Monday, December 31, 2007

Home

Being away from Portland for a few days prompted these thoughts, as did an email from one of my neighborhood interlocutors, who asked how someone so young could be so bitter about a place he's despised for so long.

My first reaction was, "bitter"? My second was, "despise"? I don't despise Austin. How could I despise Austin? But I have no defense against being called bitter, except to say that I think it's an emotion that's wasted on the old.

Here's the thing: Austin was the first place I felt attached to, the first place I called home. Before coming here, I'd been in New Hampshire, which I was eager to leave; before that, it was two years in Taiwan, a fascinating but forbidding place to which I was less attached than yoked. Before that, it was five months in the Twin Cities; before that, three years in the Berkshires at college, another forbidding place, though for other reasons; in between was a year in Colombia and summers in New Hampshire. Taiwan and Colombia played a huge role in other life decisions, and I dreamed about them constantly (and still do); if I hadn't lived there I wouldn't be who I am and am not. But they weren't home.

Before college, I went to junior high and high school in the Merrimack Valley, which I also wouldn't have called home. Or, I never let myself be attached. Reading Jack Kerouac and Andre Dubus made me more homesick than I thought it was possible to be, but when I left the place for college I was done with it. Anyway, all my friends had left. Maybe I was too lovesick and heartbroken to be homesick.

The place where my heart hung its hat was Colorado, in a 5-acre patch of land in the foothills of the Wet Mountains near Beulah, where my parents built a house in the 1970s, and in Beulah, where my sister and I went to school, and where we picked up water for our cistern in a 500-gallon tank on the back of the pickup. We lived there from 1974 to 1979. Not until I returned to Beulah in 1993 did I realize that the large orange rocks, the juniper scrub, the prickly pear cactus and the dirt road rolling off toward an inevitable mountain (usually Pikes Peak) was the landscape of my eternal soul. It was dust, not salt, that ran in my blood. Coyotes sang me to sleep. Cactus was my friend. Spending a summer in Alpine, in West Texas, where you can get lost in the desert washes tracing the ancient sediments and turning over stones, nailed that feeling true. Other places had entranced me. Colorado was the only one I felt a part of. From which I could fashion an origin myth. As if the place had cut itself and bled and I was that drop of blood. That's one of the reasons I felt so attached to Austin: it reminded me of Colorado.

You hardly ever met anyone who was actually from Austin; everyone was from somewhere else and happy to be there, because they were too creative, smart, tolerant, free, or ambitious than people where they came from could stand. Austin is an island in the middle of a forbidding sea, which also means that the people tended to greet the arrivals with a bit of disdain, worried there was too little space for everyone. Space, room, margins: that was all state of mind. If you shared the sense of relief, there was plenty of room, and you could afford to be generous.

I arrived in Austin with that same sense of relief. I felt as if I'd come home. I was 25 years old. So am I bitter? I lost that sense of relief. The feelings were reversed: I felt better when I was away, not when I was there. You can say I'm selfish: look, this city isn't yours, there are lots of people in it, it's a city, okay? But, my friend, the literature of the city has always engaged that tension between an individual's trajectory and the collective viewpoint and presses on that question of where the collective mind, and the objective eye's perspective, resides. So saying "my city" or "me and the city" is no contradiction and implies no possession. You could say, you needed a break, a time away. And I did that. But the more time I spent away the more time I wanted to be away.

Am I looking for another home? Given how I'm put together, I doubt it. The truth is, over the course of my life I've defined myself mainly by my departures. Not by my attachments. So I felt a little thrill when we drove back into the city. It was like visiting a new lover, someone you've met only six times or so. You don't know how long you'll be together, but you know that you will.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Moneyed Philistines

From a friend, on a Christmas card:

Don't abandon Austin -- we need support in subverting the money-ed philistines.
From someone else's e-mail:

I was saddened to see the entry on your moving blog about mourning for a place that was. The change the letter writer described is everywhere. And yeah, it seems the only way not to mourn is to move. But the mourning will begin again. And somehow, it hangs on some even after leaving a place. It's relative, perhaps, but still. .

Friday, December 21, 2007

Rage, Rage

So I go into this great bookstore here in Portland, Rabelais, which has every sort of food book you'd want: cook books, food porn, rare books, art books (motto: thought for food): and I get into a conversation with the owner. Misty had been in earlier in the week and talked to him about CSAs, so he knew that we'd come from Austin, so we got talking about that.

