, and The Dog Park. The Riverside Dog Park‘s abandoned house on the hill is the only one I visited for this piece, and that’s because I frequent this dog park regularly as it is and was interested in taking a closer look at the house, which has always only been an object barely noticeable in my periphery while socializing my dogs.

Other abandoned Austin buildings have stuck out to me since moving to Austin. The old train station that sits next to the current Amtrak station, for instance. Smaller buildings, like homes, that are beautiful in that way that only a run-down structure can be always catch my eye–particularly since there are so many of them in my neighborhood, East Austin. When I went out to shoot for this piece, I posted a status on my personal Facebook page that read:

“Out photographing abandoned Austin. If you know of a cool abandoned building in Austin, tell me where it is.”

One of my friends commented:

“There are abandoned buildings in this town?”

And I thought that was telling. With all of the boom and business hitting Austin, it seems people are quick to overlook the lack thereof in some areas. It’s easy to overlook, primarily because there really aren’t that many abandoned or otherwise neglected properties in Austin. Thanks to Austin’s increasing popularity and good reputation, people have been flocking to the city for years now and swiping up run-down buildings and making them new. Few remain untouched and that is exactly why I wanted to capture them while I still can. It’s a beautiful thing that Austin is doing so well, that these buildings likely won’t stay neglected for long–and I say that despite that fact that I aesthetically like something about dying structures. I gathered these photos not as a showcase of all of the neglected buildings in Austin, but as a photo diary depicting the abandoned buildings I encounter in my daily life here in Austin. Take a look at these buildings–they won’t be unoccupied for long.

4 off-the-radar destinations in South Australia

by Jessica Festa on

While many people who travel to South Australia visit the popular regions of Adelaide and the nearby Barossa Valley, there are many off-the-radar destinations that are also worth exploring. Whether you love wine tasting, unique restaurants, adventure travel, craft beer, architecture, art, or culture, there is something for everyone to experience through these lesser-traversed regions down south.

Hahndorf

Located about 30 minutes north of Adelaide, Hahndorf offers scenic hillside views as well as a strong German influence through the city’s timber-framed buildings, German restaurants, and German-inspired art galleries. The old-world charm brings you back in time while trendy boutiques and restaurants help to keep the city modern. For wine-enthusiasts, the wineries and cellars of Hahndorf give a great opportunity to sample the region’s cold-climate varieties, which are my personal favorite because of their intense flavors. Make sure to stop at Harris Smokehouse, a fourth-generation family-owned restaurant that serves high-quality smoked fish specialties, like smoked kingfish, hot smoked barramundi, and smoked oysters from Coffin Bay. I would also recommend visiting The White House, an 1858 cottage that features everything from rustic and ethical cuisine like coddled free-range eggs with spinach and pork fennel sausages with asparagus and mushrooms, an impressive wine cellar, live music, and a Secret Garden Cinema on Friday nights in the summer and fall. As a nature and outdoors lover, I also love the country-fresh treats of Beerenberg Farm like chutneys, jams, honeys, oils, and other sauces (try the molasses!), as well as getting to pick your own strawberries.McLaren Vale

While you’ve probably heard of the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale is also a haven for oenophiles everywhere. Located on the Fleurieu Peninsula about 45 minutes south of Adelaide, McLaren Vale is a beautiful food and wine destination with opportunities for wine, cheese, and craft beer sampling, various tasting trails, farmer’s markets, and even art and coastal activities. The opportunities for oenophiles are endless, with more than 65 cellars and family-owned wineries. If you’re more of a beer person, McLaren Vale Beer gives in-house tastings, including their Vale Ale, which own a gold medal at the International Beer Challenge last summer, as well as serves gastro-pub type food like mushroom pizzas and shucked Coffing Bay oysters. I would also recommend trying one (or all) or the tasting trails to get a variety of experiences, like the Cadenzia Grenache Trail, Wine and Cheese Trails, McLaren Vale Scarce Earth Shiraz Trail, and the McMurtrie Trail. If you only have time to do one thing, my top pick would be a visit to Bella Cosa, as it’s not only a Bed & Breakfast but also a winery, tapas bar, and sculpture park where you can stroll around and enjoy outdoor art. On the weekends, visitors to the area can drive about 2 miles to nearby Willunga and enjoy the Saturday morning farmer’s market. You can also bike to Willunga, as the towns are connected by a cycle path. Once you feel like you’ve eaten and drank enough, enjoy the outdoors by treking through Onkaparinga Gorge, relax on the beach, or go fishing or surfing.

