Do you remember Austin (back in the good old days)?

Discussion in 'Cactus Cafe' started by Dionysus, Jun 21, 2016.

  1. Dionysus

    Dionysus Idoit Admin

    Someone sent me this video of Austin in the 60s. I do remember some of this from the late 80s.

    Calling @OldHippie ... :smokin:

     
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  2. OldHippie

    OldHippie 2,500+ Posts

    I only got to Austin in 1971 for graduate school after a stint in the army. I do remember the majority of those places, people and things but certainly not all. Thanks for posting this. It does shake out some cobweb memories.
     
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  3. TheWalkingHorn

    TheWalkingHorn 500+ Posts

    Wow, I only know about 1/4 of this stuff and I was born and raised in Austin. I didn't make my arrival until 1984 though. :D
     
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  4. Dionysus

    Dionysus Idoit Admin

    I don't think you have met the age requirement for this thread. We’ll need to see some ID.
     
  5. Steve Dallas

    Steve Dallas 25+ Posts

    How much time do you have?

    Early '80s for me through '92. Convinced anyone who was there in the '70s, '80s and arguably the '90s saw it in it's heyday. We knew it was a special place but the word hadn't completely gotten out yet.
     
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  6. Phil Elliott

    Phil Elliott 2,500+ Posts

    Being born in 1984, you were not aware of your surroundings until the 90s. I got here in '83 and I've been to or seen just about everything on there except Zuider Zee. Even the AWH was still here in '83 but it was closed. I think they tore it down in '84 or '85.

    My wife got here in '75 and graduated from Westlake in '78 when it was in the boonies. I gotta share this with her, although she is not the sucker for nostalgia that I am.
     
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  7. snek

    snek 500+ Posts

    Hung out in the mid 80's. Skipped a lot of school to skate around town, the drag, you name it and we skated it. We got people on the East Side to buy us beer and liquor. Saw lots of shows. Remember the Poster Band days of the 80's. Hilarious times.

    I left and did up D.C. and NYC. Came back in mid to late 90's. It wasn't the same but still pretty damned awesome. I cannot say that about it now. It's time to move.
     
  8. Crockett

    Crockett 5,000+ Posts

    I still love Austin, but the thing that was different when I arrived about the fall of '79 is that it was still a fun place for poor folks like I was. So much free and low cost fun was available, and good cheap places to eat. Won't miss the hotel scene though. The Villa Capri wasn't terrible, but it seemed like the ONLY place available ...
     
  9. snek

    snek 500+ Posts

    A favorite music act of mine is in town tomorrow night. But the hassle of going to 6th Street, parking (pay or not), getting there without fights breaking out or what not and then dealing with the crowd in and out of the place? Annoying. Then there's the melee that usually happens down there after places close. Then traffic getting out of downtown. I live single digit minutes away from downtown but it takes almost 25-30 to do the above. I may as well live in Cedar Park, aka South Dallas.

    The great places of Austin now are few and far between. The joke is that we are the live music capital of the world. Whatever. We barely may be for Travis County and it's really not a debate. It's sad that when I travel I see the same bars and restaurants in other cities because it's all so corporate and chain oriented. Again, few and far between are the jewels. The Native American in me weeps atop my horse as I see trash ubiquitous in Austin.
     
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  10. VYFan

    VYFan 2,500+ Posts

    Moved to Austin when I was one month old in March of 1960.

    I remember every single thing--I was even on the Packer Jack show as a kid.

    Oddly, the most nostalgic things were the skipper pins!
     
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  11. Phil Elliott

    Phil Elliott 2,500+ Posts

    Man I do miss Aqua Fest.

    Outside of the Longhorns, just about everything else I moved back here from Houston for is gone.
     
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  12. Joe Fan

    Joe Fan 10,000+ Posts

  13. Horn6721

    Horn6721 10,000+ Posts

    wait? What ?
    You were born in 84 but got to Austin in 83?
    And your wife graduated HS 6 years before you were born in 84?
     
  14. Phil Elliott

    Phil Elliott 2,500+ Posts

    Please, dude, read slower. I was not talking about me, I was talking about TheWalkingHorn in this sentence as he said he was born in Austin in 1984.

     
  15. Horn6721

    Horn6721 10,000+ Posts

    PE
    :coolnana:
    sorry
     
  16. Texanne

    Texanne 5,000+ Posts

    I started at Texas in 1975, but my sister started in 1973. I had the opportunity to visit some of those places while visiting her.

    I also started going to football games as a baby in my mama’s arms. My family stayed at the Villa Capri and ate at the Night Hawk No. 1. I later worked there when I was a student.

    I have cousins who are Austin natives and went to a lot of those places as a kid with them.

