Here we all were buying up land in Buda as speculative beachfront property for when the ice caps melt, and now it looks like the better bet might be to start building ski lifts up Mount Bonnell. Mid-90s at the end of August? What are we? Wisconsin? Weather, it’s like we don’t even know you anymore, man. To say it’s been one of the cooler summers on record is a gross understatement. We are currently in a climatological anomaly that could only be explained by a vast and comprehensive force: perhaps a shift in the earth’s magnetic field, a comic book supervillan, or scarier still, the will of God. Or maybe, like the rest of America and arguably the world, God has taken a shine to Austin and is throwing us a meteorological bone. Maybe she digs Schrodinger’s Cat – or perhaps he’s smitten by that plucky pedalphile, Lance Armstrong. Whatever the case, the change in the weather should work nicely for this weekend’s 14th annual Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival. Yes, it’s going to be hot Sunday, but not Austin-in-August hot. If forecasts hold true, you can probably ditch your ingenious blueprints for that dry-ice jockstrap or at least put it on hold until next year. You might even get away with not wearing your grandmother’s huge straw gardening hat, but don’t get too cocky. This is Texas. This whole deal could turn on a dime. Just to be safe, you’ll still want to grease yourself up with a couple of strata of SPF 90, drag some excess grub out of the back of your pantry, and head down to Waterloo Park Sunday to sample literally hundreds of salsas cooked up by some of the finest or at least best-intended hot sauce makers in Central Texas and beyond. Here’s the deal: If you don’t love hot sauce you’re in the wrong goddamned (or blessed, as it were) city. If you don’t love hot sauce, you want Wichita. If you do love hot sauce, the Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival is just too good to pass up: free admission (come on, a few cans of food isn’t going to break your bank), free chips and hot sauce, and plenty of ass coal bear (at least that’s how the locals pronounce it). All that, plus live music (Hello? Austin?) by Misspent Youth, the Greencards, Ghandaia, and Li’l Cap’n Travis. Yep, pretty much heaven (albeit not quite as hot).
This article appears in August 27 • 2004.
