I’m trying to Twitter our adventures downtown, so if you want to follow, my feed is here. AT&T is overloaded downtown, though, so there’s only so much Twittering I can do. I’m also taking pictures, and the slideshow, which I’ll update daily, is here.
We started off the day dinking around downtown, and ended up doing one of those things you only do because it’s SXSW and you have to: We went into Beauty Bar. For those unaware, Beauty Bar is a national chain that appears to be established for poseurs. They parked a branch downtown and have tried to compete with Emo’s, Beerland, Mohawk, etc., and have had limited success. Bands I like play there on occasion, but somehow I’ve never worked up the enthusiasm to go. (Which is for the best—-at night, they’re treating paying customers trying to get in like we’re attempting to steal their cookies and only a thorough examination of your ID taking no less than 3 minutes will stop this.) But we went to a daytime show and discovered our first favorite band of the festival: Hot Panda. Alas, they don’t have much in the way of video-age online, but this gives you a small idea of how good they are: