Reasons to LOVE the EASTside

As 2020 comes to a close, we decided to share all the reasons “Why We Love East Austin.” Our team has wanted to do this issue for a while, and it never seemed to be the right time until now. Over the past five years, we have told hundreds of stories, sat down with more community members than we can count, advocated for a ton of small businesses, put tens of thousands of words into print, and have captured what seems like a million photos. Additionally, in total, we have shared the stories surrounding East Austin with just about 2 million print readers and nearly 4 million digital readers on eastsideatx.com.  

If it weren’t clear, we are pretty proud of our local community and our creative team. So this issue is for the old and new neighbors who might not know about all the wonderful people who call this place home, the people who we’ve had the privilege to capture over the years, and the people who have so graciously shared their story with us. EASTside’s whole existence is to give a voice to our neighbors, to be authentic in our story-telling, and to unite a community. 

This is your chance to take a peek inside and learn what makes this side of town so inspirational, strong, caring, and creative. And it also serves as a reminder — to us and those who’ve come before us — the many things to be thankful for (especially this year!) and to learn when to hold tightly and when to let go.

We also had a little fun with this issue and selected our favorite covers, some of the best moving issues, and the most-read stories over the years. You will see links to the full stories throughout the feature and will be able to read them all in full length on our website or follow us on social media @eastsideatxmag to stay up-to-date on everything going on.

Thank you for entrusting us to tell your story! And thank you for reading!

Gratefully,
Will and Ashley Bowling  

On The Cover
We are always trying to do something different, and this cover reflects that creativity. The concept of this issue was much more than one person or one subject, so we did our best to represent the love we feel for our community and the stories we tell. As a result, we selected some powerful imagery collected over the years put it inside the word love.