East Austin Stories: Title

The girls on the Reagan High School Dance Team get up early in the morning, and practice all week. But when they show the crowds what they've got, it's all worth it.

Links:

• Visit the Reagan High School website

Sometimes being a kid can be, well, boring, especially if you dont have a lot of money to spend or computer games at home. Thats when it helps to have a place to go to hang out with other young people and see what the city has to offer.

Travelogue spoof meets mockumentary when the Crackers (""I'm John!"" ""I'm Jane!"") give a tour of East Austin. The filmmakers play the sunny, clueless hosts daring to cross I-35.

Links:

• Learn about the French legation
• Learn about Our Lady of Guadalupe church

Father J.C. Cain and Father Prado spend their lives in spiritual pursuits. But sometimes, spiritual experiences strike them without warning. Here, they tell the story of one mystical encounter.

Links:

• Visit Our Lady of Guadalupe Church​

When Joe Vela saw a gang problem developing in Austin, he decided that teaching kids boxing was one way to get them off the streets. Through his organization, Austin Boxing Against Drugs, he estimates he helps about 600 kids a year to learn confidence and discipline through training.

Links:

• Read some articles about Joe Vela and ABAD here
• ... and here

Arturo Escamilla came to this country for "American dollars and cokes", that is, to make a better life for his family.

Museums are a place we can see ourselves for what we are, says Edward James Olmos. At Mexic-arte Museum, visitors can see the many ways Americans—who Olmos explains are all the people who inhabit the North and South American continents—represent themselves and their cultures.

Links:

• Visit the Mexic-arte web site.
• Visit La Peña, an association of Austin Latino artists.

Venus Velvet is the burlesque review stage name for Marita De La Torre. Marita plays at that personality for fun but is also a serious advocate of children and the arts as director of LUPE Arte, Latina Unidas Por El Arte.

Along the Texas-Mexico border, a bike is more than just a fun, convenient, free way to get around. For factory workers along the border, it provides an alternative to the company bus. Here's what happens when a group of East Austin bicycle activists decided to deliver a truckload of bikes to their neighbors to the south.

Links:

• Read more about the Bikes Across Borders project

While East Austin is home to both African-Americans and Hispanics, both groups don't always intermingle. Community activists Juan Valadez and Boyd Vance decided to do something about it. By inviting both communities to celebrate cultural festivals like Mexican Independence Day and Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, they hope to make East Austin feel more like one big community than many fragmented groups.

Links:

• Visit Boyd's organization, the Pro-Arts Collective

A documentary about weathermen, psychiatrists, politicians, and professional talkers---or as we've come to know them, cab drivers. This is the story of the people who spend their lives on wheels.

Yolanda Solis is a fourth-generation Mexican-American. Alejandro Mendez is a recent immigrant from Mexico. Both face the quintessential American challenge: surviving junior high. In this documentary, they talk about their families, their lives, their perceptions of other races, and what their Mexican heritage means to them.

Sculptor Barry George builds his art out of found objects and metalworking techniques he picked up traveling the world. In his sculptures, wood, steel, cardboard, and wire are transformed into political statements and images of beauty.

Links:

• View a selection of Barry's work

Marshal Rawlins had it rough for a long time. He struggled with drugs and spent time in jail. He lost his parents, and watched his sisters pay for their addictions with prostitution. But finally, something changed inside him, and he started to turn his life around. Even if he didnt achieve all he once dreamed, the lonely man with a bucket collecting change for charity on the intersection of IH-35 and Highway 183 still believes he has much to teach his children and acquaintances.

"Every song tells a story," says Clarence Pierce of East Austin blues band The Eastside Kings. While he normally lets his guitar do the talking, in this documentary he accompanies his music with stories.. "However you want it to sound, you work on it and perfect it…you got the Blues."

Links:

• Read a 2001 article about the Texas Eastside Kings.
• Read about the history of the blues in East Austin from the Blues Society of Austin.

The girls in the rock-climbing club at the Camacho Center have learned a lot. They learned to tie harnesses, to figure out routes, to push themselves when they're tired, and that boys just aren't that good at climbing.

Links:

• Visit the site of the Camacho Center
• Visit the site of the Austin Rock Gym, the for-profit group that helps coordinate the girls' climbing camp

In any city, relations between communities and police can sometimes be tense. However, any community cares about safety. It is because of this that Austins police department has started a program to make its officers known and trusted by the community, rather than a source of fear.

Imagine a troupe of all male dancers in cowboy boots with incredibly, long and pointy tips that resemble exaggerated elf shoes, dancing to energetic, Latin club beats. What you have just visualized is the Mexican dance phenomena known as ‘Tribal Guarachero,’ and the fascinating boots the men wear when dancing are ‘Botas Picudas,’ or ‘Mexican pointy boots.’

This short film takes a look at the lives of Los Inmortales, a group of Tribal dancers from Austin, Texas.

The father of Tejano music and the first Mexican-American rock n’ roll star in Texas, Manuel “Cowboy” Donley is a Lone Star legend. In this documentary, he shares his memories of the old days in Austin, as well his continued skill with a guitar.