"I'm not anti-development or anything like that," he said, then pointed out all the weird development schemes happening in Portland, how city government made strange decisions to pick a developer for a $100 million pier development project, how the city wants to run a multi-lane highway down the center of the peninsula, to hook the Old Port to the highway. How a comedy club had been closed down because the piers under it were rotted, but how this was probably a scheme just to knock down and rebuild the pier. "You're not going to get away from it, man," he said. "You can't get away from it."

"Yeah, I said, "I know development is going to happen, I know I can't get away from that. And I know I'll never get away from that huge distance between the wonderful, glorious way a project is sold to the people and how it's actually realized as crappy. But everybody wants to move to Austin. I want to get to a place where I can figure out why."

And these are my mots d'escalier: I also want to get away from an atmosphere where you're expected to sit back while crappy changes are crammed down your throat, and where everybody sits back, wondering: Should I like it? I want to go to a place that's cool but which I don't care that much about, that I'm not attached to, so however it was ruined or is going to get ruined it doesn't bother me. Where all the activist hopes, when they fail, as they inevitably do, I can note their naivete and move on. I want to go to a place that I can apprehend as a place, not somewhere I know so much about, I can't stop at a stoplight without knowing so much about what was there, when I stopped there last and with whom, what used to be on the corner, that little store, will it make it? And the guilt: I should have gone there more, now it's closed, that little place. Or: I should have swum there more, now I can't get there as easily. Or: I should have done this or that. How much a place where you live can be laced with regret it's astounding. Standing there in the bookstore I make an embarrassment of myself, bitter and rageful about the place he just left, as if it wasn't him that left, as if he hadn't been a self-proclaimed nomad for so long.

It was ironic in a way to be standing in a food bookstore ranting about this, because food is now the focus of our desires and politics and moralities. Was place ever that focus? I know theories of place were hot in academia in the 70s and 80s. Has the fetish of place been replaced by a fetish of food? And maybe we should go back to taking place more seriously again. There are multiple hitches there, I realize, namely that food is a useful device because it lies at the core of the consuming American self. I'm not saying food isn't interesting, or the fascination with food doesn't have merit. (And I love Rabelais.) But when the limits of that consuming American self are reached, when the food you love can't be shipped from Chile or California or wherever, and when it's prohibitively expensive to drive, you will learn to, have to learn, to appreciate place anew. We won't see a new politics of place arise until the real energy crisis sets in. It's like musical chairs: when the music stops, you'll have to love where you end up.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Friends

As I rant and rave on this blog, I'd like to make a quiet moment for this:

Graduate school is about, if nothing else, getting swept into a social scene. Backyard parties, barbecues, dinner parties; lunches, getting coffee; finding a running partner, a climbing buddy; hooking up, dating, moving in together. You swap books, you get drunk, you fuck, you fight, you sweat your guts out, you store old furniture. You mix and mingle, create a scene, a tribe.

I started graduate school in 1993, and my first graduate school tribe crumbled in 1996, when several key members moved away. I felt this most strongly, since it was the first tribe I'd ever known. I could tell you stories about how that tribe was concocted out of other connections: a group of friends from Trinity in San Antonio, a strong Berkeley connection, and a bunch of friends from UT Planning, plus my old connection to a college friend. This thick social soup was the first one I felt comfortable in. (So comfortable that until Nov. 3, 2007, we were sleeping on a box spring that had been passed through this tribe. It's true.) Yet it became clear that to have this tribe meant to have to give it up, because every August from then on, until about 2001, it was a constant cycling out of new friends made old by time and togetherness and new friends who hadn't been made old yet. Each summer, friends who'd graduated would move on: New York. Sacramento. Ecuador. A dozen different places. Each Labor Day I'd realize I hardly knew anyone anymore, and begin to reconstitute a tribe. That spider web outside your front door, which you tear through when you leave for work in the morning yet find rebuilt when you return, that was me: weaving, weaving connections.

