Month: July 2021

Items for sale
Amish community sign near Pontotoc MS, 2018.

One Hour Martinizing Cleaners
Tupelo MS, 2018.

As for the Austin part of our trip, we stayed at the Hotel Van Zandt — it’s a Kimpton (Kimpton and InterContinental are IHG, the only two reasons we do IHG spend for points, really) and in general, Kimptons have more personality. The Kimpton Brice in Savannah, for example, is pretty fun.

I also saw that the Van Zandt had received a lot of awards — a few years ago, Conde Nast readers award for #1 in Texas; Robb Report did a feature; some pics made it in at Wallpaper. It’s also right there at Rainey Street, which should probably just become a pedestrian zone at this point: it’s a former neighborhood of little houses that are now repurposed as bar / restaurant / foodtruck lot, repeated over and over. That to say, you could stay at the Van Zandt and do Rainey Street for food and walking around, and you’d be doing fine.

We stayed using points; the check-in was great and our room was nice. The pool was a little small and crowded, but otherwise, the stay was great.

The bath amenities are Atelier Bloem, made exclusively for Kimpton by the Malin + Goetz team.

a VZ boot jack, even

our view

and looking down at the pool

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Quick mention that supper was at JewBoy Burgers, which was super, super good and the owner was so friendly and great. Told one of my friends about it and he said the owner & place are beloved in Austin. As it is on their website:

A mixture of US/Mexico Border Culture and a traditional Reform Jewish upbringing come together to make burgers, burritos and latkes (among other fried stuff) that honor both cultures.

And yeah, the boys brought home t-shirts.

Always trying to have the philosophy to “do *all* the things” — well, do all the things that don’t hurt ourselves or other people — but I think since we all had so many months to think about the things we couldn’t do anyway, coming out of quarantine means “do ALL the things” times a million.

Spent so much time thinking about this.

Sent texts/emails/calls to friends about “when we can, let’s do THIS” and actually, I just did one of those things.

If you’ve read DFK for a while, you might remember this story; it’s about a very special friendship, why I graduated college a year-and-a-half later than most of my classmates, and why I know Allen Ginsberg poetry so well. We still keep in touch, so one day while reading some issues of Texas Monthly I was behind on, I texted my friend and said, “did you see the Best Honky-Tonks in Texas article? When I come back to Austin, we haaaave to do that.”

Okay, I don’t know what a honky-tonk is before this article, really. I’m not a bar person, I’m not a dance hall person, but I am a person who now especially takes doing ALL the things seriously.

So we went! Ha! And it was terrific!

From the TM article:

But the granddaddy of them all is the Broken Spoke, considered by many to be the greatest in Texas…

Inside the Spoke, hardly a thing has changed in 55 years. The speckled ceiling tiles still hang so low that a tall cowboy has to doff his hat. Chicken-fried steak is still served with steaming white gravy. Twirling couples still waltz, shuffle, and polka on the polished-concrete dance floor. And there to greet you on most nights are James and Annetta. But you probably already know all this, because of course you’ve spent an evening there. On the off chance you have yet to make this honky-tonk pilgrimage (and sacred Texan rite of passage), I recommend you tell no one. Just go ahead and book your trip now. You’ll be glad you did.

Just saying.

Found this sign in 2013 in the N Georgia mountains.

We were fast friends and he took so much joy in whatever my boys were into.
Lots of holidays with us all together, visits with his incredible artist friends.
His laugh was the *best*
Wade Wharton Volkswagen sculpture
Huntsville AL, 2008.