rumors of grounds

Join Me

2011-10-30T11:24:00.000-07:00

If you're here because you (like me) are a fan of coffee and searched out some coffee-related content, maybe you could head on over to the website of my new book, Babel No More, which comes out in January. It's a book about the science that explains hyperpolyglottism, or the learning and speaking of many languages, as well as the science that explains why hyperpolyglottism shouldn't actually exist. And it's a book about my search for hyperpolyglots, all over the world, in the past, and in the present. Everyone speaks at least one language. And many people (even bilinguals) have undertaken learning additional languages, so they know the time, energy, and brain power that's required to this. This book is about the people for whom this comes so easily, a language barrier is another word for an opportunity to learn more.

Follow me on Twitter here.

the end of anonymity

2009-12-04T08:09:00.000-08:00

A couple posts down (very close in textual space, very distant in time), I talked about a shift away from the First Amendment as a workable principle for governing behavior on listservs (especially the WP list) and other online communities. Today I see that a San Diego paper has ended anonymous commenting on its articles, and is arguing that it's not a freedom of speech issue:

This is a forum we're choosing to host and these are the rules we're asking people to abide by.

This isn't the first move in this direction I've witnessed since I made my earlier comments. After the Fort Hood shooting, the Austin American Statesman closed off commenting on all related articles, because of the regular abuse of the posting rules. People just couldn't get it.

The question is, do these go counter to the principles of the self-regulation of the commons that economist Elinor Ostrom just won the Nobel in Economics for? Let's assume that commenting space is a kind of commons -- it's certainly a kind of attention commons. In fact, it looks like Ostrom's design principles for stable local common pool resources would be good principles for managing comment spaces in online publications:

Clearly defined boundaries (effective exclusion of external unentitled parties);
Rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common resources are adapted to local conditions;
Collective-choice arrangements allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process;
Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators;
There is a scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules;
Mechanisms of conflict resolution are cheap and of easy access;
The self-determination of the community is recognized by higher-level authorities;
In the case of larger common-pool resources: organization in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs at the base level.

Administration by First Amendment has only ended up polluting the commons. As the editors of the Voice of San Diego wrote,

Unfortunately, many of the conversations that take place underneath the articles on news websites devolve into name-calling, racist or sexist remarks, and other vulgarities. That's in no small part because of the veil provided by anonymity and a lack of moderating by news organizations.

Discussion of this issue too often devolves into talk about Supreme Court protection for anonymous speech and the necessity of anonymous speech for a democracy. I have a seed of an idea I want to think about more, but the discussion should actually be about how to protect the commons from 1) abusers and 2) private control. Are newspapers that impose standards on comments areas invoking their private control in ways that could be self-serving? Or are they actually acting in ways that are consistent with Ostrom's principles and can be sustained over time?

Hyperlocal media

2009-04-22T10:20:00.000-07:00

Rumors of Grounds was a -- is a -- was a -- experiment in hyperlocal journalism. To see a list of other hyperlocal projects that recently won seed funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, go here. One of the winning projects is from Austin:

The Austin Bulldog - A longtime Austin journalist, founder of a monthly magazine and political newsletter, will create a daily-updated Web site for public-interest and investigative reporting, using both professional journalists and input from citizens. The site will also synthesize outside news stories in addition to posting original reporting and commentary. Readers will be encouraged to submit tips and their own commentary.

I wonder what the web site is going to call itself; go to austinbulldog.com, and you get bulldogs.

Anyone have any rumors about the Austin Bulldog, the media outlet?

UPDATE: Oh, here it is: http://theaustinbulldog.org/ You gotta optimize your site for search, y'all.

Hector is Gone

2009-03-04T17:53:00.001-08:00

My interview with Mark Boyden will be posted soon, but one thing he told me is that Hector unsubscribed from the list (though he might have resubscribed under a different name).

More Thoughts

2009-03-01T12:07:00.000-08:00

These are some additional thoughts after my post yesterday, which I drafted as a response to a note to the listserv and just mailed privately. When I stand back, the vigor of my interest in this situation makes me wonder if I'm losing the ability to discern tempests in teapots from actual storms. On the other hand, I'm genuinely interested in the issue of community stewardship and curious about the forms of leadership that will have to emerge in a new era of local and hyperlocal society, if I've discerned correctly the real storm a-brewin'.

1. Let's call the traditional libertarian solution to online spats the "suck it up and delete" model. Among its other faults, this model dismisses the substance of people's grievances, and automatically judges any criticism as intolerance or an attempt at censorship. In the case of Hector and the Spammers, we see how the "suck it up and delete" model -- as well as a lack of transparency on the part of the moderator -- put people in the position where they had to act as vigilantes. I don't think vigilantism is desirable. I'm not saying that one should always opt out of the system for adjudicating grievances. I'm saying, this system is way too short, and people run out of options way too fast, for it to be satisfying. Or sustainable. When people become vigilantes, it's time to examine the system.

2. We should not insulate ourselves in our communities, either face to face or online/virtual, and we should absolutely not pretend that there aren't differences, either political and personal. And I agree that we are enriched by different opinions and voices, and I acknowledge that dissent is an American tradition worth preserving at all costs.

That said, there's a richer array of community-based, collaborative, and shared solutions to trolls and provocateurs than what the "suck it up and delete" approach offers. These balance principles with actual practice, and I think are more defensible and sustainable.

Here's an example: Create an off-list blog where moderators quarantine questionable posts (not posters), which will not be released until a certain reasonable threshold of list members vote to remove it. This gives you 1) universal access to questionable posts and 2) community involvement in maintaining certain standards while you 3) preserve respect for the First Amendment, the value of dissent and diversity, and the importance of public discourse and 4) retain the symbolic value of posting to the entire list as achievable and potentially available to everyone. Those are the public values you want to preserve. Additionally, the process would be entirely transparent: you always see the decisions that your moderator is making, in real time.

On the individual/private side, this solution means that 1) any individual doesn't end up with a polluted inbox (by an admittedly human definition of "pollution," but one that is dynamic, transparently created, and under discussion) and 2) continues to have access to diversity opinions, because she can openly read the quarantine. If any individual believes that the quarantined post deserves the symbolic privilege of being posted, then she can vote for its release and lobby friends and family to vote for it as well. In this way, you create a social feedback system in which subjective decisions are checked broadly against collective values, and in which the decisions at all levels are visible to everyone in the decision-making chain. It also creates two layers of moderation. At the end of the day, the real moderators would be the online community itself.

There's value for the poster, too: 1) it means that posts, not posters, are flagged for consideration; 2) it means that a poster can continue to argue for the legitimacy of one's ideas, and give the community access to those arguments; and 3) it means that one can learn what is broadly permissible and what isn't in the spectrum of human discourse.

Most of this could be automatized; the only human decision would be by the moderator, who would be putting items in the quarantine blog.

Another example: Create a panel of moderators who rotate responsibilities on a regular basis. Or create a blog for the moderator to discuss moderation decisions/situations, with comments enabled for input/discussion.

