This weekend marks my eight year anniversary in my adopted hometown of Austin, Texas. Which means I've been here long enough to bitch about all the stuff that isn't here anymore. Don't get me wrong, I still love it here and at this point can't really imagine living anywhere else, but it's an Austin ritual to whine about the good ol' days, so without further ado...

Top 10 Things I Miss About Old Austin

10. Aquafest. Okay, I don't actually miss this. I'm just getting warmed up. Aquafest was a sort of county fair deal at Town Lake, with rides and live music and whatnot. I only went once.

9. Ruta Maya. This still exists, sort of, but it's way down south and just not the same. When you were dead-dog broke and starved for entertainment, you could always head for this downtown coffee house, pull up a spot on the sidewalk and watch the parade of nightlife go by. And, try as we might, who could forget the Spinning Guy?

8. Liberty Lunch. A legendary rock club, killed for absolutely no good reason whatsoever. Ween, The Cramps, Southern Culture on the Skids and the Prince Hoot Night were just a few of the memorable shows I took in at this venerable establishment. After unceremoneously evicting them, the city was going to help the club relocate, but that notion just sort of faded away.

7. Morningwood. Talented? Marginally. Lovable? Endlessly. Morningwood were five young ladies with more enthusiasm than musical ability, but we loved their tongue-in-cheek glam-rock anthems like "Mystery Date" and "Incestuous Town" nonetheless.

6. Jay Clark. I knew I would be moving to Austin when, while down here visiting friends, I walked into a David Lynch movie in the form of Jay Clark at the Carousel Lounge. We stepped out of scorching daylight into a dark bar with circus decor and a big pink elephant at one end. Sitting in front of it was a blind man at an organ, plunking out old Sinatra standbys while an older couple made their unsteady way around the dance floor. It was a beautiful thing. Jay had to retire a few years back, but fortunately the Carousel carries on.

5. The Indie Film Scene. If you read the local weekly rag, you'd think Austin is movie-making heaven. And I guess it is for Linklater, Rodriguez and the two or three other guys who get all the ink. But it seems like the group I first knew and hung out with here is defunct - either out of the game or moved elsewhere. There are a bunch of folks who worked hard, made good stuff, but never got their due. It's a shame, but this is a parochial town in some ways.

4. The Electric Lounge. Yeah, there was nowhere to sit most nights, and you had to wait a long time at the bar, and there was no ventilation so you had lung cancer by the end of the night, and if you parked your car too close to the railroad tracks you might never see it again. But it was an epicenter, dammit. The Austin Slam Team had their matches there, all the coolest bands played there, the indie film community (see previous entry) had their meetings there, my good friend Genevieve was employed there for a while, a bunch of us went there after fireworks on the 4th of July one year - it was just good times all around. Now it's some kind of yuppie cigar bar or some such.

3. Shoulders. Technically Shoulders still exist, in kind of the same way The Who still exist. They play once or twice a year, always vowing that this is the year they're really gonna come back and start playing on a regular basis. There's a couple guys who are always in the band and the rest sort of shift in and out. They were always erratic, so in the days when they played on a regular basis, you never knew if you were going to see a mind-blowing show or an interminable descent into drunken rambling. At their best, though - as a sort of unholy union of Tom Waits, the Pogues and the Shriner's circus - they could not be beat.

2. The Black Cat Lounge. Just about every Saturday night for the first three or four years I lived here, our little posse of near-broke bachelors would meet up at Lovejoys for a brew then head over to the Black Cat, where the doorman usually let us in free. They had Pabst Blue Ribbon for a buck. The Flametrick Subs and Satan's Cheerleader's took the stage at midnight. All hell broke loose. The night wasn't complete until a fight broke out. If it was summer, it was too hot to breathe. If the Cheerleaders were inducting a new member, there was an elaborate panty ritual. And the Subs could do "Folsom Prison Blues" in under 90 seconds. It burned down a couple years ago. Electrical fire.

1. Waterloo Brewing Company. Oh man, this is a travesty I still haven't gotten over after, what, three years? Every Friday for I don't know how long, I would finish up the working week with a pint and a couple of tacos at this place. Several times a year they had free all-day music festivals, always with great bands and around Halloween they had the pumpkin ale, which you wouldn't want to drink too much of, but you had to always have at least one. Now it's a corporate chain version of an English pub. I never have and never will set foot in the place.

Stay tuned for the much more upbeat Part II - 10 things I like about Austin that are actually still here!