Truesday: Making Moves, Cutting Shake

But alas, my efforts have done little to stave off the hordes of suburbanistas and demonic future condo-cave dwellers.

And in the face of such failure, I can’t help but remember some solid prison advice I once imagined I overheard on a downtown Dillo: if you can’t beat ‘em bloody with lead pipes, then join their miserable ranks with the same excitement displayed by a three year-old who is watching Finding Nemo for the seventieth time in a two-week period! Become your zombie passion! Shit yeah!

So I’m buying in, entirely. And that means that instead of crying about how the times, they are a changin’, I’m going to be proactive and ride the slick edge of the progress curve. Settin’ trends. Moving, shaking, all that sweet shit.

Let’s face it: as a town, we’ve always been about gimmicks. And that’s because when you boil it all down to find out where people actually place their cares and importance, you’ll find the well-treaded standards of marketing sorcery: tricks, absurdity, and cracked mirrors which reflect the image right back to the myopiconsumer.

Gimmicks cloak us with what we want others to see. Because image comes before substance in the dictionary.

Dry Creek Saloon has forever-cranky owners and a periodically caved-in roof. Maria’s Tacos has a lady statue a la Butterbean from Popeye, a college killer ‘cash-only’ policy, and disturbingly long lines. Emo’s has its ‘facilities of dubious working order’. And then there’s The Salt Lick, whose main claim to fame is that they’re a billion miles from anywhere.

Gimmicks. Gimmicks. Gimmicks. Fueling the engines of progressness.

So I’ve got some ideas that I think will really turn this town on its pot-addled head. Slap it silly. Body slam it onto a folding table, thereby breaking it with much drama.

1. Opening the world’s first SUPRAMEGALOUNGE. That’s right. Shit’s gonna be SUPRAMEGA. Ultra? That’s about as fancy and extravagant as a bear taking a dump in a Fendi bag. Ultra’s old hat, and on the back-burner. Supra’s where it’ll be at. Trust.

The SMLounge will be set far apart from other bars through their liberal use of flame throwers, hourly live male circumcisions, socialist-sounding rhetoric blasted over loudspeakers, singing gnomes, and $600 VSOP gorilla-administered enemas. Entrance will be by reservation only, and the Standard Table will be composed of an actual, live Stephen Hawking clone laying in a rattan papasan, with a thick piece of table glass epoxy’d to his head. A Supramega Table will utilize three similarly glass-faced Stephens on tricycles. Standard Table rent will be $500 a night and a face-punch, plus a paltry 20% tip to the clone. Supramega Table pricing will vary depending on the outcome of illegal Thai boxing matches held in the basement but shown on closed-circuit monitors above all the bathroom urinals (which will all be sheathed in real panda fur, for the plushest of pissing).

There is no better bar concept than this. Until everyone else starts doing it, or the gnomes go on strike.

2. Theme restaurant which takes advantage of Austin’s 'weirdness'. This one is especially brilliant because it offers the opportunity for franchising to other non-Austin cities (of which there are… all). The name isn’t that important, but it could be something like “It’s Weird But Edible”, “Self-Righteous & Loathing By The Slice”, or “Organic Cardboard Collective Cake Factory”. Whatever. What will be more important is the attire of the waitstaff: drunk dudes in thongs/goatees, and drunk chicks in sweats passed out at every table. For the sake of Austin authenticity, the furniture will be rusted scrap-metal garbage: mangled and bent into the shape of chairs, tables, and a hostess stand. The food will be simple, with the entire menu being occupied by various versions of the breakfast taco and four laminated pages dedicated to an assortment of mixed-composition quesos. Wall memorabilia will consist solely of wax representations of the heads of political figures and colorful editorial writers from Austin’s past, none of which will be recognized by anyone, including their own living relatives.

I see this becoming a chain, first setting up shop in Milwaukee, and then oozing down and over the Appalachians into Florida. Austin’s fame will spread across these lands like bird flu.

3. A traveling suburban carnival, highlighting the ways of ‘Old Austin’ as if those ways were extinct, even though they are still quite alive. It will be named “The Traveling It Was Cooler Here Back When Festival!”. Features will include an inflatable pool with Barton Springs scribbled on its side with a Sharpie, which will be defecated in by various balding white guys wearing corporate logo’d polos, and then violently deflated by dropping upon it a large, fake building covered in spikes, every evening just before sundown. There will be Hippy Dance-Off Races where disinterested teens hired to work for minimum wage will dress up like poorly-aged hippies and dance like leaves blowing about the wind, for the entire day until only one is left standing (then there will be a poetry reading, dedicated to the winner’s spirit animal). All the mechanical rollercoasters and whatnot will be purchased from that one company that used to have all the rides in that lot off Ben White where the Wal*Mart now lives. Because those rides were pure quality, and pure Austin legend. Anyone who is killed or maimed during the carnival’s run will be labeled a gentrifier, and ceremoniously placed in the luggage hold of the next Greyhound bus to Dallas, because they obviously hate the REAL Austin.

This carnival’s yearly migration will take it from Cedar Park through Georgetown, dipping down into all those neighborhoods around Wells Branch, then up and through RR/Pflugerville, over to Elgin, Webberville, out to the Airport neighborhoods, across to Dove Springs, and ending in Sunset Valley. This carnival will never bother going directly west of Austin, ever, not even as a shortcut to somewhere else.

That’s right, kiddos. I’m all over the bleeding edge of New Austin. Got plans and I’m makin’ the moves. Talkin’ the talk about walkin’ the walk. And I’ll get to the walkin’ part in no time, you just wait and watch.

But first: a couple of pints and a bowl. You know, for ambition fuel.