Over 30 of Austin’s finest yoga instructors will be leading classes on the festival’s four stages, bringing together the widest range of yoga Austin has ever seen – from kids classes to kundalini, from beginner to ashtanga vinyasa – which is so unbelievably awesome. I’ve been doing a few workshops, and there are some styles or teachers that work for some people (like AT for me) and others for others. The opportunity to try a bunch out … so cool!

The complete schedule of classes & instructors is here: austinyogafestival.com/schedule/

Tickets: $25/day pass, $40/two day pass (other deals for friends, kids, and so on are listed): austinyogafestival.com/tickets/

A percentage of all ticket sales from the Festival will go towards supporting several local organizations: Austin Food Bank, Community Yoga, Amala Foundation & Yoga Care Foundation.

Om on!!

$20. Registration and run qualifier take place competition day from 5-7pm with the Finals Competition taking place from 7:30-9pm. Men and Womens Divisions. Ages 14 and up. Cash prizes will be awarded!

… I don’t know much more than this. But it sounds AWESOME and I will be there fo sho!!

That might be an overstatement. I’m getting decent, like where people might actually pass me the ball and not expect an immediate turnover.

Nali, however, thinks I’m fantastic.

Key players:

• Beth A. Brooke, Ernst & Young global vice chair of strategy, communications and regulatory affairs, ranked among Forbes’ 100 Most Powerful Women in the World, former Purdue basketball player
• Nancy Hogshead-Makar, board of stewards for Women’s Sports Foundation, director of the Legal Advocacy Center for Women in Sports, law professor, Olympic gold medalist in swimming
• Alana Beard, Washington Mystics pro basketball players, former Duke star
• Moderator: Tom Farrey, ESPN Reporter and author

Overall, I thought the panel was an interesting cheering session for the law, but it was poorly attended (no surprise) and not at all a discussion about the future of the law–rather, a celebration of the law’s “success.” I suppose I should have known from the title of the panel that it wasn’t about to be a discussion …

I did love much of what Beth Brooke had to say, and I think she’s a strong role model for women in both sports and business. She said: “I attribute all my success in the business world to a sports background.” She went on to elaborate that sports teach women how to fail. Women learn how to win, how to lose, that you go to practice the next day no matter what, and that correlates into walking into a meeting or business situation prepared every time. True.

Beth also said, interestingly enough, “I’ll hire an athlete and train them in the competencies.” That’s a bold statement from the VP of a global accounting giant.

Nancy Hogshead-Makar agreed, saying “You can’t teach how to win or lose to a team on a blackboard. Olympic-caliber training is 800 laps a day, and there were days I didn’t want to do it with every cell in my body. I had done it the day before and the day before that, but I still did it because I was committed to something else. That’s discipline.”

Of course, I agree with all of this. While the comments are interesting, I don’t know of anyone who would argue that women don’t benefit from sports. That’s not the question. Is it? I mean, does anyone really doubt that women need opportunities to play sports? That participation in sports statistically improves women’s lives? (higher graduation rates, college attendance, lower rates of pregnancy, so on) This is true of men too. Sports improve lives across the board.

For me the question isn’t if Title IX is important, valuable, and making a difference–it obviously is. For me, the question is: is Title IX, and how it is enforced today, the BEST way to create opportunities for women?

Toward the end of the session, the conversation turned to viewership–who watches women’s sports? Should they still be televised if no one is watching? Nancy made a very interesting point: that during the Olympics, men’s and women’s sports have equal viewership. She postulated that this is because the Olympics have a humanistic approach to coverage, where we learn about the athletes’ families, lives outside of their sport, and so on. Moderator Tom agreed, saying that ESPN is on to this difference and studying how to create sports coverage that women want to watch.

The final commenter from the crowd pointed out that women have 85% of the purchasing power in the US, so why aren’t we changing things?

It’s a good question. To play devil’s advocate, if women aren’t “purchasing” sports, why are we legislating their participation in them? Is there really a difference between interest and opportunity? And yes, it takes time to affect change. How much time?

The panel might not have addressed these questions, but if it raised them in me, I suppose it was indeed a success …

You have got to be kidding me. In the midst of one of the greatest gourmet food and wine festivals in the country, there’s a chocolate chip cookie contest?! There’s no way I can go to this … I will eat all of the cookies and be unable to gorge myself further with fabulous food and delicious wine.

However, if you have more self-control than me, you should definitely stop by Aspen Sports on Friday, June 18th, from 3-4pm. The public is the judge, which means you HAVE to sample all of the entries. See? No way I can go.  Two divisions for Adults and Children (14 & Under). Prizes for the best chocolate chip cookies. [pictured: one of my favorite bloggers, Anna of Cookie Madness, shows off her best chocolate chip cookies]

After I surreptitiously avoid the chocolate, I will be heading to Belly Up for Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes. My way-cooler-than-me bestie from college, Jake, introduced me to Edward Sharpe when he was in Austin, and it remains the one and only time I have been in Waterloo Records checking out new music with a pair of their cool noise-canceling headphone that make you feel like a radio DJ (we were only there as we waited for a table at 24 Diner). Anyway, can’t wait to see him live.

Every round you vote in, regardless of how your bars fare, you’ll be entered to win a great big bar tab of up to $4,350.

The 2 bars voted as the Best in Austin by readers were ATX Sports Bar (what? where is this?) and Third Base Sports Bar. Thrillist’s 2 picks were Crown & Anchor Pub and The Tavern (now those I can stand behind … or in …). Now, we vote on the two out of those four bars that should advance to the next round and have the chance to compete to be the best bar in America!

