Cover Story
Best of Austin 2002
Readers’ and critics’ favorites
Dancing Outlaw
The cult documentary features Jesco White, the son of a famous Appalachian clogger who tries – in his way – to carry on his father’s legacy.
Okie Noodling
Noodling is the sport (some say art) of catching big ol’ catfish with your bare hands. The practice is legal only in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Okie Noodling is Beesley’s affectionate, funny, and engaging look at the noodlers in his home state.
La Vie Sur Terre (Life On Earth)
La Vie Sur Terre (Life On Earth) 1998, NR, 60 min. Directed by Abderrahmane Sissako, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Mohamed Sissako, Keita Bina Gaousso, Nana Baby, Abderrahmane Sissako. Life on Earth is one of the real treasures of the omnibus film Two Thousand Seen by -. It is a profoundly simple story…
A*P*E*: Attack of the Giant Horny Gorilla in 3-D
A*P*E*: Attack of the Giant Horny Gorilla in 3-D 1976, PG, 87 min. Directed by Paul Leder, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Rod Arrants, Joanna Kerns. Eager to cash in on the success of King Kong, the South Koreans offered their own monkey mayhem. Not only is their ape horny but he’s also…
The Best of Cinematexas 2002
The Best of Cinematexas 2002 NR. Directed by Various, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . The best of the recent Cinematexas Festival will screen at Cinemaker Co-op’s monthly meeting. Cinescape is a weekly microcinema series programmed by the Cinemaker Co-op, the Center for Young Cinema, Blue Screen/Refraction Arts, Rude Mechanicals, the Austin Film…
Boarding House
Boarding House 1982, R, 88 min. Directed by John Wintergate, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring John Wintergate, Kalassu, Alexandra Day. This wild horror film is essentially a paranormal home movie shot on video and transferred to film – in 1982.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1978, PG, 115 min. Directed by Philip Kaufman, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Leonard Nimoy, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright. This intelligent remake of the 1956 original still inspires dread of turning into pod people.
Zvenigora
Zvenigora 1927, NR, 65 min. Directed by Alexander Dovzhenko, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Georgi Astafyev, Nikolai Nademsky. Although Dovzhenko called this movie his “party membership card,” this revolutionary epic refracts a millennium of Ukrainian history through myth and superstition. The movie is silent and will be presented with live musical accompaniment (see…
Day Trips
Picking the best day trips is a pretty tall order. Texas is a really big place and there are a bazillion people, places, and things that could fall in that category. I once tried to write a list of the top 25 attractions in the state and soon lost track well past the century mark.…
War Drums
Last week the White House released a policy paper, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” laying out the Bush administration’s “distinctly American internationalism” for U.S. foreign policy. Media accounts treated it as a major departure, but on the whole it merely makes explicit America’s longstanding but conventionally unacknowledged blueprint for global…
Best Storefront/Sign
The motel is about as funky as it gets, with 41 rooms spread out over three buildings built in decidedly different eras (1938, 1950, 1969). This is not the Four Seasons. Welcome to Planet Austin Motel, slogan: “So Close, Yet So Far Out.” Since 1938 this fabulous neon sign (refurbished by Todd Sanders) has decorated…
Best Bar Food
Casino El Camino’s “genuine bar grub” is just that, covering all the standards, including three-quarter-pound burgers (certified Angus beef or chicken breast), sandwiches, and mild, medium, or, for the masochistically inclined, “explosive” buffalo wings. While you’re there, don’t forget to check out their award-winning jukebox.
Best Bakery
Once you master Upper Crust’s pantheon of fresh baked goods — ranging from honeyed schneckens and marzipan pockets to great breads and lunch items — wake up to the ultimate morning gnarl: the Texan Croissant. Take your average croissant, make it impossibly better and then add jalapeños and cheese. If you can handle that, then…
Best Special Occasion Restaurant
Talk about your special occasions … While it’s a well-known fact that this lovely restaurant off North Loop conjures an atmosphere that transports the senses, did you know that it also offers more tangible ventures to Mexico? In collaboration with a Oaxaca gallery, Fonda offered a unique upscale tour of the Southern Mexico town this…
Best Video/DVD Kids Selection
From the once and future classics (Baby Huey! Droopy & Company! Davey & Goliath!) to the best in Japanimation (Giant Robo! Gundam Wing! Cowboy Bebop!), the selection at Vulcan can inspire your crew to get started on the cult film tip early on.
Best TV Anchor
Judy Maggio’s name is synonymous with news. She is the quintessential familiar face of Austin media, serving as anchor on KVUE 24 news, which is where she’s worked since graduating from UT’s journalism school. She keeps us informed and entertained with her warm smile. And since this is Ms. M’s 12th time garnering this award,…
Best Public Golf Course
The grand old dame of Texas duffers, Hancock Golf Course was the original site of the Austin Country Club and the state’s oldest course. Designed by Lewis Hancock and constructed in 1899, this subtle, rolling green is typical for courses of her turn-of-the-previous-century time. This past September 11 marked Hancock’s 103rd year.
Best Scandal
From the “Well, duh!” files came the juicy tabloid-ready tale of a certain energy-speculation firm (and their crafty accountants) with ties to Commandant Dubya. Corruption? Letting stocks fall where they may? Giving plenty of bail-out warning to their rich buds? Well, duh! What’s more scandalous? That or our fearless president’s ensuing “Corporate Reform” feel-good tour?…
Best Hair Salon
Avant is Roy Frederick’s empire. From its beginnings in the early Eighties, it has reigned supreme among Austin’s most stylish salons. It is a perennial award winner, both locally and internationally, and regularly turns out top-notch work, as thousands and thousands of clients will attest. Always innovative. Always beautiful. Always Avant.
Best Moveable (Movie) Feast
It’s not exactly reinventing the wheel – more like accessorizing it, with giant inflatable screens and barbecue. So far, in addition to the regular “Movies in the Park” series at Republic Park, the Rolling Roadshow – a sort of traveling movie palace from the Alamo Drafthouse’s Tim & Karrie League – has ventured down into…
Best Liquor Store
Hey! Think you’re seeing double? Nah, it’s not the spirits, it’s the twins … Austin’s Twin Liquors. Stocking a wide range of wines and wine accessories alongside their already exhaustive selection of spirits, Twin Liquors has once again earned a special place in the hearts and livers of our readers’ adult beverage connoisseurs. With a…
Best Coffeehouse Icon
Her golden aura glows against a dark industrial factory scape. This vibrant painting by local artist Aiyana McGowan is the first thing you see when you enter: Our Lady, dark-skinned and dark-eyed in doo rag and overalls — mop in one hand and bucket in the other — oversees all coffee imbibification and food consumption…
Best Totally Mysterious Architecture Project
It’s a bunker. No, it’s a fortress. No, it’s a cleverly stacked pile of bricks. What is it? No one seems to know but it’s been in-progress (or not) for well over a decade now. The prominent no trespassing signs indicate we might never know what architectural curiousity lurks on the premises. But it sure…
Best Neighboring Art Society
With 800 active members from 30 states and four countries and better networking opportunities than a sorority, the TPS offers workshops, contests, exhibitions, grants, newsletters, and an annual print exchange. The society also has a terrific Web site for members and nonmembers alike, packed full with information about upcoming shows and other local photographic events.
Best Arcade for Dancing
Fun is right! DDR, aka Dance Dance Revolution, is the best video game in town. For those who are out of the loop, this game has been all the rage in Japan, landing stateside just a few years ago. It consists of a video screen of dance steps and a floor pad on which you…
Best hold over from the ‘60s.
