Austin ModHouse

Austin has a family friendly New Years event, Austin First Night

downtown is ripe with fun things for kids and adults.  a lot of it features the creative community that thrives in austin.

the parade differs from big professionally made floats powered by gas powered engines.  it's mostly all human powered.

there were chinese dragon dancers, indians, nicarauguan folk singers, roller girl, librarian, girls rock camp, environmentalist, belly dancers, mardi gras indians, scottish bag pipers... all parade marchers.  it really is for everybody.  there was not a lot of candy but they did hand out oranges.

even sci-fi folks

ghouls too!

the parade closer was this praying mantis that featured the band PONG rockin down congress ave.  we didn't realize that the parade ended at a party where PONG played and they burned a 34 ft wooden clock where people had written their resolutions. 

we paid $10 to park downtown so we decided we better get our $ worth.  we stopped at Cru for a quick snack.  they don't usually offer hot chocolate but the chef made an exception for us.

we then went to a party but went home around 10 pm.  typically we don't stay out on amateur night.  in bed by 11, woke up and it was 2009.

the baby is quite mobile so we need contaiment.

the austinmodhouse stairs of death are now gated off from the infant population.

used my bogen tripod to get some long exposures while the blue led lights are on.

kat and I went to party that was overflowing with glamorous women.  I met erin ivey before she played a nice set of songs for us.  she is the pretty girl in the nice dress, I'm the fat guy with goofy grin (explanation of crappy iphone pic, I guess I forgot I had a real camera in my pocket)