{"id":212764,"date":"2026-03-20T10:51:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T10:51:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/212764\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T10:51:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T10:51:32","slug":"austin-has-not-been-affordable-since-end-of-the-slacker-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/212764\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin has not been affordable since end of the ‘Slacker Era’"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Aug. 1, 1991, humor columnist John Kelso<\/a> asked American-Statesman readers for assistance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m asking for your help in finding the top slacker in Austin, Texas \u2014 the very slackest of the slackers. The king of the slackers.\u201d<\/p>\n

If a historian today were to pinpoint the last time Austin was truly affordable, it would be during the reign of Kelso\u2019s slacker \u2014 the archetype portrayed in Richard Linklater’s 1990 film<\/a> \u201cSlacker.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Kelso explains that the slacker is: \u201cThe sort of overeducated, undermotivated, eccentric kook who is attracted to college towns across America. In earlier times, we\u2019ve called these colorful misfits beatniks, Bohemians and hippies.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2026, you might ask: How could such misfits survive in a growing city already becoming a tech hub in the 1990s?<\/p>\n

Statesman classified ads show how different the market looked in 1990: a two-bedroom bungalow in a historic neighborhood rented for about $500.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHYDE PARK \u2014 5203 Avenue F. 2-1, carpet. CACH, range, refrigerator, no pets. $495.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the way, \u201cCACH\u201d stood for \u201ccentral air and central heat\u201d as opposed to window units or maybe wood furnaces. Google Maps suggests that the same narrow house is still there.<\/p>\n

At one point, seven of us students crammed into a three-bedroom stucco house \u2014 barely 1,000 square feet \u2014 north of Mueller Airport<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That era, however, was coming to an end.<\/p>\n

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Ten years later, in 2000, just before the dot-com boom turned to bust, Statesman headlines screamed: \u201cAustin is no longer affordable! What will happen to the artists, students and blue-collar workers?\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, the biggest campaign issue during the 1999 municipal election was affordable housing.<\/p>\n

This newspaper grilled candidates on their solutions. Public-private partnerships? Fewer regulations? Limits on speculation? Granny flats? Rent control?<\/p>\n

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About this series: The Cost of Living<\/a> explores how Austin became so expensive, who is being squeezed by the city\u2019s economic boom and what local leaders are \u2014 or aren\u2019t \u2014 doing to address it. Struggling to afford Austin? We want to hear from you. Please share your story with us via email at hello@statesman.com.<\/p>\n

Always start with the history\"The<\/p>\n

The exterior of the I Luv Video building is painted with distinctive movie murals, including one of Teresa Taylor, who appeared in Richard Linklater’s “Slacker” and worked at I Luv Video in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN-STATESMAN FILE<\/p>\n

A generation later, Austin faces another \u2014 and very real \u2014 affordability crisis. This year, as the Statesman documents the current economic crunch, it is crucial to remember what came before it.<\/p>\n

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Hark back, for instance, to Austin\u2019s miserable decades as a frontier outpost with few creature comforts before the Civil War.<\/p>\n

Later, the city endured years of boarding rooms and back-porch bread lines during wartime and the Great Depression.<\/p>\n

The explosion of cheap suburban housing after World War II coincided with the time when the beatniks, hippies and, yes, slackers, reinhabited the leafy inner neighborhoods that had been abandoned during white flight, or because of racist policies that emptied many of the city\u2019s former freedom colonies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In this first of an occasional series of \u201cFrom the Archives\u201d columns, we revisit the affordable slacker era of the 1980s and early 1990s, when your columnist began writing for the Statesman.<\/p>\n

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Personally, I was disappointed to miss out on Kelso’s \u201cking of the slackers\u201d finals. I certainly looked the part: ponytail, skinny limbs, thrift-shop shirts, shorts and sandals.<\/p>\n

Entertainment editor Ed Crowell educated me: \u201cMichael, you file too many stories to be a true slacker.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelso, one of this newspaper\u2019s finest writers when he found the right subject, died in 2017 from complications of a fall after a second bout with cancer.<\/p>\n

