https://www.austinchronicle.com/columns/2001-04-27/81538/
Public Notice
By Kate X Messer, April 27, 2001, Columns
Standards of Living
You aren't getting out much if you haven't seen at least one of those Universal Living Wage (ULW) signs hung around town. It's an online campaign hosted locally by House the Homeless, an education and advocacy organization whose cause is simple: Anyone working a 40-hour week should be able to afford some form of housing. According to the Web site, "The Conference of Mayors' 16th Annual Survey on 'Hunger and Homelessness in American Cities' dated December 14, 2000 [states that] the leading cause of hunger and homelessness is low-paying jobs." The goal of the ULW is to ensure that anyone working a 40-hour week should be able to afford housing based on the wage earned, a wage based on a single national formula related to the local cost of housing throughout the United States.www.UniversalLivingWage.org or 457-9027.
Boot-y Call
Oooooh, those luscious hunkerinos in uniform from the many Travis County Fire Departments will be asking passing drivers to Fill the Boot 2001 this weekend, Friday & Saturday, April 27-28, at a variety of traffic intersections. Proceeds will benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The tradition started almost 50 years ago, when a firefighter was diagnosed with MS and his fellows collected donations on his behalf. They were so successful, that the cash spilled from their hands and they had to use their boots to hold all the booty! 345-3800.
Here's the Scoop --
Bring the kids, the grandkids, your neighbors' kids, and your appetite to Baskin-Robbins this coming Wednesday, May 2, 6-10pm for Baskin-Robbins Free Scoop Night. You read right. That's free scoops of pralines n' cream, chocolate mousse royale, jamoca almond fudge, tax crunch, whatever. For every scoop scooped, B-R will donate dough to First Book, a national nonprof that provides new, free books to kids. www.BaskinRobbins.com or 857-9100.
We Remember Our First Drink!
College kids + ridiculous drinking habits ... Ahhhh, yes, like peanut butter & jelly, they are, sticky, stinky, and a real mess when slathered across the highway. It's always such a pleasure to be out on the road weekend nights at 2am behind some swerving Longhorn in his daddy's ugly SUV wondering into whom he's going to plow. Well, that recipe for disaster can be tempered a bit with extensive utilization of the UT Designated Driver Program. The DDP offers students (and up to three guests) the opportunity to hail a cab and get a Free Ride Home on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, 11pm-3am. They've also initiated a new Ticket to Ride voucher program, wherein co-ed cuties can print out said tickets to ride, hopefully before they get too drunk to remember how to do it. Now if they only offered it to UT staff ... www.utexas.edu/students/utddp/ or 471-5200 (Ride Dispatch Center).
Coffeehouse Is Doin' It for Itself
Who doesn't love the scrappy lassies (and laddies) at Gaby & Mo's, Austin's next best thing to a girl bar and community center? The love is there, all right, but at times, it must seem, to our favorite li'l butchie baristas, that the honeymoon is over, the flowers come less frequently, and we keep missing the anniversary. It's easy to be taken for granted in a town that offers so much. And really, since, the li'l coffee house that could has opened, precious few other options have solidified for this town's community whose love not only dare not speak its name, but can't sustain a decent bar to save its life.
Now is the time, Friends of Gaby & Mo's, to come together and shed some light on that love. Don't hold back. And don't fall back on that "It's not my scene," dealy. That's lame. It's your scene if you make it so. UTers, staffers who work close by and enjoy the coffee and the Blue Plates during the day, this means you, too. Come out and show your love at the Gaby & Mo's Rent Party this weekend, Saturday, April 28, 9pm and say, "Thanks," for being a community hub, thanks for hosting all those fundraisers for those wide and varied organizations great and small. And sure, this sentiment should be spread out over all of your favorite Austin independent concerns, businesses, and groups; it just so happens that Gaby & Mo's is specifically throwing itself a party this weekend. The focus of the function is on socializing, the coffeehouse's best asset, plus expect bonus Karaoking and some platter slippin' courtesy the steel-wheeled beast known as DJ Jen (oh, yes). 457-9027.
Ooooh! Quickies! Here are two weekend updates:
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