Embrace Google Maps/Transit

Google transit gives point-to-point directions using public transportation for over 400 cities.  The service especially shines on a mobile device.  Google maps on my iPhone was an indispensable part of navigating the city, helping me figure out exactly where and when to catch the buses.  I’m amazed by the number of people who don’t know their iPhone (and Android and some Blackberry phones) can do point-to-point train/subway/bus directions while incorporating the schedules too!

Get a Bike

Public transportation is great, but renting/borrowing a bike is a must.  Yes, it takes cajones to hop on and conquer the streets of a foreign city, but biking is without a doubt the best way to learn a new city.  You’ll cover much more ground than walking and avoid the headache of parking a car or waiting for public transportation.  Basically, you’ll get more done with your limited time.  And since bikes have zero variable cost, they strongly encourage exploration.  So go get lost on a bike! (but bring along your phone with Google Maps of course)

Connect with the Local Community

A few days before embarking, I asked the Austin Yelp community for suggestions of places to see and things to do.  “NYC Eliter Comin’ to Austin” garnered over 70 super helpful tips like: “6:30pm tuesday is the start of hippy hour at the continental club with the lovely miss toni price.”  Several of Austin’s fantastic Yelp members even sent me personal notes welcoming to the city.  If you weren’t already aware, I’m a big fan of Yelp and find it far and away the best source of hyperlocal information.

See the Heart of a Neighborhood

So you’ve picked a neighborhood to explore.  Great, but where exactly should you start?  Use Yelp to figure out the main commercial streets in a neighborhood!  From the homepage just click ‘search’ (leave the search box blank).  Then filter the list by “Most Reviewed” and maneuver the interactive map around your destination neighborhood.  Red pins will help call out the main streets!  Around the UT Austin campus, Guadalupe Street stood out as the clear winner (see picture on left).  This feature also works really well from Yelp’s fantastic iPhone app.

Find Must-See Popular Hotspots

Again, click ‘search’ on Yelp.com and leave the search box blank.  Setup the filters to sort by “Most Reviewed.”  This will show all Yelp listings in that city ranked by popularity.  For Austin, that includes Home Slice, Uchi, Guero’s, Polvo’s, and the flagship Whole Foods Market store.  In NYC, this list features Shake Shack, Magnolia Bakery, Ippudo, Pommes Frites, Katz’s Delicatessen, Grimaldi’s, Lombardi’s, and the Chicken & Rice Halal Cart at 53rd/6th.  You could certainly do worse as a tourist…

Find Weird Local Stuff

Most people know Yelp for its restaurant and bar listings.  But their ‘Local Flavor’ category has some seriously cool stuff.  Austin’s Local Flavor included the Cathedral of Junk, a massive three story structure created from decades of junk.  And my insider knowledge of the Bats Under the Congress Avenue Bridge seriously impressed the locals.  In San Francisco, this category led me to the Clarion Alley Murals and also the Seward Street Slides which turned out to be tremendously fun.

Bookmark Now, Retrieve Later

Bookmark places on Yelp.com that look interesting (you’ll need a yelp.com account to do so).  Then, from the Yelp iPhone App you can view those bookmarks on the go.  Best of all, the app shows your bookmarks ranked by proximity to your current location!  This is phenomenally helpful.

Log your Trip and Get Local Recommendations

I checked in on Foursquare at every place I went, despite having no Austin friends using the service.  Why?  Because afterwards I can view a minute by minute log of my trip on the history section of the Foursquare website! Equally cool, foursquare provided me great local recommendations.  Checking in at a random grocery prompted “Go to Green Mesquite and eat BBQ with friends!”  The tip was left by fellow NYC Foursquare user and friend Lee Semel and Green Mesquite was right down the block.  His trip to Austin occurred eight months prior but the virtual breadcrumbs remained!

Keep the Community Involved

Each night I updated the Yelp Forum with my accomplishments.  I also laid out my plan for the following day.  This united the Yelp community around my adventures and was really fun.  “You’re doing more things than most Austinites do in a year” wrote one Yelper. Seeing my plans even spurred Riki M., a former Brooklynite herself, to join me at the Cathedral of Junk.  The kindness of a tight-knit online community like Yelp is amazing.  Riki brought with her the Austin essentials: beer and bug spray.  And our mini picnic was fantastic — albeit buggy.

More Tips?

Since my trip, I’ve discovered plancast, which may prove very useful.  Readers: are there other tech tools I should be taking advantage of? Leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comments.  Thanks!

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(Source: Sahrizvi on Flickr)

In my life, biking serves three purposes:  A form of exercise.  A convenient way to get places.  But most importantly, biking is my preferred means of exploring a city. I cover much more ground on a bike than on foot, which means I’m more likely to stumble on interesting things:  street festivals, outdoor concerts, interesting architecture, quirky stores etc.

Bikes differ from taxis and subways in one very important way: they’re free. Without a usage cost, there is zero risk to exploration and experimentation.  And therein lies the parallel to web development and the open source software revolution.  The internet we know today could not exist without the free web development technologies (apache, php, mysql, etc).  It’s only when failure has no ‘cost’ — that creativity can truly flourish.

Would you ever hire a taxi to drive around in circles until you found something interesting?  Of course not.  But thanks to biking, I’ve witnessed some incredible sights.

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