Hi friends, the heat has stopped being small talk and started running the schedule. So this week leans into it: a cold, dark, walk-in dinner that runs late, a free festival that does not start until the sun is down, and one civic thing that lands on your tax bill whether you show up for it or not.
Three things, as always. One place to eat, one thing to do, and one thing to know. Here is your weekend.
Eat, this week
East Austin · walk-in · open late
The best low-effort dinner in this heat right now is a sushi counter hiding inside a cocktail bar. Konbini runs out of Papercut, the craft-cocktail room and rotating art gallery on East 5th, and it is built for a night when it is too hot to think. Everything is cold and raw: nigiri, sashimi, crudo, and a few sandos, with a Texas and coastal-Mexican lean from the team behind Tare. You walk in, no reservation, and the kitchen goes late, until 1 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. It runs Wednesday through Monday, closed only Tuesday, from 5 p.m. Papercut just landed on the Tales of the Cocktail list of the ten best new cocktail bars in the country, so make a night of it. Order the nigiri, get one drink, and let the dark, cold room do the rest while the heat waits outside.
Do, this weekend
Red River Cultural District · Thursday to Saturday, July 16 to 18 · free
If you do one thing this weekend, make it this. Hot Summer Nights takes over the Red River Cultural District from Thursday through Saturday, with more than 130 local artists across 14 downtown venues, among them Mohawk, Stubb’s, Empire, Flamingo Cantina, Elysium, and Swan Dive. Music starts around 7 p.m. each night, and it is free, donation-based at the door. It is the most on-brand plan of the summer for this city. It is free, walkable, all local, and the rooms sit close enough together that a night out becomes a bar crawl with a point. Pick a block, wander between stages, and pay what you can to keep it going. For the full slate of who is playing where and when, it is all on our weekend page.
Know, this week
Here is the one to actually pay attention to. The city’s proposed budget for next year is out, and it is a $6.6 billion plan that raises your property taxes and trims city services at the same time. Last November, voters rejected Prop Q, the measure that would have raised the tax rate. This budget raises it anyway. The proposed rate is 57.95 cents per $100 of value, up from 52.40, and the city estimates the typical non-senior homeowner will pay about $2,248 in city property taxes next year, roughly $174 more than this year, about 8 percent. To get there, the plan also cuts millions from social-service grants.
Here is your window before it locks. The tax-rate public hearing is 3 p.m. on July 30, and the council takes its final adoption vote the week of August 12. You can speak at the hearing or email the budget office at [email protected]. If your bill is going up, this is the month your voice counts.
Worth bookmarking
The free stuff I keep coming back to.
Tell me one thing
What is the best free thing you have done in Austin this summer? I am always adding to the list. Reply and tell me. I read every one.
See you next Thursday. If someone you know is always asking what to do this weekend, forward this to them.
P.S. The directory behind these picks, more than two thousand Austin restaurants you can sort by neighborhood, price, and what is open now, is right here. Forward it to whoever always asks you where to eat.