Limited at Austin City Limits

As an Austin native in my late twenties, I'd like give myself the Austinite stamp. I'm weird! I'm hip to the local scene! I love music and I love drinking and I love the outdoors and I love to keep Austin local and welcoming and artistic. I am the crazy liberal the rest of Texas finds appalling yet lovingly embraces as their special young sister. I am chill and free spirited. I am an authentic Austinite. But I'd never attended an ACL until September 2011. What kind of Austinite did I think I was?! Ten years of Austin City Limits, and I'm just now a rookie. Yet, after three days of ACLing it up, my thoughts reversed...What kind of Austinite does ACL think it is?!
I hate to be the downer of the positive pack of ACL attendees, but I was quite disappointed in a number of things. And here is my list of critical thoughts for breakfast.

Price of the product.
$185 three day wristband. $20-40 parking per day. $5-7 per beer. $5 plus per food item. I'm not a mathematician, but this adds up to a very expensive three day weekend.  But is this money spent worth the product you're paying for?

Music.
With over 130 artists, only a handful were known. And of that handful, how was their performance? And how many were local? Three days of music, and I feel like I was walking in a constant pace of beat-less indie rock and a beating DJ trance. It was disheartening to find that the true Austin music scene has turned into a nationwide hipster beat movement. I give credit to DJs, but I didn't enter with the notion I'd be at a DJ festival. Indie is not bad music, but I didn't want to spend my three days among melancholy wails with a side of tambourine. Basically, as massive as this festival is, and for the amount of money and time spent on coming in to trample on 47 acres of soft grass, there should've been more to see than a beautiful Austin skyline. ACL has the potential to bring a wider variety of music worth listening to. After all, ACL, you are representing Austin's music scene. If you're going to include Austin in your title, live up to what Austin stands for. Bring on a better line-up and spread your focus further than the headliners because the festival begins at 11, not when Kanye rises from a cloud of smoke in the crowd.

Beer.
Where was the local beer? Austin has amazing local breweries. Rather, my options were Bud Lite, Heinekin, and Victoria. Hidden somewhere between tents and crowds was a single tent with more 'craft' options, which sold out by noon. After that, I chose between $7 Shock Top and Kirin Ichiban. I'm sure I wasn't the only beer drinker in the crowd, but a better beer selection to appeal to my outdoor festivities would have brought my ACL experience up a notch.

Chairs.
I overheard complaints from the crowd about chairs. I didn't bring a chair to the festival, but I don't see anything wrong with people wanting to sit behind the general crowd to listen to music so long as they don't bring their tent and campfire equipment. The rude people were the ones standing in the crowd, not allowing me to find my way back in from a restroom break during Stevie Wonder. Instead, the chair crowd invited me to have a seat when I was lost.

Dance.
I was appalled to find hardly a soul dancing in a crowd of thousands. At a music festival. I thought music makes a person dance. Not stand motionless. Though, it didn't stop me from dancing. Dear people of the world, learn to free your spirits and DANCE.

The festival was decent, but hardly Austin. I felt like a foreigner in my own city during those three days. But times have changed deep in the heart of Texas. And the shows must go on, I suppose.