ATLAS: vol. 1 Austin, TX
20 Bus
The cheerful and helpful woman with a Texas-size beehive hairdo– dyed a purplely black– directs you to the 20 Bus in the direction of the city. A single ride costs 1.25, while the full day pass is 2.50.
You’re the only passenger as it drives around the airport access roads and into the suburbs outside Austin. But soon board passengers of all persuasions, dressed from shabby to sporty, all in their winter garb. One cowboy boards, long blonde hair dreaded down to his thighs, yellowed Stetson, jack knife clasped to his tan, loosely-fit jeans.
Across one block, between South Lakeshore drive and Manlove street, the strip-malls disappear, becoming outdoor sporting goods outlets and juice joints– empty lots replaced by potted palms and other succulent plants.
You ride almost an hour to the center of the city, and push the stop signal strip at Cesar Chavez avenue and East 3rd.
Grackle’s Throat
Glimmering specks of turquoise and navy blue gleam against its black feathered head.
At Ranch 616, Texas Style Icehouse
Weird enough for this town.
Certainly no shortage of neon at Ranch 616. Worth notice is an air-conditioning duct turned piss-mean snake sculpture, complete with flashing neon-red tongue. There’s an arched tin canopy over the patio, and, adjacent, a 15-foot high, neon-yellow, six-shooter sculpture. Inside, the neon relaxes, now a dull blue emanating from a three-foot-by-five-foot Modelo beer sign.
The rib-eye is smokey and deeply flavorful, but the mashed potatoes would be better without the cheese and bacon.
Not Just Nice, Texas Nice
The Continental Club is recommended for live music, and, there, Rose is dancing a short of sashay. She passes by you on the way to the bar a couple’a times, and she always smiles real nice.
She talks to you after the show, about life and love, the last musical act, where she’s from, and she continues to smile. It’s an intimate smile– warm and inviting– a longing smile, a smile that asks.
“You wanna meet the singer?” she asks you, “he’s prolly out back.”
They’re on a first name basis, and you three talk about pleasant, unimportant things.
Until the old singer says, “you get to over the age of 30 and you find there’s something higher out there. But I’ll give you a piece of advice, boy. Don’t pay it any attention. ‘Cause when you notice it– it notices you.”
You kiss a little bit, and she agrees to meet you the next day. She doesn’t. But you still have her smile.
Not Just Mean, Texas Mean
The establishment looks quite closed, so you knock before twisting the handle, which does open the unmarked door.
“Why the hell’d you knock?” she asks, declaratively.
“I wasn’t sure you were open,” you shrug, calmly.
“Might try the door before you do that.” She looks around the nearly empty establishment. “There’s room at the bar. What you want?”
You proceed to make friends over two Witherspoon– a Texas-style bourbon– neat, talking about her damn dog, the politicians she hates most, how her mamma shot a man in the hip, the ending of “Buch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
Texas Coffee Traders
The compound doesn’t look uninviting, at least. The chain-link has one large, open gate, and its rusted barbed-wire doesn’t seem much tampered with. A seating area inside the enclosure has tables and picnic benches, a tent to block the sun.
The east quarter of the warehouse houses the store– a large, open space with shelves stretching almost to the ceiling. All nationalities of bean are represented, here, whole and ground, both. For sale: drip-coffee machines and filters; french presses and espresso machines; grinders and kettles. Around the corner, through plate glass, you can see the roasting facility at work.
Back outside, an unmarked van pulls inside the fence, and a garage door in the building center is rolled up by hand. A glimpse of the warehouse interior reveals sheet-metal shelves stacked high with product.
Three Legged Dog
Recently groomed and clearly extravagantly pampered, the small, old dog jumps slightly with each step, propelled forward by its hind legs. A recently groomed and— maybe— slightly less pampered man keeps it on a short, black leash.
Craft Cocktail Tour with McClain
– Red-Headed Stepchild (entry pin required)
– Firehouse
– Garage Bar
– Small Victory
Latin Galleries at the Blanton Museum
“Casting the Runes” by Lenora Carrington: two-beaked bird wearing gold dominates, center-left. Below it are demons— fluffy or angular or pig-shaped. Above all these, cloaked and caped female figures stand at an alter with leaves and twigs. Oil with gold on wood.
“La maestra” by Alfredo Zalce: a not so old woman wearing white sits in rocker, before black background. Her face, three-quarters lit, with her elongated forefinger pointing to lower half of the page of the book. The girl leans against arm of the chair, enraptured. Woodcut.
“Espacio horizontal limitado” by Carlos Rojas: a flat black canvas in centimeters-thin, metal frame. Inside the frame? Two twin, white, millimeters-thin lines border the canvas. Except in the lower corners. To the lower right, the two lines become filled-in, forming a single, white block line in that corner. While in the lower left corner, there is but single white, dotted line bordering the canvas. The only other deviation from the flat black?— another block line, rising from those thin lines at the bottom, right third of the canvas, in a 90 degree angle, to form an open right triangle as it juts right, becoming thin, dotted lines, which then meet another open right triangle of block lines, above it. Oil on Canvas.
“Graneros III”, by Gonzalo Foneca: the terra-cotta-colored sculpture resembles an architecture, or a town plan. There are tubular towers of various diameters. Several staircases vary in size— some of these lead to sensical places, others to nowhere in-particular. A large foot mounted on a pedestal dominates the roof of the architecture– the foot’s width is wider than any staircase. Other platforms and indentations, niches or windows, surround the roof and sides of the sculpture. Red travertine.
Gross Men’s Room
The paper receipt forcefully lodged in the urinal cake drives you to the toilet, which quickly turns you back around. The BBQ must be spicy, here.
Waterloo Records, West End
West of the the city center, Waterloo Records still hangs out for a full square block. Since 1982, it has sold in here.
The entrance door sticks open into the first of two expansive rooms. In this first room, digital media– CDs, DVDs. Immediately left of the entrance, two seven-foot cases of Texan’s music, five ranked by staff preference. You pick up Jon Dee Graham and proceed to the next room.
Ah, here is the analogue. Some used, but mostly new vinyl LPs sidle up the length of the building in four rows. Unlike the digital media– which are squeezed tightly in their shelves with but the sides of their packaging displayed– the LPs have their front covers facing forward, to flip through with your fingertips.
Hey, check this out, y’all, two columns of analogue cassette tapes in six narrow rows. Ranging from 3.99 for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, a rare find, the Cro-Mags, goes for 17.99. You pick up both, pay, remind yourself to check the belts on your tape deck, then pick up your skateboard deck from behind the counter where it was checked, hitch up your pants by the belt— and saunter forth into the bright, Texas-size Sun.
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