Dry Creek Saloon is still out there overlooking Lake Austin. The place hasn’t changed a bit since Sarah sold cold beer to college students and then wrangled them like a mother hen.
Best BLT
Walking over to the Avenue B Grocery, nestled in among houses in historic Hyde Park, is an adventure in itself. And going inside the grocery, which has been in operation for over 92 years, is a history lesson. But wandering past the bottles of Coke and bars of ice cream to the deli counter and…
Best Little Tucked Away Cafe Down by the Tracks
There’s a crazy little shack, beyond the track … (sugar shack …) Okay, okay, now that that song’s stuck in your head, don’t hold it against the good folks at Cafe Mundi’s. It was our idea to get silly with the tuneage there. But seriously folks, Mundi is this beau coup magnifique tres mucho bien…
Best Russian Tea Room
Hot Jumbo Bagel by day … Cleopatra Nights in the gloaming. Cleopatra Nights inspires opening lines like, “It’s another night at the shisha bar, and the man with the ink black eyes has come with his lute.” Come dance and make merriment until the wee small hours to Lebanese, Algerian, and Moroccan music. So what…
Best Austin Booster Campaign
Taking the “Keep Austin Weird” campaign and running with it, full tilt, AbsolutelyAustin.com offers the very best of our wonderfully weird city, both past and present. Reproducing some of Austin’s legendary T-shirt designs and posters, as well as creating new renditions (check out the “Keep Austin Weird” shirts at your favorite local bars and restaurants),…
Best Chance to Howl at the Moon
Yoga teacher Charles MacInerney leads this once-monthly jaunt to Mt. Bonnell for a free yoga and meditation class on the rocky western side of the mountain, overlooking the lake. Bring a thick blanket, some water, and an open mind. You will be led through some easy breath work and stretching, gazing heavenward to watch the…
Best Place to Find Your Dog a Date
The Texas summer is tough on dogs. There’s the heat, the fleas, that thick fur coat. During the dog days, we take our pooches to this heavenly stretch of greenbelt. At Shoal Creek, dogs can run without leashes between 24th and 29th Street. They can swim, roll around in the mud, and maybe even find…
Best Way to Treat a River
Turning the tables on businesses and developers that want to drain the Guadalupe River to unsafe levels, SMRF wants to buy unclaimed water rights in the amount that a Texas A&M study says the coast bays need to remain healthy. The nonprofit has worked to maintain the quality of water in the San Marcos River…
Best Performance by a Neighborhood Association
We saw good work by neighbors on the Villas on Guadalupe and around the Northeast landfills. Special praise, however, goes to the three non-Bradley-ized Southwest neighbor groups who jumped into the Stratus fray — Cherry Creek Neighborhood Association, Circle C Neighborhood Association, and the Village at Western Oaks Homeowners Association — despite being stereotyped, for…
Most Friendly Postman
Luis Navarro?s smile is wonderful enough to make us happy when we run out of stamps. We?ve heard that we can buy stamps online, but we don?t care. We ignore the stamp machine by the door at the North Austin Station at 4300 Speedway, even wait in line if we have to. It?s worth it.…
Best Mobile Combatant of Overgrown Lawns
One of the fringe benefits of the droughts of previous summers was the one-cut lawn. You know, you cut it in June and you’re good until September. No rain, no growth. This summer of relentless precipitation has the grass growing like, well, grass. When you can’t face another day sweltering in pursuit of a clipped…
Best Way to Get From the Warehouse District to the Red River Zone
It’s Saturday night and you’re enjoying a little live music in the Red River area. When it’s time to go home, you realize that in the hustle & bustle of things your car is still parked in the warehouse district — a walk you’re not too excited to do at this late hour. Flag down…
Best New Management Hire
When Dave, the beloved manager of Hyde Park’s Fresh Plus disappeared overnight, the neighborhood sighed a big, collective, sad and sorry sigh. But there’s reason to rejoice, now. Dave’s back in the food game courtesy of The Butts family.
Best Unique Hat Selection
In serious need of some hip head wear? Go south on the Drag, and just before it devolves into a pool of fast food joints, look for Vertigo, a cubbyhole of a shop — recently relocated from its original Sixth Street digs — that has hats for just about any occasion. There are ski caps,…
About AIDS
County’s Shortsightedness Will Prove Expensive One can’t help but feel for elected officials as they grapple with the budget challenges of a post-dot-com, post-Bush-tax-cut environment. However, the Travis County commissioners’ recent decision to not continue a modest supplemental appropriation for human services was a mistake that may be very expensive down the line. Even in…
TxDot’s Retention Detention
The I-35 / Ben White drainage tunnel may be adequately filtered — someday
Best Annual Fundraiser
It’s hard to find an excuse not to patronize one of the more than 300 vendors who set up shop at the Junior League’s annual fundraiser. The event supports a group that looks out for practically every demographic through their work with local charities like SafePlace and the Humane Society, and Junior League’s own projects,…
Best Bar Staff
Looking for some magical adventure in your next drinking experience? The Club DeVille’s indoor space is an intimate study in mellow lounge conjury, while the outdoor area, set against a colorfully lit, jagged, sheer-faced cliff, constitutes the majority of this mystical club. Upon arrival, one finds cocktail servers floating effortlessly among a rag-tag assortment of…
Best Breakfast
If your normal sleeping habits allow you to hit up a window seat early in the day, you’ll have a hard time deciding what’s better: the food or the crisp morning atmosphere that begins after the departure of the last after-hours partier. Or, if you’re like some of us, pancakes and bacon go down real…
Best Waitstaff
Whoa, Trigger! Whether under the direct gaze of the blazing Austin sun or in the comfy confines of the air-conditioned room that could pass for one of Roy Rogers’ lodges, the dedicated cowpokes at Shady Grove provide prompt and unwaveringly friendly service. Whatever your hungry heart desires, the staff at Shady Grove serves it all…
Best Evening Radio Host
Twine Time on Saturdays and Blue Monday on Mondays are two really fun shows. For more than 20 years, KUT-FM has carried Larry Monroe’s wizened voice, also heard on Phil Music and Segway City, and Paul Ray’s infectious chuckle into the balmy Austin night. Both are veritable encyclopedias of Texas music (Ray also spins jazz),…
Best TV Newscast
Last year Austinites were torn over which station they loved the most. This year, however, KXAN came out on top. Whether you prefer the First Cast, the nifty Doppler radar, or the brand spanking new Live at Five, KXAN seems to live up to their claim that they are Austin’s news and weather leader.
Best Public Sports Venue
Since Opening Day two years ago, the Round Rock Express minor-league team has consistently thrilled fans with great baseball. Yet it could be argued the aura and comfort of their home stadium contributes to their talent on the field … and keeps the fans coming back.
