October 13, 2005

Third Thursday on the Upper Drag
North Campus area looks to change and grow while keeping its quirky identity

By Trevor Rosen

SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN

On the steaming asphalt between the In Step footwear store and Wheatsville Co-op, a three-piece band called Dreamsicle plays languidly to a small crowd of all ages.

Free snacks and a keg of root beer beckon from tables opposite the band. People play chess with waist-high pieces on a plastic-mat board; just beyond the players sits a tarot reader. A guy with long, curly hair sits astride an adult-sized tricycle reading the paper.

Welcome to the Upper Drag, the portion of Guadalupe Street above the elbow at 29th Street, which, like West Sixth Street, South Congress Avenue and pockets of East Austin, is undergoing an urban transformation matching the seismic changes seen on the student-hippie-dropout-hangout Drag proper in the 1960s.

Driven by higher-density residences, higher-end retail and a shift of pedestrian activity from the Lower Drag, this area is etching out a cultural identity separate from the University of Texas campus to the south and the gentrifying neighborhoods to the east, west and north.

Like all change, the metamorphosis of the Upper Drag scares some folks and excites others. But bet on it, the area is growing up -- and fast. And it has spawned its own monthly extravaganza, named, in a logical extension of virtual citywide gentrification, Third Thursday.

Head north for quiet

The northern University neighborhood is sandwiched between Hyde Park and UT, bounded by 27th, 38th, Guadalupe and Duval streets. It's a quiet, shady area peppered with unassuming apartment complexes and modest family homes, with groups of larger, older, more stately houses closer to Guadalupe. It's also home to the Trudy's Texas Star restaurant, the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, a historic fire station and, according to Capitol Metro, about 3,500 UT students.

Students call the neighborhood "North Campus," and it's typically the refuge of grads or upperclassmen who've gotten the summer-camp rowdiness of East Riverside Drive and West Campus out of their systems and just want a place that's quiet and close to campus.

The stretch of Guadalupe on the western boundary is this area's major business district. It includes I Luv Video, Chango's, Toy Joy, Milto's, Ruby's Barbecue, Tom's Tabooley, Wheatsville, Zen, Amy's Ice Cream, Mangia Pizza, Thundercloud Subs, Ozone Bikes and a host of other businesses, nearly all of them Austin originals that cater to a straight-up mix of college kids and longer-term neighborhood residents.

The changes happening up and down Guadalupe are easiest to see in the area bordering north University. Newly demolished tracks, half-finished developments, and recent vacancies have poised these nine blocks to look significantly different in the next few years.

But all that change comes to an area that has long considered itself a standard-bearer for the unique flavor of Central Austin.

Up and down Guadalupe Street, the armadillo-emblazoned banners of the Austin Independent Business Alliance have popped up in front of numerous businesses, and earlier this year, Guadalupe's independents from 23rd to 38th streets banded together with the help of the alliance to create the Guadalupe Independent Business District (Guadalupe IBIZ) and Third Thursday.

The IBIZ program, of which Guadalupe is the first, was created to help turn local neighborhoods into citywide "destination points," alliance director Melissa Miller says. Destinations need attractions, and though the IBIZ was a new concept, the members immediately hit upon a tried-and-true idea for promoting themselves.

"When we asked what we could do to support them, everyone wanted an event like First Thursday on South Congress," Miller says.

Guadalupe IBIZ launched Third Thursday on April 21. The new neighborhood night out doesn't tinker much with First Thursday's winning formula; Miller says the only criteria for businesses to join is that they agree stay open until 10 p.m. and that they run some sort of special.

But, predictably, many chose to attract customers by tapping into Austin's most ballyhooed natural resource: local bands.

"The businesses with the most foot traffic are the businesses with live music," Miller says. "Music is the No. 1 thing, and it seems like that's kind of what people expect when they go out now -- they're used to being able to cruise around to different venues and see bands performing."

Partners in publicity

On an early summer Third Thursday, in the parking lot of the dry cleaner's at 30th Street, there's a small stage and group of tables set up under an awning. Movin' Easy, the dance-supply store across the alley, is in charge of this space, which the dry cleaner has allowed them to use because it's after hours.

Movin' Easy's general manager, Julie Hughes, walks around the parking lot and makes frequent trips back across the alley to help mind the store. Movin' Easy is doing more business on this night than last time, she says, which is strange because the crowd isn't as big as the month before.

"Last time it was really big, almost too much, and this time it's pretty small, so I guess we're still looking for that magic number."

She says the drop in attendance probably has to do with the fact that one of the planned acts is a no-show. An older man strolls over wearing a golf shirt and jeans and carrying himself with the tell-tale straight posture of someone who's long been involved with dance. Hughes introduces him as Tim Hurst, Movin' Easy's owner.

