I love these dusty coffee shops, a taste likely instilled by my many hours spent in the Motherlode Coffee House in Houghton, MI, where I hail from. (Unfortunately, the Motherlode has since closed, robbing this Earth of one of its last perfect sanctuaries. I couldn’t find any site to link to, so to fill that void here’s a picture of our famous lift bridge, Houghton’s other claim to fame. Er–I meant “fame”.)

Luckily for me, Austin’s East Village Cafe is close to home, a little out of the way of any kind of hustle or bustle (it’s in a largely residential neighborhood), and is the kind of peaceful place with winsome proprietors who go out of their way to give you the Austin Coffee Shop experience you crave. It’s the kind of place where the barrista will stop by every so often to offer a glass of water or another drink, which I find to be awfully sweet of them.

We moved here from New York, a dismal and lovely place (I MISS IT SO MUCH) where charming coffee shops that let you sit for hours using their free WiFi just do not exist in any meaningful number. Even my favorite, Grey [sic] Dog Cafe, has a strict “No Laptops” policy, at least during busy hours. And so East Village Cafe in Austin fills, for me, a niche that needed filling, a quiet place with great coffee and a great selection of Mexican sodas.

I’ll be back. I already have been, many times.

PS: The guy who works here just gave me a bagel for absolutely no reason at all. He doesn’t even know I’m writing this. Southern Hospitality is the best part of the South.
Story and Photos by: Ben Britz

Back in the Gilded Age of the late 19th Century, when the mansions of millionaire industrialists dotted the countryside of western Massachusetts, the Berkshire Railway connected New York City and Boston to the Berkshires. Nowadays, if you want to spend a weekend up in those lush hills where music festivals and art museums are sprinkled across the verdant countryside like fairy lights, you’ll have to find yourself a car. If you’re like this humble reporter, that could mean taking Metro-North into rural Connecticut and walking two miles on country roads to an overgrown driveway, where a disused and decidedly rickety Saab may or may not start at a twist of the key that you picked up from a family friend in Park Slope two days earlier.

Even the interstates bypass the Berkshires. US Route 7 winds north through the empty farmlands of Connecticut towards the Massachusetts border; as the ribbon of highway unrolls across the land, winding and leaping, beneath the deepening sky, and you feel the old, rocky wilds of primordial New England awakening in the gathering twilight—you’ll know then that it was worth all that bother, to be up here where the air is cool and sweet, and the noise and manic heat of the city are far behind you. (And that gurgling sound the Saab is making—don’t worry about that. It’s just gurgling with pleasure.)

If getting to the Berkshires has gotten more difficult, finding where to stay in the Berkshires has only gotten easier since the 1920s as dozens of inns and bed-and-breakfasts have sprung up in those very mansions where the daughters of steel moguls once lounged in white cotton dresses in rococo drawing-rooms with mirrored walls.

Staveleigh House is among the best these converted mansions. Located immediately south of Sheffield town square, Staveleigh House offers luxurious accommodations for the weekend visitor, as well as special services for all types of events, from bridal showers to small company retreats. The bedrooms and private baths are beautiful, clean, and homey; the staff friendly and helpful; the food delicious and sustainable.

The force behind Staveleigh is owner, innkeeper, and chef, Ali Winton. A former antique dealer and lifetime collector, Ali’s taste for the decorative arts are on rich display at Staveleigh. Dinner plates, intricately painted with vivid, almost lascivious fruit-arrangements, adorn the walls of the 2nd floor landing; a giant rooster of wire and Spanish moss sits atop a tray of gourds in the dining-room; the stained-glass window-panes of long forgotten houses decorate the windows of the bathrooms; spindly lamps, wooden dressers, delicate, side-tables are all carefully arranged about the rooms. The old Staveleigh mansion teems with the carefully crafted, abandoned objects of decades past, now gathered and given new purpose, along with the giant house they inhabit.

If a less generous visitor might accuse the interior of primness, he would find the careful arrangement of the house itself balanced by the wild lusciousness of the front gardens, where the purple tendrils of Love-Lies-Bleedings hang amidst a riot of untamed vegetation. Marigolds rise on fine stems, like the sky-cities of a science-fiction dream, and explode into vivid red and yellow mouths, gnashing at the sky; and dahlias stand, calm as blood-colored anemones; and giant leaves and vines and wild sprays of green reach towards the hanging painted sign of Staveleigh. Thus the well-ordered mind of Staveleigh House is betrayed by the wild heart of Staveleigh Gardens.

