Kerbey Lane Northwest was a place one of our regular haunts for great food, staff and atmosphere. They recently moved from their quirky, homey, very “Kerbey Lane” location to a strip mall at Anderson Mill and 183. We had asked the staff why they were moving and they said it was such a better layout. Much more room for operation and the staff wouldn’t be bumping into each other all the time trying to get the food out.

So four of us set out with anticipation yesterday morning to check out the new digs. Well actually, we forgot they had moved and so first we went to the old digs and found an empty parking lot and a sad lonely building. So we set out to find the new place. When we got there, there were a lot of people waiting (as is usual for Kerbey at lunchtime on Saturday) and we were told there would be an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes wait. Determined to have my pancakes, we decided to stick it out.

We all agreed that while this place is certainly nice, it did NOT feel like Kerbey Lane. It had lost its vibe. While they still had the same staff, many of whom have tattoos, piercings, fun hair styles and such, they all seemed a little more dressed up than they used to be. It seemed to us like they had turned up the staffs dress code a bit.

Even more frustrating was that while we were waiting over an hour for our table, there seemed to be many empty tables. The patio outside had maybe 2 of 10 tables occupied. I thought I heard a manager telling another couple that they were limiting their occupancy while the kitchen and staff “found their groove” but that didn’t make it any less frustrating to be standing and waiting while staring at empty tables.

The place just had a much less fun, homey, quirky, Austin, Kerbey Lane feel and more generic air. Everything felt strange. Even the staff seemed more lowkey or down. I mean they were still friendly and provided great service but I sensed some tension or stress, I speculate due to probably having to deal with pissy people with overdeveloped senses of entitlement who probably thought that waiting an hour was ridiculous but decided to go ahead and do it anyway but be grumpy and bitch about it.

All in all we were very sad to see what had become of our beloved Kerby Lane NW. I think we may be making one of the other Kerbey Lane locations our new home base. It seemed to us like they probably could have kept both NW locations open considering how busy it always seemed to be. I’m sure that’s probably not realistically practical but they sure never seem to be hurting for business and it seems like there is always a wait at any time of day.

Kerbey Lane was one of those places where we would always take visiting friends to eat. We might still, but it won’t be the NW location. I kind of feel like I’ve lost a friend.

It’s been a short 12-weeks since I wrote my first Austin met blog entry, and I’ve come to realize that while I see change all the time, actually it happens very slowly.

In my first post on the alterations of Chavez and access to the S 1st Bridge, I wondered if they were going to finish on schedule, they didn’t and still have not. I didn’t hear of any serious collisions between joggers and cars though, so thats good news.

The VMUification of S 1st still hasn’t taken its first step. While the buildings mentioned in the articles are new developments, neither is being done under the Citys much vaunted VMU classification. Not much progress has been made on either.

In my post on 603 W Live Oak, the former home of Las Manos Magicas, I said they were taking the house away. They jacked it up, cut it in half, put on trailers, tarped it and then found out they needed a permit. Who’da figured? So the house is still there. Permits are an interesting thing.

On the City Permits database(*), it’s interesting to note that a small new bakeshop, Sugar Mama’s will be opening soon next to Secret Oktober, and have been busy applying for permits to cover all their work. You can chart their progress and sign-up to the mailing list on their website.

Those that regularly eat at Polvos might not have noticed the changes going on there. It was only when I saw the permit application for the sign for Sugar Mamas and searched, that it became clear Polvos didn’t apply for one for the monster they installed mid-2007. It appears from City records they also didn’t apply for permits for the work thats being going one around the back and side of the restaurant either, although this is mostly out of sight of the dinners.

Parking continues to be a problem for Polvos and residents, on a good day for the restaurant, W Johanna for 2-blocks, S 2nd for 2 blocks is completely full with customer cars, and damage to cars in the streets is a regular happening from customers who either can’t parallel park, can’t reverse or have had too much to drink(nah surely not…). Interestingly, the parking for Polvos was a significant enough problem to have been called out in the 2002 Bouldin Creeek Neighborhood Plan for action(See action item 62-64). Who’da guessed.

