Retort to "Den of Rats"

I find it hard to find where to even begin with my classmate's commentary. I suppose I will start with how he combines East Austin with Hippies and Neo Bohemian Lifestyle. Those two don't go together at all. I live in East Austin. I love it here! The rent is reasonable, I'm close to downtown and no one bothers me because i have a Pit bull. What i actually want to start with is that I have NEVER seen a hippie in East Austin. I think that my classmate has his areas of town mixed up. I believe what he is referring to is the Hyde Park area. East Austin is composed primarily of Hispanics and African Americans with small doses of white people throughout. Hippies generally hang out in Central Austin.

Now that we have that out of the way, i wonder where the author of this article obtained his information from. "In east Austin there is an alarming trend of people who call themselves “artists” moving in to the wear houses, dilapidated housing, and peoples spare rooms, and mooch off of the lower socioeconomic status of the East Austin neighborhoods." I'm sorry but i can't help but laugh at that. I wonder what the author has against "artists" and why it is in quotes to begin with. Does he think that all artists are hippies that live in warehouses, without plumbing and leach off of society? I worry that in his developmental years that he wasn't exposed to culture and art as much as he was exposed to hunting and fishing.

"What inevitably has followed this society of neo-hippies is a wave of vice, pestilence, immorality, and so called hip new cafes and coffee houses and clothing stores that cater to and encourage the type of useless and counterproductive behavior that creates a false sense of a thriving economy. " The type of useless and counterproductive behavior? What does that mean? Artists are counterproductive and useless? Coffee shops harbor pestilence and immorality? I can't even wrap my mind around that.

I only agree with one part of his whole commentary. In recent years, there has been some development in East Austin. There is a "green" neighborhood that is in development out here. It's will be an environmentally friendly, upperclass community, which does worry me that prices will go up and change the neighborhood from something i love to something that i hate.

I do not agree with anything else mentioned in his article. I think it shows how close minded and fearful some members of our society can be. I really hope that someday the author will go out and see the world for what it is and not what his parents (?) tell him it should be.