Clare valley

While most people wanting to experience south Australia’s wine country opt to visit the Barossa Valley, another option that’s just as beautiful but a bit off the beaten path is Clare Valley. Located about 2 hours north of Adelaide, this is one of the more historical wine regions in South Australia and visitors can experience this through tastings at unique wine cellars. I love this region for its countryside ambiance and the way life here seems simple and organic. While there are many different vineyards and wine cellars in the area, there are a few that stand out from the rest. First there is Sevenhill Cellars, which is the oldest winery in the region and was built by Jesuits in 1851 for the purpose of making sacramental wine. Jesuits actually still work there, and along with tastings in the cellar you can also visit a historical crypt that resides underneath the on-site church. Another winery I really love is Knappstein Winery, mostly because I’m a big craft beer fan and there is a micro brewery in their wine cellar. Moreover, Annie’s Lane is a great stop when checking out the Clare Valley wineries, not only because they have delicious Shiraz but also because they have a free art gallery with works from local artists as well as a complimentary wine museum where you can learn more about vino production through the ages. To sample an array of wineries, I would suggest doing the Rieseling Trail, as Clare Valley is famous for its German Rieselings.

Flinders Ranges

While this Outback mountain range is a bit further from Adelaide (about 4-5 hours from the central area), it’s a great way to experience the rugged beauty of South Australia. The experience literally feels like going back in time or a trip to a different world as people live in the bush among wild kangaroos and emus with little signs of civilization and modernization. The landscape of the area is extremely unique, with glowing red rocks, vast desert, jagged mountains, and bright starry skies at night thanks to little light pollution. In the Flingers Ranges National Park you will still find a rich Aboriginal culture as these people have lived in the area for thousands of years. The Aboriginal rock art that you will find is impressive as well as the ancient ruins. Another unique outdoor experience is visiting the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary , where bird watching, off-roading, and hiking are popular activities. Explore precarious-looking mountain peaks, scenic lookout points, ancient seabeds, radioactive hot springs, and see the endangered Yellow-footed Rock-Wallaby in Bararranna Gorge.

World’s quirkiest rental home: The Balancing Barn

by Jessica Festa on




For travelers who want to have a rustic experience in the English countryside while also experiencing modern innovations, you may want to look into reserving a stay at The Balancing Barn, a unique rental home in Thorington, Suffolk, in England that defies the laws of nature. Created by Netherlands-based architectural firm MVRDV, half of the barn sits precariously over a descending slope with no ground underneath as the house actually shifts and balances. For an immersive experience in the outdoors, guests have the opportunity to literary soar over nature via a swing hanging from the bottom of the structure, just as if they were hanging from a tree. Moreover, the reflective sheet metal covering the structure responds to nature, causing the optical illusion of changing with the seasons.

For more information on how to book and what’s included, click here. To get a better idea of the project, check out the video above and the gallery below.

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Bowermaster’s Adventures: Finding civilization in Antarctica

by Jon Bowermaster on

Port Lockroy — If there is a human population center along the Antarctic Peninsula, this is it. While there may be hundreds of thousands of penguins, tens of thousands of seals, whales and sea birds that call this remote stretch home, few people do.

But at the height of the austral summer season — December-February — more people congregate in the protected harbor here at the former ‘Camp A’ of the British Antarctic Survey than anywhere else for many thousands of miles, if temporarily. (The next most populated place in Antarctica would be the American base at McMurdo, home to 1,200 scientists and support crew during the summer months, but located on the opposite side of the continent.)

The former refuge hut has been turned into a mini-museum and gift shop, demanding a mostly volunteer staff to run it and keep the small island relatively tidy (it is surrounded by breeding Gentoo penguins, everywhere …) for the tourist boats that arrive, often twice a day.

When we go ashore at Goudier Island we find an all-women staff of four plus a visiting guide from one of the tourist ships who’s spending ten days here helping out. The two men are here temporarily, installing video cameras around the hut so the penguin colonies can be monitored remotely during the eight months no humans live here.

I had a slightly selfish interest for pulling into Lockroy; a pair of kayaks I’d asked to be dropped off by the National Geographic Explorer had been stashed alongside the residents’ Quonset hut a few weeks ago. We find them, bright red and yellow polyurethane wrapped in plastic badly deteriorated by the ozone-free sun that shines brightly here during the summer thanks to the still-present hole in the atmosphere that grows over the deep, deep south this time of year.The even-more-temporary residents of Lockroy are those that arrive by private sailboat, a growing phenomenon, seeking well-known shelter from Antarctica’s fiercest winds. Twenty years ago, it would be rare to see a sailboat here, maybe one or two during a complete summer season. Today there are almost always five or six boats at anchor in this bay alone.

