Ahh… feels like junior high.

“Downtown Austin” wrote a post about the battle to redevelop the warehouse district.

I think there’s a lot of nostalgia about the area, but what’s left to be nostalgic about? Aside from the gay clubs it’s become increasingly an area with a ton of chain restaurants and bars that are a pain to walk to. Waterloo’s gone. Ginger Man was a chain. It’s going, if not gone. The Spaghetti Warehouse will be fine I’m sure. There will still be a place to take a date with horrible food and piss-poor atmosphere. Never you fear. If this had been proposed in the nineties, I might have complained, but now? I think land owners trying to make money on their underdeveloped properties have already caused a lot of damage to the area.

If I’m going to dress up and go out drinking I’m going to West 6th or Second Street now. Thanks in large part to the fact that I don’t have to worry about getting hit by a car, or Julie wearing heels and falling down a flight of stairs with no handrail.

I think that you could probably come up with a design for that neighborhood that would be more “warehousey”, but that had actual walkable sidewalks. I’m interested though, is there anything anyone thinks is left in the warehouse district that they’d be sad to see go?

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Comments

ttrentham (http://thechunk.com/blog)

2009-08-14T21:29:34.000Z

Ginger Man is still there. It just moved around the corner and to the south on Lavaca between 3rd and 4th. It still seems to be doing quite well. Starlite became something called Frank’s with Chicago Dogs and Poutine. I want to check that out. Otherwise, I agree with you, not much there. Did you know that the Whip In now serves food, has beer on tap and has a happy hour? I’ve been going there for an after work beer even though they’re a bit overpriced. Opal’s Penn Field is our default hang out since it’s fairly close to our neighborhood. I’ve heard good things about the Black Sheep on S. Lamar.

Tim (http://www.loadedguntheory.com/)

2009-08-14T21:34:40.000Z

Yeah, I’m looking forward to checking out Frank’s. I love hot dogs. I knew about Whip-In, and need to check out their beer. I think we have a mental block because we don’t generally go that way when looking for food. And check out Black Sheep.