Austin is a tug-of-war over a lake that is really a river.

Hello!

I want to tell you about my hometown. Austin is divided into north and south by a body of water that we call a lake but is actually a dammed river. The river’s name is Colorado—not the Colorado River that flows through the Grand Canyon, but a smaller one with a unique history. Perhaps we call it a lake to shield our local water from the inferiority complex that might result from being compared to its bigger riparian cousin. That would be very in character: perish the thought that anything in Texas could actually be smaller.

I grew up in south Austin, which in the 1980s was home to bikers, plumbers, and rugged Texan hippies, not the hipsters, high-rise condos and slick corporate bars that crowd neighborhoods like SoCo and SoLa today. They were called South Congress and South Lamar back then; there were no cute neighborhood abbreviations. Today I google “Sola” and the second AI search result asks “where do millionaires in Austin hang out?” (Where do they not hang out is the better question.)

In the ‘80s, the south Austin “Bubbas” prided themselves on being more laidback and working class than their north Austin counterparts, the “Yuppies.” It was this playful rivalry that prompted a formative event of my childhood: the Great North vs. South Austin Tug-of-War. A fundraiser organized by young state lawmaker Charlie Gandy, the Tug of Honor brought crowds of Austinites to the shores of the river to try to pull each other into the water. On the north shore, the Yuppies ate quiche, drank chardonnay, and braved the river mud in their white Keds, khaki shorts, and tucked-in Izods, while the Bubbas on the south side drank Lone Star and ate hot dogs and BBQ in their cutoff jeans and muscle shirts. The Bubbas outweighed the Yuppies by many beer bellies, which explains why they always won. As the guy in the handmade Bubba t-shirt explains in this video, “Gucci tennis shoes don’t work good wet.”

After a few years, the Tug of Honor reached its fundraising goal and the event disappeared into obscurity, which I suppose means the defeated Yuppies had the last laugh. The Tug of Honor (also known as “The Great Jerk Off”) was an