3. If you're interested in a grand philosophical flourish of an ending, read on; otherwise skip.

I'm not a legal scholar, but I am invoking my American right to propound on legal and cultural matters with an amateur's enthusiasm that shouldn't be mistaken for as a claim to authority:

I think it's erroneous to immediately and automatically equate online community stewardship with censorship, just as it's a logical fallacy to say that we must meet the challenge of tolerance in our neighborhood listservs because someday we'll have to stomach Nazi parades in the streets. There are very fine tissues of experience, tradition, and culture between the two poles of tolerance and censorship, and discussing what is there and, importantly, how to enact and live it shouldn't just be task for lawyers and the legal-minded. There's a culture of practice which -- sometimes -- overlaps with the culture of law. (Even the culture of "law" doesn't always overlap with the law.) We all live between these two cultures. Some of us bridge the distance between culture and law by using values that are spiritual, religious, or scriptural. Some of us have other cultural values to bear. I don't know what sort of term to use for how I do it, except to say that I rely on my humanistic training and what little I know about the principles of user-centered design. We may never create the perfect utopia, but we can at least accept that we are the creators of the systems we inhabit, not their servants, and the best system is the one that serves the most creators, as inclusively and sustainably as possible.

Now back to your regular programming.

Trolls on Top

2009-02-27T13:10:00.000-08:00

The faux-ster, Hector, who once aimed his hectoring at The Nomad, has now brought down Mark Boyden, moderator of the Windsor Park Neighborhood Association listserv. Today Mark tendered his resignation from the position, which he's held since 2002.

I had meant to write about this remarkable turn of events earlier, but I'll recap here: Hector recently goaded a couple female WPNA readers into spamming him in retaliation for his sarcastic remarks to the listserv. Then they admitted, to the list, that they'd spammed him, and they forwarded a private email from Hector to the public forum - thereby disseminating an obscenity that Hector had used. The upshot: bad etiquette was compounded by stupidity and, against the odds, succeeded at making Hector blameless, perhaps for the first time.

And Mark is taking the hit. As he wrote in his letter, "I have not been able to help good people not succumb to baiting and help them to not violate the guidelines themselves by promoting and engaging in abusive behavior themselves -- actions that have helped in other situations and on other lists. In short, I have failed as your moderator on this one list."

I like Mark, who is a selfless, principled person who cares for the neighborhood and believes in public service. As I wrote to him in a private email earlier this year:

I don't envy the decisions you have to make as a moderator, on behalf of neighborhood comity, and I appreciate the time you spend as an unpaid volunteer keeping WP patched together virtually. Your notes of encouragement are inspiring, as well. I like hearing you on the radio, too.

However, I agree that his time as an effective moderator is over, and I'm not necessarily sad to see him go (though who knows who WP will get as a replacement). It's not that he kept good people from doing bad things. His first and biggest error was defending Hector's right to free speech, even as the rumors rose that "Hector" is a pseudonym. Though Mark moderated Hector's comments, Hector was able to write things in a way that made them acceptable according to the letter of the law but, by violating the spirit, polluted the listserv. It seems clear that any policy that allows people to follow the letter of the law but violate its spirit needs some revision.

What is that policy?

Mark is an Internet veteran, back from the days where online forums were considered public spaces that could be governed through the First Amendment: anyone could say anything they wanted, as long as it wasn't obscene, violent, or discriminatory. Those veterans were libertarians, vocal and fierce and understandably so: the Internet was the last wild open space, and they wanted to protect its wildness and openness.

Since then there's been a shift. We've become more communitarian and less libertarian about our Internet communities. Friendster, Facebook, Myspace are all clear sorts of communities, but so are web forums, email listservs, comment threads in newspapers and articles: in one way or another, they're hyperlocal virtual minisocieties that are shaped by rules that may or may not be mirrored in a face-to-face community and that may or may not be shared by the society at large.

Some might say this is the result of the commercialization of the Web: the wild open Web became real estate. It may, as Mark writes in his note, result from how increasingly prone Americans are to "devilize" those with different ideas.

Whatever the cause, these communities still have to be governed, and though the First Amendment principles are noble, they're not effective in these social spaces if they're applied too mechanistically. It's assumed that once a system is established, its workings must never be interrupted. In fact, humans intervene in the system all the time, and the principles are more often situationally applied. Invoking the First Amendment allows a moderator to act according to what's been called "procedural objectivity," which will be familiar to anyone who's dealt with a bureaucracy. "Those are the rules, gotta follow the rules," the bureaucrat says, which directs your ire not at him but at the system. In actual fact, the rules aren't universally, objectively invoked, and moderators make subjective decisions all the time. So do bureaucrats.

Free speech and property rights may be crucial for protecting democracy, but they're not very good principles for stewarding community. While these online communities are common spaces, they should still be shaped and curated -- the community can decide what sort of ethos and atmosphere it wants to live in, and what sort of values they want to encourage and discourage. The First Amendment is a blunt tool. In the Internet veteran's view, any attempt to shape or curate amounts to censorship, but it's possible to engineer interactions and spaces for interaction such that choice and freedom are retained while shaping the choices that someone makes. This is called paternalistic libertarianism and was laid out in the recent book, Nudge.

Mark, like many moderators, used to advocate that people respond to WP assholes by deleting or filtering emails from their inbox. But I've never liked this view. For one thing, my inbox is an extension of my private space, and I shouldn't have to tolerate invasions or pollutions. Now, the conception of inbox = private space may be faulty, but it's the default conception. In those terms, I should be able to keep assholes out of my house, which shouldn't be their last free haven.

For another thing, online communities should be able to work like real world communities do, where people who are obnoxious can be shunned. In dog parks, aggressive dogs and their owners can be shamed. In these spaces, even in public spaces, you can rid a space of trolls, or marginalize them so much that they either stop what they're doing or go elsewhere. This can be done peaceably and nonviolently. It's done all the time.

Among its many attributes, a good community has a transparent, shared and effective mechanism for neutralizing its trolls. My immediate reaction is that Mark could have neutralized the Hector troll but didn't, and that it's appropriate for him to step down. There's probably more to this story, which I'll pursue as time permits, but for right now, this feels right.

If I were moderator, these are some tools I'd use to neutralize trolls:

1. Block the message, not the person. A certain number of complaints from users should be enough to flag a troll's posts, so that that person gets moderated; they may be able to earn the right to post again unmoderated.

2. Create a volunteer editorial corps to divide the moderation duties.

3. Encourage face to face meetings between trolls and their targets, perhaps even requiring those meetings, once a disagreement has broken out.

4. Create a face-to-face meeting as a requirement for joining the listserv. Avatars like Hector can't be granted the same rights as real people, because only real people have a right of free speech. That's the last problem with the First Amendment: its defense can blind you to other problems.

Coffee Psalm 1:1-9

2009-01-25T08:47:00.000-08:00

1:1 And the Lord COFFEE said unto them:
Long have thou waited, coffee hounds,
thou undercaffeinated wretches, my people;

1:2 Long have thou watched other neighborhoods elevated above thee,
proud that they have a coffee shop to walk to
and eat a vegan empanada if they want.

1:3 Now, thy patience has been rewarded;
thy faith has been rewarded;
and thy desires have been bestowed with treasures
because thou hast both a bar and a coffee shop.

1:4 Arise, thou coffee hounds, from thy misery, and cast off thy shackles;
Lo, the Corona Cafe opens,
On Monday January 26th,
and the first coffee will be poured at 7 am,
so thou must go to the coffee shop, the land of milk and honey,
and afterwards if thou desirest thou can get a tattoo
or get thy nails done.