    Funny that I didn’t see GM Steakhouse or The Stallion in the video. Or Nothing Strikes Back, my favorite place from my university years.
     
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  17. mchammer

    mchammer 10,000+ Posts

    I was a student between 1991-1997. The inflection point between old and new Austin was the success of Dell. New people, new money moved in and pushed the old out (or bulldozed it). Somewhere between 96 or 97 was the dividing line. I remember talking to people who had just moved in from Durham or Chapel Hill, places where people wouldn’t have ended up in Austin during the 80’s. Austin was very different culturally (from anywhere else) when I moved there in 1991. You had to adapt or leave. It all died with Dell (and Austin’s) success.
     
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    Last edited: Jan 30, 2020
  18. Chop

    Chop 10,000+ Posts

    Remember when SXSW was a cool music fest instead of a largely corporate/political/tech networking convention.
     
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  19. BevoJoe

    BevoJoe 10,000+ Posts

    Saw Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen perform (and record an album) back in '73 IIRC. Went there several times while at UT.

    [​IMG]
     
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  20. Driver 8

    Driver 8 Amor Fati

    The old Austin is alive in my memory and it is still really weird
     
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  21. Joe Fan

    Joe Fan 10,000+ Posts

    Under the "Gone But Not Forgotten Header"

    Mad Dogs and Beans
    Open: 1977 – 1995
    Location: 24th and San Antonio
    Remembered for: Historic innovations, like blending bacon into cheeseburgers, an eccentric staff

     
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  22. Phil Elliott

    Phil Elliott 2,500+ Posts

    They mistakenly say that GM Steakhouse moved to Lamar in 1981. There was a GM Steakhouse breakfast place on Lamar, as well as another location on Koenig, but the drag location never moved.
     
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  23. Joe Fan

    Joe Fan 10,000+ Posts

    Poster by Jim Franklin. His work is so easy to spot. To me, it screams "Austin!"
     
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  24. BevoJoe

    BevoJoe 10,000+ Posts

    The Hole in the Wall was (is?) a great place, across the Drag from campus. Could walk there, and beer prices were low. In the mid '70s after a long day in the classrooms, you could have a few and wash away everything you had learned.

     
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    Last edited: Mar 11, 2020
  25. BevoJoe

    BevoJoe 10,000+ Posts

    When I was a student, I would go the the Hoffbrau Steakhouse down on west 6th, and get the large sirloin steak, eat some and take the rest home. Had dinner for about 4 days! As I recall, it was really cheap compared to steak costs now.

    [​IMG]
     
  26. SabreHorn

    SabreHorn 10,000+ Posts

    When I worked in the State Senate, I would be loaned the Senator's car and given a wad of cash to go to the airport and buy airplane tickets. The surplus cash I got to keep. I'd head straight to Hoffbrau or Scholz to eat. If there was any money left, I got to keep it as long as my mouth stayed shut.

    One day, I bought SIX roundtrip tickets to Acapulco on Braniff on the same plane in one woman's name. Was never sure if the name was real or phony, but she occupied six seats on those two planes.
     
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  27. huisache

    huisache 2,500+ Posts

    transferred in in 1969, February, from rural south Texas and thought I had died and gone to heaven. I told my landlady my thoughts and she told me I missed the best Austin had to offer---back in the 50s before it got crowded.

    I think everybody thinks they arrived at peak Austin and left before it went to hell or California.

    I left in 74 but got offered a good job there in 81-----but decided there was too much traffic, the rents were too expensive and it was no longer anything but a haven for the well off. I go back for football games and to tour the Ransom but that is it.
     
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  28. Phil Elliott

    Phil Elliott 2,500+ Posts

    Yeah it's all relative to when you get here. We moved to Dripping Springs in 1996 and are dismayed at how many folks there are here now, how crowded it is and how many traffic lights there are. However, there is a couple around the corner from us who moved here about a year ago from Austin and they think they have come out to the wide-open country. When we moved here in '96, there were old-timers saying stuff like, "there used to just be a 4-way stop at RR12 and 290 before all YOU people moved out here!"
     
  29. Dionysus

    Dionysus Idoit Admin

    The late 80s were peak Austin and I will fight you over that :catfight:
     
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  30. VYFan

    VYFan 2,500+ Posts

    I have lived in Austin from 1960 to 1984, and 1995 to 2020–49 total years out of my 60. I suppose there were benefits to each period. People were nicest, and Austin was the most pleasant in the 60s and 70s. Funky, fun, easy. Music was best in the 80s and 90s. Things aren’t really so easy, and people are not really committed to easy friendliness anymore, (still, pretty good, though), however, not one restaurant in Austin from 1960 to 2000–possibly excluding Jeffrey’s—could crack the top 75 restaurants in Austin in 2020. More jobs are here now, too.
     
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