Wednesday night I attended an event at an outdoor brewhouse/restaurant. Our host was none other than FTFGuy, publisher of FTF Magazine. A good time was had by all. We introduced one of the employees to geocaching by pointing him to a cache outside the venue. I met some muggles belonging to cachers. But that wasn’t the biggest thing for me. The venue itself was a draw and a half.
The conceit of the bar is that it acquires signage and displays from defunct Austin businesses. In a few cases, they’ve managed to pick up old signs from from still extant ones. And the moment I walked in, I was overwhelmed by floods of memories. I remembered how my grandparents took me to Mrs. Johnson’s Donuts when I was little, and how lucky I felt to be able to take my own daughters there before it closed (it might reopen, but I’ll believe it when I see it). My grandparents also took me to Karavel Shoes because that was the best place to go at the time. How many times did my friends and have lunch at Dart Bowl in high school? How many times did we skip classes because we didn’t want to leave?
The towering marquee of The Frisco, last of the Night Hawk chain, was there near the great female statue with welcoming arms from the top of Maria’s Taco Xpress. I drove past Allen’s Boots so many times going south from downtown, but I never went in because I wasn’t in to country/western wear. How many times did I visit Atomic City, perhaps to look at their boots (while I never owned a pair of Doc Marten’s, they were closer to my speed) and their vintage books and toys? Oat Willie’s was a venerable head shop and source of my plastic baggies for cache maintenance (yes, head shops are a good source for them because they have them in lots of sizes and you can buy them in small numbers as well). The I Luv Video booth contained small televisions and DVDs from the shop’s collection (now preserved by We Luv Video) while the Red Fez booth contained Persian couches and red and gold accents. Restaurants (Lucy’s Chicken, Mr. Natural, Gordough’s); bars and clubs (The Gibson, Dallas, The Poodle Dog Lounge); even locations of more … prurient mien (Dreamers, Expose, Midnight Cowboy) …
For most of you, these names mean nothing but for me, each sign was a tombstone, a reminder of the city that was, the city I grew up both as a child and an adult. I also bet that wherever you are, you have a list of places that now only exist in memories and the stories of others. I haven’t always been happy with Austin‘s changes. I’ve always thought that the fact that Austin City Hall sits atop the location of one of the city’s most storied venues, Liberty Lunch, was a great metaphor for how the city plows under its past. But at the same time, I remember an editorial I once read from the Austin Statesman (before it merged with Austin‘s other newspaper, the Austin American). It decried the destruction of a landmark house, being demolished to make way for the brand new (now over a century old) Driskill Hotel. Time only goes one way: forward. I can’t keep this place like a city in a bottle. In fact, many of the city’s problems over the last four decades have been caused by people fighting tooth and nail to keep Austin preserved under glass. I am at peace with knowing the city must change. And yet, for one evening, I sat in the graveyard of the city that was. It didn’t remind me of death and the human condition. It felt like home.
Geocaching While Black 