Photo Booths in Austin

The Photo Booth Scene in Austin

Austin has 23 photo booths distributed across a city that has changed faster in the last decade than almost anywhere in the United States — and the booths have managed to keep up. The 6th Street entertainment corridor has several machines in the bars that have survived years of development pressure, maintaining the kind of lived-in quality that the rest of downtown has shed. South Congress (SoCo) has booths integrated into bars and vintage shops that lean into Austin's self-image as a keeper of weird, and Rainey Street — once a block of Victorian cottages, now a walkable bar district — has several machines in venues that draw a younger crowd. East Austin, which has replaced South Congress as Austin's primary creative neighborhood, is where the most interesting new installations are happening: booths in natural wine bars, coffee shops, and music venues along Manor Road and the surrounding blocks. Austin's music culture intersects with the booth scene meaningfully — venues along the Sixth Street and Red River corridors have machines that get heavy use during SXSW and ACL festival periods, when the city triples in population for a week.