If you want to hear razor-edged political humor about George W. Bush, don’t go to Washington, D.C. Don’t even watch the Comedy Channel. Go to Austin, Texas’ capital city. Buy a ticket to Ester’s Follies Comedy Club on the city’s hip Sixth Street and brace yourself for an evening of TeX-rated humor. The Follies upholds a three-decade tradition of turning back-room whispers from the political movers and shakers into stage-front guffaws.

We’re warned not to sit too close to the front unless we want to be a part of the show. Sure enough, the actors roam into the audience and drag a woman on stage. As the review progresses, skits roast politicians, football, rednecks and the crowd of gawkers staring in the storefront windows behind the stage. Austin has always been a tell-it-like-it-is city with no scarcity of audience involvement.

The Texas History Museum in Austin tells the story of Texas from pre-European settlement to current times.

When the Follies began its run in 1977, the town boasted a 15-minute rush hour and the hubris of a teenager. With a booming economy, new fern bars opened on Sixth Street almost weekly and construction cranes hovered over half-built skyscrapers like oil derricks waiting for a gusher.

By the ’90s, Austin had pledged allegiance to a cybertech future and the city boomed with the rest of the nation. Now, Austin boasts a new airport and a rejuvenated downtown with a high-tech convention center, art and history museums, new and renovated hotels, and not one, but two music-and-restaurant districts.

The Sixth Street strip, from Interstate Highway 35 to Congress Avenue, is the main downtown street. It is here that the pace was set in the ’70s with a half-dozen clubs and several restaurants. Disco was dead, so the clubs featured local bands. It didn’t take long for the town to discover what 50,000 college students knew all along: Austin rocks. The vibrant music scene propelled Janis Joplin, country musician Willie Nelson, blues legend Stevie Ray Vaughan and a dozen other bands into gold records. Homegrown music became as much a part of Austin’s identity as longhorns and bluebonnets.

Now, the city bills itself as the “live music capital of the world.” More than 100 venues play everything from country twang and Texas swing to jazz and techno rock every night of the week. In the Warehouse District, a well-seasoned restaurant mix complements jazz, salsa, blues and retro bands with music from the ’50s and ’60s.