This Place in Austin Doesn’t Want You To Move There Either
ATX is fresh out of space for tax avoiders and flippers
Today is the first day of summer (not technically, but Zoom school ended yesterday.) And, well, it feels like every other day of the year and a half (or however many centuries it’s been since something good came on Netflix) since this whole thing started.
Mostly just checking the boxes, trying to get through, hoping for something better, feeling helpless and nostalgic, but also—a strange sense of submission-meets-restraint. I texted “congrats” yesterday to a mom from the school, my playground confidant, on getting her kids through this one, and she said she read this one from me about the school year that was, and she wrote back, “I see you’re still trying to fight it. Maybe that’s better than me. I let it go, let it run over me a long time ago, haha.”
She’s right. Bruce Lee’ing yourself and becoming water is the best way to survive (and ultimately resist). Any hardened protestor knows that. Anyone who makes it through the slog can shift with the tide. No, you don’t need to relent or give up your values or what makes you you, but being rigid, stamping your feet, and continually saying “no, no, no” won’t get you very far. You’ll be the oak tree that snaps in the store, not the palm that bends with it.”
So, for this coming summer, which in many ways will be more challenging than the school year (now there’s not even enough structure to convince the kiddo that he needs to pause Sponge Bob long enough to put pants on), I’m gonna have to let it go.
And as soon as I “decided” that, I saw something pop up into my feed. The New Beverly Cinema in Hollywood LA right off La Brea, a couple of blocks from Pink’s Hot Dogs, (yes—it’s an art-house theater owned by Tarantino, the Grand Marshall of the million mansplain march but we don’t need to get into all that) is open again (thanks to all the LA folks who have gotten vaccinated!!) and is doing a midnight showing of Dazed and Confused this Saturday.
Believe me; if there’s anywhere in this world I could transport myself to for that precious 80 minutes, it would be to the inside of that theater.
Dazed and Confused came out right at the beginning of the summer after my senior year. The cast was around my age (mostly older), portraying kids my age (seniors!) in a time that we wished we’d lived in (the ‘70s!) because, you know, the ‘90s sucked. (There’s a line about how cool they think the ‘80s will be, and we felt the same about the ‘00s, and boy oh boy...)
Anyway, it was the right mix of nostalgia, an era before the window shut on muscle cars and low-key buzzed sexism, where kids roamed their neighborhoods freely starting around the age of seven. It wasn’t perfect and wasn’t even good in wide swaths, and director Richard Linklater points that out plenty, so much that when you watch it back as an adult, it’s more about mistakes the kids were making and the trauma bonds they can’t break with their grown-up oppressors... the only real hero, the only real adult of the story being the black Junior High teacher who gives the kids in class the most valuable advice of their lives: some will make it, most won’t—but they’re on their own. Their decisions are theirs.
...And then releases them to the wild to get swatted on the rear by Ben Affleck and Cole Hauser.
Anyway, yeah, that’s me in the third row, a little sleepy and a little nostalgic, but for what I can’t remember watching a movie that helped inform my formative years (That fall as a freshman in Eugene, Oregon, another arthouse standard, The Bijou Art Cinemas, played “Dazed” every midnight Friday and Saturday the entire year. I’ll have to ask him, but I think my buddy Red went and saw it close to thirty times.) Other freshmen would sneak out into the theater’s courtyard and spark a bone near the fountain. I’d carry in two 40s of ice-cold Colt 45 with me, and each time I’d finish one, I’d roll the bottle down the aisle, and someone in the audience would go “whoo-hoo!”
So anyway, that’s summer to me. Or at least what summer could have been, or should have been—but probably never was. Another time, another place, different attitudes, and standards. Have we come far and gotten better? Yes, in some ways. Are things a lot worse now? Absolutely. But who am I not to let it run over me?
8508 Brookfield Dr Austin, TX 78758
Okay, Austin, it’s your turn. Show me what you got!
In homage to the start of a white-hot Texas summer and to the neighborhoods where the aforementioned all-time classic was filmed, I thought I’d dip down into ATX and look and see if there are any rancher bargains.
Warning: Don’t try to do what I did.
Two days spent poring through nearly every MLS listing in ATX revealed my worst fears:
1) Every home looks like a flip or at least a sad sack second-cousin of a Fixer-Upper episode.
I don’t even want to imagine how much cool stuff (wood paneling! Stained glass! Wagon wheel chandeliers! Shag carpet! Pink bathroom tile!) has been mercilessly wrecked by a white tech company middle manager dude in goggles and a sledgehammer. It’s all been replaced with shitty laminate flooring, crookedly set subway tile, center islands that are slightly off-center, and then accessorized with a lotta Wayfair and Ikea flotsam washed up in the open concept. Fuck. This. Shit.
Literally every house.
And
2) It’s fucking expensive. I know there are tax breaks and your racist/white supremacist/suppressor space travelers supreme leaders Joe Rogan and Elon Musk allegedly decamped for there—and every little Silicon Valley stock option success story along the way has pointed wagons east, but really? Austin, well, it kind of sucks. It’s fucking waaaaay too hot in the summer; it can snow and whatever else in the winter. Sixth Street is like Pacific Beach in San Diego. This cool area has been recolonized by the guy with the goatee trimmer, the fake distressed vintage tee, and the flip flops and $300 jeans doing his best McConaughey when a member of the opposite sex in spaghetti straps and booty shorts catches his eye. Like, fuck all that.
I feel bad, in other words, for the original denizens of Austin. Where have the naked bongo players and the midnight liquor store clerks gone? Lit out for West Texas, I suppose, dirt and a bubbling horizon as far as the eye can see. Here in the Amazon-owned Whole Foods HQ, it’s nothing but memories and nonsense.
Then again, ain’t that the truth everywhere?
This place in North Austin may be the answer—for now. It’s in the district where Bedichek Middle School served as the location for Lee High School. So your kids (or the neighbors, or whoevers) can actually go. Other spots in the neighborhood that served as locations include West Enfield Neighborhood Park (a block from this home), Top Notch Hamburgers (a half a mile away), and Stiles Switch BBQ & Brew (a quarter-mile), which used to be the Violet Crown Shopping Center hot spot was the location used for The Emporium.
This home ain’t much for looks. Most of its early sixties interior flares seem to have been stripped clean in favor of easy-clean rental chic sometime in the early eighties through mid-nineties, but a little responsible restoration, nice tile, flooring (restore the paneling and cabinets!) and paint, should do the trick. At 1,100 square feet, it’s the lot size (almost a quarter acre!) that’s impressive.
For well under $400k it’s about the only home in North Austin that retains some of the glory days features and a nostalgic price to match.