Voting can be done here: http://madness.thrillist.com/

Rep our city with pride. And someone for the love explain to me what and where ATX Sports Bar is …

We get on the topic of making friends in Austin. Both of the strangers (not me and Alexandra) say it’s hard to make friends in Austin. For the record, Alexandra and I met randomly at an event and have forged a friendship out of that, emailing regularly and meeting up every so often. She’s GREAT at keeping in touch. I don’t think she finds it hard to make friends, and I’ve often said Austin makes it easy to make friends. More on that in a minute.

So we started talking about HOW you make friends, and Alexandra declares that there are three groups of people who find it easy to make friends: people who are into live music, people who are into sports, and people who are hippie-ish or granola-y. I think this over. When I moved back to Austin (I’m a native but was away for school), I immediately sought out sports leagues, not only because I love sports, but also because I figured it’d be a great way to make friends (thank you, Austin Sports & Social Club, and I discuss this more here). I also went out quite a bit, but not to listen live music. And while I shop at Wheatsville, only eat free-range meat, recycle, and have a very active compost at the house, I don’t really consider myself a hippie. Nonetheless, I apparently had 1/3 of the advantages for making friends.

But I don’t think it’s just about what activities you do. It’s about the intention you approach anything in your life with. I moved home and said, “I have to make new friends now.” I didn’t hang out with my high school friends, and I looked at every event where there’d be new people as a chance to make friends. Always open-minded and open-hearted. It certainly wasn’t an immediate process, but I’m picky and I still found an amazing group of friends that continues to grow and expand to this day. I always credited my ability to find awesome new friends to Austin itself, for having a young, intelligent, diverse population of laid-back people. But if this isn’t true for 2/4 girls in the coffeeshop, where’s the disconnect?

So I’m curious … how did you make friends in Austin? If you’re from somewhere else or lived somewhere else, was it easier or harder to make friends? Where do you think we fall on the Easiness-of-Making-Friends Scale?

I’ll let TJ Ford, who pairs with Royal Ivey as the main instigators, say it as he blogs a “Welcome” letter to the site:

I would like to invite you all into this project that my good friends and I have created that allows you to be in tune with the sports world in the STATE OF TEXAS. We will post video throughout our journey to greatness. Texas360now will also include updates on athletes from Texas that have made it to the pros, blogs from athletes as well as fans, high school sensations, and athletes playing overseas. We are hoping to create a place that allows you to keep up with the best athletes at every level; which includes basketball, football, baseball, boxing, and track & field. We hope that our website becomes your favorite site that becomes a place you visit everyday. There will be opportunity to win many prizes and gifts from our athletes so sign up and leave your opinion because it matters and we hope to hear from you. We also hope you’ll meet some like minded Texas athletes and fans in the forums and groups area. Thanks for checking us out.

The site already boasts 279 registered members–4 more were added between the time when I started my registration and finished it–with active forums whose topics range from Best UT team to high school hoops to UT football in ’09. As anyone who has ever tried to start or join an online community in its infancy knows, the kind of interaction the site already has is impressive. But then, why wouldn’t it be? These guys are adored figures, successful in the NBA, and have huge fan bases hungry for more info about their heroes.

One of the things I’ve always liked most about college sports is that college athletes are approachable. They’re not superhuman performance machines (ok, they kind of are), but they’re kids (granted, BIG kids) who are in class with everyone else, eating at the cafeteria with everyone else, and so on. But once they hit the NBA, they lose some of that approachability as their profile is elevated. So I think it’s beyond cool that five of Texas’ biggest basketball stars wanted to build something to reach out to their fans, and keep that sense of approachability.

As time goes on, who knows if the site will develop into what they want it to be: a hub for all Texas–state of not just University of–sports? But its goals are lofty and its execution energetic, so I think it’s pretty cool. Hell, I joined and I didn’t even go to UT (living in Austin will do that to you).

I have very few experiences with Third Base OR South Park Meadows (one apiece), so perhaps I am mildly unqualified to comment. But I do know this: Austin must have the fewest sports bars per capita of any city in the entire world. Including podunk towns. The argument is often that we can’t have pro sports because we don’t have the fans because UT pretty much is pro sports, but UT plays their games on TV, so that argument can’t be true for sports bars. So it boils down to Austin needing more sports bars. And Third Base filling that void. Oh, and the only time I’ve been to the Southpark Meadows shopping center, I joined some Southies for a beer on the “patio.” In the middle of a strip mall. I don’t really get an expansive patio where the only view is of parked cars. At least I know no one is breaking into my rig?

Anyway, back to Third Base. It’s a mere 2 1/2 years old, with a location downtown and in Round Rock. Like its sister stores, the new South location features a large shaded patio (…), forty high definition LCD flat panel TVs, multiple zones of sound and a game room with pool, darts, Golden Tee and shuffleboard. True Sports Bar.

And now my friends at CrossFit Austin have another place to enjoy a post-workout beer.

Downtown: (512) 476-BASE or Round Rock: (512) 388-BASE.  www.thirdbasesportsbar.com

It’s about time for a social event that anyone can attend, regardless of whether you are currently playing a SSC sport. Start your night off right with $3 UV drinks and win some more free vodka while you are here by writing down your favorite UV shot combination. No bartending experience necessary! We want you to bring us your recipe for the new SSC shot to be featured on special after every game in 2009! Grab a bottle of UV Vodka today (any flavor) and start mixing! Then bring us your recipe to mix up on Friday, April 3rd. Everyone who submits a recipe gets a free mini bottle of UV. The winner gets UV for a year! We’ll also hold a raffle to give out even more bottles of our favorite vodka. No drink submission is necessary to attend. Come out with your friends to start your night off and enjoy $3 UV drinks for the entire event. Try a UV Grape Vodka & Sprite – highly recommended! Drink specials start at 8pm and the judging begins at 9pm.

Third Base: 1717 W 6th St

8-11pm

Specials: $3 UV drinks during the entire event!