Something happened around 2001, when all this stopped. By that point most of the people I knew weren't graduate students; I'd finished school (and school finished me) in December of 2000. Since then the web I've built -- the web that's found me -- the tribes I've merged, the ones that have engulfed me -- has, for the most part, remained intact. And it's grown. A few have moved on. But the friends I have in Austin are the ones I feel I've grown in to. Up to. When trees first send their new growth up in the spring, it's soft and springy, more like grass than wood; that growth soon matures and hardens. The friends I have in Austin are the wood of my tree. Those other tribes I'll remember forever, but then I've never surprised myself with realizing my own capacity for nostalgia; I know full well how capable I am of suicide by petites madeleines. But the ones who haven't left are the roots, the stuff, and they mean more to me, collectively and individually, than anything else I can describe. And now I've gone and left them. Turning the tables. Look ma! No roots!

I just want you to know, I don't do any of this lightly, but with the fullest of intention. But when I return I hope to be pure and clean and strong, and I'm doing it for you.

Broken Spoke SOLD!

I won't say the sale of the Broken Spoke is dismaying, by itself, but gee whiz, James White, if ya knew ya were going to sell the place, what the fuck was up with $3.50 Lone Stars?

So the developer promised to keep the dance hall intact. Good for him. Let's see if he can actually keep those promises. The woman who became my wife and I started dancing and dating there, so you can expect I'd be upset if the place changes for the worst. It's inevitable that something will. Everyone gave big fat kudos to Walgreens for building Taco Xpress its own place, but has anyone bothered to say that the place sucks and the food's not that good?

And who's going to run the Spoke now? The developer? Are we going to be longing for the good old days of $3.50 Lone Stars?

It was a neck and neck race there, for a while, the Spoke and Barton Springs, then Barton Springs hurtled ahead in the race toward symbolic destruction of the heart of Austin. And now it looks as if the Spoke may have pulled ahead for a win.

But hey, don't worry, everyone: Catellus will build you dance hall at Mueller!

Friday, December 7, 2007

Irony of Ironies of Ironies of Ironies of

So I read this letter to the editor in one of the local (Portland) publications, The Bollard:
For many years, Portland successfully maintained a level of independence from the big boxy, corporate hogomony [sic], which is expanding to cover nearly every town in America. But our precious holdout has begun to change. Recently we have see the loss of local businesses that were integral to Portland's character, such as Free State Taverna, Acoustic Coffee, the State Theatre, The Skinny (which struggles to find space to reopen in), and Casco Bay Books. In turn, we have new neighbors -- Wild Oats, Whole Foods, Lowe's, and another Starbucks -- as well as condominiums and potential private waterfront development.
Why is this ironic? Because when I moved to Austin in the fall of 1993 for graduate school, I remember reading many such letters in the Austin Chronicle, though the writers were angry, pissed that the Austin they loved was gone. It's nothing now like it was in 1973, and I hate it, they wrote; it's ruined, you've ruined it, and I'm leaving. I remember flocks of such letters in the mid 1990s, flocks that dwindled away, then one day had disappeared entirely. Everyone who couldn't stand griping had left, leaving everyone else behind to gripe and see if they couldn't get up at least one or two more rungs.

As for me, I didn't care; in 1993, Austin seemed like heaven to me. It was relative, of course: I'd just come from a year in rural New Hampshire, living with my parents, doing odd house-sitting gigs, commuting to Boston, and just about dying of isolation and boredom. This after 2 years in Taiwan of high-pressure cultural difference, language learning, and teaching. Austin was warm and had a huge library, plus bookstores, two things I'd missed in Taiwan. The majority of people spoke good English. Plus, Austin gave me a place. Not only a job, but tasks; not only a path, but paths. It gave me venues on which to hang my identity. The university folded me into its bosom, a graduate student who was poor and powerless, true. But you could ride your bike around! The women, oh god, the women were lovely! Lots of places to sit outside and drink cold beer! Parties, oh god, the parties. Nearly every book you'd ever need was there. Occasionally I'd go on long road bike rides to the northeast, to Manor and beyond, where you could find the edge of the city quickly and find yourself in sorghum and cotton fields, as if you'd ridden fast and hard and ended up in Nebraska. Then I got a car and a girlfriend who lived South, which opened up a whole new part of Austin, as if I'd moved to a whole new city ripe for exploring. You could get to all the parts of the city in less than 20 minutes by car then, any time of day. So by 2000 or so I was still high on Austin. People who complained, let them complain, I figured. They were old hippies who couldn't reconcile themselves that the dream of the Age of Aquarius was over and gone. Their disillusion had nothing to do with Austin and everything to do with American history.

