report on downtown

[Michael Eisenstadt]

every Saturday morning now there is a farmers
market in the square just south of us. it is
more craft fair than produce but there is some
produce at one end of the square. tomatoes were
$2.50 a pound. i got permission to touch and
pick them up at 2 different stands. they had
no tomato smell when i smelled the stem.

like other fruit it they dont smell of themselves
at the store, they dont have much taste at home
but you already knew that

interesting that there were at least 4 men
selling copies of the Socialist Worker newspaper.

the first seller i came upon was a handsome
blond young man with a stud in his tongue.
he had never heard of Trotsky but he did
urge me to read Engels to know, as he did,
what was going to happen to capitalism.

i thought for a moment that i had got him
to agree that predictions were not admissible
in the elenchus. but after a while he went
back to making predictions.

there is a City of Austin city hall building
going up on a block further south, one block
up and between the 2 empty CSC buildings which
front on the lake. the CSC buildings are 4
stories and quite handsomely finished with
vertical rusticated stone bands all around.
also there is a substantial copper brise-soleil
between the 2 upper stories. this theme is
repeated at ground level at the entrances
in solid copper.

the city hall will take up half of the
block between and north of the CSC buildings,
the other half of the block will be ramps
and sidewalks at various levels. also 2 large
vertical fan like objects in front of the
brownish city hall which i couldnt quite
figure out what they were from the picture
of the project on a big sign. the perspective
of the sign picture was looking north from
where the sign is and the fans and city hall
are on the far side of the picture. the sign
itself is a block south of the site.

doing north there is a cement 8 story condo
building going up on the NE cattycornered
from the City Hall block. from the picture
on the sign it will have a fake dormer roof.

there is another cement condo building going up
on the creek (Shoal Creek) and West ave.

the 35 story highrise on Congress & 4th will
be finished this year as will the 33 story
Hilton condo and hotel building going up on
East 5th & Sabine. these alone equal 2/3rds
of a WTC tower. what do these rich guys know
that we dont?

and then there are the Socialist Worker
newspaper sellers in the park predicting
the demise of capitalism

yr correspondent Michael