Austinites are brilliant: Better Than The Van

I heard about this on Twitter last week: Better Than The Van. I bet this thing in crazy popular during SXSW.

How apropos that two Austinites started this. It's a social networking site for touring musicians looking for free places to stay on the road! If you're a musician, you just log in and search for lodging in your tour cities of choice. Like CouchSurfing.org, it also allows generous hosts to offer up their humble abodes as well.

If you're in the latter category, it would be cool if you could request specific bands to stay with you.* Heh.

Better Than The Van is having a pledge drive right now to expand the site and give it better functionality, so I encourage you Austin musicians to throw some cash their way.

On a sidenote, in this virtual-life-colliding-with-real-life world of ours, after Better Than The Van and I discovered each other on Twitter, one of the founders realized he had been to a party at our house! I don't think it was the bouncy castle party though, which means you'll just have to come back Scott next time we rent that thing out.

Musicians reading this post, I'm curious: Who among you would sign up for this service?

*Maybe more creepy than cool, now that I think about it.