Best Sexiest Austin Personality
If the readers of The Austin Chronicle were casting directors, hometown sweetie Sandy Bullock would be in the pink for quite some time. Of course that comes with a price, for those same reader/casting directors would most likely cast themselves as our sassy gal-next-door’s romantic lead. Honestly, we can’t think of a more sexy Austinite,…
Best Health Spa
Luckily, some things don’t change: like our readers’ preference for this luxurious spa that still overlooks Lake Austin from its comfortable Hill Country setting. But change can be good — like when you start getting massaged from head to toe after a grueling work week. Or say, after a week poisoning yourself with nothing but…
Best Movie Trailers
It’s a given that the Alamo Downtown is gonna show goofy, retro trailers or shorts before main features. It’s one of our favorite things about the Alamo, in fact. The pleasant surprise is what you see at sister cinema Alamo North, the first-run moviehouse that shows mostly mainstreamy flicks. Instead of forcing moviegoers to endure…
Best Music Business
Is it due to their fine selection of the best musical instruments? Partly. Is it because of their new and convenient location? Maybe. Is it their 40 years in Austin as a family-run business? Does it have anything to do with the friendly, knowledgeable staff who treat their customers with respect and offer helpful advice…
Best Decor in Which to Indulge Like a Barbarian
plug for the interior
Most Beautiful Wall
Q: What do you get when you cement together stones, marbles, sea glass, champagne bottles, a sculpture of the Virgin Mary, colorful ceramic figurines, a cognac bottle, plastic toys, a snow globe, shells, and chunks of coral? A: The most beautiful wall in Austin. Surrounding a garden we just wish we could call our own,…
Best New Gallery
Wow… this place has some amazing photographs!!!
Best Austintatious Memory Trip
For one whole day, La Zona Rosa passed backward in time to an Austin that now exists only in brief riffs and glimpses: Paul Ray, the Uranium Savages, Marcia Ball, the ghost of Doug Sahm (and his son), a dozen more of the living dynamos of real Austin music. Who says you can’t go home…
Best Off-Sixth-Street Bar
In the space that used to house Charlie’s Attic, there is sadly no longer proof of neither Giant Jenga nor peanut-covered floor. But don’t fret, instead let us recognize the unique goodness of the new kid on the block. The former, sometimes-frightening hangout has morphed into a beautifully hip rock-star joint. Armed with a killer…
Best Cajun Gumbo
As Austin’s hotbed for expat Louisanans, Shoal Creek Saloon is a great place to catch the pigskin action from hometown faves LSU and the New Orleans Saints. Now, when Chicago meets New Orleans — and we don’t mean on the field, we mean on the plate — you get the best Cajun gumbo outside Louisiana…
Best Lunch Room Revival
Relive the days of cattle barons with classic recipes originally prepared by the Heritage Society in this legendary socializing parlor off the main lobby of the historic Driskill Hotel. The menu is casual with a distinctive Texas flavor, like eggs Benedict spiced with jalapeños and steak. Indulge your sweet tooth with Texas Pecan Sticky Buns,…
Best Salty Burger
Nothing like that old fashioned, drive-in burger shack burger. We’ve searched high and low for a burger that tasted like home, and here we have it. Posse East’s hamburgers are fresh, made to your specifications, and just a little bit more than slightly salty. “Duval Road, take me home, to the place, I belong…”
Best Place to Befriend a Cockatoo
When the kids clamor for feathered friends, we take them to the Bird Sanctuary at J&M Aviaries. Tours are available, during which we can wander past llamas, goats, emu, donkeys, lemurs, marmosets, and over 85 species of tropical birds. We can even watch baby birds being hand-fed. J&M also has birds for sale, so we?ve…
Best Day Trip Without Leaving the House
You might remember Ira Kennedy from when he worked at such magazines as Enchanted Rock Magazine and True West, now the intrepid day tripper has started a webzine called Tourin’ Texas Monthly, following Texas backroads looking for adventure and love. Winner of a Golden Web Award, the site leads to Texas-sized adventures to places like…
Best Blue Pool Diving Board
Springs, Schwings … For those who prefer the chlorine and no-slip surface of a blue painted pool, and a diving board to launch you into that pool, welcome to Bartholomew on East 51st Street. A diving board isn’t its solo claim to summer fun. The pool is a good 50 meters long, there are covered…
Best Place to Get Lost
Surely somewhere along the 2.5 miles of hiking trails that wind through 227 acres of protected Texas Hill Country you can at least lose yourself to nature if not test your survival skills? Before you strip down to your trusty loincloth, though, keep in mind the added difficulties of 1) respecting the wooded home of…
Best Photo Op
Primary night at the Crockett Center was, um, cozy — about 10 feet of space for hundreds of supporters doing the traditional TV-time victory lap — and there, bobbing among masses, was a giant bulldog head. Underneath it was Eastside activist Lori C-Renteria (clad beneath the collar in a star-spangled bathing suit, a la Miss…
Most Missed Austinite
“It was like I had to find someone to know me before I could begin my journey.” — Albert “Huff” Huffstickler, 1998 Hyde Park’s beloved poet laureate, “Huff,” departed this life February 25, 2002. For years, Austinites kept Huff in free coffee and his favorite cigarettes — and Huff kept Austin in beautiful words and…
Best Mobile Mechanic
The car was in the middle of the Lamar bridge during rush hour … dead. Pushing it backward against traffic, we maneuvered it off the road. Never having experienced this before, we fretted … and looked up mobile mechanics in the Yellow Pages. In no time at all, like a cross between a white knight…
Best North-of-the-River Answer to South Congress
There?s a little bunch of stores in this funky shopping area (don?t be put off by the overused “funky” here, for in this case the word is fitting indeed). Check out Forbidden Fruit, Donkey Records, Room Service and Hog Wild Vintage, Ararat Middle Eastern Restaurant, the Parlor pizza joint, Musical Exchange, Monkeywrench Books, Asahi Import…
Best Way to Get Framed
Why would you take your precious work of art or family photo heirloom to some barely trained teenager at some chain frame center? Wouldn’t you want to work with someone who gives at least half a fig about the border for your treasured wall hanging? Or better yet, wouldn’t you like to work with the…
“Austin City Limits” Festival Picks & Sleepers
Blurbs on the majority of ACL Music Festival performers
Murder or Madness?
On Sept. 11, 23-year-old Chidalu Amobi was arrested and charged with injury to a child in the beating death of 2-year-old Khyrian Simms. According to an APD press release, Simms was severely beaten on Sept. 6, after Amobi — a stranger to the family — entered her parents’ Northeast Austin apartment. Police were called to…
Best Architectural Trend
Spikes of rebar tangle in the twilight. Walls leading nowhere and connecting to nothing create monolithic shadows on streets under perpetual construction. You voted for this year’s biggest Austin architectural trend, folks, and here you have it: the Empty, Unfinished Building! Actually this new BOA award yielded some interesting answers, attesting to many of your…
Best Art Gallery
Rest assured that you will not sprout ovaries, suffocate on estrogen, or suffer any other unfortunate side effects if you happen to set foot in this popular nonprofit gallery. However, you might find yourself overwhelmed by the varied talent that you will find, in which case swooning is guaranteed. Sponsoring events that include film, music,…
Best Dance Music Club
Take one huge dance floor, add an array of lights that can be timed to swirl with the beat. Top it all off with resident DJs like Lance Cashion, Merrick Brown, DJ Tats, DJ Mel, and others, and the hottest booking acts in town, and you’ve got Texture, the entertainment district’s most popular place to…
Best Caterer
Over the last 10 years, Word of Mouth has catered events from galas for the Lance Armstrong Foundation to private parties of eight. With their own full staff of chefs and bakers, all menus can be customized to span the gamut of elegance, from mini burger bars to gourmet feasts. Talk of great taste spreads…
Best Arcade
Check out 40,000-plus square-feet of the absolute latest and greatest of video games. Sure, it’s a chain, but it’s a Dallas chain, so it’s almost one of us. You, dear readers, certainly think so. Can we venture to guess why? Well, D&B is not solely a video game arcade in the classic hanging-out-with-your-fellow-underage-pals sense of…
Best Journalist
Save the Trees: Eradicate the Bushes! Actually, given the ongoing amount of material ol’ Shrub Dubya provides Ms. Molly, maybe there is a sunnyside to junior’s presidency. In light of Enron and WorldCom, etc., it’s a damn good thing we got free speech champion Ivins to get us through. We can say that, can’t we?