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Back in 1991, he landed on a natural winner that ran under the headline: “Let the nominations begin for the king of the slackers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Be aware in advance that Kelso\u2019s published humor could sometimes cut too close to the bone. In person, he was a pussycat.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou probably know a slacker,\u201d\u00a0Kelso wrote. \u201cLord knows there are enough of them around town. He (or she) comes here to attend the University of Texas to become a petroleum engineer or a sociologist. He (or she) ends up dropping out and playing guitar with an obscure rock band with a quirky name, like Chicken Luggage or Existential Tamale.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a contest prize,\u00a0Kelso promised to write about the winner. He also joked about putting them on the guest list at Liberty Lunch (a defunct nightclub).<\/p>\n

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\u201cThat\u2019s another thing that defines the slacker. He (or she) spends about half his (or her) time trying to get on the guest list, so he (or she) doesn\u2019t have to pay that cover charge to hear live music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelso noted that the Austin movie, \u201cSlacker,\u201d had been praised in Newsweek and Rolling Stone, and that the hit film ran for many weeks at the Dobie Theater.<\/p>\n

\u201cAustin may have more slackers living in it than any city in America,\u201d Kelso wrote. \u201cI\u2019d estimate an easy 10 percent of the city\u2019s people are slackers. And many of them are going to this flick to see themselves in lights.\u201d<\/p>\n

What were these slackers seeking?<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe slacker feels about work the way a slug feels about salt,\u201d Kelso wrote uncharitably. \u201cRather than hold a job, the slacker prefers to create. Perhaps he\u2019s writing a book. Sure, he started it 10-12 years ago and he\u2019s still working on the first chapter. But it\u2019ll be about some weird conspiracy theory the slacker holds dear \u2014 alleged ties between the Camp Fire Girls and the sale of arms to the Iranians, Elvis is alive and reincarnated in the body of Saddam Hussein, like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe slacker isn\u2019t stupid, mind you. He\u2019s often an intellectual \u2014 in a screwball sort of way, he has many, uh, unusual ideas, most of them based on rampant paranoia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelso assured the readers that none of these traits is set in stone.<\/p>\n

\u201cA slacker may possess all, or some, of them. Then again, he may have some that I\u2019ve neglected to mention. Like a dog at home named Bilbo Baggins.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cMost slackers have some higher education. The slacker may have accumulated hundreds of college credit hours. He may be within one final exam of his B.A. But no real slacker ever got a degree. The slacker wears his ability to avoid traditional employment like a fancy Panama hat. He hasn\u2019t had a job in years and he\u2019s as proud of this as a soldier with a Medal of Honor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelso\u2019s humor sometimes went too far, but he got the anthropology of the Slacker Era right.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe slacker probably doesn\u2019t own a car,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIf he does, it\u2019s an old van with an Oat Willie\u2019s bumper sticker and the engine is fixing to explode.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe slacker lives in a rent house over on Avenue D, or an apartment near the UT campus, with several other slackers who chip in on expenses. Occasionally, an argument breaks out about who ate the last slice of baloney in the refrigerator. It ends when one calls the other a capitalist.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Long live the slacker king!\"Statesman<\/p>\n

Statesman columnist John Kelso was born in Oklahoma, but spent decades in Austin as both a beloved and contentious figure. He died in July at the age of 73.<\/p>\n

Austin American-Statesman<\/p>\n

Kelso crowned David Lee the king in September 1991. Nineteen years later, in 2011, the columnist didn\u2019t even recognize the erstwhile royalty when he ran into Lee at Strange Brew, a 24-hour coffee shop.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHe\u2019d gained weight,\u201d Kelso wrote. \u201cDavid Lee used to make a living as a human guinea pig. He regularly submitted himself to live-in drug studies at Pharmaco, a drug research firm. David Lee is recession proof. He\u2019s a master at getting you to buy him a coffee of java. And he didn\u2019t seem to have changed much.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Aug. 1, 1991, humor columnist John Kelso asked American-Statesman readers for assistance. \u201cI\u2019m asking for your help…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-212764","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}