1:5 And the coffee is hot and strong
and peeleth the sleep from thy eyes;
and the espresso is a tonic to the soul,
and affordable.

1:6 And the Lord COFFEE said:
Do not take the coffee shop for granted,
for it exists by thy goodness and for thy pleasure;
and speak no false words against it, such as
searching police records for crimes that occurred
before the shop had opened;
and do not hide behind false identities
or poison the email inboxes of thy neighbors.

1:7 And remember that the hope of Mueller
is a false hope;
and keep no false hopes before thee;

1:8 And lo, the fast food restaurants, the check-cashing joints,
the car washes: these will flee from Cameron Road,
and trees and gardens will overgrow the asphalt and replace it
with a minimum of city construction crews digging it up.

1:9 Other neighborhoods will wail and gnash their teeth
at the patheticness of their vegan empanadas,
Thy property values will increaseth;
Thy flocks multiply beyond measure;
And thou willest live with the clarity bestowest by COFFEE.

Grist for the Mill

2009-01-04T19:32:00.001-08:00

Rumors of Grounds will inaugurate 2009 by moving on from coffee and cracking open a new nest of testy rumors. "You make a brave show, but in fight you are sadly wanting. A runaway like yourself has no claim to so great a reputation."

Corona Cafe Open Date Update (with photos)

2009-01-02T09:03:00.000-08:00

Brandon writes:

It's safe to say that we'll be opening the third or fourth week of Jan. We have a plumbing, health and fire inspection to pass so our schedule has been a little open. We have placed an ad in January's WPNA newsletter and will be announcing our official date a week before opening.

For updates, check out www.coronacafeaustin.com or http://www.myspace.com/coronacafeaustin.

Corona Cafe Interview!

2009-01-01T10:26:00.003-08:00

Brandon Gonzalez and his wife, Juliana, took time from prepping the new Corona Cafe to answer some questions from Coffee Hound:

1. What will be available at Corona Cafe to drink and eat?

Corona Cafe will offer coffee, espresso and espresso drinks, tea, bottled beverages (non-alcoholic) and food from local vendors. The Green Cart will provide our sandwiches and wraps, including several vegan and veggie options. We'll also carry empanadas and sliced pizza from La Boca bakery, just east of us by a mile and a half. Breakfast pastries will also be available.

2. How long has Corona Cafe been in the works, and where did the idea come from?

Juliana and I dreamed up Corona Cafe this past April, during happy hour at the Nomad. We have always talked about opening up our own business and all signs pointed to this location.

3. Do you live in Windsor Park? And if so, how long have you been here?

Juliana and I live just east of Windsor Park in Pecan Springs. Juliana and I have lived in Austin since 2001.

4. Have you ever run or owned a coffee shop or restaurant before?

Corona Cafe is our first coffee shop.

5. A lot of people have talked for a long, long time about how WP needs a coffee shop -- do you feel any pressure?

Corona Cafe is looking forward to being another business in the neighborhood where neighbors can get together and socialize. Right now, folks in the 78723 travel over two miles to the nearest locally owned coffee shop.

6. Is this a sole effort by you and your wife, or does Corona Cafe have other investors/owners?

Juliana and I are the sole owners of Corona Cafe. We received a small business loan to finance the start up, and have lots of support from talented friends and neighbors.

7. What's your favorite coffee drink?

Brandon's favorite drink is an Americano with a little cream. Juliana just drinks "regular coffee" but likes the occasional mocha.

So here's your long-awaited coffee shop, Windsor Park: support, partake, and enjoy.

Even before we moved to WP in 2004, people said it was a cool neighborhood, with just one problem: there wasn't a coffee shop. So apart from the fact that WP is now a cool neighborhood with a coffee shop, this is a significant moment. Why? Let's review:

One: If you have any complaints about the Nomad, you should note that this coffee shop idea sprouted at a bar--if Brandon & Juliana didn't have the Nomad to go to, you might not be getting your coffee this soon.

Two: The Nomad is anchoring new local business development -- and doing it in a way that Mueller hasn't (and if the recession continues, probably never well). It's a triumph for local business all around. There's just no reason to accept the argument that "WP doesn't need to build it, because Mueller will have it." Sure, Mueller may get this or that -- just in time for your kids, not you, to enjoy them.

Three: Note that Brandon & Juliana successfully got a small business loan, which means that someone recognized the good business possibilities on WP's side of the highway, which means that the signs may be good for other business investment over here.

Four: This effort combines both local capital + community, not just capital, and not just community. Call me a Clinton-era Third Wayista, but that seems like a winning combination, at least in this instance. So much of the bad development news in Austin over the last couple years has demonstrated the complete domination of community by capital (e.g., Las Manitas, the Domain, the Broken Spoke) and the refusal by community to admit the usefulness of capital (e.g., complaints about gentrification). Let's not just wish Corona Cafe a happy stay, let's make it happy.

Five: Maybe it's time to close down this blog -- what rumors will I track? Maybe that bakery rumor...

Congratulations, Windsor Park

2008-12-30T17:18:00.001-08:00

This from the comments:

Corona Cafe will be opening in mid-January just three doors down from Nomad at 1215-B Corona Dr. We'll be open early mornings (7am-7pm). Looking forward to it!

I'll reserve commentary for later, but I will say this: Congratulations, WP. You're growing up. (If you're the Corona Cafe owner/s and would like to do a little interview for posting here, get in touch at michaelerard except with a dot after michael and the at sign plus gmailcom with a dot after gmail).

Corona Coffee

2008-12-12T20:22:00.000-08:00

It appears to be true.

WP Gets a Coffee Shop!

2008-12-03T13:50:00.000-08:00

Well-peeled neighborhood eyes spy a sign next to the tattoo parlor, "Corona Coffee."

Can someone write in with details?

Posting Rules on WPNA List

2008-11-26T16:22:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned earlier, I'm on an extended mental health break from the Windsor Park list, so I don't know what's been posted about the Nomad. But it sounds as if posts making unsubstantiated claims about illegal activity are making it on to the listserv. What's the justification for that?

Miguel's Post

2008-11-25T05:40:00.000-08:00

This is Miguel's original post, with some redactions that he approved:

The following was supposed to be a post on the Yahoo Windsor Park groups page but it was deemed to not follow the guidelines so here it is.

OK, I've had enough. As the owner of Nomad Bar, I have seen everyone's complaints and gripes about it on here, and have been OK with it, as it is their opinion and I respect that. But when someone flat out lies and makes false accusations that can hurt my business, I have to step in. I am at Nomad everyday, am very proud of my business, care for it and for the neighborhood very much, and I can guarantee you that the police have been there only twice in relation to Nomad. They showed up because I called them. For problems I was trying to fix, problems that were there BEFORE I went into business. Everyone who has griped seems to have forgotten that there was a DAY LABOR office and an unofficial HOMELESS CAMP there before I opened. And you complain that The Best Neighborhood Bar as voted by the readers of the Austin Chronicle, is there, instead of that? Really?

