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Soooooooo Austin
Psssssst! There's this little secret in South Austin ... and it ain't the South Congress strip. Nope.
SoCo, Austin's loco pomo locus has just about as much focus, attention, street cred, and overkill as it can stand, thanks. Especially thanks to a little thing called First Thursdays. You've heard of First Thursdays, haven't you? Well, if you haven't, don't worry. You can use this opportunity, right now, while you're turned to this page, to bone up on what you might be missing.
Welcome to the Chronicle's SoCo Guide.
Yep. That's right. We couldn't keep our yaps shut about such a raging cultural phenomenon (Chronicle speak for ``freaking melee'') as First Thursday, now could we? So we didn't. We've been telling y'all about that sweet little block party for ages now. But what about the street itself? It's been a while since we weighed in on everybody's favorite li'l shopping mecca. In fact, we last did it in late 1998 in our South Austin Guide.
Quite a bit has changed since those days. The biggest shifts have been on the Avenue's edges: The ``cleanup'' of the south end near Oltorf seems so thorough that it's hard to image the area was once a hooker haven (from ho blows to bohos?); in the north end, the major face-lift of the Texas School for the Deaf comes just in time to greet the new slew of well-heeled neighbor-condos across the way. And that's not all. Today, there's an Amy's (yea!) and a Starbucks (...), plus old favorites like St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Shop and New Bohemia, which have hung in and battened down come boom, bust, or high water.
But you already knew all that, didnąt you? After all, all roads lead to SoCo, no?
We imagine SoCo must sometimes feel like a lady. A lovely lady. With a poodle. And they both have new pink hairdos. There they are, walking down the street minding their own business, when suddenly they are the trendiest thing since Snausages(TM). The weight of 1,000 eyes of 500 scenesters and white-hot blazing spotlights are trained on them, taking them in, analyzing their form, grading their gates, putting them out there for all to see.
Woof!
Maybe sometimes the lady and her poodle just want to be appreciated for who they really are. Maybe the lady and the poodle resent all this sudden attention and yearn for the time when the hydrant wasn't the place to pee and be seen. Maybe they would just like to be left the hell alone.
Oh well. SoCo is not a poodle, and she's no lady. And Austin's hippest, hottest, worst-kept secret is not going to feel relief from adoring gazes anytime soon. - Kate X Messer, South Congress Guide editor
THANKS TO: Assistant editors: Verushka Gray, Anne Harris. Writers: Barbara Chisholm, Laurie Gallardo, Liz Gold, Verushka Gray, Kate X Messer, Virginia B. Wood, Abe Louise Young. Feature writer and listings editor: Wayne Alan Brenner. Original map art: Jason Stout. Dispatch dude: Lindsey Simon. Art, etc.: Taylor Holland, Karen Rheudasi. Photographs: John Anderson (cover). Proofing: The fabulous proofing team.
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