South by Southwest Travel Diary, Entry 4: At the Staats House

The Microsoft travel system found the nearest available hotel to South by Southwest for me – the Fairfield Marriott Suites on I-35 South –  is a good six miles away from the Austin Convention Centre and probably not even reachable on foot. Still, it’s a place to stay, which is hard to come by during this conference.

Thankfully, my friend from my Crazy Go Nuts University Days, Jodi Brown, is renting a house just off 11th Street, a shade over a mile from the convention – a longish walk and a quick cab ride away. It belongs to one Peter Staats, photographer, and it’s both awesome and rather unusual. She and her friends have taken the rooms in the house, but the coolest room (in my opinion) was left available: the “Quonset hut” in the backyard. It’s now my “hotel away from hotel”, and it’s featured in the video tour of the Staats house, shown above.