Skip Novak, the owner of the Pelagic Australis that I’ve chartered, has been coming to the Peninsula by small boat since 1988 and is one of a the charter members in a very small (3 or 4?) club of pioneers. He is on board with us and regales us nightly with stories of those early days when they used to tap into the fuel deposits left behind at abandoned science bases, debauched nights in Ushuaia’s lone strip club (the Tropicana, still there) at trip’s end and the always odd and colorful characters who initially came here in small boats against the advice of virtually everyone.

We anchor at Lockroy for three nights, filming in the iceberg-studded bays nearby, diving under icebergs and photographing the whalebones left on the sea floor by rapacious oil barons of a century ago. During those days a half-dozen sailboats anchor nearby:

An Italian couple on their private boat pull in, crewed by a staff of six sailors. The report from its skipper, who used to work for Skip, is that they are already bored by the penguins and ice and will most likely cut an anticipated 30 day trip short by two weeks. A Brit in a plastic sailboat carrying four friends comes and goes from the anchorage on day trips. Daily they return with a slightly fearful look in their eye and worried tone in their details; their boat is certainly not cut out for bashing through ice and this season there is a lot of still-frozen sea ice out there in the passes.

Another small plastic boat, the Paradise,operates out of Ushuaia and specializes in bringing (mostly French) climbers to the Peninsula. In my 20 years coming to this part of the world, on top of the general tourist boom the biggest change has been that the adventuring crowd has finally found ways of getting here. The result is lots of skiers and climbers are chartering small boats and spending their days exploring new peaks and routes. While most of the biggest mountains along the Peninsula have been previously climbed (the tallest is Mt. Francais, at nearly 9,256 feet) there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of smaller ones no one has ever stood atop or ski traversed.

But the number of sailboats we see is down from a few years ago; then we pulled into Lockroy and there were ten boats. Similarly general tourist visits are down; four years ago Lockroy had a record 18,000 visitors by cruise boats, this year they anticipate 13,000. The record high for visitors to the Peninsula was more than 35,000 in 2008; this year it will be just over 20,000. Global economic woes are an explanation for the drop, as is the elimination of most of the giant cruise boat visits thanks to a change in law ruling out the heavy fuels they use from operating along the Peninsula.

One boat we’re keeping our eyes out for left Ushuaia a couple days before we did, stacked with nine British special forces soldiers down here for “drills.” We’d run into a similar group a few years ago — similarly 8 men and 1 woman — and they’d welcomed us into various anchorages along the Peninsula with bagpipes, proper British tea and good Scotch.

More traditionally for Antarctica we meet up with a handful of boats being run by second-generation sailors, who have inherited a passion for the place by essentially growing up here … both a job and lineage no one could have imagined just fifty years ago when the international treaty that governs the continent was written. The word “tourism” is never mentioned in that original agreement.

10 tips for doing a homestay

by Jessica Festa on

Doing a homestay in another country is a great way to get to know the culture from a first-hand perspective. By living with a family, you get to see how a local’s daily life is, from what they eat, to how to they dress, to what their before-bed ritual is. With such a unique opportunity being given to you, it’s important to get the most out of the experience while also being respectful. To help, here are some tips on how to enjoy a successful homestay.

Try new foods

When I did a homestay in Ghana, Africa, there were many meals that I was less than thrilled about. As a health-nut, I never would have made fried chicken a normal part of my diet, and eating (or drinking) rice water for breakfast left me less than satisfied. However, instead of getting upset about the food situation think about how much effort your host is putting into making your stay with them pleasant by spending time cooking for you and letting you stay in their home. Thank your host for every meal, even if you don’t like it. And if there’s something you really can’t stomach, find a way to make it edible. With rice water, I learned to add chocolate powder and stir it into the mix. Moreover, to help myself feel better about eating fried foods I began going for morning runs, which also gave me the opportunity to see the village market stalls being set up in the morning, something I usually would have slept through.Dress appropriately

While it may be okay to walk around your own home in your underwear or short shorts, think about how it might make others feel. Nobody wants to feel uncomfortable in their own home, and even if they don’t say it makes them uncomfortable, it probably does, so just make sure to cover up. Also, in certain cultures showing your shoulders and knees is inappropriate, so just be aware of a culture’s etiquette.

Help out

Because this person/family is allowing you to live in their house, it is respectful to help out. That doesn’t just mean doing your dishes and making your bed; offer to do everyone’s dishes, help cook a meal, sweep the floor, or go to town and get groceries. It’s a nice gesture to the host as well as a unique way to learn about the culture and what it’s like to perform an everyday task.