Early in 2007, when I started thinking about moving from Austin, and began persuading my wife that it was a good idea, I thought back to those letters to the Chronicle back in 1993 and 94, how those writers felt about the city, and how I feel now compared to all the people showing up for whom this is their Shangri-La, moving as they have from Los Angeles or San Jose or New York. Let 'em have it, I think bitterly. There's a big difference between me and those letter writers, though. They were nostalgic for an Austin of 15 years earlier. Me, I'm nostalgic for Austin of 2005.

I used to live off of Manor Road, on Breeze Terrace, at a time when Hoover's was the big new brash restaurant and what is now El Chile was an empty husk, waiting for the next in a string of to-be failed coffee shops. So when El Chilito went in 5 years later, that was a big deal. At the time I lived in Windsor Park, and El Chilito became the "local" place, even though going there meant driving, and in nothing of a direct fashion. I used to think that the day that Barton Springs closes to swimmers is the day that the heart of Austin dies and I leave. But in 2007, the day that I called El Chilito to place an order and was put on hold for 10 minutes, then drove by and saw a line of people a dozen deep, was the day I reached my personal limit. You think it's going to be a big symbolic thing: Barton Springs closes, the Broken Spoke closes. But no, actually it's very quiet and personal, that limit. Less like a bone breaking than a fingernail.

The writer from Portland (who sports an old Maine name, I notice) didn't threaten to leave the city; her letter becomes a rant about the politics of food more than the politics of place. But it was still amusing to show up in a new city that I couldn't be more thrilled with -- I can ride my bike around! There's a yoga studio a mile away! We walk the dog on the waterfront -- offleash! -- and to see that someone else was mourning, and dealing with, but mainly mourning the evolution of a place. Now I'm less dismissive of people who want to do that. But I mourn the fact that if you want to stay in a place you're going to mourn, mourn, mourn, and that the only way to be free of mourning is to move away.

Monday, November 26, 2007

WP gets more coffee!!

From a credible source: the plaza at Corona & Cameron where The Nomad is slated to open will feature another coffee shop by the name of Java Jones.

Let's hear it for the coffee glut! Now WP needs a real supermarket (sorry, Randall's), a movie theater, and a sushi restaurant, and it just may be possible to never have to drive anywhere.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

How I Found Coffee in my Hood

I tracked coffee shop rumors in Windsor Park for how long? It felt like ages. Sick of waiting, I floated an idea to jumpstart something, and got some people interested. Good for them, good for me, now we're here, still undercaffeinated but a little smarter. In the meantime, a Starbucks opened up and a local place, hallowed be its name, is in the works. So did I get what I wanted? Yes, and no. Yes, because it's coffee, and yes, because it's local. No, because the prevailing attitude was still, Mueller will bring it to us. Look, Mueller is going to be a big fat disappointment and will never live up to its hype. Wipe the mud from your eyes. The ensuing clarity is priceless.

The biggest news, though, is not about the neighborhood but with my own household, which has relocated to Portland, Maine. In other words, my neighborhood isn't your neighborhood any more. We're located in a second story apartment on the eastern end of the peninsula, where we enjoy a beach 300 yards away for off-leash dog walking, a quiet neighborhood, and a Whole Foods that's a reasonable waterfront trail bicycle ride away. And a coffee shop two blocks away. A cluster of fine, affordable restaurants. And a bar with a flat screen tv for the games. The city's walkable. Is the city walkable? In this neighborhood, there's hardly any car traffic -- I check both ways before crossing out of habit, a habit I know I'll soon lose because it's so unnecessary. This morning, a weekday, I walked the dog around 8:00 and only saw one soul preparing to leave for work. Maybe no one works, I'll come to find. But this isn't funny, you know, it's a damn indictment of Austin, and I'm so glad to be here. Who knows -- maybe this city is irrevocably broken. Toxic mold in the nursery schools. Fat, corrupt cops. Incest on the city council. One's plot gland squeezes out extra secretions from the stimulation. But I don't need kickbacks to cops from dog fight organizers to feel disappointed -- merely the thought of paying income tax turns my stomach. But perhaps paying taxes for services I receive will prove not so painful. And perhaps the political news won't be another turn in the rapaciousness of interests. And neither in the cultural news, and the personal news, and the business news.

Why I left Austin, at least for the time being, would require a longer post I someday intend to write, because my disgruntledness can't be plumbed so easily. For the time being, you can have Austin.

Did I mention that I can walk to a coffee shop?

