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.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Friends
As I rant and rave on this blog, I'd like to make a quiet moment for this:
Graduate school is about, if nothing else, getting swept into a social scene. Backyard parties, barbecues, dinner parties; lunches, getting coffee; finding a running partner, a climbing buddy; hooking up, dating, moving in together. You swap books, you get drunk, you fuck, you fight, you sweat your guts out, you store old furniture. You mix and mingle, create a scene, a tribe.
I started graduate school in 1993, and my first graduate school tribe crumbled in 1996, when several key members moved away. I felt this most strongly, since it was the first tribe I'd ever known. I could tell you stories about how that tribe was concocted out of other connections: a group of friends from Trinity in San Antonio, a strong Berkeley connection, and a bunch of friends from UT Planning, plus my old connection to a college friend. This thick social soup was the first one I felt comfortable in. (So comfortable that until Nov. 3, 2007, we were sleeping on a box spring that had been passed through this tribe. It's true.) Yet it became clear that to have this tribe meant to have to give it up, because every August from then on, until about 2001, it was a constant cycling out of new friends made old by time and togetherness and new friends who hadn't been made old yet. Each summer, friends who'd graduated would move on: New York. Sacramento. Ecuador. A dozen different places. Each Labor Day I'd realize I hardly knew anyone anymore, and begin to reconstitute a tribe. That spider web outside your front door, which you tear through when you leave for work in the morning yet find rebuilt when you return, that was me: weaving, weaving connections.
Something happened around 2001, when all this stopped. By that point most of the people I knew weren't graduate students; I'd finished school (and school finished me) in December of 2000. Since then the web I've built -- the web that's found me -- the tribes I've merged, the ones that have engulfed me -- has, for the most part, remained intact. And it's grown. A few have moved on. But the friends I have in Austin are the ones I feel I've grown in to. Up to. When trees first send their new growth up in the spring, it's soft and springy, more like grass than wood; that growth soon matures and hardens. The friends I have in Austin are the wood of my tree. Those other tribes I'll remember forever, but then I've never surprised myself with realizing my own capacity for nostalgia; I know full well how capable I am of suicide by petites madeleines. But the ones who haven't left are the roots, the stuff, and they mean more to me, collectively and individually, than anything else I can describe. And now I've gone and left them. Turning the tables. Look ma! No roots!
I just want you to know, I don't do any of this lightly, but with the fullest of intention. But when I return I hope to be pure and clean and strong, and I'm doing it for you.
Graduate school is about, if nothing else, getting swept into a social scene. Backyard parties, barbecues, dinner parties; lunches, getting coffee; finding a running partner, a climbing buddy; hooking up, dating, moving in together. You swap books, you get drunk, you fuck, you fight, you sweat your guts out, you store old furniture. You mix and mingle, create a scene, a tribe.
I started graduate school in 1993, and my first graduate school tribe crumbled in 1996, when several key members moved away. I felt this most strongly, since it was the first tribe I'd ever known. I could tell you stories about how that tribe was concocted out of other connections: a group of friends from Trinity in San Antonio, a strong Berkeley connection, and a bunch of friends from UT Planning, plus my old connection to a college friend. This thick social soup was the first one I felt comfortable in. (So comfortable that until Nov. 3, 2007, we were sleeping on a box spring that had been passed through this tribe. It's true.) Yet it became clear that to have this tribe meant to have to give it up, because every August from then on, until about 2001, it was a constant cycling out of new friends made old by time and togetherness and new friends who hadn't been made old yet. Each summer, friends who'd graduated would move on: New York. Sacramento. Ecuador. A dozen different places. Each Labor Day I'd realize I hardly knew anyone anymore, and begin to reconstitute a tribe. That spider web outside your front door, which you tear through when you leave for work in the morning yet find rebuilt when you return, that was me: weaving, weaving connections.