The list of violations that Hector Jimenez lists under NOMAD BAR LLC is completely misleading and is a blatant attempt at hurting a place he himself has said he has not been in at night. These things did not happen there and I find it a bit disturbing that this person can post such obvious lies that people are believing on this board, and not get so much as a slap on the wrist, but when someone states the obvious about this disturbed man, the guidelines immediately pop up. And I know I will probably get the guidelines popping up after this e-mail, but maybe the guidelines should be changed to protect against blatant libel.

I have seen this guy's posts go from completely ignorant to downright insulting and I tell you, enough is enough.

Nomad Bar is going on record to say that Hector Jimenez is not welcome in Nomad bar. And should this man show up, you can guarantee, I will take care of it by asking him to leave and if he doesn't, I will be contacting the authorities to keep our neighborhood, my staff, and the Nomad, SAFE, as I always have.

I would also like to point out that Los Tequileros is zoned incorrectly and thus illegally, so it has no business being there. It is insulting and unfair to equate a business that legally was given the WPNA go-ahead and was zoned properly, with Los Tequileros.

- MJ

light's on

2008-11-24T17:26:00.001-08:00

Yes, I've been guilty of absentee blogging, and because I never thought anyone would be that interested in my little mirror on Windsor Park, I never moderated the comments. No more. Maybe there should be a conversation about the posting rules on the WP list, but I can't have my real estate become a place where posts that were unacceptable somewhere else came to live. Unless I make them, I should add.

So I dumped the post that the WP list referred you to today.

But as I continue to be a fan of The Nomad, and as I'm baffled by this Hector's hectors, I'm going to post an edited version of Miguel's comment, pending his approval. If you'd like to comment on this post, feel free. Comments will be moderated, though. I don't have time to adjudicate truth, truthiness, or falsity, but be sarcastic if you got it, but keep it clean and neighborly.

I might also add that last spring I left the WP listserv, and my mental health improved 4,000%. You might try it. It's much, much cheaper than leaving town, but its uncluttering of the mind is priceless.

If Rumors of Grounds has been silent, it's because I don't have any coffee rumors to report.

Statesman Endorses Obama

2008-10-19T07:59:00.000-07:00

Oh my. And I thought this paper was red, red like lipstick, red like angry faces, red like the called for blood of lambs. Good for them.

The Brand is Back! (Is it Back?)

2008-09-03T19:25:00.001-07:00

Tonight, Wednesday, the Statesman website goes front page with the GOP Convention. First time that I've seen with national political coverage on the front. There's a photo from the convention, and the headline: "Selby: GOP Convention marked by distractions." So it's not exactly triumphant.

My local paper sez, "Republican National Convention."

My Local Paper, Day 3

2008-09-02T06:01:00.000-07:00

Either my local paper just prefers to put national political news on the website (the photo today is of Laura Bush standing behind Cindy McCain; the headline simply says, "Republican National Convention"), or the whole GOP thing is such an embarrassment, the Austin American Statesman has decided that the story line won't sell newspapers or keep eyeballs, so it's best to avoid it altogether.

My Local Paper

2008-08-29T06:12:00.000-07:00

And again today. My local paper's website has a big photo of Obama with the headline, "Election 2008: Obama's Historic Speech."

Your paper's website says, "Stony Point Hangs 58 on Alamo Heights." The first mention of Obama is on the right column, 11 links down. That's right, 11 LINKS DOWN. It merely says, "Obama accepts party's nomination."

I wonder what the Austin American Statesman will run on November 5.

It's making me all nostalgic for the Portland Press Herald already.

The Rules of Coffee Rumors

2008-08-28T13:18:00.000-07:00

The first rule of coffee rumors is, don't believe the coffee rumors.

The second rule of coffee rumors is, if you really want the rumors to become reality, you should make them come true yourself.

There seems to be a bit of a backlash brewing in the WP about The Nomad, in which people feel cheated for the coffee shop they never got, and resent The Nomad for being a bar. I know I was an advocate for a coffee shop, but I'll take a bar, and I'll definitely take The Nomad, because even if it's not a coffee shop, it's going to improve the overall environment in the WP so much that you will, eventually, get a coffee shop. As I wrote in my review (which you can see in an earlier post), that place is going to be an economic and aesthetic anchor for what happens on OUR side of 51st.

It's not easy, though. Back in the early days of my rumor-mongering, I got serious about the second rule of coffee rumors. I found out that despite the positive signs of a thriving neighborhood of owners (not renters) of a certain socioeconomic class, Windsor Park is still considered a risky place for restaurant investment. Until somebody solves that problem, no coffee shop. I don't know what choices Miguel had to make to open The Nomad, but I imagine they were about the business, and selling alcohol has higher profit margins than coffee. I also believed him when he said he wanted to do coffee eventually. If he doesn't, that's okay. Why?

Because I don't insist on pinning ALL of my hopes and dreams on one place and one guy. It's like pinning all your hopes and dreams on one airport re-development project. It doesn't make sense. You will be disappointed. There will be financial hiccups, back-room deals, personal fallings-out, none of which you can control. (UPDATED NOTE: I'm not saying that any of those were reasons behind The Nomad not having coffee early in the morning.) At a certain point, any planner's job is simply to keep the project from looking like a train wreck.

Here's the thing: the person who's smart and ballsy enough to open a coffee shop for real is going to point to The Nomad as an example of how a new food-related business (that's not selling paletas or fried chicken) can succeed in the neighborhood. That's why you want The Nomad there.

In the meantime, stop breaking the rules of coffee rumors.

Your Local Paper

2008-08-28T06:51:00.000-07:00

Does the website for your local paper feature today a big photo of some unknown model who had her big break on some TV show, relegating any mention of the Democratic convention to a link in a side column?

My local paper doesn't: the website has a big photo of Obama and Biden.

Even by local standards, that's the more important news. For as much as Travis County is said to be a blue county in a sea of red, the Austin American Statesman sure does craft its coverage to that sea of red. I predict they'll endorse John McCain, come endorsement time. Or they'll bow out of making an endorsement at all, with some foolish argument that didn't keep them from endorsing primary candidates (and they endorsed McCain, then, too, remember).

photo

2008-08-27T17:07:00.000-07:00

The view from the end of my street:

Broken Spoke NOT Sold

2008-08-27T05:53:00.000-07:00

Today's AAS reports that Ardent Residential, a developer, has backed away from plans to build condos and retail around the Broken Spoke. Ardent says it's because they have too much work; the real estate facts (on the literal ground) say something else: there's an oversupply of apartments, which is pushing rents down.

Won't someone write a country song about the demise of the ol' honkytonk, where grandpa met grandma, where pa's roving eye got him in trouble, where little sister learned to fiddle, and where I met you?

But I'm less interested in the fate of the Spoke per se than in signs that the real estate slowdown will affect the Mueller development. I had long predicted that a downturn would leave us with acres of big box parking lot, a few houses, and no local businesses -- far from the inner city developed community Shangri-La that everyone expected, and which depended on an ocean of cheap money. Maybe all the money is already in the pipe for those houses. But it doesn't look good for local places to be able to move in, not in this climate. I could be wrong -- I haven't been back since June -- but it'll be interesting to see. Don't get me wrong: I want Mueller to be cool.

Omnivore's 100

2008-08-22T07:09:00.000-07:00

A list of foods that every omnivore should (arguably) eat at least once. What I've eaten is in bold. (Note: I don't know whose list it is; anybody else's list could be very different.)