Wandering the halls and rooms of the mansion, the observant guest will notice a recurring theme of dogs: framed photographs, china sculptures, and on the bedside table, a copy of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night. (The literarily-minded guest might even flip through the latter while his girlfriend is running a bath in that immense tub and find it, well, not quite as clever as its author seems to find it.) If you go around the back of Staveleigh, past the pointillist shadows of the lattice roof above the veranda, you can meet Ali’s three rescue dogs, along with her chickens, sheep, baby goats, donkey (from Craigslist), and miniature horse. Ali and her husband are animal lovers, and richly adorned as it may be, Staveleigh House is enthusiastically pet-friendly.

Whenever there are guests at Staveleigh, Ali is up at 6am to start breakfast. Using organic ingredients from local Berkshire-area farms and eggs from her own hens, Ali constructs elaborate breakfasts of Belgian waffles with fresh fruit and apple-cheddar quiches. If you’re lucky, you’ll be there for one of her cheese soufflés which she fills with kale and onions from her garden. On the side, she serves piles of roasted potatoes, croissants, and apple-cider. Her coffee is high quality, and her syrup is the pure maple kind.

From the coffee on up, a weekend at Staveleigh is a thoroughly satisfying experience—luxurious yet informal, rustic yet classy, carefully curated yet touchingly personal. Personally, we had such a good time that on the way back down to the city, my girlfriend (who took the photos for this article) started talking about buying that old Saab, so we could go up there more often. “It only shakes like that in the 60s,” she explained. “Once you get up to around 70, it smooths out real nice.”

Story by: Max Bean, author of education and pedagogy blog Dewey to Delpit
Photos by: Paris Mancini


Gallery: click on a thumbnail to view full size.

Day 1: Austin – Wimberly

After a couple weeks of planning and lamenting about the trip we are on our way!

The trip couldn’t have started any worse.

• One of my compatriots, Brooks, would be arriving late from New Orleans.
• The one thing you would think I had packed would be the maps but I left that at home.
• Brooks left his bivvy sack in his friends car.
• Dammit.

After finally collecting all our missing pieces and loading up our bikes I felt that the two person tent I was bringing was unnecessary. The sucker weighted a good 4-5 pounds and easily draped over my rack. A last minute REI trip was necessary to procure a bivvy sack.

A bivvy sack or Bivouac bag is a shell that slips over your sleeping bag. It is a waterproof shell that protects you from the elements, adds a little extra warmth to your sleeping bag, and makes a tent unnecessary. With this I could not only cut my weight but also my footprint.

So all together we wasted enough time to delay our departure a good 6 hours.

Once we hit the road we had to deal with Saturday traffic around South Congress and it wasn’t really till we hit old San Antonio road that I felt we has left Austin. One of the things that frustrates me most about biking in the city is all the starting and stopping. It’s really hard to get into a rhythm and allow your body to just let let go and just bike.

The first day proved a new experience for all of us. I don’t think any of us had biked with all of stuff we would be carrying for the trip. We moved slow by at a steady pace. Eventually we crawled into Wimberly, Texas.

Wimberly is a small town located 40 miles west of Austin and about 16 miles north of San Marcos. Because of it’s close proximity to Texas state in San Marcos is has a college feel to it but still maintains the charm of a small Texas town. We found a place to eat and grab a beer at Ino’z Brew and Chew. The venue is really nice with a large outdoor patio, a stage up top, and to the south, a small creek. The live music was great and the pitcher of beer hit the spot after a long first day.

According to our map there was a bike-only camping ground but we couldn’t find it due to its unhelpful directions: “off route 0.2 miles behind emergency service building”. THANKS FOR NOTHING.

So instead we camped in the cemetery. It was fitting, considering how “dead” we felt.

Day 2 Wimberly-Kerrville

We started Day 2 with a mileage deficit: we still had to make up the 20 miles we didn’t make on Day 1.  There was a lot of climbing today.  Hills rolled up and down giving us a nice opportunity to work on our endurance.  Most of the day I spent slowly pushing my way up a hill, the only sounds my breathing and the clicking of my chain. The click click click of the chain mastering a hill reminds me of going up the first incline of a roller coaster.

Right when everything in my body started to shake and gasp for air, I’d be reprieved with a nice descent.  I’d let my legs can breathe for a second and regain some composure. But the break only lasts a second before I’d snap back into action, striving to take you as fast as possible down the hill to make the most of my momentum.  Everything suddenly feels as if it is moving underneath you instead of a struggle to push your way against gravity.

