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Browse Old Austin Grouch posts about neighborhood loss, Austin nostalgia, and the city habits locals still argue about.
Use this topic hub to explore satire, memories, and cultural commentary about neighborhood loss in Austin, Texas.
The avocado-green bungalow at Fourth and Comal housed nurses, bike mechanics, and late-night guitar pickers for decades at $875 a month with a backyard that smelled like mesquite smoke and cheap beer; it's now The Comal Collective, 18 micro-units starting at $4,150 with a "biophilic wellness garden" where the mesquite tree stood and marketing copy about honoring East Austin that somehow forgot the people.
6 min read
Stood in the former carport of 4508 Duval while the agent bragged about "adaptive reuse" of the 1947 duplex footprint; the place that once housed a mailman, two UT dropouts, a revolving cast of cooks, and one very loud parrot for under $400 a side is now four "bespoke residences" starting at $4,295 with a $275 monthly amenity fee and a rooftop deck no one will use.
6 min read
Caught the G&S Lounge sign dumped in a pile of red mud and rebar on Airport Boulevard while a backhoe waited nearby; the sticky-floored joint that kept $1.75 domestics, free popcorn, and zero pretension flowing from the late '70s until last month is now making way for The Layover, a boutique hotel where rooms start at $320 and the "local heritage" lobby will somehow cost more than every tab ever run at the old bar.
6 min read
Survey stakes appeared overnight in the side yard where Mr. Alvarez kept his fig tree and his '82 El Camino; the new "Canopy Residences" billboard promises 22 boutique units starting at $2,795 with smart-home fruit bowls that will never match the real ones that used to drop on the sidewalk for free every August.
6 min read
The concrete slab where we once parked a '92 Civic with a trunk full of Shiner bottles and argued about whose turn it was to buy breakfast tacos is now occupied by a desk, an iPad stand, and a 26-year-old in performance fleece asking if I want the 'flex unit' with the Peloton hookups; the whole complex starts at $2,475 for 620 square feet of what used to be four actual lives.
6 min read