"Tonight's been good for business," Hurst says. "There's less activity outside, but more customers, whereas before it was more activity and less customers."

Hurst is enthused about Third Thursday and the Guadalupe IBIZ.

"This is all about businesses cooperating with each other to develop interest and energy here, both in our businesses and just out on the street, among the customers and neighbors," he says.

"The commercial area here has become different even over the last five years," he continues. "It used to be that nobody knew their neighbors on Guadalupe, but that's been changing, and Third Thursday is just the natural next step. It builds energy and brings new people, gives them a reason to walk around and be in the neighborhood."

The right kind of vibe

"There's not a real aggressive indie vibe here yet," says Aaron Gomez, general manager for the Zen on Guadalupe Street. "We're not South Congress, but we are concentrating on becoming something of our own. In five years, this should be a hip, retail-and-restaurants type of strip."

The sheer diversity of people and performances at Third Thursday hints that the area is on the cusp of becoming something big.

Across 30th from Movin' Easy, past the CVS pharmacy, a trio of costumed punk avengers are blasting their sound from the shared parking lot of a laundry place and I Luv Video. The music is energetic and a little bit grinding, and it reverberates off the glass-and-concrete wall of the strip of shops across the street, so it sounds almost as if it's coming out in stereo.

The drummer is in a T-shirt and shorts, but the bass player wears a Mexican wrestling outfit, complete with a fierce red mask and matching boots. The frontman/guitarist has on what can only be described as a wizard's smock -- a shapeless, bright blue number decorated with silver stars that ends a few inches above Converse high-tops. From in front of the band it feels like this kind of thing is what Austin really means when it lays claim to the title of "Live Music Capital of the World."

The scruffy willingness to get out, play and not take oneself too seriously is exactly the type of "pure Austin" zeitgeist that Miller and the Guadalupe stores are hoping to tap into with Third Thursday -- from performers and patrons alike.

To some participants in Third Thursday, the event resurrects a Guadalupe tradition of streetside culture that many Austin residents claim died with Les Amis and Maddog & Bean's. Across the street from the I Luv Video band, Shelagh Brown is standing at a glass-blowing setup in front of Tom's Tabooley. Brown is a local artisan who specializes in hand-woven hemp hats and crystal jewelry. She laments the downfall of independent commercial opportunities further south.

"You can't sell glass down on the old Drag," she says. "You can't sell much there at all. But everyone's hoping it'll be different up here. I mean, this has the potential to be as big as First Thursday."

As she talks, she gestures over the top of her tables and cases toward the other side of Guadalupe. "There are lots of hip, conscious people in this neighborhood," Brown says, "and so much going on, right here."

As big as the first?

Wheatsville general manager Dan Gillotte laughs when he hears how many people hope the neighborhood's new signature event will get as big as SoCo's.

"I don't think we want it to be that big," he says. "First Thursday can get a little too crazy, but it'll be nice if this gets bigger, and I think it will. A new merchant seems to get involved every month."

It remains to be seen whether the Guadalupe IBIZ and Third Thursday will be able to make the area into another signature Austin neighborhood the way SoCo has. The sheer size of the area -- 15 blocks -- makes it a challenge to keep a sense of cohesion among the participant businesses, and parking availability differs dramatically along the route -- from scant and tightly regulated near UT to fairly open and reasonable just a little further north.

Miller also says that chain businesses don't have to be left out of the plan for cohesion along Guadalupe.

"This was started to help out local businesses," she says, "but we're not anti-chain. We're very much pro-local, but not anti-chain. There are a lot of chain businesses on Guadalupe. I'm sure at some point some will choose to join in Third Thursday, and that's perfectly fine."

Third Thursday comes along at a time when much of the neighborhood is in flux. Wheatsville plans a renovation to take place during the next year -- the first since the store moved into its present 5,100 square-foot location in 1981; Half Price Books, long a fixture on Guadalupe and just up the road from Wheatsville, moved to Lamar Boulevard last March, and its old space is being renovated and divided into multiple retail outlets.

The half-block strip of small commercial spaces directly across Guadalupe from Wheatsville's parking lot, as well as the adjacent space that used to house Ray's Steakhouse, have been leveled to create a new building in a mode now familiar to Austin -- residential up top and retail at street level.

That plan also describes the Triangle, the large development at 45th Street that marks the northern end of the commercial section of Guadalupe. Though only a portion of the massive development is open now, the Triangle is set to have a significant impact on area traffic when the remainder of the commercial space is completed next year.

"I think it's great," says Gomez. "We've just been open here a year, but it feels like we're getting in on the cusp of something great for the area."

Find this article at: http://www.statesman.com/life/content/auto/epaper/editions/thursday/life_entertainment_34d4d5677625b04000fc.html

©Austin American Statesman 2005

 

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