Scene: Austin

Afterward I met up with Gina Trapani, lifehacker.com editor, author of Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better, and ranked by Forbes as No. 7 in its 2008 list of "The Web Celeb 25." She was nice enough to grant me a few minutes to talk about being the head of one of the most trafficked tech sites on the net. Like Lynne, she also said that she has never really experienced any overt homophobia in the tech industry.

Gina Trapani

Later that evening Trapani hosted the Gawker Media party at Side Bar on Seventh Street, where I met up with yet another technodyke, Dena van der Wal, a web designer from Chicago who proceeded to point out all the lesbians she had already met that weekend.

Dena van der Wal

During all this activity, people were still twittering away: "I'm drunk." "She's drunk." "Where's the so-and-so party?" "The line for ____ party is crazy." "That panel sucked."

Scene 3: Uh Huh Her Concert
SXSW Music Festival
March 13, 2008

When the internet left town, the music industry finished busting up Austin during SXSW Music. Any commercial space that had so much as two milk crates to push together hosted shows.

And while Interactive had the city bursting at the seams, the music fest was at least five times worse. Walking through the streets of Austin during the music fest is like listening to several radio stations that change every block. As soon as your ear recognizes the sound of one band, it's quickly replaced by the echo of another.

The line for passes to get into the festival depressed me — until I realized that I could also watch the bands check in. Genderqueerness was in full effect as hordes of skinny, pasty boys in tight girls' jeans pressed shoulder to shoulder with skinny, pasty girls in tight girls' jeans. In the clear light of day — without the shelter of low lighting to take the edge off their overdone makeup or hair sculpted with far too much "product" — they all looked out of place.

Although most Austinites flee downtown during SXSW/Music, they will come out of the woodwork to see a band they like. And local lesbians came out to see Leisha Hailey and Camila Grey of Uh Huh Her during a band showcase at the Hilton Garden Inn on a balmy Thursday night.

Uh Huh Her

Uh Huh Her was fourth of six bands playing in a small conference room at the hotel. Luckily for the bands, the room at least had a wall of windows, or else it would've been a pretty dismal place to play.

The conference room looked like it might be able to hold a hundred people, but when I arrived, there was just a smattering of folks who looked like the friends and family of the second band playing. I decided I'd wait outside and check my email until the UHH crowd arrived.