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Leaving, and leaving

2008-08-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

Going out of town for two weeks, I shut off my Windsor Park list subscription, and boy, did my life become peaceful, my thoughts untroubled, my heart limpid as a tidal pool. So I'm going to remain unsubscribed and let the shriekers shriek. That means that, unless someone forwards it to the list, the essay I'm going to post -- a piece that just appeared in the Texas Observer about our move to Maine -- will be read by only a dozen pairs of eyeballs, which is just as well.

The piece begins like this:

For the eight months that we’ve lived in Portland, Maine, casual conversations have leaned a lot on the preposition “from.” As in, “Where are you from?”
We’re from Texas, my wife and I reply.

“Where’d you move from?”

From Austin, we say—though on the mental maps of Mainers, it sometimes seems there are only two places, Maine and not-Maine. Texans, New Jerseyeans, Samoans: We’re practically the same, because we’re not from Maine.

“Oh, you’re from away,” people say, offering that newcomers may bear the stigma of that condition for at least two generations. “Wait for summer,” they say. “You’ll love the summers.” We did, and we do.

Along these same lines, “because” has become a frequently employed conjunction, as it introduces a lot of jokey answers to the question, “Why did you move to Maine?” Because I wanted more fleece in my life. Because I look great in long johns. Because I wanted to pay state income tax.
The real answer requires pulling more rope off the spool...

It ends like this:

Austin is home. Austin is still home. It’s always been an island of possibility in the middle of a forbiddingly foreclosed sea. That’s why people go there, and that’s probably why it’s so difficult to leave. But I’m discovering an underappreciated fact about islands, and about Austin: They’re great places to be from.

The full piece, in its glory, is here.

The Nomad -- a review

2008-07-08T16:30:00.000-07:00

A much belated post about the The Nomad, which we visited with friends on our brief but enjoyable trip to Austin about a month ago. I remember watching that site at the end of the strip mall for progress all last summer, not really believing it would ever happen, and if it did, that it would feel fake or out of place. Never having entered the space, I wondered if it was going to be too small.

You who live near The Nomad already knew that Miguel has pulled off something rare. It's not small, nor dark, nor fancy. It's an expansive space with interesting nooks and corners; lots of different things can happen there, and you won't necessarily see, sitting in one place, what they are. I like my bars to offer mystery. I also admired the diversity of seating (benches, stools, reclining chairs), which seemed deliberately designed, but Miguel swore it was happenstance.

I wish I had more time there, to try his food and more drinks. Main thing is, he has Fireman's #4 on tap, a beer I'm enthusiastic about, especially when it's hot. But a bar is not only about what you put in your body, it's what you put your body in. The Nomad feels continuous with the rest of the neighborhood's 50's ranch-style feel, what an artist friend once complimented as "trickle-down modernism." You go to other places on Cameron Road, and you feel as if you're somewhere else, at the mouth of a road to some hellhole that seems less like Austin and more like, say, Matamoros. But the Nomad is actually the neighborhood reaching out to Cameron Road, not retreating from it. Here's hoping that the Nomad might make for a stylistic anchor for that stretch of road, much as Joe's and the Hotel San Jose became the stylistic pivots around which everything else on South Congress evolved.

You're lucky, if you live in Windsor Park and can have a drink there. It's a sign of light and life and things done right and offered in the right spirit. (Los Tequileros? Not so much.) And, if what I heard that night is true, that there will be a drive-thru coffee place at the other end of the strip, then that corner is going to be very important for a lot of people.

I admit

2008-05-30T08:03:00.001-07:00

I admit it: I prefer listening to KUT than to the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, not for the NPR/news/talk stuff, but because the music is way, way better. Classical music rules the airwaves here.

I also admit that of the two local papers I check every day online, I check the Statesman before the Portland Press Herald. Why? Probably because the Press Herald is a little duller, a little more obvious. Also because the Statesman feeds me such a regular diet of death, traffic accidents, crime, and weather reports that I need the Press Herald's soothing balm.

Private Use of Public Land

2008-05-29T05:38:00.001-07:00

This is a good step: making all private businesses, including fitness trainers, to pay to use the parks. Yet it's a sign of how much our sense of the commons have eroded to read comments like this:

"Where did the taxes go that I am already paying for parkland? They should go towards using parks however I'd like, whether it's for flying kites or walking dogs or doing push-ups," said Michelle Persica, a personal trainer with 20 years of experience who sometimes holds classes in Pease Park.

Well, Michelle Persica, if I can come join your class in Pease Park whenever I like, and for no charge, then I guess I'd be happy to let you count your taxes toward a private use fee. Oh...I can't? I have to sign up ahead of time...and pay? Then I guess you're exploiting the commons, aren't you? I guess you're using my contributions to the parklands for your own personal gain.

My friend Roger calls this the "free rider" syndrome, and the free riders "Snopes" (after the family in Faulkner's novels of rising working class Southern whites who "were more interested in avaricious commercial gain than honor or pride" (well put from here)). He describes the phenomenon more:

The Snopes hate the Hoover thing – hate the idea of paying for something when they have figured out how to get it free. And of course they hate the Roosevelt thing of tolerance and enlightenment and blacks moving in next door and marrying their kids. But what they hate most is the idea that the progressives they are conning don't understand what is happening. The progressive harping on the ignorance or bad consciousness or brainwashing of the Snopes class has to stop. Far from being ignorant or unaware of their self advantage, they have had a free ride that has given them the luxury of being able to indulge in reactionary hate while being bankrolled by progressive legislation and opened up to the world through Civil Rights. Everything they hate has supported everything they love: credit cards, big trucks, big motor boats leaking oil over various federally funded dammed lakes, etc., etc. It is no wonder they feel like God's remnant on earth. They have the satisfaction of knowing who is conning who in the great progressive deal, and what they really can't stand is that the liberals that are being suckered don't know who is suckering them.

No free riding, Michelle Persica Snopes.

How to get to the Nomad?

2008-05-16T06:30:00.000-07:00

The Nomad got a good review the other day in the Statesman. Good for Miguel. It beats out Spiderhouse, even, which is a major feat. But Dina Guidubaldi, the Statesman writer, put the Nomad "around 51st, behind Target," which is, of course, wrong. I don't know whether to laugh at this moronic sense of place or to celebrate it, because if the Nomad is that good, we'll want to keep it to ourselves. (Notice that I haven't given the correct location here.)

Coffee Rumor

2008-05-02T06:52:00.000-07:00

Richard Yu writes to the WP listserv that he's looking into a coffee shop. But Richard! Windsor Park has a new....bar.

This Makes Me Sick

2008-04-30T20:47:00.001-07:00

This note today from "Ed" in Windsor Park make me fucking sick to my stomach:

I have noticed an increase in people going around the neighborhood
removing aluminum cans from people's recycling bins. Today someone came
and took mine as well!

I understand these are difficult times we live in, and people are
trying to make ends meet, but I feel like they are stealing from me.

These cans I recycle are not only to do a small part for the
environment, but I think also help subsidise the costs associated with
the trash and recycling pickup. I would imagine the recycling company
makes a small profit from the items they recycle, helping offset the
pickup costs. Surely they take this into consideration when they bid
the contracts.

