You'll still find a Tamale House elsewhere in town, but the location most cherished by Austinites on Airport Boulevard was technically the restaurant's third iteration -- though in our experience most people eating there didn't have a firm understanding of why the sign had a #3 at the end. Opened in 1977 and closed after the death of owner Robert Vasquez in 2014, the Tamale ...
Blog
Commentary, analysis, and quick thoughts on almost everything in town.
In 1989, This Absurdly Corny Easy-Listening Album Had ‘Pride in Austin’
The world didn't discover Austin yesterday, even if it might feel that way sometimes. Our local tourism industry, booming roughly as long as the city itself, saw 7.5 million visitors in 1989, though three decades later we're looking at a yearly count closer to 30 million. With a lineup of new towers downtown, the ongoing success of Aqua Fest, and a small music event known as ...
Waller Creek Looked Pretty Bad in 1977
Though we've still got a ways to go before the completion of the Waterloo Greenway, the stretch of Waller Creek running through downtown Austin has already come pretty far -- the photo above shows the condition of the creek (full of garbage, mostly) in 1977, looking south between East Fifth and East Sixth Streets. Here's a current view from roughly the same perspective, with ...
In 1980, Austin’s Zoning Board Made a 9-Year-Old Tear Down His Clubhouse
Forts and clubhouses, timeless portals to the secret world of kids, stand apart from adult society and its grim concerns of property and propriety -- and this usually works out just about fine, at least until those kids get old enough to hide beer inside them. But no age, innocent or otherwise, can save you from suburban residential zoning. Enforced by adults hidden inside ...
VIDEO: An Inside Look at Downtown Austin’s Indeed Tower Project
Though we stick to the written word for the most part, sometimes nothing beats a video for getting your point across -- so here's one of the best we've seen in a while. It's from construction firm PERI Formwork Systems, working with DPR Construction, describing some of the specific challenges of building the Block 71 / Indeed Tower office project in the heart of downtown ...