Here's the thing: Portland feels like a place. This is difficult to describe, except perhaps only in comparison, but Austin stopped feeling like a place for me a while ago.

Monday, September 3, 2007

Good News!

Distracted by the excitement surrounding the release of my book, I missed this comment from Miguel, owner of The Nomad, on August 19th:

Good news Coffee Hound, Since my place, The Nomad was not allowed to stay open until 2AM by some neighbors on Corona, I will be selling coffee and opening in the AM for it and shut down at midnight. I have to make up my profit loss somehow, and I figure if there is this much hubbub on a coffee joint then surely people will come drink it, right? Lets hope so. So Windsor park will get their coffee and pastries in the AM and their booze in the PM.

This is good news -- it's the Good News I've been preaching since this blog started. Coffee and pastries in the AM, booze in the PM: just like God promised to Adam and Eve, yessir, the way things should be.


Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Starbucks on Cameron & Corona

Well, maybe it was inevitable: someone passed along the rumor that there's a Starbucks going in at Cameron & Corona. At first I pooh-poohed this: that's not a coffee shop they're building, it's a bar, The Nomad.

Then I thought: Well, there is that old 7-11 across the street.

But if you've been by there recently, you've seen the hole they're digging in the parking lot for a new underground gasoline tank. Since I'm doubtful that Starbucks sell gasoline, I'm going back to discounting this rumor.

But if you have any info to the contrary, pass it on.

Friday, July 13, 2007

A New Blog!

In the works: the Windsor Park Dog Blog!

Just kidding. But thanks, Jill, for the idea.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

You pass it on -- I'll put it up. This isn't so much a rumor as a report: the sign at the Starbuck's is up. Say what you want, it's true, we're getting coffee in Windsor Park.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

New WP Retail Space -- coffee shop possibility?

Bleary eyed, we picked up a few Sunday morning groceries at Randall's and noticed a sign for 5k sq. ft. of retail space going in at the south edge of the parking lot. Has that sign always been there? I can't remember. But it has a phone number on it. Someone should call to see if there are plans for the space and who has them.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Meeting for Coffee, Drinking Beer

A small group of people met last night at Thunderbird Coffee to discuss coffee shop ideas -- and the first thing we noticed was that 3 of the 4 drinks ordered were beer. Can you blame us? They serve Fireman's #4. We chuckled about that.

But the beer also gave shape to the first point of the discussion that followed, which was that whatever the place is, it should also be able to sell beer. Holly, a new mom, recommended that it be a kid-friendly place, given that the baby potluck mafia in WP has swelled to several hundred. Emile and Stacy explained why roasting your own coffee (rather than purchasing it wholesale) is more cost-effective in the long run; Emile is a coffee roaster who currently manages a coffee shop in Westlake, so he had the most experience of all. (He also wants to get back into the roasting game.) Kristin says she noticed two signs in a window at Briarcliff & Westminster by the CVS, one promising fresh donuts, the other new tires. (But no coffee.)

We split up after assigning some small tasks and scheduled another meeting for the same time and day in two weeks.

It doesn't seem that anyone is wedded to cooperative principles philosophically; it's more a practical way to organize a start-up. The whole thing has an outsider business (as in "outsider art") feel to it, which I love as much for its simple faith in entrepreneurship as the absence of any qualms about commerce. Some old professor wrote to the WPNA listserv trying to tar me as anti-business because I was making an argument for local business/brands over national brands; it's impossible to shop anywhere that's not tainted, he wrote. Needless to say, I never said anything about taint and corruption.

I'd like to say that I'm an amateur connoiseur of business models. To prefer the local business over the national corporation is to prefer a certain kind of mechanism, not for any ideological reasons, but for ethical and even aesthetic ones. There's a subtle way in which arguments about capitalism and collective action by people of a certain generation froze during the Cold War, by people whose brains were left behind by glasnost, perestroika, and Clinton's Third Way. Where you were during the dotcom boom plays a part, I think. Before the World Wide Web hit, the greatest minds of my generation were stuck in office jobs, temping, slacking off, playing rock and roll. Without the Web, we, or they, would have stayed crushed under a Baby Boomer hegemony. The Web didn't create entrepreneurship. But it did empower the DIYism of the age.

That has given us -- me -- whatever -- a taste for the business as a thing of beauty, a mechanism or a contraption that shows the influence of the hands that produced it. So the point isn't only that you walk in, put down your money, and somebody hands you a cup of coffee. What also has to be compelling is the story of where that coffee comes from, where you walk in to, and how it came to be.

