AUSTIN | Photos & Videos Thread - Page 68

drummer · #**1341** Posted **Nov 12, 2015, 2:24 AM**

Frost is disappearing...

Thanks to all our friends who do great photography for the rest of us to enjoy!

KevinFromTexas · #**1342** Posted **Nov 22, 2015, 8:38 PM**

OverAustin.com flies their drone around the top of the Capitol, and there's a hawk perched on the star of the statue. Check it out full screen in HD.

https://www.facebook.com/overaustin/...4422240261043/

Tech House · #**1343** Posted **Nov 22, 2015, 10:39 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by drummer

Frost is disappearing...

Hmm, maybe we could swap some Capitol view corridors for Frost view corridors?

I second your other remark, thanks to all the photographers. I've looked at many other cities' forums on this website and few come close to having so many high quality up-to-date photos as Austin's SSP forum. Y'all are slammin' it!

smith_atx · #**1344** Posted **Nov 23, 2015, 1:38 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas

OverAustin.com flies their drone around the top of the Capitol, and there's a hawk perched on the star of the statue. Check it out full screen in HD.

https://www.facebook.com/overaustin/...4422240261043/

That was neat. A few weeks ago I saw a hawk carrying a squirrel in its claws. Tried to get a picture but it flew away too soon.

KevinFromTexas · #**1345** Posted **Dec 1, 2015, 1:35 AM**

Fox 7 opened their video vault and posted some old clips to their Youtube page.

• Video Link

austlar1 · #**1346** Posted **Dec 1, 2015, 4:58 AM**

I love that second "retro rainstorm" video. The streets filled with normal Austin residents going about their business in what appears to be a still functioning downtown commercial and shopping district. A few short years later it was a ghost town down there.

jg6544 · #**1347** Posted **Dec 1, 2015, 5:57 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by austlar1

I love that second "retro rainstorm" video. The streets filled with normal Austin residents going about their business in what appears to be a still functioning downtown commercial and shopping district. A few short years later it was a ghost town down there.

The downtown areas of all Texas cities pretty much emptied out in the 70s and 80s. Some office towers were built, but shopping, etc. had all moved to the suburbs. Look at any picture of Dallas, Ft. Worth, San Antonio, Houston, or Austin in the 1950s and you'll see large numbers of people on the sidewalks. Not so today.

austlar1 · #**1348** Posted **Dec 2, 2015, 6:11 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by jg6544

The downtown areas of all Texas cities pretty much emptied out in the 70s and 80s. Some office towers were built, but shopping, etc. had all moved to the suburbs. Look at any picture of Dallas, Ft. Worth, San Antonio, Houston, or Austin in the 1950s and you'll see large numbers of people on the sidewalks. Not so today.

I grew up in Fort Worth in the 1950s. Downtown FW started to lose retail by the late 1950s. By the late 1960s there were only one or two large department stores left downtown. Today there are none. My family swam against the tide by operating a retail business downtown until the mid 1980s.

drummer · #**1349** Posted **Dec 2, 2015, 6:11 AM**

^ That's sad. It's true for even mid-sized or smaller cities like Waco, Denton, etc. However, many of these also are beginning to emphasize a return to downtown, albeit not on the scale Dallas, Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and Fort Worth.

jg6544 · #**1350** Posted **Dec 2, 2015, 6:12 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by austlar1

I grew up in Fort Worth in the 1950s. Downtown FW started to lose retail by the late 1950s. By the late 1960s there were only one or two large department stores left downtown. Today there are none. My family swam against the tide by operating a retail business downtown until the mid 1980s.

Gone from downtown San Antonio: Joske's, Frost Bros., Wolff & Marx
Gone from downtown Dallas: Titches, Sanger-Harris
Gone from downtown Houston: Foley's, Battlestein's, Sakowitz, Neiman-Marcus

Downtowns can't come back from those sorts of losses.

