Waller to Pedernales on Foot, Ordering Ghosts

The kid at the rope near Waller asked if I had "a patio hold," and I told him the truth: I had a forty-year-old knee and a twenty-dollar bill, and only one of those was going to make it to Pedernales.

He let me in. He seemed glad to. I may have reminded him of a grandparent, or of a health code violation.

That was the plan for Friday night. Walk East Sixth from Waller to Pedernales on foot, after the heat let go just enough to stop being a medical event. Stop at each place I used to drink. Order out loud what they used to pour. Then buy whatever they sell now, write down the price, and keep moving. I brought a notebook and a cooling towel I'm too proud to wear around my neck in public, so it lived in my back pocket like a damp wallet.

One housekeeping item. The bar names below are what we called these places, which was rarely what the sign said, if there was a sign. Some of them were somebody's back room with a cooler. I'm not here to settle anybody's history. I'm here to settle a tab.

The block past Waller, north side

What we called it: The Porch, because that's all it was. A porch, a screen door that slapped every eleven seconds, and a man named Delfino (as far as any of us knew) who sold Lone Star longnecks out of a cattle trough full of ice for two dollars. You paid him in cash. You were not given a receipt. A receipt would have embarrassed everyone involved.

What I ordered: "Longneck out of the trough, please."

What I got: A look. Then a twelve-ounce can of a local pilsner, poured into a glass, for $9 plus a suggested 22 percent tip on a screen that swiveled toward me like a hostage negotiator. The porch is still there. It has heaters for winter and misters for summer, which means it is the only porch in Austin with a stronger climate control system than my house.

Running total: $10.98.

Past Comal

What we called it: Neon Tuesday's, because the only light that worked was a Pearl sign with the "P" burned out, so the whole room glowed "EARL" in a red that made everybody look like they'd just been told bad news. Well whiskey was three bucks. The jukebox had one Tejano disc, one Replacements disc, and one disc nobody could identify that we all agreed was perfect.

What I ordered: "Well whiskey, neat, and whatever's on number C-7."

What I got: A "pecan-smoked old fashioned" for $17. The bartender brought it under a glass cloche and lifted it in front of me, and smoke came out like the drink was clearing customs. She was lovely about it. She didn't pick the price, she didn't pick the cloche, and she definitely didn't pick the playlist, which was beamed in from a company that sells "sonic identity" to hotels.

There is no Earl anymore.

Running total: $31.72, because I tipped her properly. My grievance is with the cloche, not the person holding it.

Somewhere around Chicon, south side

This one hurts. This was the room.

What we called it: The Garage, because it had been one, and still smelled faintly of an oil change nobody had finished. Bands played on the floor with no stage. If you stood too close, you became part of the drum kit. Cover was three dollars, or free if you helped load the PA, which I did so often in 2004 that I should have been on the payroll. They sold Shiner for $2.50 and a frozen margarita out of a machine so loud it was basically the opening act.

I'm not going to pretend it was clean. It was not clean. I lost a shoe there once and didn't go back for it. The shoe had made its choice.

What I ordered: "One frozen marg from the loud machine."

What I got: The building's been rebuilt into something called a "hospitality concept," which is what developers call a bar when they want the rent to sound like art. Garage doors are still there, now painted a gray I would describe as "quarterly earnings." I ordered a frozen margarita for $14, which arrived silently. No grinding. No roar. The new machine is so quiet you could hear the guy two stools down explain his "fractional ownership" in a lake house.

That silence cost more than the drink.

Running total: $48.50.

Between Chicon and Robert Martinez

A brief interlude, because the walk itself has changed.

In 2009 the sidewalk on this stretch was half sidewalk and half suggestion. You stepped around a root, a dog, a couch, and a hand-painted sign advertising brisket "TIL GONE." The sound was cumbia from one car, metal from a garage, and grackles shrieking like they'd been overcharged.

Now the sidewalk is wide and handsome and lined with planters that are obviously on a drip schedule more reliable than my own water heater. I'd love it, honestly, if it weren't so clearly there to escort me from one $14 drink to the next. The grackles are still overcharged. On that, at least, we agree.

Near Robert Martinez

What we called it: Rosie's Ice House, though I never met a Rosie. Open-sided, one long bar, a cooler that hummed in B-flat. Lone Star for $1.75 on Mondays. There was a pool table so warped that the locals knew the hills by name. Someone had written "NO POLITICS NO PARKING NO EXCUSES" on the wall in Sharpie, and as far as I could tell all three rules were optional.

What I ordered: "A dollar seventy-five Lone Star and the left-side cue."

What I got: It's a place now where you play "elevated lawn games" by the half hour. Cornhole by reservation. Ping-pong with a minimum spend. I paid $11 for a canned ranch water and stood next to a giant Jenga set that a sponsor had branded with a seltzer logo. A guy in a quarter-zip, in July, in a heat advisory, explained to his friends that the space "really honors the ice house vibe."

It does not honor the ice house vibe. The ice house vibe was that nobody explained anything.

Running total: $61.70.

Pedernales, the finish line

What we called it: Last Call, because it was the bar you went to when the other bars made you leave, and they knew it. Lone Star tallboys. A popcorn machine older than the city council. The bartender kept a cigar box of IOUs and, rumor had it, actually collected on some of them.

What I ordered: "Tallboy and a bag of the burnt popcorn."

What I got: Nothing. It's a lobby. A residential lobby, with a water feature and a wall-mounted screen flipping between "Resident Mixer Fri 7 PM" and a photo of a cocktail that I'm fairly sure was rendered rather than made. You can't order anything in a lobby. I asked the security desk if the mixer was open to the public, and he said "residents and guests," and I said I'd been a guest at this address since before the building had a lobby, and he said, kindly, that he believed me but the system didn't.

That's the whole city now. Everyone believes you. The system doesn't.

The ledger

Total spent Friday: $61.70 for four drinks, with tips. Total I would have spent in 2005 for the same crawl: about eleven bucks, plus whatever I owed the cigar box.

I walked back to the car under that orange streetlight haze, past a scooter lying on its side, flashing its little red eye at nobody. The towel in my back pocket had gone warm as soup. Somebody's open window down by Comal was playing cumbia, a little too loud, out of a speaker that had definitely been dropped at least once.

I stood there for a whole song. No cover. No QR code. No suggested tip.

Best drink I didn't have all night.