The Rules of Coffee Rumors

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

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

The view from the end of my street:

Broken Spoke NOT Sold

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

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

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

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.