Before we even got to the climbing section of the day, Bob decided to call it a day and return home to Austin, to tacos and barbecue.  His presence will be missed as the wise sage on our quest.

While resting in Comfort, Texas I received an email from a guy that I had met online through couchsurfing.com. He had a place for us to stay, a hot shower and some warm food.

It only took us 2 days to figure out we were carrying way too much stuff.

Brooks and I weighed our bikes and gear to see how much we were lugging.  My total weight was 90lbs and Brooks had about 80lbs of stuff.

If that sounds like a lot, imagine how it feels hauling it uphill for 50 miles.

To put it into perspective, I weigh 170lbs. That means I’m carrying over half my weight in gears and gear.  By the end of the night Brooks and I made the necessary choice to drop a good week’s worth of oatmeal, rice, pasta, peanut butter, as well as a pot with lid and some extra clothing.

Hopefully this lost weight will allow us to gain some speed and take some stress of our body. I’m a little worried about running out of food but I don’t think it is realistic to carry that much weight.  If anything I can start that diet I so desperately need.

Previous: EPIC BIKE TRIP

It’s a gray and rainy day in Austin. My windshield wipers are on, my headlights are on. As if to intentionally disapprove of the weather forecast, I have iced tea beside me, rattling in my old Honda’s cup holder. I feel depleted. One of the reasons I moved to Austin was to escape the bitterness of the brutal New York weather; to escape the weight that pulled me down on days like these. I welcome these gray days in Austin more than I ever welcomed them in New York, but the way my body feels, the sheer exhaustion at the hand of the climate, is undeniable. But I’ve made a plan to check out my friend’s vintage store today, Charm School Vintage.

Charm School Vintage isn’t far from my house. It’s a straight shot from where I live down to Caesar Chavez‘s eastern-most parts and, pro-gentrification as this may be to say, I really like this street. I really like this area.

Glowing with the flashing bulbs of an arrow-shaped sign, the front porch of Charm School Vintage looks just like the porch of any other house in the neighborhood, but with a few additional components:

1. Said glowing arrow sign.
2. A porch swing. Good for the swinging.
3. A clothing rack or two.

Enter through the front door and you’ll find yourself in a building that hosts not only Charm School Vintage, but also a fabulous wig/accessories/makeup shop called Coco Coquette, and an additionally fabulous salon–the whole collection is called Daisical Industries. The ceiling’s paint is chipped, just as it should be. A beacon of the old shining onto the old. Browse through Charm School’s clothing selection and you’ll find yourself asking this question, I’d reckon:

“How come I don’t ever find these kinds of great clothes at second-hand stores”?

The answer is: you’re not Shari Gerstenberger. That’s why.

Shari Gerstenberger was one of the first people I met upon moving to Austin and I liked her right away. She’s a lady with a clear sense of irony and unstoppable ambition. Furthermore, she’s a lady with impeccable taste–which is handy considering her line of work.

It’s Shari’s job to make ladies look better. To doll them up and accentuate the things that deserve accentuating. She approaches this task through the eras before us; through vintage fashion. So just to be clear, here’s what vintage clothing means, definitionally:

Second-hand garments originating from a previous era.

Which eras?

Well, clothing produced before the 1920s, generally speaking, is considered antique. Clothing produced between the 1920s and 1980s, generally speaking, is considered vintage.

Shari’s specialty is vintage, particularly bohemian-hippie-beautiful vintage. Her eye is what makes Charm School Vintage different than other vintage stores. Once a buyer for Buffalo Exchange, Shari’s natural sense of style was honed through her work and when the opportunity to open her own shop came a’knockin’, well, she came a’runnin’. Her store is stacked full with a few closets’ worth of apparel I’d like to purchase, and to be fair, it’s not expensive. It’s cheaper than American Apparel. It’s cheaper than Urban Outfitters. And lets face it: it’s way better than both. Nothing quite says ‘unoriginal’ more than wearing the same floral print sundress every other girl on the block also got from the sale rack at ____________.

But the strength of Shari’s style is in her eye. I’ve been thrifting with her. And you know what? She’s a clothing magician. She sees potential in pieces you wouldn’t see potential in. She sees flaws in pieces you think are good. She recognizes quality fabrics, quality craftsmanship, and quality brands. She likes earth tones. (I like earth tones!) But she’s handy with a sewing machine and jewelry-making tools. Shari can make glorious what was once left abandoned. And she does it with such finesse, you’ll want to keep coming back to her shop, no matter the rain, no matter the gray.