I know I could collect them and other metals and turn them into the
recycling people myself and make some money, but I don't own a pickup
or large area of land to store metals until I have enough to pay for
gas dropping it off. I don't think my immediate neighbors would approve
either.

Perhaps when the new bins come everything will not be as accessable to
these bandits.

Bandits! Bandits! Stealing what probably amounts to a dollar or two in aluminum. Granted, I don't know how many aluminum cans Ed leaves behind, but let's be generous and say it's not many. But my god, to treat a couple aluminum cans as some sort of loss, as some sort of affront to his property -- all I can say is, I hope Ed gives heartily at church, not because I think the church allocates his money any better, but because I'm sure he's taken to heart his pastor's big fat sermons about charity and the love for your fellow man.

When our old school Democrats, who love to wave the names of Molly Ivins and John Henry Faulk like flags when it suits their own cause, scream like shrill little misers because they've been taken with property value paranoia (say it shrilly: "we're being dumped upon!") , and when others gripe that others who have it worse than they do are picking through their trash to make a living, that's when you know you're living in a mean, pathetic little fucking world. I expect these sorts of attitudes from others. I don't expect it from people in my neighborhood.

Update: Last night after writing this I had a dream in which I had been elected to some WP neighborhood position. My first thought was, I'm going to have to take down that post. Second was, I can lead the neighborhood from Maine.

This morning someone else posted to the listserv about the can thing, and as it was not in my dream, it made me feel some hope for the WP, and for humankind in general:

When I see people taking the aluminum cans, I pray.

When Traffic Becomes News

2008-04-22T06:18:00.000-07:00

Britches, meet too big:

"...The city doesn't appear to have the infrastructure or processes in place to handle the number of simultaneous events that are happening downtown," she said.

This isn't news because the traffic was bad; it's news because people's expectations didn't match reality. The new expectation has to be this: if you chose to live in a city whose cultural life is rich enough that large simultaneous events are scheduled in the same area, don't expect to drive up to your destination and park outside the door; if you try it, you'll get stuck, so you're going to be walking, or taking a shuttle, or biking. Basically: expect to arrive sweating. I may be contradicting myself, but I don't think it's the city's job to match reality to expectations. I think it's to provide leadership about -- and certainly to change -- the expectations as well.

Here's a new thought about public transportation: maybe it's not capital-intensive, building streetcars or subways. Rather, maybe it's temporary transport, like flash mobs, shuttling people from one parking area to the event area on the weekends. Riders have to pay for it, of course.

Move

2008-04-21T05:26:00.000-07:00

Inevitable. Curious. Unseeing. I don't know what to label how yesterday's NYT Magazine's slew of articles on reducing environmental impact and carbon footprint didn't include one obvious choice that individuals and households can make: moving.

This could be moving to a new part of a city (to reduce commute times), to a new city or region, or even simply to a new style of house (one with a backyard, say, where one can grow some of one's food). Maybe the capital intensivity of this moves it off the table as an option, but I'm not convinced; people buy hybrid vehicles and install solar panels. Maybe it's because it was the New York Times. What if the answer is that big cities make big footprints? I don't know if this is true or not; if it were, the city's newspaper couldn't very well advocate people abandoning it. I think the answer may lie deep in the American psyche: Americans move for jobs or when they retire, not for general economic considerations -- that would be called "migration," and those who "migrate" are called "immigrants."

I'd also want to know where one should move. We have a pretty good situation in Austin: lots of sunlight and our own roof meant we could install solar panels if we wanted to, though not without a lot of other capital improvements. And we have the biggest backyard on the block with proven soil for veggies; a rainwater collection system would give us water for the garden. And chickens! We don't hardly heat the house at all in the winter. On the other hand, we can't walk many places, and riding a bike, though doable, isn't comfortable. Portland is walkable year-round, and the hardcore biking season has just begun, plus things are close: the office supply store and post office are just down the hill, and both Whole Foods and Hannafords are easily reachable by bike trail.

In Maine, They Tell Anti-Gay Activists To Shut Up

2008-04-18T06:29:00.000-07:00

Check out this column, the likes of which I don't think has ever been printed in a daily Texas newspaper:

You might not know him by name, but you've probably heard his story.
Hiroo Onoda was a second lieutenant in the Japanese Army. Rather than face reality and surrender when Allied forces overtook his garrison on Lubang Island in the Philippines in early 1945, he headed for the hills.
And there Onoda stayed for 29 years. Convinced that World War II was still being fought, he dismissed overwhelming evidence to the contrary as clever enemy propaganda.
Which brings us to, of all people, Michael Heath.
The executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine announced last week that he's spearheading yet another referendum drive in his never-ending war on homosexuality. But this time, even Heath sounds a little like, well, Hiroo Onoda.

The rest of the column (which accuracy demands I note did not generate all positive comments) is here.

The Grass is Greener Game

2008-04-06T10:31:00.000-07:00

This article, about group behavior in a stumbling stock market, seems relevant even to the question about why one might decide to leave an awesomely wicked cool city:

...One model that researchers have used to study contrarian behavior is called the minority game. The game is based on a now-classic problem posed in 1994 by the economist W. Brian Arthur set in a bar called El Farol. Everyone likes El Farol but also knows that the place is not much fun when it’s crowded. What, then, is the best strategy to maximize the fun. Avoid weekends? Try Thursdays and Sundays? Won’t everyone else be doing the same?
Experiments testing various versions of this game have shown that many players flip strategies in the middle of playing, apparently simply because they have set some private threshold for changing, like trying one strategy three times, “and if it doesn’t work, switch to the other one,” said Willemien Kets, a postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute.
Dr. Kets contends that this switching strategy can be successful precisely because others decide to stick to a congested road. “You see this ‘grass is always greener’ kind of behavior emerging,” Dr. Kets said in an interview, “which suggests that a variety of contrarian strategies will evolve naturally in the course of any such game because there are people who are more conservative in their strategies.”
Once people start thinking in this way, they subconsciously recruit evidence that supports their view, and not only from other investors. Simply bumping into an acquaintance who shares a contrary opinion — at the gym or in line at the grocery store — can seem like an affirmation.

Texas is HOT!!!

2008-03-27T06:59:00.000-07:00

The Census Bureau says that Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio were among the top ten fastest growing metro areas in the country. But I don't think the Texas state demographer's explanation is very complete, because it's very Texas-centric. He was quoted:

"People are running away from unaffordable housing, from the economic slowdown," said Karl Eschbach, a state demographer in Texas. "I would expect Texas to stay at the top of a slowing game."

I bet that people are actually coming because Texas promises the escape from two inevitabilities: death and taxes. I'd like to know how many migrants are baby boom retirees who are being pulled to the Sunbelt, rather than pushed by poor economies. The other big attraction of Texas, of course, is that there's no state income tax, so all your investment income won't be taxed. All the other states containing the top ten metro areas have state income taxes, but no other states had more than one metro area. Jake Bernstein at the Texas Observer has clued in to the demographic changes on the way in Texas, mainly increases in young Hispanics who need to be educated and provided health care, and how services are woefully underfunded.

How amenable do you think a political bloc of tax-escaping retirees is likely to be to a state income tax?

First Day of Spring

2008-03-21T08:34:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's spring here in Maine, the first day of it, anyway. I can hear the wind howling through the walls, and Google says its 27 degrees. Huge piles of dirty snow are tucked about -- inland places have many feet on the ground still.