It's no surprise that everyone at the coffee meeting was under 40.

UPDATE: Let me clarify the point about taint and corruption. I am willing to accept that sizable human and environmental costs are exacted for modern American lifestyles, but that's no reason to throw all commercial activity into the same bin, to denigrate it all. The old professor was saying, it's all tainted, so why differentiate one business from another? Who cares if the coffee is Starbucks or not? I think that's foolish and naive.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Coffee Meeting

An informal meeting has been set to discuss some ideas and ways to move forward.
If you are interested in participating/contributing, please join us:

Monday, June 18
7:00
Thunderbird Coffeehouse

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Coffee Shop Petition

Aide of WP has started a petition to get the corporate HQ of the Speedy Stop at 51st and Berkman to put in a coffee shop in their planned expansion. If you're interested, you can find the petition here. Link
(via the Windsor Park list)

Monday, June 4, 2007

Windsor Park Gets a New Coffee Shop Rumor!

Windsor Park is abuzz with new rumors of the coffee source in Mueller, which will supply all those doctors and nurses, all those Best Buy employees, all those residents of David Weekley homes, and, yes, should they care to venture across 51st, the denizens of Windsor Park.

Will it be Jo's? A new El Chilito, called El Norteño? Epoch East?

No, it will be a Starbuck's.

Friends shopping in one of the new stores heard that Starbuck's will be moving into one of the retail spaces on that side of the development. I've long said, hey, it could be Starbuck's, I don't care, I want coffee in Windsor Park. But I've changed my mind. And not about coffee. After seeing all the other retail crap in Mueller, I began to crave even more retail from that brand we know and love, the Keep Austin Weird brand (oh, what the hell, let's just call it KAW, the KAW brand). But no.

Fortunately, you say, there WILL be a coffee shop in Windsor Park! The Migrant!...No, the Vagrant...What's it going to be called? The Transient?

Oh, yes, the Nomad.

Apart from the name of the place -- which surely will be mistaken for a day labor site -- a commenter reports that it won't, in fact, be a coffee place. It will be a bar.

The search continues, people. Capital, o capital, wherefore art thou?

Friday, April 20, 2007

Nomad Breaks Ground

Drive by the former day labor shop at Corona & Cameron, and you'll notice the windows are boarded up. Something's going on inside, and we know what it is.

Beer Co-op

Check out this story in today's Statesman about the Blackstar Beer Co-op. Could it be a model for a coffee enterprise in Windsor Park? I notice in the comments some people offering to be involved...so let's do something. I'll check in with some principals and schedule something. How does next week work for everybody? Link

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Open Thread

Use this thread to meet and discuss stuff.

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Coming Soon...

Coming soon: a survey on what people would like to see/would support in hang-out joints in 78723.

Watch and learn, Catellus survey designers! This is how we do it in Austin, ya knuckleheads!

Details on The Nomad

I asked Miguel for a full description of what he's got planned for the corner of Corona & Cameron. He described it "a sort of Gingerman meets Club DeVille," with cheese, fruit, bread, coffee, Italian sodas, hot chocolate, aperitifs, and coffee, coffee, coffee. Furniture: "loungy couches, comfortable barstools, eclectic worldly decor and jukebox." Setting: patio and eventually a fireplace outside. Entertainment: monthly foreign movies, with foreign and beer/wine to fit the regions. (I can't wait to see what he serves when he shows "The Fast Runner.") Companions: dogs, kids, friends, partners, family.

"Think home away from home type feel, even more comfortable than a coffee shop in many ways I hope," Miguel wrote. "Let me know what you think."

At the neighborhood planning meeting last week, lots of people knew about Miguel's place already, mainly from the Planning Commission. Yet I also sensed a lot of what I'll call Muellerism: that it doesn't matter what we get north of 51st, because what's going to happen south is going to rock. Well, I don't necessarily believe that's true, which is why I can get behind both Miguel and Jose's projects. Both are ambitious, but if we end up with 50% of what they envision in the next year, that's 100% more than what we'll have at Mueller.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Another Coffee Shop

Jose del Valle and I met at Epoch (where I'd never been before; cool place) the other day to talk about his coffee shop idea. He owns 1/2 acre on the west side of Cameron Road, just north of Clayton Lane, sandwiched between a day care center and the Church of Christ. He's looking to revamp the house on the property and turn the first floor into some coffee shop/restaurant arrangement, perhaps building some hangout space on the back that wouldn't change the overall nature of the space. (There are trees, for instance.)

