Browsing Tag

John Aielli

Austin, Music, Pop Culture

An Open Letter to John Aielli

via KUT Flickr page

Dear John Aielli,

A few weeks back, I saw you for the first time out in this strange and beautiful world. I was walking into the alley below UT’s School of Communication as you were shuffling out.
A smile was playing on your lips– not a smug, pretentious smile, but a smile of someone who appreciates life, the birds in the trees, the geckos on the sidewalk and the clouds above our heads.

Seeing you smile to yourself made me smile to myself– you were exactly how I pictured you (this is bordering on slightly creepy, but something makes me think you’d appreciate “borderline creepy”).

When I first arrived in Austin 4 years ago, you were the jovial “is he drunk or isn’t he?” uncle figure that welcomed me to the city with your weekday morning program “Eklektikos” on KUT.

I’ll never forget the first time I felt the uncomfortableness of your dead air and the sounds of you mispronouncing a band’s name or accidentally playing the same song over again, even though (more…)

Austin, Pop Culture

Are You a Bobo?

In this week’s CultureMap article, “More than Trader Joe’s in store: Seaholm development targets ‘urban bohemians,'” managing partner of Seaholm LLC, John Rosato, used the titular term when describing the sort of clientele they want their future tenants to cater to. A lot of you thought the phrase “urban bohemian” sounded like the verbal equivalent of dragging your nails across a chalkboard, but I have news for you, it ain’t nothing new.

Try on this word for size: Bobo. Bourgeois bohemian. Does that make you want to throw up a little in your mouth, too?

“Bobo” was coined by David Brooks in his 2000 social commentary, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. The book describes the rise of upper middle class and their penchant for spending big bucks on organic food, brand new electric cars and all-American clothing.

They are a hybrid of the “liberal idealism of the 1960s and the self-interest of the 1980s” a.k.a. hipsters with money. Bobos are essentially (more…)