Best TV Reporter
KXAN’s multiple-award-winning journalist Jim Swift ties with KXAN’s multiple-award-winning journalist R.J. DeSilva as Austin’s favorite television reporter. A fixture at KXAN since 1977, Swift’s Out on the Porch feature is a staple on Channel 36, offering arts and human interest features that are a charming respite from the daily news grind, and his coverage of…
Best Skating Rink
How long has it been since you strapped on some roller skates and straight rocked it on the roller rink? We don?t mean anything resembling blades, mind you. We mean disinfected rental skates with eight rickety wheels tearing up the high-gloss floor. If it has been too long, you have no choice but to get…
Best State Department
What makes TxDOT the Best State Department in Austin? Seems like the answer might be either (1) they provide secure employment to a large number of citizens, or (2) they provide asphalt surfaces for the use of hundreds of thousands of Central Texans. Whatever the reason, Austin loves TxDOT.
Best Home Service/Repair
If it can go wrong with your home, Fox can fix it. This crafty little company appears on the Best of Austin ™ lists year after year, with thousands of satisfied commercial and residential customers who have relied on their painting, carpentry, electrical, plumbing, and drywall repair services. You have to get up pretty early…
Best Pawn Shop
Luckily for us, sometime long ago Doc Holliday gave up life as a tuberculosis-afflicted gambling gunslinger and settled into a more peaceful existence as a local pawnbroker. Okay, while this might not exactly explain the namesake of Austin’s best pawn shop, it does point to the fact that a visit to Doc Holliday’s is far…
Best Erotic Neon
Though their attempt to splice strip-club atmosphere with a barber shop is ultimately disappointing on both counts, the neon, leg-shaped shears adorning Sexy Scissors’ storefronts, specifically the one in North Austin, most definitely add spicy lasciviousness to the otherwise missionary commingling of North Lamar, Anderson, and Research. Commuting castration fetishists are best advised to keep…
Best Babe to Getcher Freak On
Smoking vinyl and a sweet, steady sweat come together in the potion that DJ Organic has been brewing ever since she heard Bad Boy Bill mixing on the radio in her native Chicago. Let yourself be seduced by the elements, as Earth, Wind, & Fire, Kimara Lovelace, and Prince (to name a few) are woven…
Best Place to Eat Tacos, Read Poetry, and Get Drunk: Not Necessaily in that Order
Loca Maria’s Taco X-Press, 2529 S. Lamar in South AustinMy god, when this place goes, Austin is DEAD! You might as well live in the Gap and eat biscotti dipped in seltzer. You might as well get your poetry from the fucking New Yorker, pal. Dirt floors and 30 minutes of poetry every Thor’s Day.…
Best Seoul Food
A realtive newcomer to the Korean food/sushi scene, Kimchi offers exceptionally flavored traditionals like Bul Go Gi and Bi Bim Bab with family-style service and smiles. We’re especially fond of the Hwe Doub Bab — a big bowl of rice topped with veggies and a variety of the freshest raw fish bites. Load on the…
Best Place to Frolic With Ducks
After swinging, sliding, and lots of make-believe on the Zilker playground, head down the steps to the dog pool and take a left. Follow the stream until you get to lots of ducks. Wiggle your toes in the cool water as the children splash with the ducks. (Be careful! The rocks are slippery.) Everyone will…
Best In-Studio
The ulterior motive may be material for their annual Broadcasts release, 10 volumes of mostly acoustic b-sides from heaven – an enormous fundraiser for Austin’s nonprofit musician’s health service SIMS — but KGSR’s track record of in-studio live performances from singer-songwriters of legend large and small, Austin-bound and international, is music to our ears. Program…
Best Cheap Thrill
on the Barton Creek Bridge
Best Place to Just Set and Meditate and Watch The Crosspaths of Ducks, Heart Patients, Food Connoisseurs and State Hospital Patients
The Big Tree at Central Park, adjacent to Central Market, is a mighty oak and a giving tree indeed. With upper branches that stretch 300 stories high and lower branches dancing along the earth, it provides a place to set, think, climb, relax, and sometimes, catch live music drifting over from CM’s patio.
Best Canary in the Coal Mine
If it weren’t for the Barton Springs Salamanders — and their cousins, the Eurycea waterlooensis or Austin Blind Salamanders — the liquid heart of Austin would have stopped beating long ago. But with the money boys determined to pave the Edwards Aquifer, come high water or hell, the salamanders badly need us to return the…
Best Post-9/11 Flourish of Patriotism
Sending out giant, inflatable “Fly Guys,” — colorful blow-up figures for different occasions — used to mark everything from open houses to beer-drinking contests. Before last fall, floppy orange balloon men or cuddly, inflatable teddy bears were considered up to the job. These days, however, Fly Guys” being made of sterner stuff, invariably wear a…
Most Relentless Health Care Advocate
It’s no surprise that the Texas Lege isn’t the most welcoming venue for progress in social services, when the reflexive responses are: (1) We don’t have enough money, and (2) We need to spend it on highways and prisons. Very surprising is that even in that climate, year in and year out, Austin’s State Rep.…
Best No Drip Novocain Shot
Don’t you hate it when your dentisit accidentally dribbles a little novocain on your tounge while giving you an injection? We certainly do. This won’t happen when you make the trek to North Austin for a visit to Dr. Hobbs. It’s worth the drive. With a steady hand, Dr. Hobbs will administer a shot that…
Best Office Furniture & Supplies
These days, warehouse shopping means large faceless buildings with displays of office furniture set high above your head, and choice limited to one or two types of chair or desk. T.O.P.S., on the other hand, is an old-style warehouse for the budget-minded. They have many kinds of surplus/recycled/pre-owned desks, chairs, file cabinets, and bookshelves stuffed…
Most Delightful Sight
When it’s blisteringly hot outside, and traffic is a miserable nightmare … out of nowhere, like a vision from Oz, a bubble appears, bobbing and floating across South Lamar. And then another appears, and another, and more and more as you near the source: the vintage store Flashback. Offering fun and fashion through their vintage…
“Austin City Limits” Festival Picks & Sleepers
SATURDAY PICKS LI’L CAP’N TRAVIS: This rangy tribe of Plainsmen from the Llano Estacado (aka Amarillo) are everything a great country band should be: hirsute, tongue-in-cheek, and intoxicating. If they’re not singing about rodeo clowns or breaking your heart with Sweet Gary Newcombe’s steel guitar, they’re channeling Kiss on their ode to Trans Ams and…
Naked City
News in brief from Austin to the world
Best Bed & Breakfast
This spectacular gem set in the heart of West Campus is an Austin treasure. Over 100 years old, it is a lovingly restored neo-classical Victorian beauty offering history and romance. Choose from 10 gloriously appointed rooms, each bearing the name of a Texas governor.
Best Author/Poet
The 1986 release of Texas native Kinky Friedman’s first crime detective novel, Greenwich Killing Time, marked the start of a literary career that now totals 18 books. Not only is he Austin’s favorite author, but he is apparently something upon which ex-prez Bill Clinton and current chief Bush Jr. agree. Both just love Friedman’s main…
Best Drink Specials/Happy Hour
Trudy’s has good food, a fun atmosphere, and loads of upbeat people. And from 2 to 7pm they take a dollar off most of their drinks, which means you spend less than $10 on a very good buzz … errrrrrr, we mean “refreshment,” and that is pretty darn special.