This property is up for rezoning to general retail in the new neighborhood plan, which is the best zoning category for such a coffee shop. From where I live, this is a bit of a hike, and I don't relish the idea of crossing Cameron, but then that all depends on the destination, doesn't it? And it remains to be seen whether a place between a day care and a church could ever sell beer, but maybe he could sell Christian beer in sippy cups, I don't know.

Next steps? Either getting a co-op together or finding someone with capital to lease and remodel. If you want to get involved, contact Jose at delvalle dot jose at sign gmail dot com.

UPDATE: I altered Jose's email address.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

In depth news

A closer look at Jose Del Valle's place later in the week. All you Epoch fans, he and I are meeting for coffee there....maybe you'll get your Windsor Park Epoch offshoot, after all.

New Mueller Survey

So we should be grateful to Catellus for letting us give input into the retail landscape at Mueller? Well, how about this: you can start by collecting my input accurately.

The survey that was announced the other day will not reflect people's actual preferences, and it forces them to rank items for which no ranking may be necessary. That's a problem.

If you haven't taken the survey yet, let me explain. On one page, you're given a list of types of businesses that you'd like to see at Mueller. A coffeehouse? A drafthouse? An ethnic eatery? A family-style restaurant? Now, I care more about a coffeehouse first (check the name of this blog), and ethnic eateries ranks second, but I care about drafthouses and family-style places just about equally. (All of this critique extends to the rest of the survey; I'm just illustrating with these items.) However, the survey won't let me indicate this preference, which is my actual preference. Instead, I can only indicate one level of preference for each type of business. So I'm forced to create a ranking where I don't hold one. Why should I rank drafthouse over family-style place? That hierarchy doesn't exist in my mind.

Eventually, I just stopped answering questions. How can I know whether I want a yoga club over a sporting goods store? Ahh, maybe it's a thinking exercise. But give me a thinking exercise that's labeled as such; don't call it participatory neighborhood planning. Item over item, survey-taker over survey-taker, what will be generated is an inaccurate picture of the retail that people are interested in.

You may say, it's easy to criticize. What alternative would you propose? Well, a better mechanism would have been to put each item on a Likert scale (e.g., 0=not interested, 5=very interested). I'd bet money that Survey Monkey has this functionality. You say, what if everyone says they're very interested in all of the options? I guess that means you better get cracking providing people the options they want, instead of creating an environment where you can doctor the results with your methodology.

Look, I operate from the perspective that if people's input is actually important, then survey design and other data collection methodologies matter, too. I'm new to the Mueller Redevelopment listserv, and new to getting involved in planning. So can anyone tell me, is there any way to influence the survey methodology? Or is this the way it's always been done?

I sent a note to "Lkunz," who sent the note about the Survey Monkey survey, with this same critique. I'll post here when I hear from him or her about why a Likert scale (or some other design) wasn't chosen.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Owner Interested in Starting Coffee Shop

Jose Del Valle wrote to the Windsor Park listserv about his house at 6008 Cameron, on the west side of the street just north of Clayton. He wrote:

I'm in the process of reconfiguring my house at 6008 Cameron Road -- I'm exploring the idea of a coffee house or something that the neigborhood would really would like to see there. It's on the west side of Cameron (just north of Clayton Lane) it's the two story house with red brick in front. The property sits on 1/2 acre with lots of trees, so there is plenty of potential for a nice neighborhood hangout. I would be open to potential partnerships --- I'm much more interested in renting the structure then actually running /operating it myself.
I've invited Jose to give me a fuller account of what he's planning. Maybe we can arrange a full meeting or something, so that he knows what people in the neighborhood want/need and how they're willing to help. Last week a commenter suggested a cooperative model, which is interesting. A sort of Wheatsville of coffee. Anyone out there have any coop organizing experience?

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Why not to rely on Mueller

Thanks to Kate from the Windsor Park listserv, who send this article from San Fran about a New Urbanist community where the much-touted services never arrived:

At first glance, a trip to the New Urbanist community taking shape on Hercules' bayfront is reminiscent of the neighborhood depicted in the Jim Carrey movie "The Truman Show." Each Craftsman, Victorian and Italianate home couldn't be more perfect, glistening in an array of tasteful pastels.