Something happened around 2001, when all this stopped. By that point most of the people I knew weren't graduate students; I'd finished school (and school finished me) in December of 2000. Since then the web I've built -- the web that's found me -- the tribes I've merged, the ones that have engulfed me -- has, for the most part, remained intact. And it's grown. A few have moved on. But the friends I have in Austin are the ones I feel I've grown in to. Up to. When trees first send their new growth up in the spring, it's soft and springy, more like grass than wood; that growth soon matures and hardens. The friends I have in Austin are the wood of my tree. Those other tribes I'll remember forever, but then I've never surprised myself with realizing my own capacity for nostalgia; I know full well how capable I am of suicide by petites madeleines. But the ones who haven't left are the roots, the stuff, and they mean more to me, collectively and individually, than anything else I can describe. And now I've gone and left them. Turning the tables. Look ma! No roots!
I just want you to know, I don't do any of this lightly, but with the fullest of intention. But when I return I hope to be pure and clean and strong, and I'm doing it for you.
Broken Spoke SOLD!
I won't say the sale of the Broken Spoke is dismaying, by itself, but gee whiz, James White, if ya knew ya were going to sell the place, what the fuck was up with $3.50 Lone Stars?
So the developer promised to keep the dance hall intact. Good for him. Let's see if he can actually keep those promises. The woman who became my wife and I started dancing and dating there, so you can expect I'd be upset if the place changes for the worst. It's inevitable that something will. Everyone gave big fat kudos to Walgreens for building Taco Xpress its own place, but has anyone bothered to say that the place sucks and the food's not that good?
And who's going to run the Spoke now? The developer? Are we going to be longing for the good old days of $3.50 Lone Stars?
It was a neck and neck race there, for a while, the Spoke and Barton Springs, then Barton Springs hurtled ahead in the race toward symbolic destruction of the heart of Austin. And now it looks as if the Spoke may have pulled ahead for a win.
But hey, don't worry, everyone: Catellus will build you dance hall at Mueller!
So the developer promised to keep the dance hall intact. Good for him. Let's see if he can actually keep those promises. The woman who became my wife and I started dancing and dating there, so you can expect I'd be upset if the place changes for the worst. It's inevitable that something will. Everyone gave big fat kudos to Walgreens for building Taco Xpress its own place, but has anyone bothered to say that the place sucks and the food's not that good?
And who's going to run the Spoke now? The developer? Are we going to be longing for the good old days of $3.50 Lone Stars?
It was a neck and neck race there, for a while, the Spoke and Barton Springs, then Barton Springs hurtled ahead in the race toward symbolic destruction of the heart of Austin. And now it looks as if the Spoke may have pulled ahead for a win.
But hey, don't worry, everyone: Catellus will build you dance hall at Mueller!
Friday, December 7, 2007
Irony of Ironies of Ironies of Ironies of
So I read this letter to the editor in one of the local (Portland) publications, The Bollard:
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.
For many years, Portland successfully maintained a level of independence from the big boxy, corporate hogomony [sic], which is expanding to cover nearly every town in America. But our precious holdout has begun to change. Recently we have see the loss of local businesses that were integral to Portland's character, such as Free State Taverna, Acoustic Coffee, the State Theatre, The Skinny (which struggles to find space to reopen in), and Casco Bay Books. In turn, we have new neighbors -- Wild Oats, Whole Foods, Lowe's, and another Starbucks -- as well as condominiums and potential private waterfront development.Why is this ironic? Because when I moved to Austin in the fall of 1993 for graduate school, I remember reading many such letters in the Austin Chronicle, though the writers were angry, pissed that the Austin they loved was gone. It's nothing now like it was in 1973, and I hate it, they wrote; it's ruined, you've ruined it, and I'm leaving. I remember flocks of such letters in the mid 1990s, flocks that dwindled away, then one day had disappeared entirely. Everyone who couldn't stand griping had left, leaving everyone else behind to gripe and see if they couldn't get up at least one or two more rungs.