Sweet Home Alabama
Sweet Home Alabama 2002, PG-13, 102 min. Directed by Andy Tennant, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas, Patrick Dempsey, Candice Bergen, Mary Kay Place, Fred Ward, Jean Smart, Ethan Embry, Melanie Lynskey. Sweet Home Alabama hooks itself on the idea of geographical ambivalence — ironic then, that the film was…
Best Birthday Cakes
Family owned and operated, Lucy’s Cakes is still doing what they’ve done best in Austin over the past 11 years: baking cakes from their own family recipes in their own special ovens (we can’t tell you any more detail, it’s a secret). Lucy’s believes in doing it the old fashioned way: baking, decorating, writing up…
Best Local News Web Site
This might be the first time that a non-print news source has taken this prize, and no wonder: News8austin.com is a well-designed, user-friendly local TV site that doesn’t waste bandwidth on connections to national network fluff. Our local 24-hour news channel’s Web site is easy to search, easier to read, and best of all, its…
Best TV Show Team
Last year Austinites were torn over which station they loved the most. This year, however, KXAN came out on top. Whether you prefer the First Cast, the nifty Doppler radar, or the brand spanking new Live at Five, KXAN seems to live up to their claim that they are Austin’s news and weather leader.
Best Spectator Sport
Whether you are a football fan or not, good times are to be had by all at UT’s most popular event. The roar of 80,000 fans, chanting, stomping, and singing at the tops of their lungs all amidst a sea of orange, makes these events truly awesome. Whether hot, humid, rainy, or cold, nothing can…
Best State Legislator
Our local man in the dome, Senator Gonzalo Barrientos (D), served in the Texas House beginning in 1975 until 1985. That year he won his first seat in the Texas Senate, where he has served ever since. Last year, Barrientos won the first-ever Combined Law Enforcement Association of Texas Lifetime Achievement Award. This year, he…
Best Interior Design
Jerri Kunz likes to take risks. In 1974, she started practicing interior design with little to no prior formal training — her degree from UT was in lighting for theatre. Nearly 30 years later, Kunz?s modernist style has made her one of the best known interior designers in Austin, her work most prevalent in high-end…
Best No-Talking Warning at the Movies
One of life’s most annoying scenarios is to be stuck in front of morons who must hold a discussion concerning every plot development during a movie. No matter how sotto their voces, you can hear every irritating, distracting word. Hurray, then, for Alamo Drafthouse & Cinema, who show the world’s funniest No Talking During the…
Best Pet Store
In addition to grooming and lots of pet supplies like cool doggie beds, this top-notch pet store offers all sorts of dietary options, from holistic foods to specialty diets to Steve’s Real Food for Dogs and Cats — so carefully prepared that it’s “human edible.” (You first…)
Best Gargoyles
A good gargoyle is hard to find in Austin, but the Norwood Building at 114 W. Seventh St. has some pretty cool ones. The Central Christian Church at 12th & Guadalupe has some of the strangest adornments of any building in Austin. What are they and what do they mean?
Most Haunting View of the City
The University of Texas Tower Observation Deck has one of the best vantage points for viewing the entire city. The summer sunset tours can even rival Austin romance landmark Mt. Bonnell. But that’s not all that lures people to the tower. People are curious about the tower’s notoriety as the site of our town’s most…
Best Band Swag
It’s not just that we split our sides laughing at Cornell’s song titles and between-song patter. Neither is it the massive all-star South Austin lineup he features onstage or the dare-you-not-to-dance left-wing swing tunes. When the tip jar came around, a bonus was offered: Whoopie Cushions that featured pictures of Presidents? Wives on the Guy…
Best Place to Have an Intervention Over Margaritas
Ninfa’s presents quite the accommodating atmosphere if you happen to need something to take the edge off of your next intervention. The colorful contemporary interior on Sixth cheers up even the most awkward social confrontations, while the comfortable, modest village-styled exterior up north soothes the nerves. We found the service exceptionally attentive there, so much…
Best Cheap Date
Dinner at the Hickory Street with free tickets to a movie at the Paramount Theater for desert.
Best Bygone Boon to Breeders
The General Cinema at Barton Creek Square allowed families to watch first-run movies, once a month, in the company of their own. No scrounging for a sitter; no smuggling an infant inside and praying for quiet. No more banishment at home with Me, Myself, and Irene on cable. Sadly, when General Cinemas moved out, so…
Best Place to Watch the Sunset
If our kids could choose their perfect sunset, it would be orange, red, and filled with bats. That’s why we head down to Town Lake from April through October to take a cruise with Lone Star Riverboat. We board the Little Star, a 32-foot electric cruiser, and speed on out to the Congress Avenue bridge,…
Best Local Music Boosters
It’s a photo finish with LBJ-S sister station KGSR, and with all due respect to the yeoman’s work the UT noncommercials (KUT, KVRX) provide local acts, but finally, it’s KLBJ FM (93.7) that wins the local music scene booster BOA by a nose for its continued, round-the-years support of Austin’s storied music scene. For every…
Best Country Club
This place is a golfer’s dream. Of the four golf courses that surround Barton Creek Country Club two are ranked one, two in the state of Texas (Fazio Foothills and Fazio Canyons) and the other two are designed by legendary pros (Ben Crenshaw’s Cliffside and Arnold Palmer’s Lakeside). If hitting the lynx is on the…
Best Place to Meet People Outside of the Office
It’s bad enough having one of those, “What do you want to do?” “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” conversations, but when you are having it with your dog, you need help. Well, help is here: Just log on to www.hillcountryoutdoors.com. Hosting a wide variety of activities from hiking Turkey Creek to…
Best City Bureaucrat
When your city has grown 40% or so in the past decade, you need a good city demographer, and we’ve got one. Plus, whatever you think of single-member districts, Robinson pulled off the near-impossible — producing all the data and the map, actually several maps, showing how (and why) to divide Austin into sensible chunks,…
Best President With Whom to Share a Birthday
If you work for the state and were born on Aug. 27, guess what? You get your birthday off as a holiday. And even if you aren’t a state employee but still share this fabulous day of debut, you can join the lovely volunteer docents at the LBJ Library & Museum for a sweet slab…
Best No-Fuss Alterations
When you’re vertically challenged (some people like to say “petite”), clothes shopping can be a challenge. Not to worry, your new or old duds have friends in Primo Tailors of Austin. They’ll shorten a pant leg, raise the hem of a skirt, or just about any other alteration necessary to make your wardrobe fit to…
Best Yoga Instructor Gluteus Maximus
Rhoades is a scholar alright. Of the mind and body. When beloved yoga instructor Riki Dunn gave up her classes at Ballet Austin, her classes sucked in their collective breath, waiting for some poor substitute. But Todd has filled her shoes (technically, bare feet) nicely, with his own style (maybe a few less downward dogs,…
Best Paint Shop for Girls
Let the boys have their fun at their Home Depots. Let them test drive the power tools and ponder paints. Okay, we girls have a gas doing that sometimes, too. But when we’re feeling really girly, we head to Sephora and get to paint, blush, gloss, powder, and spritz to our hearts’ content — and…
Nursery Most Worthy of the Name
Austin is blessed with some wonderful places to buy seeds, plants, and gardening supplies, but Barton Springs Nursery remains a top choice for a simple reason: They actually grow a great deal of what they sell. It’s an uncommon practice that deserves our continued support and patronage (and our empty pots, so they can cultivate…
“Austin City Limits” Festival Picks & Sleepers
SATURDAY SLEEPERS PAULINE REESE: Reese is one of the many up-and-comers in the “Young Texas” crowd. Like Pat Green and Kevin Fowler, she sings about the common man and woman, sprinkling enough Texana throughout her music to give it a Lone Star flavor. Her blond prettiness doesn’t hurt, and neither does a new CD, Trail…
Naked City
The Travis Co. Clerk reminds you that the voter registration deadline for the upcoming election is Monday, Oct. 7. You can register all over the place: grocery stores, libraries, post offices, and government agencies, or online at www.traviscountytax.org. Call 854-9473 for more info. Dedicated East Austin activist Robert Donley died Monday at the age of…
Best Billboard
From what we can find, this clever bit of road signage comes courtesy of our Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (née TNRCC) as part of a larger ad campaign to address the growing concern of (no they are not kidding) pet waste. Pepé and Precious’ poop had become cause for consternation, as pet waste washes…
Best Classical Musician
With the more classical classical purveyed by conductor Bay and his Austin Symphony Orchestra, and the classical tangents and innovations of Reynolds’ Golden Arm Trio (next scoring an entire modern opera about a witch, for Pete’s sake …), it’s no wonder these fierce talents are fit to be tied.
