Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2008 > March > 28
Friday, March 28, 2008
HEB Westlake Market wows cocktail crowd
A gala at a supermarket? You bet. When H-E-B decides to christen a new concept, the venerable Texas chain does it right. After all, they introduced the Central Market concept with great style — and flexibility, responding to first-nighters’ frustration with the originally strict amusement-park spatial arrangements.
David Johnston, Joan Klasson
For somebody who grew up in a family grocery store, the invitation-only launch of the Westlake Market — a hybrid between an ordinary H-E-B and a Central Market — was Nirvana. Yes, you had aisles and aisles of family staples, such as SpagehttiOs, but also artisan breads, fine wines, tart cheeses and dense prepared foods.
Pamela Saldana, Mario Saldana
(Arugula was an early request, according to produce manager Carlos Gil, Jr.)
Jeff Thomas, Michelle Dickson, Charles Butt
In the world of groceries, H-E-B leader Charles Butt is Gregory Peck, a superstar with modest integrity. I’ve wanted to meet him virtually all my life, and when I did last night, I reminded him that he played tennis regularly during junior high with my aunt, Valerie Barnes, in Corpus Christi. “Ginger hair…wiry…very athletic…sure I remember Valerie,” he said. Everything else in our conversation was a blur.
Lanette Smith, Rev. James Evans, Mary Evans, Lynn Nolan, Neal Nolan
Of course, there was the married Catholic priest, which I never figured out. Leave that for another column…
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Robert Redford pumps ‘Unforeseen’ in Austin
You could hardly ask for two more articulate speakers on behalf of a movie, this one a poetic documentary about Barton Springs and urban development that has swept the world’s film festivals and won the hearts of critics.
“My hope is to inspire and reinvigorate those who have battled (for the Springs) while informing the newcomers,” Dunn said about her hope to capture “The essence of what’s going on in Austin.”
Then she invited Robert Redford up to the stage. Grounded, magnetic, a better expository speaker than most politicians, Redford talked about what attracted him to the project: Terrence Malick’s invitation to join the team as executive producer, his own childhood learning to swim at the springs, his activism in the 1980s and ’90s in favor of the aquifer’s preservation, his long support of documentaries as films, not just megaphones, as well as Dunn’s unusually fair-minded and aesthetically persuasive technique.
At one point, activist Brigid Shea pointed out, as she has at screenings, that “Unforeseen” does not document the SOS struggle minutely enough and Dunn didn’t show enough of Bradley’s dark side. Dunn and Redford need only have said that the rhetoric of changing minds not already converted to the environmental cause requires something other than the movie that Shea could make, but their respectful comments expanded on that.
“The environmental movement needs to accept there’s a new way to do things,” Redford said, emphasizing the broad coalitions now possible for protecting the environment.
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Google Street View your house!!!
OK, I’m a map nerd. Drew maps in the margins of my notebooks in school. Spent hours at a time lost in historical or topographical maps.
So every version of Google’s maps have amazed me — streets, satellites, terrains. Stunning.
So now Street View has made it to Austin. Oh. My. God.
Obviously, the first 360-degree street shots were taken a few months ago, wince the greenery glows from last year’s record rains. Our yard and borders look unusually tidy. Can you imagine if the streetcams came by when you’d been on vacation for three weeks and had forgotten to ask a neighbor to pick up the newspapers?
Maybe Google Street View will help encourage people to keep up appearances?
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