As for me, I didn't care; in 1993, Austin seemed like heaven to me. It was relative, of course: I'd just come from a year in rural New Hampshire, living with my parents, doing odd house-sitting gigs, commuting to Boston, and just about dying of isolation and boredom. This after 2 years in Taiwan of high-pressure cultural difference, language learning, and teaching. Austin was warm and had a huge library, plus bookstores, two things I'd missed in Taiwan. The majority of people spoke good English. Plus, Austin gave me a place. Not only a job, but tasks; not only a path, but paths. It gave me venues on which to hang my identity. The university folded me into its bosom, a graduate student who was poor and powerless, true. But you could ride your bike around! The women, oh god, the women were lovely! Lots of places to sit outside and drink cold beer! Parties, oh god, the parties. Nearly every book you'd ever need was there. Occasionally I'd go on long road bike rides to the northeast, to Manor and beyond, where you could find the edge of the city quickly and find yourself in sorghum and cotton fields, as if you'd ridden fast and hard and ended up in Nebraska. Then I got a car and a girlfriend who lived South, which opened up a whole new part of Austin, as if I'd moved to a whole new city ripe for exploring. You could get to all the parts of the city in less than 20 minutes by car then, any time of day. So by 2000 or so I was still high on Austin. People who complained, let them complain, I figured. They were old hippies who couldn't reconcile themselves that the dream of the Age of Aquarius was over and gone. Their disillusion had nothing to do with Austin and everything to do with American history.
Early in 2007, when I started thinking about moving from Austin, and began persuading my wife that it was a good idea, I thought back to those letters to the Chronicle back in 1993 and 94, how those writers felt about the city, and how I feel now compared to all the people showing up for whom this is their Shangri-La, moving as they have from Los Angeles or San Jose or New York. Let 'em have it, I think bitterly. There's a big difference between me and those letter writers, though. They were nostalgic for an Austin of 15 years earlier. Me, I'm nostalgic for Austin of 2005.
I used to live off of Manor Road, on Breeze Terrace, at a time when Hoover's was the big new brash restaurant and what is now El Chile was an empty husk, waiting for the next in a string of to-be failed coffee shops. So when El Chilito went in 5 years later, that was a big deal. At the time I lived in Windsor Park, and El Chilito became the "local" place, even though going there meant driving, and in nothing of a direct fashion. I used to think that the day that Barton Springs closes to swimmers is the day that the heart of Austin dies and I leave. But in 2007, the day that I called El Chilito to place an order and was put on hold for 10 minutes, then drove by and saw a line of people a dozen deep, was the day I reached my personal limit. You think it's going to be a big symbolic thing: Barton Springs closes, the Broken Spoke closes. But no, actually it's very quiet and personal, that limit. Less like a bone breaking than a fingernail.
The writer from Portland (who sports an old Maine name, I notice) didn't threaten to leave the city; her letter becomes a rant about the politics of food more than the politics of place. But it was still amusing to show up in a new city that I couldn't be more thrilled with -- I can ride my bike around! There's a yoga studio a mile away! We walk the dog on the waterfront -- offleash! -- and to see that someone else was mourning, and dealing with, but mainly mourning the evolution of a place. Now I'm less dismissive of people who want to do that. But I mourn the fact that if you want to stay in a place you're going to mourn, mourn, mourn, and that the only way to be free of mourning is to move away.
Monday, November 26, 2007
WP gets more coffee!!
From a credible source: the plaza at Corona & Cameron where The Nomad is slated to open will feature another coffee shop by the name of Java Jones.
Let's hear it for the coffee glut! Now WP needs a real supermarket (sorry, Randall's), a movie theater, and a sushi restaurant, and it just may be possible to never have to drive anywhere.
Let's hear it for the coffee glut! Now WP needs a real supermarket (sorry, Randall's), a movie theater, and a sushi restaurant, and it just may be possible to never have to drive anywhere.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
How I Found Coffee in my Hood
I tracked coffee shop rumors in Windsor Park for how long? It felt like ages. Sick of waiting, I floated an idea to jumpstart something, and got some people interested. Good for them, good for me, now we're here, still undercaffeinated but a little smarter. In the meantime, a Starbucks opened up and a local place, hallowed be its name, is in the works. So did I get what I wanted? Yes, and no. Yes, because it's coffee, and yes, because it's local. No, because the prevailing attitude was still, Mueller will bring it to us. Look, Mueller is going to be a big fat disappointment and will never live up to its hype. Wipe the mud from your eyes. The ensuing clarity is priceless.