Best Friendly Bar
Ginny’s has the charm of a Texas small-town bar where locals hang to drink, hear the band, and discuss simple matters. The Dog & Duck caters to the pub hounds who like beer, darts, and good company. Each place greets you with a smile, and soon feels as cozy and warm as your favorite old…
Ram Dass: Fierce Grace
Ram Dass: Fierce Grace 2001, NR, 93 min. Directed by Mickey Lemle, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . Richard Alpert started life in 1931 as a nice Jewish boy. He grew up to be a doctor, the Ph.D. kind, and served on the psychology faculties of Stanford and Harvard. There he heard the…
Best Indoor Fun Spot
Back in the day, we had Mr. Wizard and field trips to the LBJ building. We’re not bitter, mind you, but look at how far we’ve come: The Austin Children’s Museum is everything a kid could want out of field trip, a day trip, or a bonding trip with that special adult — a visual,…
Best Local Webzine
Alex Jones is part little boy who cried wolf, part Nietzschean madman, and all patriot. Alex has no problem coming off like a nutter so long as he is keeping the New World Order on its Ps and Qs and the public informed. His webzine, Infowars.com, isn?t just some paranoid HTML rant; it is an…
Best Weatherperson
Jim Spencer, director of weather services for KXAN 36, has been with the station since 1990, and he’s been bringing Future Radar to Austin since February, 1998. They said he was crazy, said it couldn’t be done! They were wrong, of course, and Future Radar is where our readers turn, “weather” or not.
Best Swimming Hole
Year after year, the late-springtime stampede heading toward Barton Springs signals it is time to brave the chilly waters. Jump in, freeze your tush off, and then lay out and relax as natural air conditioning keeps you from heat stroke.
Best Unsung Hero/Heroes
Standing ready to risk their lives for ours is a force of emergency workers dedicated to being there, no matter how dire the call. Not only that, but, as one worker pointed out, if you squint and sort of make your eyes go out of focus when you look at “EMS” on the emergency workers’…
Best Internet Provider
Prompt service (“Where did that modem come from?”), online and telephone support, and a connection so integrated with your system you never have to think about it, just click and cruise. So maybe technology isn’t out to get us after all.
Best Antiques
Travel into the past as you wander around the different dealers’ stalls, down the store’s two corridors packed with one-of-a-kind collectibles and some truly fascinating oddities to add to any antique collection or personalize any home. Uncommon Objects has something to brighten everyone’s life.
Best Plant Nursery
Red Barn features everything from ponds and water plants to cacti and Christmas trees — not to mention a stellar reputation among Austinites who demand excellent quality at reasonable prices. Three well-stocked locations make them easily accessible from just about anywhere in town.
Best Home Away From Home If You Lived in a Southern Mansion
Just stepping onto the property of this South Austin B&B is an invitation to ease life’s tensions. Take a hint from the sprawling live oaks that greet visitors onto the lazy lawn: You don’t need to be anywhere but here right now, so why not relax? Gracious hosts Renee and Kevin Buck purchased the majestic…
Most Unlikely Place to Commune With Nature
If you don’t know what goes into Dillo Dirt, you’re better off not finding out until after visiting Austin’s 700-acre bird-watching Mecca. The smell is likely to give it away anyhow ? but Hornsby Bend, the site of the dirt in question, offers a great year-round opportunity for viewing a remarkable variety of our fine-feathered…
Best Ongoing Meeting of the Minds
Jeremy Ellis, BookPeople’s masterminded marketing man, is forever scheduling weird, exciting, eclectic, and sometimes downright wacko events on the third floor. Whether it’s your “standard” book signing, Use Your Words (the live “talk show” hosted by Spike Gillespie), weekly meetings on intimacy, or some NC-17 affair, there is always some something worth investigating.
Best Bar Band
Where’s the best weekly show in town? Sunday nights with the Resentments at the Saxon Pub, according to MSNBC, who dubbed them the best bar band in America. No dispute here, we’re too busy snickering at Jon Dee’s stories about his kid (“Why are all those people running around downtown, Daddy?” “It’s the Motorola Race,…
Best Place to Party Like It’s 2000 … And You Still Have a Job
Some nights we just want to ignore that Intel fiasco in the middle of town. We want to stop searching HotJobs and Monster.com. We want to don a slinky outfit, spray on some perfume, and pretend we’re still living large, with stock options. On these nights, we put away the Top Ramen and head for…
Best Coffee Hangout in the Burbs
On the square in Round Rock. Eclectic, homemade fudge, live music, Amy’s ice cream, excellent coffee drinks.
Best Mediterianan Deli
This place is just the best. They have all different kinds of tasty foods from all over the world.
Best Squeeze
A most deserving Austin success story — nothing beats fresh-squeezed fruit juice, and no one squeezes it better than Goodflow. They’re pretty darn smart at squeezing honey out of bees, too.