When I moved in, the big yellow building at 2009 was empty, and so it will be again soon. La Luz moved in, and now they are moving out. According to signs on their myspace web page and in the store, La Luz will be shutting its doors and merging with Prototype Vintage Design on South Congress beginning early August!

The more things change on South 1st, the more they stay the same.

(*) When searching the permits database the best results can be found by lugging the street name in the the project name entry field. It’s also worth limiting the search by date at the bottom.

So, down at the coal face it seems there is an ever increasing drum beat to do more, turn off lights, switch to energy efficient bulbs, recycle more etc. I’ve always done my part, the cardboard boxes are piled high in my garage waiting for that w/e when I have time to flat pack them and tie them up for the City to take.

However, everday, between 4.30-7 am an industrial garbage removal truck comes to the local bakers, tips up their huge industrial size bin and out flows more garbage per day than I generate per year(probably). If I watch during the day, they throw in a stream of cardboard boxes, along with all the regular trash. I dunno, just sayin…

Last night as I flew back into Austin on the late flight from Chicago(Yeah I know, the very act of flying isn’t so great), it was with sheer amazement that I watched as the City burned so bright. It wasn’t so much the downtown area, but the huge lots either side of I35, the parking spaces way out of town, not a single car in sight, the car dealershsips, some strange homage to the $1 Gallon of gas, now laden with steel monsters from what is possibly a bygone era. Never mind, even at 10,000ft you can still pick-out the individual shapes thanks to the fantastic floodlighting.

Wait a minute, Austin Energy is asking me, all of us, to let them fit a control to our AC system so they can cycle off on AC during the middle of the day at peak times, fair enough maybe. But, is all that energy used to illuminate nothing, empty parking lots, trucks that won’t sell, really free? Somehow I think not. Isn’t it about time to start tackling local waste before proposing more offshore drilling?

Start by requiring businesses that are closed during the hours of darkness and for whom there is no use of their parking lot to shut off their lights and then how about a commercial recycling scheme? Oh yeah, I’m prepared to do my bit, no more closed bottles with just water in at sports and music events. Lets ditch the plastic…

Friday evening I wandered up to End of an Ear for 6pm and My Empty Phantom.

I’d heard some tracks from Jesses my space page and do from time to time enjoy ambient, down tempo music. It somehow conveys feeling without lyrics, it has style in that it generally has no style. Jesse was ready to play when I arrived but the store was almost deserted. On cue, just as he was about to start, a small crowd arrived and Jesse played a short set.

Unlike lots of ambient, and other music made in the bedroom, Jesse played instruments, including haunting synths, and a psychedelic guitar, no computer in sight. It was only a short set, and quietly spoken Jesse seemed unsure, some what insecure, but his music spoke for him, unlike film music, a genre most often compared to this sort of ambient music, the music was the foreground here, not the background.

Although billed as a CD release party, there were no CD’s in evidence. Jesse can be seen in a show on July 15th at 10pm at The Hideout Theater with hotel,hotel and the Improv Tuesday jam..

“Let there be light.” And there was light, after many peaceful months without it. I’m talking about the corner luminaire, a streetlight that’s over-bright and sends way more light upward and elsewhere other than on the street. Some busybody newcomer must have called it in, perhaps the one that believes that a good illumination scheme is one that gives the appearance of a maximum-security prison and extends the benefits to properties several houses away, allowing people to read inside their own houses without turning on a single light. Now late-night drivers can add an additional thirty miles an hour to their rate of progress. There is one benefit to living on the bright side: those of us with peaceful reel lawnmowers and who use rakes, not leafblowers, who formerly had to wait for dawn’s first glimmers to do yard chores can return to working in the middle of the night after being awakened by the police helicopter buzzing rooftops. The grinding bucket truck began its work before four o’clock this morning. Austin’s skies are too red and we can do better than these drop-lens cobra-head monstrosities. Can you tell? I’m a fan of the Dark Sky people. I like to see the heavens and I loathe light trespass. The city code of ordinances does contain some provisions prohibiting light trespass, although not from the public right-of-way, but they’re not enforced, just as many construction and zoning provisions are ignored. Other needed provisions (regular and frequent emptying of portable chemical toilets, extended idling of big trucks on construction sites in residential areas, e.g.) don’t even exist. Where does the mayor stand on issues other than trucks in downtown commercial areas? His statement does not enlighten.

