It’s thursday in the real world, link but in Austin, this week is just getting started. Many of you are probably having some serious FOMO, and telling all of your friends, “Yeah, I was totally going to go to South by this year…but then I didn’t.” Well, cheer up you saps. Because in a nutshell, SXSW is awful. The video above gives a pretty accurate description of the SXSW stereotype, but here’s but a handful of other reasons why:
1. A first-time SXSW-goer is, to use a dated analogy, like a mushroom; fed on shit and kept in the dark. No one tells you ANYTHING. All you know is that you have to show up to the convention center on the first day to get your pass, which you later realize is pretty much worthless. All of the bands you want to see play for free during the day at unofficial shows. Some play five times that week. Very few shows that start before 5 PM are listed. Even if you go to the official shows at night, every Tom, Dick, and Harry can get into the vast majority of shows too, as long as they show up early enough and pay a door fee. And don’t forget how outrageously expensive those SXSW badges are.
2. It is a shit show. A SHIT SHOW I TELL YOU. And not in a good way. It’s fucking chaos. Not like MTV Spring Break Chaos. More like trying-to-drive-a-car-blindfolded chaos. You spend all day on Twitter trying to get the inside scoop on unannounced shows of pretty serious headliners, feeling like the village loser that never gets invited to the party. Then you shuffle through the PACKED streets of Austin, head buried in the SXSW pamphlet for directions to venues, much like the Jews that followed Moses around the desert. Except Zion is really just a huge line that you have to wait in, because your precious badges really don’t mean a goddamn thing in that town. So then you do the whole thing over again, several times a day, for five days straight. Also, don’t forget that it’s St. Patrick’s Day week, and for some reason, a lot of people in Austin fancy themselves as Irish, I guess, because I have never seen more drunk people or their puke in my life than I did on 6th St. in broad daylight on St. Patty’s last year.
3. UT is on spring break. The rest of the people that live in Austin full-time get the fuck out of there for the week. That’s right, there is not a blonde-haired southern bombshell in sight. That means that the entire city is like the worst frat party you’ve ever been to.
4. On Monday, everything in Austin is cheap. On Wednesday, everything in Austin is fucking expensive. The dive bars you find on the first day that have delicious $2.00 mixed drinks (not a joke, I found some) jack up their prices three-fold, and probably water down the booze. The food trucks do the same thing, which blows, because they’re the only place to get food somewhat quickly. All of the awesome places your Austin-based friends tell you to go to (Torchy’s Tacos notwithstanding) are inaccessible through the gauntlet of similar-minded tourists.
5. 9/10 SXSW-goers take themselves really fucking seriously. I probably was not an exception. Shit, I had “Allston Pudding” under the “Company” header of my badge last year, in an attempt to attract the wandering eye of some unfortunate female that might find wanna-be bloggers sexy. The sad thing is that it kind of worked, mostly because everyone wants to come up and talk to you about how awesome their blog is, and give you business cards that you’ll probably end up giving to your roommates to make joint filters. If your new SXSW friends don’t work for a blog, they’ll probably want to talk about how many times they’ve been to South by, and how awesome their taste in music is.
6. Everything you could possibly want to do in Austin, you can do in Boston without paying for badges, airfare, and lodging. This includes the BBQ. Soulfire has better brisket than what I had in Austin. Pretty much everyone I saw play at SXSW I saw play again in Boston in the same year, and seeing them in Austin for a “wholesale” price wasn’t even worth it.
In short, going to SXSW is like getting in line at a CVS, trying to buy a frozen pizza. You’re really hungry, but there are fifteen people ahead of you, and they’re all dudes reaffirming to each other how cool their own taste in music is. To drown them out, you try to listen to your iPod, but when you try to turn a song on, your iPod says you have to wait two hours to listen to that song, so you have to pick something else. The line doesn’t move, and you can’t figure out what the fuck is going on, because no one tells you anything. Oh yeah, and imagine that you have to walk 4 miles from the end of the line to the register, it’s fucking hot in there, and the pizza ends up costing about $1,500. No thanks, I’ll pass. I’d rather be at work. I feel bad for all those poor bastards that bought into this whole nonsense. South by Southwest? More like South by Southworst.