Best Cheap Frozen Confection
Sandy’s is no health spa, but if you’ve got a hankering for an unpretentious wafer cone piled high with smooth, delicious soft-serve custard for under a buck, it’s the only game in town. No waffle cones, no 30-wonderful flavors, and no “crush-ins” … choose from chocolate or vanilla, large or small, and move away from…
Best Place Where Someone Else’s Kid Is Louder Than Yours
We find it hard to overpraise this local eatery’s suitability for families. It’s well-priced, it’s quick. The menu’s got most every favorite kid food you can think of, and the other fare is “adult” enough to bring back the parents. The wall of TVs, the searing paint colors, the hopping music, and the crayons seem…
Best Nuclear Family
First, it was mom, dad, sis, and bro. The happiest of happy American suburban families. See bro sporting a natty orange Hawaiian shirt? The next year, bro’s short color changed to orange. But wait … that’s not bro! That’s an entirely different kid! Guess when they changed shirts, they changed bros. Then this year, dad…
Best Example of Pure Sport
There is a place where sport is not about multimillion-dollar contracts, drugs, or court trials, but about the joy and heartbreak of competition and athletic grace. That place is Austin in the spring – in March, the state basketball tournaments come to town, followed by track and field, golf, and tennis, and in June, by…
Best Place to Remember That We’re in Texas
What, you don’t know where your good pair of chaps went? Not to worry, little vaquero. They won’t think any less of you, as long as you remember the proper contraction of “you all” (hint: it is not “you guys”). Offering riding lessons for the greenest beginners (“That’s not a horse, ma’am. That’s just where…
Best Display of Noblesse Oblige
We endorsed Griffith, and we think she could have won a run-off with Betty Dunkerley, and Griffith probably thinks so too. To bail out of a race you will almost certainly lose — as Ronney Reynolds did in 1997 — is worthy enough. But to withdraw for no other reason than to spare the city…
Best Reason to Grow Old
The Black Panthers are a heroic memory — their elderly namesakes still stalk the political jungle, determined as ever to strike fear into the hearts of backward bureaucrats and plutocrats everywhere. The local pride, led by co-conveners Charlotte Flynn and Clinton Smith, is currently focused on health care reform and the city’s obscure budget process…
Best Arborist
In towns where trees abound, tree-pruning businesses seem to grow like weeds. It’s difficult to discern which ones rate in terms of expertise, value, and trustworthiness. May we make a suggestion? With Ultimate Tree Care’s Tim Hackney, less is more. Which isn’t to imply that he leaves trees looking like naked, outsized bonsai. No, Tim’s…
Best Nonprofit Bootstraps to the Financially Disadvantaged
Those looking for a new start and a new job can delve into Lisa?s H.O.P.E. Chest for the clothes to help get them on their way. The unique thing about Lisa?s H.O.P.E. Chest is that it offers work clothes for men as well as women, for blue- as well as white-collar jobs. Need a pair…
Most ‘Home-Grown’ Business
Kimas Tejas Nursery keeps Central Texas beautiful, and in the most long-term way, with their sustainable gardening resources. Specializing in native and well-adapted perennials while also stocking organic fertilizers and soil amendments, this Bastrop nursery stretches almost two acres. If the drive out sounds daunting, one can still keep up with the seasons through a…
Best Place for Reasonably Priced, Sanitized Sofas
If you’re past feeling comfortable on just any old sofa scoured from Bulky Item Pick-Up Day, but not yet to the point of being able to stomach the expensive commitment that is new furniture, then head over to Salvation Army. We know what you’re thinking: “Sally Ann’s? Why they’re easily twice the price of most…
Shop Most Likely in Which to Find Yourself Exclaiming, ‘Holy Toledo!’
Stations of the Cross coloring books, anyone? Perhaps a picture of the Pope, religious medal for your pet, or a wall plaque featuring those weepy-eyed “Precious Moments” moppets? Yep, Emmaus has all manner of religious-themed tchotchkes, jewelry, books, cards, statues, and enough overwhelming sweetness to wear down even the hardiest fans of Catholic kitsch. But,…
Austin City Limits Festival Picks & Sleepers
SUNDAY PICKS JANE BOND: Forget that Kelly girl; the real American Idol from Austin could be this chestnut-haired former Omelettry waitress. With a set of pipes the organ at Westminster Abbey would envy (if it were human), Bond may be a relative newcomer, but the way she belts the blues and purrs Western swing suggests…
Naked City
Residents at Sun City Texas are hopping mad over developer Pulte Homes’ effort to remove age restrictions from 2,500 vacant acres next door. Pulte, which bought up Sun City developer Del Webb Corp. in 2001, wants to build a typical suburban neighborhood on the tract, since the retirement community has not turned out to be…
Best Downtown Building
Instead of voting for new high-rise loft buildings or other trendy developents, y’all just couldn’t help but show your Texas state pride again this year. The centerpiece on our town’s table, the Texas State Capitol is your fave, yet again. Guided tours are offered daily, but it is also fun to simply wander around amid…
Best Comedy Club
Esther’s Pool is that snazzy building adorned by Doug Jaques’ exquisite “underwater” murals at the corner of Sixth & Red River. The main attraction here, of course, is the legendary Esther’s Follies. While taking in a night of ribaldry at Austin’s fave club of yucks, here are some important things to remember: 1) Get there…
Best Gay/Lesbian Hangout
Before the warehouse district became oh-so-trendy, there was Oilcan Harry’s. Our readers know that the tidy lads at Oilcan’s have had it goin’ on for quite some time. Hey, they’ve been winning this category for almost as long as we’ve had a poll.
Trapped
Trapped 2002, PG-13, 99 min. Directed by Luis Mandoki, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Dakota Fanning, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Stuart Townsend, Courtney Love, Kevin Bacon, Charlize Theron. Not as disastrous as the promotional campaign or early buzz would suggest, but still ill-advised from most every angle, Trapped is a messily plotted, spottily engaging…
Best Kids Bookstore
All that most bookstores offer are circus midget chairs for the kids. Not so here. Storytime, book signings, puppet shows, and that super chill reading space make BookKids at BookPeople the perfect play-date spot to take your petite sophisticate and his or her friends. And if you’re a single person looking for something intriguing and…
Best Locally Produced Radio Show
Eklektikos was born in the early Seventies with host John Aielli and is now KUT’s longest-running radio show. His show pays tribute to the fact that, well, people are complicated, and as a result, personal music preferences are usually a little broader than The Best of the Eighties or any other single-themed, Procrustean-minded music show.…
Best Basketball Court
Enfield Court on a good and hot July afternoon is as frisky as a made-for-cable Zalman King movie. Those sexy non-hooping hotties are nice eye candy when you’re stopped at the Enfield light. Watching them do their thing kind of makes you wish were one of those old money Mrs. Robinson types, you know? Once…
Best Tennis Court
Looking for love in the Rod Laver sense of the word? If you have not tried the centrally located historic Caswell Tennis Center, then you are looking in all the wrong places. Boasting a pro shop, new locker room facilities, and (come May 2003, after a well-deserved renovation) eight freshly renovated courts, the Caswell courts…
Best Visionary
While some know Amy Babich as a math professor, bicycle dealer, or politician, most Austinites know her from her Chronic letters to the editor. The vision expressed in each letter is practically (morally?) equivalent to what Austin aspires to be, or at least to the reputation our city has: Bicycles, so pure and kind, rule…
Best Laundromat
Enjoy the comforts of clean drawers and a cleaner Austin thanks to the hard-working folks at Ecomat. For the past five years, Ecomat’s innovative petroleum-free, wet-cleaning process has brought Austin closer to the utopian ideal of cleaner shirts for those traditionally pungent few who strive for a better environment. Plus, the card system on the…
Best Austin/Texas Souvenirs
Just a visit to this regal wonder, housed in the old Texas General Land Office (just east of the big pink granite dome we call the Capitol), will fill you with state and local pride. And once you begin to rifle through one of the best collections of Texana books for sale and gaze upon…