By: Elizabeth Seward
Photos by: Ben Britz

Gallery: click on a thumbnail to view full size.

This is Jon here.

I’ve been helping out at The Anti Tourist for a little while and with the new site and thought I’d take a second to introduce myself.

I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and now reside in Austin, Texas.

In less than a week I will be biking over 2500 miles to San Francisco.

(For illustrative purposes and braggadocio only – the actual route may differ! -Eds.)

Going on a bike tour has always been a long dream of mine. I have been biking as long as I can remember.

When everyone was learning how to drive, my dad offered me a choice; he’d go half on a shitty car or I could get a new bike. I chose the bike and have never looked back.

I love to share my love of biking with others every chance I can. This trip will allow me to explore parts of the country I have never seen before, push myself to new limits, and meet some great folks along the way. I’ll be posting updates regularly on Facebook and The Anti Tourist to share the experience with all of you as often as I can.

Cheers,
Jon

Next: Biking Austin to LA: Days 1 and 2

When I asked my friend for restaurant recommendations in Austin, she told me to go to the East Side Showroom. She described the place in such rich tones that I envisioned a bordello atmosphere, velvet red decor, sexy cocktails, and excellent food. When I pushed open the heavy street front doors of the East Side Showroom, finally making my entrance, finally checking it all out, it didn’t take me long to register that I was seeing what she claimed I would see: a vibrant restaurant and bar with a knack for eccentricity.

Used paint can lids find themselves bound together in cloud-like bursts on the walls beside the dining tables at East Side Showroom. Old jars and vases find themselves on display on shelves under bright light; the rest of the room is dimly-lit; the romance in the room is tangible. The Showroom.

The waiters are Southern Belles and Gentlemen, eager to make you feel at home.

The food awaits your swooning.

The bartenders are alchemists; the drinks are magic.

Silent movies continuously play in an empty picture frame.

They serve wine in jars.

We dined on a busy Friday night and I swirled the Malbec around in my mouth for an unnecessarily long while, hoping its flavor would seep into my tongue and last through the evening. The flavor did persist, my mouth did rejoice, and I tipsily made my way home with Ben Britz at the wheel.

By: Elizabeth Seward
Photos By: Ben Britz

Gallery: click on a thumbnail to view full size.

$2 SHOWS & THE ANTI TOURIST™ HOST UNOFFICIAL SXSW PARTY

Community Nonprofit and Travel Website Collaborate Create Performance and Art Space during the week of the SXSW

AUSTIN, TX – $2 Shows, Inc. and The Anti Tourist™ cosponsored a music and performance art event dubbed SXS1st which took place concurrently with the SXSW Music Conference and Festival. Bands hailing from all over the US performed on two stages alongside dancers, live spray paint artists, and smaller music acts. Offerings from local artists, photographers, and jewelry artisans were on display, and a local BBQ chef offered a savory meal from his mobile barbecue wagon. SXS1st, which began on March 17^th, 2011, lasting all night, at the Audrey House, 811 Audrey Drive, Austin, also celebrated the long awaited redesign and relaunch of www.TheAntiTourist.com.

Adding to the city-wide clamor that is the SXSW Music Conference and Festival, the aim of SXS1st was to provide a space for artists and performers to take part in the festival. The $2 Show mission to bring skilled new artists to the public eye by providing an exciting and affordable event resonates with the philosophy of The Anti Tourist, who seek out and document lesser-known locales, venues, and events through photos, videos, and the written word, resulting in a vast online collection of fascinating first-person travel narratives and stunning photography.

The Anti Tourist founder and Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Seward says, “Collaborating with $2 Shows made sense. Not only we were planning a similar show to launch the website redesign, but we love the $2 Shows mission, and this kind of event is perfectly in line with our editorial philosophy. That the relaunch of TheAntiTourist.com is to take place during South-By is fitting, given our touring background and music focus.”

To celebrate their relaunch at SXS1st, The Anti Tourist provided a limited number of very well-received backpacks filled with offerings from businesses they support from across the USA—from homemade soaps and lotions, artisan teas and coffees, and micro-brewed beer, to discounts and gift certificates from AirBnB, local restaurants, and vintage stores, these backpacks were filled with The Anti Tourist’s favorite things and branded with The Anti Tourist logo.