I'm about to get on my bike and ride downtown. Why ride? Well, because it's spring.

Mercury Hall Under Development Gun

2008-03-12T20:57:00.001-07:00

People Who Got Married at Mercury Hall Narrowly Miss Serious Bummer.

What's interesting is that the church was hauled to Austin and restored by Richard Linklater's producer, Anne Walker-McBay, and her husband, Clark Walker. I don't know if they still own it or run it. Yet it would make another fine chapter of Austin's autophagy to have people involved in making one of the iconic Austin films sell their property to developers. Another PowerPoint slide in a demonstration about how to transform the human scale of a place to the scale of capital.

Round Rock Donuts

2008-03-10T12:20:00.001-07:00

at the corner of Briarcliff & Westminster, says the neighborhood listserv. Open 7 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Coffee Rumor

2008-03-10T07:22:00.000-07:00

There's still a rumor floating around that down the strip from The Nomad someone's putting in a drive-through coffee shop, no seating. Can someone give details on this?

Oh, So That's What This Is

2008-03-10T05:39:00.000-07:00

A placeblog:

They're about the lived experience of a place. That experience may be news, or it may simply be about that part of our lives that isn't news but creates the texture of our daily lives: our commute, where we eat, conversations with our neighbors, the irritations and delights of living in a particular place among particular people.

I've written more here (and at our move blog) than at my home blog, and that this writing has been more satisfying, because it's been about a certain lived experience of a particular place. A lot of blogs are like this: an assertion of the inside of the lived experience of the ordinary. (Two lovely blogs I read share this quality: Little and Big, and Iron Steph Cooks.) And you thought I was vituperative and contumacious by nature.

The description of placeblogs also puts two things into opposition, the everyday and the newsworthy, which I used to feel very acutely, back when I dated a journalist who was too contumacious by nature to grasp the back-and-forth (or the antistrophe) I experienced between the public and private spheres. That experience would have made for a great blog. "After she interviewed John McCain, she called and I was making cookies." That would be stuff for another blog. One thing I like about my marriage is the resolute line between the public and the private: I don't think I'll ever write about the inside of this, even on a blog.

WP gets...a bar

2008-03-09T18:40:00.000-07:00

If you've come looking for my review of The Nomad, the WP's newest hang-out joint, I've got to get there first, but when I do, it will be reviewed. Word filtered to the north that last night's opening was packed but loud, and it's...a bar. If I ever get around to opening a coffee shop, I'll swing open the doors on a Sunday morning, because folks will be looking for...coffee. Until then, and/or when we come back to the WP, you'll be able to find me at the Nomad, drinking...a beer. (Even when I have a coffee shop, that's where you'll find me.)

In my current neighborhood, the coffee shop just moved from a cozy shack-like addition (you've heard of a shotgun; this was a BB) across the street to a larger space next to the fine grocery, Fat Baxter's. Haven't been to the new space yet but I'm excited to see it.

time = money

2008-03-07T14:39:00.001-08:00

A new language experiment: Try to clean out the time = money locutions from your speech, among them wasting time, spending time, investing time.

Report back here in 12 months.

CENSORSHIP ALERT! CENSORSHIP ALERT!

2008-02-29T08:29:00.000-08:00

An overworked, underpaid city employee writes to the Windsor Park list to tell John LeValley to shut the fuck up:

I am offended every time I see one of your missives, and would really prefer not to see another one.

Cue a rant from Steve Speir about how this rank, crass attempt to censor the Windsor Park neighborhood listserv offends the Big D Democratic and little d democratic spirit of the holy progressive ground of the city of Austin on which John Henry Faulk once trod.

Tree Kudo

2008-02-16T16:23:00.001-08:00

Damn, that coffee guy has something good to say about Austin on his blog? Yes, I do. Today's Statesman has a story about Austin Energy's treetrimming practices, but I have to say that when they came last spring to cut our trees, I was really impressed with how responsive they were and how the trees looked when it was all done. It didn't look like they'd done anything at all! Now, I worked at home and I met the guys twice before they cut, so maybe that had something to do with it. Otherwise I have zero complaints.

If you work for SXSW

2008-02-09T15:09:00.000-08:00

This site got traffic from SXSW the other day...if you work for SXSW and want to speak anonymously about what's going on on the inside, get in touch.

Maine to Texas

2008-02-08T06:17:00.000-08:00

The original Maine to Texas connection: John Kelso.

SXSW is a Parasite

2008-02-06T05:55:00.001-08:00

Michael Corcoran interviewed SXSW co-founder, Ronald Swenson, about SXSW's battle against "pirate parties," "fringe entities," and "entities improperly using the SXSW name or trying to compete with sanctioned venues."

Swenson's defense, which makes it seem as if SXSW is fighting for its survival, includes this:

SXSW exists only because more entities choose to pursue a symbiotic relationship with us rather than a parasitic one. However, every year more marketing groups representing huge multinational corporations and their local proxies choose to feed off of us.

Mr. Swenson, thank you for the handy biological metaphors, because SXSW has ALWAYS been parasitic upon the city of Austin itself -- all in the guise of symbiosis. Your attendees swamp the city. Traffic swells; the restaurants are jammed. You receive city largesse. The SXSW promotion machine sucks the air out of coverage of anything else locally for weeks. And yet, as SXSW made clear last year, the festival isn't for the locals, who might get a hold of wristbands but complain that they can't get into venues for all the badgeholders. No, it's an industry conference (you said), it's not for anyone who might want to catch some of the overflow vibe or, heaven forbid, some music.

Not everyone picks cotton for the music industry in Austin, you know.

In your defense of SXSW's brand purity to Corcoran, you muddle two sources of competition: one, from outside money, big corporations using the festival to market their own stuff; two from local venues and businesses with an indie spirit, such as all the businesses on South Congress, like Yard Dog and Home Slice, that have bands play. A couple of years ago I watched Billy Bragg in a crush of people in Yard Dog's courtyard -- an amazing show -- and Magic Surprise at Home Slice -- even in the rain, a great show. Are these the events that you want to crack down on?

I don't care about your fight with big music promoters booking other bands, but if you go after other locals, that's plain offensive. Because those events are creative response to SXSW's own exclusivity -- why shouldn't local bands, brands, and businesses benefit from the celebration without SXSW taxing it?

SXSW has already taken its piece of the city; it doesn't need to skim off any more.

The delicious twist worth noting: because Austin Chronicle co-founder Louis Black also co-founded SXSW, you won't read any smart, critical coverage of the festival or its relationship to the city in those pages. So where do you have to turn? To the Statesman, which traditionally sides with the big money on most other things.

Update: typo fixed in last paragraph.

Update update: The comment thread at the Statesman piece contained this gem supporting the parasite argument:

A big problem is SXSW’s reputation for strong-arming competitors and sponsors rather than engaging them in discussions that might bear something mutually beneficial for everyone. They have an almost universally bad rep among local musicians regardless of whether their particular bands play the fest. How can they repair that image? How about re-investing in the local music community upon which it depends? Earmark a percentage of their profits to SIMS (every year,) lend their name to some charity events, and hold something during the summertime when clubs are hurting, and advertise these efforts so everyone remembers them when festival time comes around. A little responsible corporate citizenship goes a long way for whole lot of our local businesses. Such behavior might help SXSW garner the local support it obviously needs to help it survive.

