Sure, Austin, TX, gets everything — SXSW, a festival every weekend, an F1 race track out of nowhere and a reputation of not being as cool and weird as we claim that probably belongs to Portland — so it is with local pride, sports enthusiasm and a sense of being super cool and weird that I tell you Austin’s getting the X-Games. FINALLY, our area gets a bunch of teens in baggy tanktops, snapbacks and cheap Wayfarers riding bikes!
Austin will host the Summer X Games from 2014 to 2017, ESPN officials announced Wednesday. But the games won’t be in summer.
Next year, Circuit of the Americas will stage the Games from May 15-18 in an effort to dodge Austin’s searing summer heat.
ESPN picked Austin over the other three finalists — Chicago, Detroit and Charlotte. (via Statesman.com)
How did we get the X-Games, you might ask? Why, with a slow-motion video of guys doing skateboard tricks set to dubstep, of course!
In all seriousness, this is a fun thing coming to our area, and as the UPROXX Austin representative I look forward to my three years of sit-down interviews with Shaun White, or whatever happens when you do press for the X-Games. You can find out more information about the event here, and get in line for tickets. I’m gonna spend most of my free time learning how to jump a bike in shadow.
Of course, the DOWNside to this is HEY COOL, 30,000 MORE TOURISTS*.
*I have lived in Austin for more than three years, so I’m allowed to talk about how people who aren’t Austin natives are ruining/don’t appreciate Austin**.
**Maybe we DO deserve that reputation***
***Portland deserves it too, I’m just saying
