Half Price Books- Central

There are a bunch of Half Price Books locations in the Austin area. Our goal is to get to at least 3 of them this weekend, since everything is an additional 20% off for Labor Day weekend. So... get ready for incessant posts about Half Price!

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Monday Movie & Margarita night at the Belmont

Ok so I already blogged about the Belmont on Chowing in Austin, but I feel like I should also cover it here since it's a food and an activity. Anyway, every Monday evening at the Belmont you can see a movie on a screen on their outdoor patio, while drinking $2 margaritas. This Monday we saw Airplane! there. It was hilarious. I had never seen it before, and apparently everyone else has, so I was glad to finally get to see it. Check the Belmont's events page to see upcoming Monday movies, as well as their live music schedule. Last summer we saw a jazz band on their patio, and we definitely recommend that too.

Tables on their patio, and the movie screen. We got there early, the movie doesn't start until sundown. You can kinda see Ryan's back at that table up near the front.

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Concert in the Park 2008

This summer, the free Sunday evening concerts relocated to the grassy area in front of the performing arts center. The new location is great, the music carries well and the center really provides a nice backdrop.

The sun setting to our right:
Some little kids dancing at the front:

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Hot Sauce Festival 2008

Every year, the Austin Chronicle hosts a hot sauce festival. There are hot sauce contests for commercial hot sauce and amateur hot sauce makers, as well as tons of booths where you can sample locally made hot sauce and salsa. And of course, there's live music throughout the day. The charge for admission is a donation of 3 canned goods for the food bank.

Some of the booths for hot sauce sampling:

We were only there for the last couple hours of the festival, so we only saw one band. Luckily it was a really good band.
I don't think people were crying because this brand of hot sauce was so hot, they were crying because clowns are freaking scary!!!!!

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Shopping on Guadalupe

From around 21st to 27th on Guadalupe, there's a strip of stores and restaurants across from the UT campus. Some are chain stores like Urban Outfitters and Jamba Juice, others are unique. It's a great spot to go for lunch and shopping.
There are a couple of nice murals along the way. There's also a Scientology Center, so if you're easily brainwashed you might want to cross to the other side of the street when you see it.

intellectual property

The bookstore "intellectual property," in the strip of stores across from UT, lures you inside with the artwork all over the outside of the store.

I mean come on, Johnny Cash and the Virgin Mary? How can you not want to take a peek inside?
It's a big bookstore with a bunch of different sections. It's pretty much impossible to buy a book from a regularly priced bookstore when you're aware of the existence of Half Price Books, but it's still fun to browse around in a silly list price bookstore.
High ceilings, quotes written on a skinny strip of blackboard above the windows.

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San Marcos Outlets

The San Marcos outlet mall is huge. It's designed to make you feel like you're in Italy.. a sort of Vegas-y, Texas version of Italy. You can find the Gap, Neiman Marcus, and everything in between here. Most of the stores really do have cheap, extremely marked down outlet prices, which is fantastic. However, a few stores seem to not know the meaning of "outlet." If the discount is only 10%, or if you don't even tell us what the discount is on the tag so we can get psyched about the major deal we're getting, that's not outlet.

The mall is all outdoors, so it doesn't induce fits of anger and aggression the way indoor malls do.

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Austin Museum of Art (downtown location)

The downtown AMOA is all modern art, with a permanent collection and rotating new exhibits. I don't have much to say about it, because I've never been much of a fan of modern art. If you're into modern art, you must check it out, and if not, head straight to The Blanton Museum of Art instead (which we'll hopefully blog about soon).

By the way, photography is not allowed, which I learned after taking the photo above. Go figure. I was allowed to take photos at the Louvre.

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