Paraphrased: how about some symbiosis, Swenson?

Update update update: This comment was good, too:

the KARL ROVE look-alike gets: *VOLUNTEERS to work his festival *priority access to every venue in town *huge corporate sponsors PAYING to be involved *a monopoly on all downtown hotels at a DISCOUNTED rate for headlining acts only. *bands PAY THEM to play the festival in exchange for a wristband that doesn’t guarantee anything *free press and media coverage which increases corporate sponsorship money as the festival grows in popularity year after year.

Windsor Park Spa Rumor!

2008-01-22T10:28:00.000-08:00

You now won't have to leave the neighborhood for spa services, as Signature Touch day spa is opening next to Randall's. I always knew that Windsor Park needed a spa, especially after a long day of mowing the grass or nailing up plywood after those guys broke in my house.

Nomad

2008-01-21T12:43:00.000-08:00

This is going to change Windsor Park as we know it. For the better. The much, much better.

Brunch

2008-01-20T14:03:00.001-08:00

One significant thing happened yesterday: we had a brunch date. It was the first social engagement we've had since Christmas Day, and before that? I can't remember. It's been so long. We met David and Lisabeth at an awesome Thanksgiving feast my brother and some of his friends put together in Keene, and since they were visiting Portland they got in touch, and we had a great visit. (Food highlight: pea sprouts in the omelette, and very salty butter on the English muffins. Good coffee, too. Local 188. Remember that one.) There's so much to learn, because we don't know them hardly at all, except that she's from Corpus Christi and they met and married in Austin, Texas, before moving to New England in the late 1990s, but they felt like more intimate acquaintances. Plus we, or I, was hungry for social interaction. Misty and I are mostly hunkered down together, which has been a lot of fun & good for The Relationship, but brunch reminded me not to go too long or believe I can go too far without social time. What constrains me is a sense that, why meet anyone we'll have to leave? And building a social circle -- even a social dot -- can seem like a distraction from the work we both know we need this time to do. It's an old tension. But as it's familiar, it's workable. And as we're not overwhelmed with social opportunities, the tension remains productive and in balance.

Portland Rave

2008-01-16T07:50:00.000-08:00

This guy raves about Portland:

Besides the good feeling I got from the conference, the charm of Portland Maine was the icing on the cake. Coming from Indianapolis, I am used to the standard set of strip malls, mega discount superstores, and chain restaurants. In fact, a visitor who was dropped in the middle of Indianapolis would be hard pressed to figure out where they were because, frankly, it looks like every other metropolitan city. Same billboards, same neon signs, same putrid grease smells, same everything. Not Portland. Granted, they had a few Starbucks but the real charm of this city comes from the small business owners who take great pride in their history and connection to the people. Walking downtown, I didn't see Office Max, instead I saw "Wigon's Office Supply" - a quaint supply outlet in the heart of downtown Portland. I did not see homeless people, I saw everyday people enjoying the sun and relaxing in the public areas with their well-groomed dogs.

Bike Box

2008-01-10T06:32:00.000-08:00

Portland, Oregon is doing an interesting thing to promote bicycle commuting: making intersections safer by painting "bike boxes" on the road where cyclists can wait for traffic lights to change.

Calling it a "bike box" makes it seem really involved. Folks, it's paint on the street. Which is to say, 1) it's cheap 2) you don't have to physically change the road and 3) enforcement against auto drivers is going to be tough. Still, I don't see why Austin couldn't do something like this on its existing roads.

That said: apparently cyclists in Portland can be pushy, mean, and rude, just like drivers anywhere. But I'll never stop believing that cyclists are just more enlightened than auto drivers.

I believe that any one who wants a driver's license should have to spend 1 month riding a bicycle, so they can learn to give the proper right of way when they're driving their screaming tons of metal deathbox off to pick bluebonnets for baby. This is apropos of nothing; I just wanted to write "screaming tons of metal deathbox."

Food & Place

2008-01-04T07:09:00.001-08:00

I'm in Chicago for business meetings and a conference, and food came up twice in conversations. The first one was about Chicago supermarkets, Austin supermarkets, Portland restaurants; the second was about the new word "locavore," or "eating around one's place," which is the Oxford University Press's new word of the year. On that theme of food versus place as a cultural focus of the moment, "locavore" blends the two -- though notice that it's the food that's chosen, not the place. And I fell asleep trying to think of the inverse word, where it's the place that's chosen for its food. I didn't get far -- I was tired -- but will continue thinking.

Another Windsor Park Blog

2008-01-01T12:47:00.000-08:00

You might enjoy this Windsor Park blog: http://the-grackle.blogspot.com/

I am nearly certain that I used to walk the dog by these folks' yard and admire their plants.

Home

2007-12-31T16:35:00.000-08:00

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.

Moneyed Philistines

2007-12-23T19:15:00.000-08:00

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. .

Rage, Rage

2007-12-21T13:35:00.000-08:00

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.

Friends

2007-12-20T17:54:00.000-08:00

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!

2007-12-20T09:32:00.000-08:00

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!

Irony of Ironies of Ironies of Ironies of

2007-12-07T16:22:00.000-08:00

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.

WP gets more coffee!!

2007-11-26T13:31:00.000-08:00

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.

How I Found Coffee in my Hood

2007-11-13T17:44:00.000-08:00

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.

Good News!

2007-09-03T12:47:00.000-07:00

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.

Starbucks on Cameron & Corona

2007-07-31T07:09:00.000-07:00

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.

A New Blog!

2007-07-13T08:41:00.000-07:00

In the works: the Windsor Park Dog Blog!

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

2007-07-10T19:29:00.001-07:00

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.

New WP Retail Space -- coffee shop possibility?

2007-06-24T11:20:00.000-07:00

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.

Meeting for Coffee, Drinking Beer

2007-06-19T08:46:00.001-07:00

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.

Coffee Meeting

2007-06-16T08:21:00.000-07:00

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

Coffee Shop Petition

2007-06-07T11:20:00.000-07:00

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.
(via the Windsor Park list)

Windsor Park Gets a New Coffee Shop Rumor!

2007-06-04T07:23:00.000-07:00

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?

Nomad Breaks Ground

2007-04-20T15:16:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-20T08:42:00.000-07:00

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?

Open Thread

2007-03-01T08:29:00.000-08:00

Use this thread to meet and discuss stuff.

Coming Soon...

2007-02-28T20:25:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-28T20:10:00.000-08:00

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.

Another Coffee Shop

2007-02-25T14:30:00.000-08:00

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.

In depth news

2007-02-20T20:02:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-20T19:33:00.000-08:00

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.

Owner Interested in Starting Coffee Shop

2007-02-18T11:02:00.000-08:00

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?

Why not to rely on Mueller

2007-02-17T15:29:00.000-08:00

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.

Get in Touch

2007-02-15T11:26:00.000-08:00

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

(Cryptic, huh?)

Rumors of Nomads

2007-02-14T08:33:00.000-08:00

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.

Windsor Park Gets...A Bar

2007-02-13T15:45:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-13T07:32:00.000-08:00

"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.

Launch

2007-02-12T18:34:00.000-08:00

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.