Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2009 > November > 18
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Your A-List: Best Bookstore
In a city that worships local businesses, you could pretty much bet your life that BookPeople would win the A-List reader poll for Best Bookstore. The Austin institution shelved a full 47 percent of the vote.
Mega-chains Barnes & Noble and Borders landed respectably at 10 and 6 percent. All the rest — 12th Street Books, Moneywrench, Austin Books and Comics, Brave New Books, Resistencia and Domy — achieved 2 percent or less.
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Your A-List: Best Beauty Salon
Earlier this year, Beauty Store Salon and Spa won the A-List readers poll for Best Place to Get Your Hair Done with 39 percent of the vote.
Competitors didn’t even clip close. Jackson Ruiz buzzed up 10 percent. Avant curled up 9 percent. Birds Barbershop shaved off 6 percent.
The rest — Urban Betty, Wet Salon, Salon 505, Vain, Salon Sirrah and Zig Zag — rinsed out four percent or less.
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Your A-List: Best Basketball Courts
A little thing called “hand-eye coordination” has, for the most part, kept me off area basketball courts. I show up often enough as a spectator to actual basketball games. But no, despite my height, there’s really no excuse for my handling a ball in public.
Two spots — Barton Hills Playground and Wooten Park — tied for third place with 7 percent. Three — Ramsey Park, Givens District Park and Brentwood Park — tied for fourth with 5 percent. The back of the pack: Walnut Creek Park, Alamo Park and Shipe Park.
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Your A-List: Best Breakfast
That’s the case with the top winners in the Best Breakfast readers poll for Your A-List. Kerbey Lane served up a full 30 percent. Magnolia Cafe dished out 22 percent. And Juan in a Million fired up third place with 16 percent.
Some of the remaining breakfast spots have not been around so long, others are even older: Galaxy Cafe (8 percent); Omelettry (7 percent); The Frisco (5 percent); Counter Cafe (5 percent); Curra’s (3 percent); Austin Java (3 percent) and El Sol y La Luna (2 percent).
I adore each and everyone.
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The Parlour for Salvage Vanguard at the Eponymous Garden
The Eponymous Garden — located, naturally, on Garden Street — is a superb location for a small-scale fundraiser …
Andree Bober and Cheline Jaidar
Especially on a dreamy night like Tuesday night, when the gardens, designed by Daniel Gregory of Silver Sage Landscape Environments, form a fairy land of delights …
Sarah Bird and Doug Dorst
The gardens connect five houses, four of them owned by designer/legal eagle Lorne Loganbill and composer/performer Sterling Price-McKinney, who have returned from New York City to grace Our Town full-time …
Jenny Larson and Dustin Wills
Full disclosure: Kip and I rented one of the bungalows on their property in the Holly Street neighborhood for six years in the 1990s. The houses, including the Victorian main house, and gardens are MUCH improved, thanks in part to Gregory and renovation architect Emily Little of ClaytonLevyLittle …
James Dean Jay Byrd and Kyle Henry
Tuesday’s event, called the Parlour, was a creative fundraiser for Salvage Vanguard Theater, one of the city’s top warehouse theater groups, so there were performances, inventive raffles and signature drinks …
Daniel Gregory and Chris Meier
A splendid melding of arts, architecture and Austinites …
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Cine Las Americas Happy Hour at Malverde
Two developments of note during the Cine Las Americas Happy Hour at Malverde …
Giovanna Colson-Basurto and Angel Quesada
An obvious one: The cosmopolitan crowd that follows this Austin film festival has found a home away from home at Malverde, which, as more than one guest remarked, looks like it was lifted from Mexico City’s Condesa district …
Roberto Hernandez and Tania Lara
Not so obvious to the curious outsider: Cine is becoming a year-round institution …
Monica Malenco and Omar Flores
Instead of gathering for just eight days during a feast of Latin American films, it now spreads its wings throughout the year with screenings and social events like this one …
Angela Hall, Leslie Sainz, Dan Dau and Dillan Bryant
This organization is growing up quickly. I like that …
Hector Perez, Yvette Montalvo and Philip Hernandez
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The shrinking gay media — and what that means
Newspapers convey a concrete sense of time and place.
So the American gay community lost some of its orientation this week when its oldest and most comprehensive newspaper, the Washington Blade, closed its doors.
The Houston Voice had already closed. The Dallas Voice appears healthy.
Now, Austin lost its serious-minded Texas Triangle years ago. Yet the national failures — Washington Blade employees plan a replacement newspaper — affect the GLBT community here as well.
Respected Austin syndicated gay-press writer Ann Rostow wrote an impassioned piece on the shrinking opportunities for gay reporters and editors, while over at KOOP Radio, OutCast hosts Heath Riddles, Kate Messer and Stephen Rice discussed the wider implications on the air Tuesday. (I was a guest.)
It would be easy enough to blame the shrinking print industry, or the decline of advertising in general. Sharp questions should be asked about Window Media’s business model and the viability of niche publications, especially when the mainstream media shoulders more and more of the reporting on GLBT issues.
One issue won’t go away: The inevitable evolution of gay culture as the community becomes more assimilated. Austin could be a test case for this phenomenon. Because of the city’s open nature, the gay community here never developed a ghetto mentality, with strictly separate neighborhoods, businesses and organizations.
Austin’s gay culture is so deeply entwined with Austin culture, it’s hard to unravel the strands.
Here’s what I hear gay people say they want: Equal protection under the law, first, but also the freedom to associate with their straight counterparts in the city they love, while preserving some semblance of a distinct gay culture.
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