byKatrina L. Spencer
The bartenders at the Roosevelt Room in downtown Austin are as likely to grate fresh nutmeg on your beverage as they are to spray black walnut oil inside your glass. It’s an experience, for sure, and it’s not just for those who love liquor, wine and beer.
“A cocktail is interesting whether it has alcohol or not,” said Armando Garza, a bartender at the Roosevelt Room.
The Roosevelt Room and other Austin bars are tapping into the trend of consumers forgoing alcohol when they go out for happy hours, gatherings and celebrations. A 2023 Gallup report found that only 62% of 18- to 34-year-olds said they had occasion to drink in 2021-23, down from 72% two decades ago.
“There’s almost as many reasons to abstain as there are people,” said a Missouri professor of psychological sciences.
byMichelle Lavergne
The “Back Girls Don’t Wear Red Lipstick” photography exhibit at the Austin Central Library showcases 42 photos of Black women in varying poses, many wearing red lipstick, which historically has been taboo for African-American women.
byAnissa Sanchez
From a booth on the east side of Zilker Park, a husband and wife from Ohio exceeded their dreams of helping to save lives by distributing 6,000 doses of overdose-reversing drugs.
“We thought we were gonna do a couple of festivals in the Midwest; that’s all we hoped for,” William Perry said of his lifesaving operation called This Must Be the Place. “This year, we went coast to coast and now we’re here in Austin.”
Their booth at Austin City Limits Music Festival the past two weekends served as a beacon of information on preventing fatal overdoses of fentanyl and other opioids with the nasal spray naloxone.
Perry said they found a receptive crowd in Austin.
“We were prepared to talk people into taking it and talk people into why they should have it, and obviously that was not the case,” Perry said. “All you have to do is sit and listen to us explain the signs and symptoms and how to administer the medication. It takes people two and a half minutes or so and now they’re equipped to go save a life.”
byIsabella McGovern
As the sun went down over Barton Springs Pool, dozens of people said goodbye to “Flo,” a 120-year-old pecan tree set to be cut down the next day.
“I think of Flo as a symbol of our love for trees and our love for nature and Mother Earth,” Austin arborist Don Gardner told the crowd. “We used to always be a lot more connected to trees than we are now, and I’m so happy to see those who still have some sense of that.”
Flo has leaned over Austin’s spring-fed pool since 1925, but the city’s parks department and tree experts determined it must go because of Kretzschmaria deusta, a root and trunk fungus known as brittle cinder that weakens trees and has no treatment.