But at least Carrey's character, trapped in a seemingly idyllic seaside community, could walk to the local cafe for a cup of coffee. Three years after moving into the Promenade section of Hercules' New Urbanist Waterfront Redevelopment District west of Interstate 80, residents still have to drive or take a long walk for items as mundane as a cup of coffee. The bustling just-walk-to-it village, touted as a model of the New Urbanist movement, has yet to materialize.

Read the whole thing here.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Get in Touch

Miguel, we should be in touch. Shoot me an email when you get a chance.

(Cryptic, huh?)

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Rumors of Nomads

I had heard of Miguel's plan as a rumor first, and I need to credit my friend Jill for passing it along. And though I had threatened to start this blog a year ago, it was Jill's comment on Saturday night that sprung a leak in my procrastination. Thanks, Jill!

If you read the comment thread, it sounds like The Nomad is full steam ahead, with coffee, pastries, and breakfast tacos sooner rather than later. A big ol' Valentine for Windsor Park.

If anyone has other rumors of coffee shops, feel free to post them or pass them along.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Windsor Park Gets...A Bar

Well, I'm glad that people are making major announcements on Rumors of Grounds. From the comments, "miguel" writes this:

OK, heres a "rumor" that happens to be true. I am opening a bar in WP and it will be at the location of the day labor place on Corona. We will serve Coffee and some food but we will only open at five-at first. We plan to expand as time goes on to be able to cater to our AM neighbors in a few months after we open, which hopefully if all goes well should be in July. We will have wifi, foreign movies scheduled and an eclectic choice of beer wine and liquors from around the world. Please visit The Nomad when it arrives.

That's very exciting! We wish Miguel lots of luck, and we'll definitely check out The Nomad. But does it mean this blog should now shut down? That coffee shop activism is irrelevant out of the gate? Not at all! This is a coffee shop rumor blog, and Miguel brings true rumors of...a bar.

Better Now Than Never

"Windsor Park is a great neighborhood," people told us when my wife and I were considering buying a house here 2.5 years ago, "but there's just one problem with it."

"What's that?" we asked.

"There's no coffee shop," they said.

There wasn't a coffee shop then, and now, 2.5 years later, there still isn't one. What there have been are rumors. Rumors of coffee. And since we live in WP now, we hear rumors all the time.

"Oh, didn't you hear? Somebody's going to turn the Jack Brown cleaners into a coffee shop."

"I heard that somebody's mother-in-law, who lives out of the country, is going to come and open a coffee shop somewhere."

"I heard that two lesbians are going to open a coffee shop where Centennial Liquors used to be...oh, it's already a plumbing supply place?"

Oddly enough, one of the rumors turned out to be true. Well, sort of true. But things didn't work out. And since that fell through, the rumors have picked up again.

I'm going to use this blog to relate all the coffee shop rumors and rants that I hear. I may even include reviews on places I visit in Austin. Flightpath. Quack's. Pacha (where there's a $5 minimum on credit cards, which sucks). Cafe Mundi. Azul. Clementine. El Chilito. Thunderbird. Jo's. In other words, little independently owned businesses that some forward-thinking person carved out of the urban sludge, who saw value in the valueless. I may even post here on conversations with owners & entrepreneurs about what's stopping them from moving into Windsor Park.

One more thing: I don't particularly care what's going to open over at Mueller someday, and I don't care that we'll eventually get a coffee shop.

1) We all know that it's going to be Starbucks at Mueller, and that's fine. But I want something else, a place that sells coffee and paletas, or coffee and tacos, or coffee and panini, and Starbucks doesn't do any of those. Yes, "Austin as weird" has become a bit of a brand name itself, but I like the brand, and I'm loyal to it.

2) We all know that's years away. So come on. Put a coffee shop where the people already live.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Launch

Welcome to the Windsor Park Coffee Shop Rumor blog, where I'll post on each new version of each new rumor I hear about efforts to build a coffee shop to serve the Windsor Park neighborhood. (Yes, it's that frequent that I need a blog.) This is also ground zero for the coffee activist movement that is going to convince an Austin entrepreneur to open a coffee shop around here, independent of the Mueller development. Barring that, it will be the gathering place for the people who will decide to take matters into their own hands. I'll open a coffee shop in my own damn living room if I have to...but we're not at that point yet, folks.