Despite a nagging head cold and having spent the day in New Braunfels at the last day of Wurstfest (a family tradition), I headed down to the Compound on East Fourth to check out The Evens for their first Austin appearance. The Evens are Ian MacKaye of Fugazi and Minor Threat fame and Amy Farina. Farina plays drums and sings while MacKaye plays a Danelectro baritone guitar and sings.

I’d never been to the venue and I’m not even sure if it’s going to continue to host live music. MacKaye mentioned that someone lives on the property and the band is known for playing non-traditional rock venues like basements of libraries and churches. They played a gallery in Dallas the night before. It was essentially a yard between several corrugated metal structures. The weather was perfect, something MacKaye commented on several times.

This set list isn’t in the order played (and I may have missed some), but it’s pretty close. They played “Cut From the Cloth”, “Everybody Knows”, “Cache Is Empty”, “Eventually” and “Dinner with the President” from Get Evens. There were several songs from the first record including “Shelter Two”, “All These Governors”, “Sara Lee”, “Mt. Pleasant Isn’t”, “Blessed Not Lucky”, “On the Face of It”, and “You Won’t Feel A Thing”.

Anyone who’s familiar with MacKaye won’t be surprised that the evening was politically charged. The stripped down arrangements of the songs lent themselves to showcasing the message. MacKaye enlisted the audience to sing along during “Mt. Pleasant Isn’t” and “You Won’t Feel a Thing”. The whole event had a feel of a campfire sing-along crossed with a protest sit-in; a bit cliched perhaps, but given the current state of things, not entirely unwarranted. In introducing one song, MacKaye likened the changes in DC to periodic storms, a storm comes in, does some damage and then people clean up and rebuild. To him, the current administration is a particularly nasty storm. Perhaps the 100 or so people in attendance were looking for a respite from the storm and hopefully got what they were looking for. There’s going to be a lot of clean up work to do.

Now that our last show of this crazy week at the PAC is over it’s time to begin thinking about the end. Bass is closing on the 21st and even though my office looks out over backstage I’ll miss its motions, its hustle and bustle. There’s going to be PAC events and shows still but nothing like what’s been in Bass even in the past week.

My coworker is a wonderful singer and she’s always wanted to sing in Bass. Some of us went downstairs to hear her and she just came out of nowhere with this gorgeous song, and I stood there watching her from stage left it all hit me that it’s ending and just beginning all at the same time. So many people are leaving but so many new people will become a part of our family down the line, and even though Bass will be dark for 18 months she’ll be better than ever when she reopens. I hope I’m still here to see that.

As Natalie’s voice cut through the stale air of an empty stage I thought about how that giant hall had seen so much; so many people have played here and so much beauty has come to Austin through the PAC, that its closing deserves to be this event that makes me sad and happy all at the same time. Bass is so much more than just a building now that I’ve seen all its sides; as a freshman in the second balcony with my student ticket and my opera buddy, as a seasoned student going to musicals with my friends, as an employee shepherding photographers at rock shows and as just me, off the clock, cutting through a silent, dark hall on my way to the bus, those lights above the seats shining through the black like tiny stars. I’ve mentioned them before but I still think it’s so beautiful.

We as a whole will be saying goodbye to Bass early Monday morning if you’d like to come- it’s called The Big Intermission and everyone’s invited! There will be a live broadcast from KGSR, free breakfast tacos and a free gift to the first 150 people there. I know what the gift is! I want one really bad. Email Mindy Graves to RSVP.

I hope to see you there to help me say goodbye to our Bass Concert Hall. You might have to give me a hug.

Leslie Cochran, Austin’s beloved cross-dresser, has lived the American Dream. Whereas years of transience and a horrific bikini line might be a limitation for most, Leslie has managed to spread his assets across Austin’s social fabric. His popularity started innocently enough with random sightings and the occasional morning radio appearance, and has since blossomed such that 6th Street and major events feel empty without his spandexed package on display.