the Genral · #**1351** Posted **Dec 2, 2015, 8:43 PM**

The obvious thing to say is retail likes to be where there is a large enough population to support it and the property is at a good price point. The suburban landscape provides both. Most retail in downtowns now cater to people who walked to their location, either from blocks away, or from their dt residents. That limits how much they can sell in terms of how much can that customer carry with them. In NYC, you see a lot of jewelery/watch shops, small electronic stores, drug stores, grocers, clothing stores, boutique shops, gift shops, ect... but there is enough pedestrian traffic to keep them open for business despite the high cost of doing business there. What's sad is when a city's downtown population can't even support these type of compact businesses due to the high rents. A large city like Austin should be able to offer a big box retail shopping opportunity to its downtown residents, albeit in a convenient block by block store by store format, and I believe that could happen when; dt population increases, and all future construction requires affordable ground floor retail space, and not just filling those spaces with restaurants and coffee shops. You know Petco has small spin off stores called Unleashed which would fit in spaces like that, as could mini HEB's or Target, perhaps even a mini Home Depot and Best Buy, Container Store, and Bed Bath and Beyond, Hobby Lobby, Foot Locker, DSW, Claire's, Spencer's, ect...

jg6544 · #**1352** Posted **Dec 3, 2015, 5:58 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by the Genral

The obvious thing to say is retail likes to be where there is a large enough population to support it and the property is at a good price point. The suburban landscape provides both. Most retail in downtowns now cater to people who walked to their location, either from blocks away, or from their dt residents. That limits how much they can sell in terms of how much can that customer carry with them. In NYC, you see a lot of jewelery/watch shops, small electronic stores, drug stores, grocers, clothing stores, boutique shops, gift shops, ect... but there is enough pedestrian traffic to keep them open for business despite the high cost of doing business there. What's sad is when a city's downtown population can't even support these type of compact businesses due to the high rents. A large city like Austin should be able to offer a big box retail shopping opportunity to its downtown residents, albeit in a convenient block by block store by store format, and I believe that could happen when; dt population increases, and all future construction requires affordable ground floor retail space, and not just filling those spaces with restaurants and coffee shops. You know Petco has small spin off stores called Unleashed which would fit in spaces like that, as could mini HEB's or Target, perhaps even a mini Home Depot and Best Buy, Container Store, and Bed Bath and Beyond, Hobby Lobby, Foot Locker, DSW, Claire's, Spencer's, ect...

But downtowns in Texas cities until the '70s had large and small merchants. I'd venture a guess that almost none of their customers walked more than a couple of blocks from where they had parked their cars. Stanley Marcus wrote that he decided to open the Zodiac Room at the downtown Dallas Neiman-Marcus because the majority of his female customers had to drive into town from several miles away. He wanted to give them a place to have lunch so they'd stay longer and spend more. But by the '80s, downtown merchants of all sizes were on shaky ground and the consolidation of national chains had begun.

owwo · #**1353** Posted **Dec 15, 2015, 9:25 PM**

View from Shepherd Mountain 1998 to 2013

image credits: Brent Allen Thale and Panoramio91

drummer · #**1354** Posted **Dec 16, 2015, 12:17 AM**

Very cool - I wish it was up to the current date, though. Still neat to see the change.

jbssfelix · #**1355** Posted **Dec 16, 2015, 3:39 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by drummer

Very cool - I wish it was up to the current date, though. Still neat to see the change.

I'll see if I can get a shot from there this weekend.

KevinFromTexas · #**1356** Posted **Dec 21, 2015, 5:05 AM**

You gotta see these.

https://www.facebook.com/overaustin/...73654/?theater

https://www.facebook.com/overaustin/...22279/?theater

Video Link

AusTxDevelopment · #**1357** Posted **Dec 22, 2015, 5:04 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas

You gotta see these.

https://www.facebook.com/overaustin/...73654/?theater

https://www.facebook.com/overaustin/...22279/?theater

Video Link

I love those. It's awesome that Sherman spins the tree from the top. I've spun it so many times from underneath. Gotta love Austin icons like the Zilker tree.

The time lapse Vimeo video is great too. Thanks for posting!

owwo · #**1358** Posted **Dec 23, 2015, 11:33 PM**

I was in Hays county in the Belterra neighborhood and noticed you could see the top of the Austonian from several locations.

The Austonian from 16 miles west-southwest:

KevinFromTexas · #**1359** Posted **Dec 24, 2015, 1:38 AM**

That's a pretty good view. I know it's way off, but that's a good 230 feet of the top of the building - from about the 35th floor up.

KevinFromTexas · #**1360** Posted **Jan 2, 2016, 11:49 PM**

This is really cool.

Quote:

Stampfli Express this morning at Austin Rowing Club.

#Stampfli has 24 seats, 48 oars and is 44 meters (over 144 feet) of boat. This one of a kind boat was in town for Pulling for Pink, a breast cancer awareness event hosted by ARC. Web version of this video can be found at http://bit.ly/Stampfli on OverAustin.com

• Video Link