The biggest news, though, is not about the neighborhood but with my own household, which has relocated to Portland, Maine. In other words, my neighborhood isn't your neighborhood any more. We're located in a second story apartment on the eastern end of the peninsula, where we enjoy a beach 300 yards away for off-leash dog walking, a quiet neighborhood, and a Whole Foods that's a reasonable waterfront trail bicycle ride away. And a coffee shop two blocks away. A cluster of fine, affordable restaurants. And a bar with a flat screen tv for the games. The city's walkable. Is the city walkable? In this neighborhood, there's hardly any car traffic -- I check both ways before crossing out of habit, a habit I know I'll soon lose because it's so unnecessary. This morning, a weekday, I walked the dog around 8:00 and only saw one soul preparing to leave for work. Maybe no one works, I'll come to find. But this isn't funny, you know, it's a damn indictment of Austin, and I'm so glad to be here. Who knows -- maybe this city is irrevocably broken. Toxic mold in the nursery schools. Fat, corrupt cops. Incest on the city council. One's plot gland squeezes out extra secretions from the stimulation. But I don't need kickbacks to cops from dog fight organizers to feel disappointed -- merely the thought of paying income tax turns my stomach. But perhaps paying taxes for services I receive will prove not so painful. And perhaps the political news won't be another turn in the rapaciousness of interests. And neither in the cultural news, and the personal news, and the business news.
Why I left Austin, at least for the time being, would require a longer post I someday intend to write, because my disgruntledness can't be plumbed so easily. For the time being, you can have Austin.
Did I mention that I can walk to a coffee shop?
Here's the thing: Portland feels like a place. This is difficult to describe, except perhaps only in comparison, but Austin stopped feeling like a place for me a while ago.
The biggest news, though, is not about the neighborhood but with my own household, which has relocated to Portland, Maine. In other words, my neighborhood isn't your neighborhood any more. We're located in a second story apartment on the eastern end of the peninsula, where we enjoy a beach 300 yards away for off-leash dog walking, a quiet neighborhood, and a Whole Foods that's a reasonable waterfront trail bicycle ride away. And a coffee shop two blocks away. A cluster of fine, affordable restaurants. And a bar with a flat screen tv for the games. The city's walkable. Is the city walkable? In this neighborhood, there's hardly any car traffic -- I check both ways before crossing out of habit, a habit I know I'll soon lose because it's so unnecessary. This morning, a weekday, I walked the dog around 8:00 and only saw one soul preparing to leave for work. Maybe no one works, I'll come to find. But this isn't funny, you know, it's a damn indictment of Austin, and I'm so glad to be here. Who knows -- maybe this city is irrevocably broken. Toxic mold in the nursery schools. Fat, corrupt cops. Incest on the city council. One's plot gland squeezes out extra secretions from the stimulation. But I don't need kickbacks to cops from dog fight organizers to feel disappointed -- merely the thought of paying income tax turns my stomach. But perhaps paying taxes for services I receive will prove not so painful. And perhaps the political news won't be another turn in the rapaciousness of interests. And neither in the cultural news, and the personal news, and the business news.
Why I left Austin, at least for the time being, would require a longer post I someday intend to write, because my disgruntledness can't be plumbed so easily. For the time being, you can have Austin.
Did I mention that I can walk to a coffee shop?
Here's the thing: Portland feels like a place. This is difficult to describe, except perhaps only in comparison, but Austin stopped feeling like a place for me a while ago.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Good News!
Distracted by the excitement surrounding the release of my book, I missed this comment from Miguel, owner of The Nomad, on August 19th:
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.
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.
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