Among the bands that will be playing are Rabbits Running, Quiet Life, Mike Kingcaid, Slothpop, Brainstorm, Monarques, Tiger Bones, Jascha, Super Volcano, Polysky, and The Vanguard. Some of the show sponsors and The Anti Tourist swag bag donors are AirBnB, Sugoy, Bookholders, AustinFIT, Austin Natural Soap, Gorilla Coffee, Zhi Tea, Sunny Meadows Farm, and Charm School Vintage. A full listing of performers and sponsors can be found on the attached SXS1st flyer.

About $2 Shows:

$2 Shows promotes community collaboration between all artists and organizations. The charitable organization creates a space for people from all socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds to join together for one night of the month to appreciate a night of art and music. To circumvent the obstacles created by large-scale venues and music industry, $2 Shows is meant to be the answer for young artists to debut their work in front of large audience. Partnering with local non-profits, $2 Shows strives to promote community involvement by educating its audiences about other organizations and important issues. $2 Shows aims to create events that are meaningful, and aim to inspire our artists and audiences to continue to support one another, in hopes to bring a constant positive light to the community, one affordable show at a time. $2 Shows, Inc. is an official 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

About The Anti Tourist:

TheAntiTourist.com is a youthful, energetic travel site that focuses on creative first-person travel essays, videos, and stunning photography from a wide range of contributors, the bulk of which are affiliated with professional touring bands. The redesign of TheAntiTourist.com updated its appearance and strongly emphasizes photographic and video content. The Anti Tourist was founded by musician Elizabeth Seward in early 2008. By that point, Seward had sung her way across the USA a few times over both as a solo artist and band frontman and had collected a large repository of travel stories and pictures, which became the raw material for the birth of TheAntiTourist.com. As a philosophy, The Anti Tourist focuses on lesser known locales, venues, trips, and adventures, avoiding the commercial and insipid style of travel highlighted by the mainstream travel industry.

Contact:

Lauren Bruno, Cofounder, $2 Shows Austin
503.752.8746

Clayton Lillard, Cofounder, $2 Shows Austin
210.240.0008

Elizabeth Seward, Founder, Editor-in-Chief, TheAntiTourist.com
shout@theantitourist.com

Ben Britz, Co-editor, Photographer, TheAntiTourist.com
shout@theantitourist.com

The car I drive now that I live in Austin is an old one. My parents had it sitting around on its last leg in their West Virginia driveway and they offered it up when they caught wind of the news that Ben Britz and I were moving south. It’s a 1996 Honda Accord with 272,000+ miles on it. We managed to revive it over the summer after a transmission scare in Centralia, PA, which is a living, burning ghost town. We then managed to coax it all the way to Austin from New York City. The car picked up a wheezy rattle along the way, a rattle that still persists and echoes horribly when crossing bridges or going through tunnels. The AC has been fixed numerous times to no avail; we are planning on driving only at night this summer. The “check engine” light is usually on; no one knows why. It only starts reliably sometimes.

On the way to Foreign & Domestic, we mistakenly parked too far away (unhelpful GPS) but when we tried to start the car to go the last mile, it didn’t start. We’ve developed a maneuver to help us with our finicky ignition – if you wiggle it a certain way, it will almost always usually start – but Ben sucks at it so by the time we got it started we were 20 minutes or so late for our reservation.

Our friendly waitress brought us some cocktails. They don’t seem to have any liquor, but they had a great bubbly orange sparkling wine cocktail I heartily recommend. It was like a mimosa all dressed up. As we devoured our Chicory and Celery salad (very good) and Venison Heart Tartare (yes, I feel a little guilty for eating this), we found ourselves discussing our transportation situation.

“Are we still going to Abbie’s party?” Ben asked, referencing a friend’s birthday get-together we’d planned on attending after dinner.

“I think the car will decide that”, I say, silently car shopping in my head.

Ben orders the Revival Meats Pork Pie. Warned early on by the waitress that it is served at room temperature, the room temperature-ness of it still takes him off-guard, despite the obvious artistry and flavor alchemy behind the dish. I order the Vital Farms Organic Chicken and, once again, like I so frequently have to do, I restrain from licking the plate when I’m done with the chicken, chickpea fries, and braised beef. We don’t think we want dessert, but the waitress thinks that we do, and that’s all of the persuasion we need to find ourselves drooling before Almond Tart (with lemon ice and whipped cream) and Chocolate Mousse (with hazelnut ice cream and chocolate ganache) dishes just minutes after we say we’re stuffed to go on.

