The Walhus Take on the 2025 Austin Best Of

Every spring the Austin Chronicle drops its annual Best of Austin issue, and every spring I read it the way some people read the Sunday paper — with a coffee, a pen, and a quiet conversation in my head about what they got right and what they missed. The Chronicle has been doing this since 1981, which means there are now 45 years of Best Of Austin lists stacked up — an editorial archive of how this city's idea of itself has changed across nearly half a century.

I moved to Austin in 1979 in a green Oregon Forest Service truck. I was here for the first Best Of Austin in 1981. I've watched every wave: the cosmic cowboy years, the Slacker years, the dot-com years, the SXSW boom, the post-2010 tech rush, the 2020 Joe Rogan moment, and whatever this current era will be called when somebody else writes its history. The Chronicle has chronicled all of it. Their list every year is a little time capsule of where Austin is at.

This page is my running commentary on their 2025 picks — where I agree, where I think they're wrong, and which winners deserve more story than a one-line caption. Read the actual Chronicle list at calendar.austinchronicle.com/best-of/2025. They did the work of picking. I'm just one old Austinite reacting to it.