Young adults in Austin in the early 90s (Houston, West: apartments, rent)

[curiousgeorge5]

A long time ago I saw a movie named Slacker. The theme of the movie was young adults in Austin being lazy. Was that accurate for young people in Austin back then? Are young people in Austin these days lazier than their contemporaries in other cities?

[CptnRn]

I always thought the film was a representation of the Austin lifestyle in the 60's and 70's. But the Wiki says it was shot in the 90's and represented the youth at that time. That has never been true in my experience.

I moved to Austin in 1977 and am now retired in Austin. At no time has that film represented the people that I hung out with or the lifestyle that I'm familiar with. But I moved to Austin to earn a Master of Architecture Degree, then get a professional job and work towards earning my Architectural License. Most of the people I associated with were like myself, working hard on professional goals.

No doubt there were some people around who lived lifestyles such as those represented in the movie. But I did not associate with them. Most of the young people that I know in Austin today are like I was, oriented toward earning their way in a profession or career.

[centralaustinite]

I moved here in 1990, saw the movie when it came out, knew people who appeared in the film. Even then, it was looking backward to a time that was passing into history. Back in the 1980s UT tuition was $4 a credit hour! The big complaint was when it doubled to $8 a credit hour. So for about a $100 a semester you could stay enrolled at UT, take classes, eat at Quacks, a plate of beans and rice was maybe two dollars, rent for a 1 bedroom near campus was under $300.

Beer was cheap, living was easy, the music was great. All of this was starting to fade away by the time Slacker came out but elements of it remained.

In the early 90s UT cracked down on slackers who accumulated credit hours but never a degree, then a new president raised tuition deliberately as a way for "people to value their education more," rent, beer, and housing stayed cheap until the tech bubble of the late 90s. By 2000 Austin was much changed.

[curiousgeorge5]

@centralaustinite: That's interesting you knew people in the film.

[JohnKneedep]

Linklater never set out to generalize Austinites in Slacker. The movie represents a very specific niche of people living in Austin, mostly post-hippie pseudo-intellectuals and early hipsters that read a lot and work very little and who all think they're destined to do something greater with their lives, hence the title and the theme.

Even if one wanted to represent Austin community, that would be a difficult task. With so much diversity in Austin, you can never represent everybody (and that would make quiet a boring film anyway) and instead opt for just a small slice of the pie.

The film itself is great. Anybody who loves Austin and hasn't seen in, do it.

[Trainwreck20]

In the 80s (and into the 90s), I live a lifestyle akin to the 'Slackers' of the movie, albeit never as naive, I suppose. I paid my $100/semester to go to UT, waited tables to foot the bills, and split housing costs with various people while living in run-down places around central Austin - usually $300/month or less split two or three ways. Lots of time throwing darts at the Crown and Anchor, cheap Tex Mex at the Posse East, and late night volleyball at Aussies. The manager would leave the lights on at Aussies until 3 or 4 in the morning while she did paperwork, so we would play until lights-out, then go across the street to the apartments to jump in the pool to cool/clean off. Drinking age was 19 when I started college. Sept. 86 it when to 21, which was a bummer for the younger students .

87-88 school year was the first year of deregulated tuition and it jumped to $12/hr (it skipped $8!) and fees also went up. Think I ended up paying $500 or so per semester that year. Then it climbed to $20 and $24 an hour and fees 'exploded'. Finally 'forced' me out of school in '91 (I had completed my engineering degree before then, but was getting a teacher cert.) and I paid $1800 for my last semester of only 9 hours. I continued to wait tables and 'slack' for a couple more years. Spent my time scuba diving and sailing on Travis or disc golf in the 'mornings' with a dip in Campbells hole/Twin Falls in the heat of the day, work in the evenings (4 days a week) and Sunday afternoon. If I had only known how good 'we' had it back then....more fun than I think is possible to have under the current system and probably for good reasons, but still a shame.

[df175]

It was highly accurate for a significant subset of students who wanted to stay in Austin indefinitely, whether as a student or post-student. The characters of the move are not lazy; they pursue their idiosyncratic interests above careers and consumerism.

There were few real professional jobs in Austin then, unless one worked for the state. One had to go to Houston or DFW to get a "real job", which many people loathed. Everything was dirt cheap. People had little money but weren't in poverty. UT's academic standards were probably higher at the time; grading was brutal and there was around a 35% attrition rate. (UT admitted students holistically based more on aptitude back then, not merely achievement-based high school rank.)

UT students are far more pragmatically driven now then back then, on average. (It matters that tuition and the cost of living is much higher.) By driven, they are socialized and pressured to follow highly scripted life plans instead of just pursuing genuine interests until they mature into something pragmatic.

[clarksvillemom]

I lived in one of the co-ops in West Campus in the early 90s and knew some people like this. I remember liking the movie!

[Kthnry]

Originally Posted by df175

There were few real professional jobs in Austin then, unless one worked for the state. One had to go to Houston or DFW to get a "real job", which many people loathed. Everything was dirt cheap. People had little money but weren't in poverty. UT's academic standards were probably higher at the time; grading was brutal and there was around a 35% attrition rate. (UT admitted students holistically based more on aptitude back then, not merely achievement-based high school rank.)

My sisters and I attended UT in the early '80s. As I recall, anyone who graduated from a Texas HS was accepted, no questions asked. My HS grades were pretty dismal and they accepted me.

Back in the '80s, the biggest employers were the state and UT. I went to work for Texas Instruments in the mid-'80s, when they were one of the only tech companies in town. Three years later, when TI shut down their PC division and laid us all off, other companies had opened or greatly expanded and we had plenty of opportunities. Many of my co-workers went to Dell and eventually became Dellionaires. The tech boom was well underway in the early '90s, but Austin was still a pretty laid-back, sleepy place, at least compared to now.

Does anyone remember the proposed Michelin tire factory? They wanted to build a plant in NW Austin. There was massive opposition based on concerns about noise and pollution. It turned out, years later, that the plant would have been extremely modern and clean and would have provided hundreds of skilled, high-paying jobs. Who was behind the opposition? Current Austin-area employers, who wanted to prevent new employers from coming to town so pay rates could be kept low.

This is all I was able to find about the Michelin plant on Google. The average wage of $6.34 seems laughable now, but it was more than twice the minimum wage in 1979.

[curiousgeorge5]

Originally Posted by Kthnry

This is all I was able to find about the Michelin plant on Google. The average wage of $6.34 seems laughable now, but it was more than twice the minimum wage in 1979.

The CPI inflation calculator says $6.34 in '79 is equal to $21.21 now.