Upstairs at Caroline
Absurd
RECEIVED Fri., April 27, 2018
Dear Editor,
It is absurd to call in.gredients a "community venue." [See "in.gredients Is Closing," Daily Food, April 25.] The place was owned/run by people in the tech sector who respectively live in North Austin, Round Rock, Lake Travis, and Vermont (the state). It's existed for less than seven years and occupies a lot that used to be owned by a church and run as a tutoring center and rec space for local youth. They even shared a lot with real estate developer MX3, which is at the forefront of gentrifying East Austin. While their zero-waste efforts were admirable, their prices were totally inaccessible, even in a "rapidly gentrifying corridor." It seems less like they got displaced by high rents, and more that the area actually didn't gentrify fast enough to support their failing business model. This nostalgia for the loss of a short-term, yuppie-oriented, redevelopment-friendly, for-profit business is an affront to all the people and families and actual community-oriented businesses and organizations that have been displaced from the Eastside over the past decade and a half.
It is absurd to call in.gredients a "community venue." [See "in.gredients Is Closing," Daily Food, April 25.] The place was owned/run by people in the tech sector who respectively live in North Austin, Round Rock, Lake Travis, and Vermont (the state). It's existed for less than seven years and occupies a lot that used to be owned by a church and run as a tutoring center and rec space for local youth. They even shared a lot with real estate developer MX3, which is at the forefront of gentrifying East Austin. While their zero-waste efforts were admirable, their prices were totally inaccessible, even in a "rapidly gentrifying corridor." It seems less like they got displaced by high rents, and more that the area actually didn't gentrify fast enough to support their failing business model. This nostalgia for the loss of a short-term, yuppie-oriented, redevelopment-friendly, for-profit business is an affront to all the people and families and actual community-oriented businesses and organizations that have been displaced from the Eastside over the past decade and a half.
James Clark