For Alex Hannaford, one photo sums up what went wrong in Austin, the Texas city he adored and which was his home for two decades before fleeing in 2020.
Show the rustic Former property of BJ Smith from the 1850s it was overshadowed by the construction of a concrete and glass office block, which provided desk spaces for technology workers arriving in the city.
hannaford50, said the image captures how Austin has lost its quirky, offbeat charm and has begun to look like every other booming U.S. city with populations of around a million people.
‘What’s different about it anymore?’ he told DailyMail.com.
‘If you have fancy restaurants, private clubs and chain stores, what makes it different from any other city in America? When I moved here, it was very different, low-rise and distinct.’
British writer Alex Hannaford lived in Austin, Texas, for nearly two decades and says gentrification ruined its charm.
This photo of the former BJ Smith property overshadowed by office construction sums up Austin’s growing problems, Hannaford says.
Hannaford reveals in his book how he fell in love with Austin during a road trip in 1999 and moved there shortly after. Lost in Austin: The Evolution of an American City.
Back then it was a “strange, heady mix of frontier town, hippie resistance, and indie mecca, with too many Mexican restaurants to count,” he writes.
“This was the city of reinvention: exciting, brimming with opportunity and optimism: a kitschy, retro America where the real world outside could be forgotten.”
In addition to beatniks and hipsters, Austin was home to free-thinking libertarians, iconoclasts, and even conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones.
Hannaford was working there as a freelance journalist when he met his wife, from Dallas, during the Austin music and film extravaganza, South by Southwest (SXSW), in 2003.
The couple bought a nice three-bedroom house and in 2012 had a daughter.
The book shows how Austin went from a crucible of crunchy artists and musicians to a gentrifying tech-industrial hub, complete with skyscrapers, snarled traffic and skyrocketing real estate prices.
When Hannaford, then a 24-year-old Londoner, came to town in a Pontiac Firebird, Austin was home to fewer than 600,000 people and locals typically spent $180,000 on a house.
Today, that figure is close to a million, and the average home changes hands for $550,000.
It is now marked by rampant development, environmental deterioration, racism, gun proliferation, water depletion and homelessness, the 240-page book states.
Locals adopted the “Keep Austin Weird” mantra and fought to maintain the city’s free-thinking spirit.
But for Hannaford, the eccentricity was evaporating, and within a few years Austin became an enclave for the wealthy.
The Old BJ Smith property dates back to the 1850s and is one of the oldest homes in Austin.
Hannaford’s 240-page book, Lost in Austin, was published earlier this month.
This eclectic taco restaurant closed in 2020, in another sign of Austin’s fading character.
Actor Matthew McConaughey is among Austin’s most famous residents, seen here at a book event in the city in May 2022.
Hannaford and his daughter kayak down the Colorado River in Austin. Nearby water wells have dried up in recent years due to climate change, he says.
Its wealthy residents included employees of upstart tech companies Apple, Meta and Google, and celebrities from actor Matthew McConaughey to podcaster Joe Rogan and filmmaker Robert Rodriguez.
The “hippie in flip-flops eating Tex-Mex watching a blues band in some seedy bar” was gone, says Hannaford’s book.
Now, he’s a “guy in an ironed shirt, Patagonia vest, and Allbirds sneakers eating Japanese barbecue fusion in a new, air-conditioned building.”
Hannaford particularly laments the decline of Austin’s vaunted music scene.
In the 1990s, open doors along Sixth Street led to live clubs featuring raucous, eccentric bands.
But big bands and solo artists have displaced local musicians, and the beloved SXSW festival has changed forever, he says.
Today, “working musicians couldn’t afford to park downtown to unload their equipment, much less live there,” Hannaford writes.
“For older Austin residents who helped cement its reputation as a music city back in the day, what Austin has lost, as far as they are concerned, is irretrievable.”
Austin’s transformation reflects the growing pains of other American arts centers, from Portland, Oregon, to San Francisco, Seattle and Brooklyn, New York City, he says.
But Hannaford wasn’t affected by Austin’s real estate bubble: He was a homeowner who saw his house triple in value as the city grew.
He says he was driven away by Texas’ lax gun laws and his horror at the active shooter drills at his daughter’s school, which have become normalized in many parts of the United States.
Country singer Lyle Lovett performing on an Austin college campus in 2000, when Hannaford says the city had a more eclectic music scene.
Podcaster Joe Rogan is another of Austin’s famous residents, seen here at a UFC Fight Night event at Moody Center in June 2022.
Austin has also been a hub for people with unorthodox views, including conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, seen here in a courthouse in August 2022.
Hannford first came to Austin during a road trip in a Pontiac Firebird in 1999.
Hannaford and his family now live in upstate New York, where he writes, chops firewood, and roams his lot on a lawnmower.
The family was also pushed out by climate change and the increasingly frequent scorching 100°F days in Central Texas.
In the early 2000s, Austinites could take short car trips and swim in nearby rivers, lakes and watering holes, he says.
But a population boom and climate change depleted groundwater supplies and caused some of the area’s natural beauty spots to dry up.
The family were effectively “climate refugees,” he says. So they sold up and moved almost 2,000 miles to a town in upstate New York.
Hannaford writes books, his wife works remotely in tech, and his daughter is in high school in a state with “more sensible gun laws,” he says.
The family enjoys the four seasons. Hannaford chops firewood and travels the lot on a lawnmower.
“Even though we left Austin and I feel like the changes have been too profound, I will always love the place,” he says.
“It’s where I met my wife and where our daughter was born.”
