Let’s begin with the title in mind: My So-Called Austin Stories. If I’m going to reference a short-lived MTV series from the 90’s that attempted to capitalize on post Slacker-era Austin, then I should start out by writing about my fair city, and there’s nothing more Austin than nostalgia.
Nostalgia might not actually be the right word for it, but there is certainly a longing for the past, even in the midst of an exciting present. It’s best summed up by the phrase, “You should have lived here ten years ago. THAT was Austin!” Thing is, that decade gap between the now and the cool persists throughout time, and I suspect it will as long as I live. Ten years ago will always be better than today, or at least we’ll remember it that way. This is part and parcel of being a denizen of this growing and flawed city. Over the next weeks and months, I’m going to explore some of these backwaters of Austin Nostalgia by remembering the coffee shops, restaurants and who-knows-what-else from days not long past.
Living in Austin after college was never a certainty for me. Not only did I graduate from Texas A&M where a hatred for all things Austin is preached with rival-ristic fervor, but even my first encounters with the city weren’t big selling points. I’m not talking about the one trip my family took when I was a kid, driving from Amarillo to the capital city (where we stayed in that cool, cylindrical Holiday Inn by the lake, not yet obscured by a parking garage) of which I have vague memories. During my last year of college, I made a couple of trips over with my roommates who had high-school buddies going to school here. We were embracing our Gen-X-iness, and came to the “big city” for coffee shops and various hp culture. We hit Ruta Maya on 4th and Mojo’s Daily Grind on Guadalupe. I didn’t know what to do with all this. Frankly, I was non-plussed.
Still, I had to move somewhere. I toyed with the idea of a pre-Portlandia Portland, but that was going to be a big move considering I was in a relationship with a Texas girl. Eventually, I opened my mind to Austin. My initial research came in the form of a special Saturday delivery. I would open up the coffee shop that I worked at right across from campus (Copasetic Cafe, if you can believe that Clinton-era name) and go next door to our only (and now dead) independent music store, Marooned. They had the Austin Chronicle shipped in every week for curious readers in College Station. I would spend hours thumbing through those pages, more than I ever did once I moved here.
From there it was simply a matter of arranging housing and employment. The former lasted twice as long as the latter, but still, I had made the move. It’s 15+ years later, and I’ve got a lot of memories, enough to be able to say to new arrivals, “Man, you should have lived here ten years ago…”