WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 3 2016

POSTCARDS FROM JOHN & JODY
| JODY JAFFE & JOHN MUNCIE |
Postcards from
Austin TX
This is a series of “postcards” sent to WDT
Magazine publisher, Ron James, from veteran
journalists and friends Jody Jaffe and John
Muncie as they travel the globe.
Dear Ron,
You can’t go to Texas without buying cowboy
boots. Well at least one of us can’t. We’d just
scored the perfect pair — cherry red boots
with broncos bucking down the shins — when
we heard a twangy version of Dylan’s “Tangled
Up In Blue” coming from South Congress Avenue.
It was James Anthony Johnson, whose cowboy
hat and guitar picking matched his twang.
He’s been singing the blues on South Congress
for 15 years and he’s watched the neighborhood
change. “Used to be, it was full of transvestites,
prostitutes, and transsexuals ...and
politicians cruising to find them,” he said.
Nowadays it’s full of retro shops where you
can buy the ugly clothes we wore in the ‘60s;
folk-art stores with the obligatory Day of the
Dead skeletons and turquoise squash blossoms;
shoe shops where the half the proceeds
go to Haitian children; and high-end booteries
where you can easily drop $2,000. And that’s
just on one block.
South Congress is the trendy section of Austin’s main drag, 10
blocks from the state capitol and just across the famed “Bat
Bridge” over the Colorado River. From March through October,
1.5 million bats — the largest bat colony in North America —
roost in the crevices underneath the bridge. And every evening
crowds gather to watch the clouds of bats fly off for dinner. While
we missed the bats, who were keeping warm in Mexico, there was
still plenty of entertainment on the south side of the river: Pinstriped
suits in the rear-view mirror, blue jeans, ironic beards and
tattoos dead ahead.
City marketeers have been trying to re-brand this seven-block
area, “SoCo,” a nod to New York’s SoHo, that locals find amusing
at best. “No one but tourists and PR people call it that,” we
were told repeatedly. The trendiness has spilled one block west to
the edgier First Street, with funkier stores like the vegan grocery
called “Rabbit Food.”
We wandered both streets for a couple of days, shopping, eating
and just getting a taste of urban Texas hip. Just like you can’t go
to Texas without buying cowboy boots, you can’t go to South Congress
without eating a Hopdoddy burger and their killer truffle
fries. Here’s where it pays to be old. Eating dinner at 5:30 is now
normal, which is good at Hopdoddy because when the hipsters
eat, the line stretches out the door and into the parking lot.
56 Wine Dine & Travel 2016