But times have changed. Just like the city that has grown up around him, Leslie appears ready to forsake his funky past and move on to more commercial goals. In a Monday press release, he explains the need to hang up the banana hammock, and perhaps even leave Austin altogether.

In the 90’s, it was all about being myself. The fact that cross-dressing allowed me to grope chicks and scam drinks was a bonus, but it was all in the name of self actualization n’ shit. Then the money started rolling in, and now it’s just a job. Frat boys, bachelorette parties, queer bubbas … It’s like my hairy ass-cheeks don’t even belong to me anymore.

Leslie tried to turn the corner towards respectability by running for mayor, but found politics to be harsher than any APD shake-down. Competition from Jennifer Gale and a burgeoning hipster electorate downgraded Leslie from Freak Vote to ironic diversion. After failing to mount a campaign in 2006, Leslie lamented “Either Austin’s getting smarter, or I’ve jumped the shark. Either way, it’s time to go.”
Read more

My wife and I attended Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell, part of the Paramount Theatre’s Spoken Word Series, on Thursday night.

It’s been just over three years since Spalding Gray’s body was pulled from the East River in New York, an apparent suicide. He had last been seen by his family on January 10, 2004. It’s thought that he jumped off of the Staten Island Ferry. Gray made a career of writing and performing monologues about his life and his neuroses. I remember him first in a small part in The
Killing Fields. He also gave a memorable performance in the role of Mr. Mungo, the bachelor who commits suicide in Steven Soderbergh’s King of the Hill (it’s a travesty that it’s still not available on DVD). I lived in Manhattan in the mid-90’s and remember passing him on the street a few times. My wife and I saw him perform It’s
a Slippery Slope at the Paramount in January 1997 and, if I recall correctly, I saw Gray’s Anatomy at SXSW Film that same year.

Gray’s delivery was such a big part of the draw his stories that I wondered how well a group reading would translate. It started out kind of rough. I found myself imagining Gray’s voice and delivery over that of the performers on the Paramount stage. They eventually settled in though and I found myself enjoying the material even though I’d heard some of it before. Unlike Statesman reviewer, Brad Bucholz, I preferred the delivery of Carmelita Tropicana over several of the others. Shawn Colvin did a good job and
Jonathan Ames made a respectable stand-in reading journal entries at Gray’s trademark wooden table. At first, I thought they might leave the table and chair empty as a place for Gray, but perhaps that would’ve been a bit too morose. I did like the way that they used the lighting towards the end as Gray’s last journal entries were read. A father myself, I couldn’t help but think of Gray’s two sons and stepdaughter, who he had late in life and the effect his suicide must’ve had on them. None of us is perfect, but
I just can’t fathom leaving my family to deal with such a terrible situation, especially since Gray’s own mother committed suicide when he was in his mid-twenties. Gray’s writing seemed to enable him to deal with the demons that claimed his mother, but a terrible head on collision in 2001 while on vacation in Ireland seems to have pushed Gray over the edge. The reading captured the bittersweet ending to a life that seemed to touch and hopefully enrich the lives of many people. There were more than a few tears
in the audience when the lights came up.

The Statesman has an interview with Gray’s widow, Kathie Russo, a review of the show by the interviewer, Brad Bucholz, and a slideshow of photos from the performance.

There were two preliminary reports heard across the river, starting at shortly after seven o’clock this morning. The real thing happened later and produced several window-rattling concussions, louder than the noises that used to be made when Bergstrom was active and the military planes routinely broke the sound barrier. Farewell, Intel shell. Many of us have grown fond of you. We could envision you as a dormitory for the homeless, with barriers and shelter against the winds and the danger of falling. You would have made a great hanging garden, with plants trailing from the edges. You were a fine venue for arts projects. The horizon looks empty without you.

Update: A few of my toy-camera pictures of the results of the detonations may be seen in miniature stacked to the right on this page; the Austin Flickr group shows more, and a search of all of Flickr on “Austin” and “Intel” will show yet additional pix.