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I finally got my film back from Austin's Buy Nothing Day festivities, so I'm posting my recap for you here. For readers unfamiliar with BND, its a yearly action held the day after Thanksgiving where participants buy nothing, in order to call attention to the West's consumer culture. As you will soon see, I badly need to hone my scanning skillz, but I think you will be able to make out some detail in the images.

Last Friday, I attended a Buy Nothing Day gathering at East Austin's Plaza Saltillo, which featured live music, food, and other free activities.

For context, here's a shot of downtown Austin from Plaza Saltillo. East Austin has traditionally been the hub for a variety of minority communities in Austin. Many of the people in East Austin are very poor. I-35 separates East Austin from the rest of the city, so the boundaries for the community are distinct.

As a statement against the consumer culture an all-free swap meet was held; people brought garage sale-type items and left them in an area for others to take what they wanted or needed. I scored a brand-new bicycle lock still in the cellophane.

This guy scored a fur coat, and he sure did look sharp. He also had a wild bicycle that had an extended fork. Atop the fork was a piece of a shopping cart, allowing him to use his bike for transporting a large number of items at once.

This might have been iZac's favorite part of the Buy Nothing Day Activities. A number of local restaurants, including the Magnolia Cafe and the Sacred Cup coffeeshop donated vegetarian free food, since, well, we weren't supposed to buy anything, but we needed to eat. Magnolia's rice was awesome, and a number of people said Sacred Cup's vegan chili was yummy, but it was gone before I got there. Sacred Cup is a few blocks from my pad, so I'll go there and try it some time.

This is Eileen. She's part of Austin's Yellow Bike Project, which takes donated bikes, paints them yellow, and releases them for the community to use for free. Each of the bikes were named, and carried a disclaimer removing the project from any liability.

The Yellow Bike project released about 50 yellow bikes that day at the plaza, and kids of all ages were taking the bikes for a spin. After some initial reluctance, I hopped on a cruiser, and pedaled around the plaza as bands played on stage. There ain't nothin' better than listenin' to some country music while ridin' around on a yeller bike; I wished I went to more shows where you could ride around on bikes instead of imbibe beer and inhale secondhand smoke.

After all the bands played, some college-age kids (with nice cars) put on a puppet show mocking the machinations of market economics. Books Behind Bars, an organization that distributes paperback books to prisoners also had a booth at the party. I had a great time at Buy Nothing Day; I think part of the reason it was a success is because it was a celebration of activists projects around Austin, rather than an event that antagonizes mainstream culture. The vibe was very positive and fun.