Keep an open mind

While you probably realize the culture is different in terms of what you will be eating, bathroom habits, and house design, there are sometimes more drastic contrasts that you should be prepared for. When I did a homestay in Thailand, I remember at first having a little bit of a hard time getting used to the squat toilets, bucket showers, and always having frogs and lizards in the bathroom with me as I changed my clothes. What really took me off guard was one night when we were having chicken for dinner seeing my host mother literally chop a live chicken’s head off. Of course, you know it happens, but it’s definitely a little off-putting to see it first hand. There were a lot of adjustments for me in Ghana, as well. Once or twice a week, my host would have a prayer group over at 3AM to sing hymns until 6AM, which meant once or twice a week I didn’t get to sleep. While it bothered me at first I began to go watch the group sing and tried to make it into a learning experience. Remember, you won’t be here forever, so try to open yourself up to as many unique learning opportunities as possible.

Be conservative

While this could mean how you dress, it also means in general. While you may be used to taking hour-long hot showers while leaving all of the lights on and scarfing a bag of Doritos at home, you’ve got to remember you’re now living on someone else’s dime. Moreover, it is also possible that the area your homestay is in doesn’t have the natural resources that your home town does, so try to conserve as best as you can. In Achiase, Ghana, the town would turn on the taps for about 3 hours per week, and everyone would rush to fill up as many buckets with water as possible so that we could wash dishes, do laundry, and take bucket showers during the week. While it may not be the easiest thing to get used to, you’ll come to learn that showering and doing laundry every single day isn’t a necessity.

Spend time with the host

Don’t think of your homestay as a budget-friendly alternative to a hotel. Instead, get to know your host and form a relationship. Not only is it more respectful, it’s also very rewarding. It’ll give you the chance to gain a better understanding of life in the city as well as the opportunity to do activities that you may not have otherwise gotten the chance to do. In Ghana, I got the opportunity to attend church with my host mom. While I could have done this on my own, it was a whole different experience going with a local congregation member, and the pastor even had an interpreter sit next to me. I also got the chance to play soccer with the local team in Achiase because I would go running with my host brother in the morning. This was something I never would have been able to do if I had kept to myself, and it gave me a first-hand account of team interactions and sports in the country.

Learn something

The best part about traveling to another country is immersing yourself in the culture and learning everything you can. Partaking in a homestay is a great first step to doing this and the perfect opportunity to learn something. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and interact. If you see your host cooking, ask them what they are making and if you can have the recipe. If you like your host sibling’s clothing, ask them what it’s made of and what the local fashion is like. Help them with their school work and see what they are being taught. Depending on how close you get with the host and what the cultural norms are, you can even learn about more personal topics like community issues, relationships, and gender roles, which leads me to my next point.

Learn cultural norms before you go

If you know that talking about religion or the government is taboo in a culture, don’t ask about it. That being said, I’ve done homestays in places where I was told a topic was off-limits yet became close with a family member and was able to have these touchy conversations; however, I allowed them to bring up the issue. In Ghana, the locals were very open to talking about everything, and would actually take me off guard with the questions they would ask. That being said, I got to learn a lot about dating norms, marriage proposals, government corruption, religious beliefs, diet regimes, and the religious structuring in the schools.

Learning the cultural norms goes farther than what you say; it also includes gestures, clothing styles, and rituals. For example, I researched Thailand before doing my homestay there and learned that it is rude to sit with your feet sticking straight out. This is something I do all of the time at home, especially if I’m eating while sitting on the floor, and was so grateful to have been given this information beforehand as all of our meals were taken on the living room carpet.

Teach something

While you want to learn about the culture from your host family, they are most likely excited to learn more about your culture, as well. Bring photos from home of your friends, family, places you go, foods you like, your neighborhood; anything that you think someone who has never been to your city might want to know about. You can also teach them recipes, games, songs, dances, art skills, and other fun activities that you think might be interesting.

Exchange contact information

After your homestay is complete, you shouldn’t just leave and drop off the face of the Earth. Most likely, you’ve established some kind of connection with these people, and even if you haven’t, they were still nice enough to host you. Once you return home, a follow-up thanking them for their kindness is appropriate. Moreover, if you took photos your host family will probably be interested in seeing them. During both my Thailand and Ghana homestays I was living with families who didn’t own cameras. I took photos of them and their families and the community and mailed them over for them to have for themselves. For both families, it was the first photos they’d ever owned, and both told me that the gift meant a lot.