Singer-songwriter Elle King had a troubled adolescence, but she's channeled all of that into her brooding, bluesy music.

Tiffany Diane is a blogger for Nylon Daily, manager of buydefinition.com, and editor for wearevoyeur.com. This is her take on four places she likes, and one place she doesn't.

This is my fourth year at Austin City Limits. This year also marks the rock festival's ten-year anniversary (the first six obviously don’t count). These festivals are a lot like airports—they’re pop-up communities, mini social experiments, petri dishes for human social interaction. I keep coming back simply because of the people at ACL, us festival-goers in a contained environment with one another with no fire department-approved easy way out. This year, with my two counterparts, I decided to divert my attention from the media area and get crowd-focused. We made a pledge to interact with every interesting person we passed, using our press credentials as a launching pad.

Careful what you wish for.

On Friday, local nine-to-fivers descended on the SxSW festivities with full force, packing the streets like a New Year's crowd. I hit West Second and Third Street, a former warehouse district now home to condos, high-end restaurants, and the W Hotel. Nearby are a few of Austin’s oldest and largest venues: The Austin Music Hall, host to MTV’s seemingly pointless Woodie Awards earlier in the week, and La Zona Rosa, which suffered last-minute cancellations by both Lupe Fiasco and Cee-lo Green the night before.

Interstate Highway 35 divides the East side of Austin from the rest of the city and has, for decades, been a relatively isolated section of town for low-income minority families, hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurants, and supply warehouses. However, as Austin has boomed over the past decade, there has been a push past the highway, to venues like The Scoot Inn and Longbranch Inn, echoing back to an Austin of old. I spend the second day of SXSW in the heart of the “Eastern Block,” as its called.

When I conceived of this series of articles about SXSW Interactive, I figured I’d start by talking about the obvious philosophical inconsistencies in the entire production, then I’d make a spectacle of the conspicuous consumption that goes on in Austin during the festival (not all of it directly related to the festival, but it can’t be escaped one way or another), and finally I’d wrap up with an article talking about all the good things I thought were worth remembering. It turns out the most memorable thing that happened to me in Austin was how I was assaulted and ended up in jail.

By noon yesterday, lines are almost around the block for KCRW’s showcase at Phoenix Lounge, the Fiat Fader Fort has a half-mile line for just the wristbands. There are two primary blocks of music in your typical SXSW day: Day parties, which run from about noon to 7, and evening showcases, which begin at 8 and run until the bars close, at 2am. This schedule is not set in stone, and you can find music anywhere, anytime—from bands playing in hotel lobbies at sunrise, to hippies marching up and down 6th Street, banging drums, and strumming guitars, never letting the music die.

If there is any sort of down time in the ten-day span of SXSW, it's the beginning of the first week as the Interactive portion of the conference winds down, the majority of the film premieres have happened, and local Austinites try to squeeze in a few days of work before most of the city becomes a potpourri of live music, gridlock, and parties.

It’s an understatement to say that SXSW Interactive has become “commercial” -- it makes Nickleback look indie (that band will probably give a keynote about social media next year). SXSW can be an extremely effective branding opportunity for businesses of all types. Thus there are many complimentary services and goods available throughout the festival. Some of them are weak (another heavy cotton t-shirt with your whiz-bang logo on it? Really?), some of them are helpful (my fiancee will be pleased with all of the canvas totes), and some are downright outrageous. I’ve cataloged them in this list, where I’ll rank them for you on the Star Jones Scale of Shameless Giftmongering (1 is relatively shame-free, while 10 is for the type of giveaway that obliterates any last trace of your conscience).