The irony of the juxtaposition of an insanely creative and dare I say, fancy, menu like Foreign & Domestic’s with our poor-people car situation does not escape us as we exit the restaurant and return to the Honda to see if it’s still broken. I decide to drive and find that it starts perfectly, well, perfectly for it being what it is, at the first try – no black-magic-ignition-wiggle trick necessary. And so we head on into town to meet up with Abbie, but where one problem resolves, another finds complexity. My phone has died and although we’re downtown at this point and ready to celebrate, there’s no way to know just where the birthday girl is drinking her birthday drinks. And so we go home, and it’s just as well.

Full to the brim on deliciously showy food and ever-perplexed by the ways in which mechanics and technology worm into our lives, we watch a movie before going to bed. And, like every other night that we watch a movie before going to bed, I’m asleep before the movie’s climax; dreaming away at newly-introduced characters who have not any conflict and, in my head, never will.

By: Elizabeth Seward and Ben Britz
Photos By: Ben Britz

“What’s TC’s?” I ask, trying to alert my brain to the task of mental note-taking, particularly important when you’re a newcomer to a city.

“It’s hard to describe–it’s kind of a run-down bar with awesome blues music. It’s packed with people dancing every Monday night. And there’s free food and the cover is cheap–and it’s BYOB, I mean not beer, but wine and liquor. They sell beer.”, says another girl in the group.

A few weeks later, I’m trying to conjure up Fun to Do in Austin type ideas. My favorite long sleeve black shirt is a thin one, worn so thin that its holes expose various parts of my wrists and waist. I’m curled up in this little thing, as sheer as nylon tights, and gazing off into the nothingness of the residential homes in my neighborhood. The view from my backyard is limited–our fence is wooden and taller than I am, but I’m gazing off for a purpose: I’m trying to think of exactly where to take our Brooklyn friends who are in town for the weekend. The mentioning of TC’s Lounge doesn’t escape me and I mention it in return to our visiting friends, who really seem genuinely interested in the idea of seeing live blues music in a run down club on the East Side on a Friday night. But, again, it was a Friday night.

We park and enter from the wrong door at first (you should actually enter TC’s from around the side, not the front). After finding our footing and our ways through the correct door, we pay a nominal cover fee and find that we are the only people, really, the only people, in TC’s aside from the band and the workers. That’s ok, we think. We’ll just get a beer and see if this band is good, we think.

The band begins with a howl that can only descend from the mouth of person singing blues in the south, in this kind of place. Every member means it, they mean every single lick, every single hip-shift. This music isn’t the kind of music you can easily find in NYC, if at all. A certain degree of innocence is lost in NYC, and even the best blues musicians I know in the city will speak of differences they know of and hear between themselves and the blues musicians down south.

We drink.
We dance.
We go home.
We dance at home until our neighbors ask us to turn off the music.

Our initial experience at TC’s was, overall, good. But we wanted to see the TC’s people were talking about. The Monday Night.

We notice the difference in TC’s on a Monday vs. Friday night before we even park. Cars are lined up and down the modest Webberville Road and the parking lot is full. People are loitering outside the *side* door, smoking, talking, playing with the disturbingly friendly TC’s cat. Between the two of us, myself and Ben, we are cashless–pretty much. We have $9 between the two of us and the cover is $5 a person. A quick word with the door woman leads me to the bar, where I buy a PBR for $1 more than it should cost, making it $3.75, and I go back to show the door woman my receipt; prove that I’ve squared out my debt of $1 owed to TC’s. She nods her head and shoos me away. But the band isn’t playing.

While we wait for the band to start, it’s hard not to notice the striking difference between our first time at TC’s and tonight. The place is packed. There is not a single seat available for us to take and it seems as though every cranny we find for the standing is monopolized by a shooting pool stick, one that’s jabbing us without apology. We head over to the bar again and this time we notice the source of the food everyone is eating: a giant basin of Hamburger Helper. We go ahead and make the decision to help ourselves to a couple of bowls, but our stomachs disagree with us shortly after.

And then the band starts.
And they are good.
And everyone is dancing.

And we drive the whole 2 miles home thinking about what other secrets Austin is keeping.

By: Elizabeth Seward

Photos by: Ben Britz