Best Record Store
Waterloo rocks! Apparently we are all in agreement on this fact. This perennial “BOA” winner and fabulous musical smorgasbord has been serving Austin for decades since owner/founder John Kunz began offering what seems like a darned near complete musical inventory of everything from the obscure to well-known, hip to not-so-hip. Don’t miss the recommended section…
Best Hotel Bar
Capital to the left of me, SOCO to the right, here I am, stuck in a hotel bar with you. Once upon a time this was a 1930’s motor inn, but now is an upscale minimalist paradise. It’s the only bar in town we know of with such expertly trimmed hedges and neatly raked paths.…
Best Acting Coach for the Stage Shy
If you would have gotten in touch with your Inner Thespian long ago but for that naysaying Internal Critic of yours, sign-up for one of Babs’ beginning acting classes. In a supportive, nonintimidating setting, the director of the State Theater School of Acting and one of this town’s primo actors will show you how, utilizing…
Best Poetry Open Mic
Think all poetry is stuffy and elitist? Then prepare to be delightfully disillusioned at the Church of Character, aka the Austin Poetry Slam. Here you’ll find some of Austin’s most emotionally brilliant, intellectually beautiful poets, as well as the city’s most animated (and opinionated) literary audience. Poems are judged for content – ranging from individually…
Best Bit o’ Blarney
The band formerly known as Hair of the Dog changed their name but not their fiery brand of Irish rock. While you can certainly call out for “Danny Boy” and other Emerald Isle faves, Pubcrawler’s oeurve lies in their deft performance of original, modern Irish rock under the leadership of Dubliner Neville Stewart. Less fashionably…
Best Punk Rock Musical Trend
With the “rebellion” of youth so mainstream and the control of this town so squarely seated in the mitts of the white-boy (55 year old boy … ) blues contingent, it’s totally punk rock to be a snot-nosed 30- or 40-year old. Most of this generation chose guitar or bass. But there’s this “new” crop…
Best Consistently Friendly Fast Food Service
134 E. Riverside
Best Neighborhood Deli
One of the most charming perks of life in the Crestview neighborhood is picking up lunch at the Little Deli, easily the closest place Austin has to a New York-style corner deli. Owners Lucretia and Jonathan Doyer know most customers by name, and their tasty, jaw-stretching deli sandwiches are well worth going out of the…
Best Takeout Pizza Deal (With Free Fries)
Wouldn’t it be great if everything from new shoes to college diplomas came with free french fries? That dream comes true whenever you order fried mushrooms or cheese sticks at Texas Pizza, Pasta & More. All appetizers — from chicken strips to mini-calzones — come with free fries. And their superior, budget-conscious pizza is a…
Best Reason to Wear a Coonskin Cap
The first look at this exhibit is pure nostalgia: a beautifully curated replica of a 1950s child’s room decorated with Davy Crockett memorabilia, from wind-up guitars to books to the ubiquitous coonskin cap Fess Parker made famous. The second look is a wonderfully evocative journey through Crockett’s colorful career from Tennessee politics to the Battle…
Best Queer Dance Music
Where did Meg Hentges debut her solo CD Brompton’s Cocktail? Where can you hear Austin acts like Daniel Link and Deb Norris? How about GLBT musicians like Mark Weigle and Tret Fure? Our beloved Dusty Springfield? Queerwaves!! Every Saturday afternoon from 4:30 to 6pm, Taylor Cage and Matt Korn bring Austin the best in queer…
Best Historical Cemetery Stroll
Though it may seem like a slightly morbid endeavor, strolling through the Texas State Cemetery and nearby Oakwood Cemetery on a sunny spring day is both peaceful and educational. Restoration efforts spearheaded by Bob Bullock in the Nineties helped make Texas’ version of Arlington National Cemetery an epicenter of East Austin revitalization. Stephen F. Austin,…
Best Revitalization of a Park
For years this square sat unused, unloved, and in the shadow of various construction behemoths. Then the Austin Parks Foundation partnered with the Parks and Recreation Foundation and Downtown Austin Alliance, and the next thing you know, yoga enthusiasts are welcoming a new day with postures in the park in the a.m., and Elvis impersonators…
Best Electoral Matchup
The Three B’s — Betty, Bev, and Brewster — made for a hard City Council choice, but not as hard as picking who should succeed Glen Maxey at the Lege. We backed Rodriguez, and he won, but we applaud the fact that a traditionally marginalized community had such capable candidates ready to put themselves at…
Best Response to the September 11 Response
An organization that has no central governing body and is as mysterious as ancient Egypt, Our Lies sponsored a series of hyper-creative guerilla events that sought to inspire and illuminate in the emotional aftermath of last year’s terrorist attacks. The events included marching band peace parades and organized public acts of art rebellion against the…
Best Auto Body Experience
For those who believe that nothing good ever happens to a car – or its owner – once the services of a body shop are required, this one’s for you. Imagine a job impeccably done, cheerfully done, and done on time. One of the few places where the notion of “service” is alive and well.…
Most Interesting Pit Stop
We cannot possibly capture the essence of the Pronto Mart in words. We can, however, quote a newcomer to Austin who claims that going to the Pronto Mart is “like walking onto the set of Clerks.” Late night stop-ins are definitely worth the trip. Be sure to keep an eye out for Huff’s poetry on…
Best place to buy a gift for the home or yourself
The sign on the front of the building may say Ace Hardware, but this place is more than paint and nails. Buy everything from bath soap to the dish to hold it in. Besides the mundane gardening supplies are unusual toys and presents that you won’t beable to resist buying something for yourself.
Best of Austin 2002
The Best of The Best of Why bother? That’s what I said to myself after I first saw the ultimate “Best of” issue, put out this year by Seattle’s The Stranger. Why should anyone ever bother putting out another “Best of” in their city ever again? The tongue-in-cheek Seattle newsweekly released its annual “Best of”…
“Austin City Limits” Festival Picks & Sleepers
SUNDAY SLEEPERS JACK INGRAM: About the only thing that’s cliched about the perennially underrated Jack Ingram is the story of how his third and finest major-label album, Electric, cost him his Sony Nashville deal; they deemed it too country for rock, too rock for country. His ambition to embarrass his old bosses with success has…
Naked City
Retiring Dist. 51 state Rep. Glen Maxey will be held up to ridicule by his friends in the Central Austin Democrats at a roast on Monday, Sept. 30. Among the roasters will be gay/lesbian rights activists Rich Bailey and Dianne Hardy-Garcia, pro-choice lawyer Catherine Mauzy (daughter of the late state Sen. Oscar Mauzy, under whom…
Best Downtown Place to Park
Okay, so that’s not really its name. But we didn’t make it up. A significant portion of our readership knows from garages, and this one in particular is your fave for downtown parking. While, like last year, a sizable number of ballots came in marked “Are you kidding?” and “nowhere,” the overwhelming tally was for…
Best Comic/Improv Group
Austin loves her spoofsters. Esther’s Follies, with its ripped-from-the-headlines take on Texas life and politics keeps the crowds comin’ after 25 years. Relative newcomers, Mr. Sinus Theater, a local live spoof of the spoof Mystery Science Theater 3000 television show, takes cult films and recent releases alike and skewers them from the comfy vantage point…
Best Jukebox
Another dull Saturday evening? Maybe it’s time to head over to Casino el Camino, the place where on any given night, you can find Chuck Berry, the Ramones, Mudhoney, the Propellerheads, Marvin Gaye, Big Mama Thornton, Fugazi, and friends whipping fans into a frenzy. Well okay, fine, it’s just a jukebox, but it happens to…
Mad Love
Mad Love 2001, R, 117 min. Directed by Vicente Aranda, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Susy Sanchéz, Rosana Pastor, Eloy Alzorín, Giuliano Gemma, Manuela Arcuri, Daniele Liotti, Pilar López de Ayala. Like a paperback romance, this costume drama about the marriage between Joan and Philip, the King and Queen of Castile, is pretty…
Best Kids Clothing
While both Bright Beginnings and Dragonsnaps offer colorful arrays of shoes, toys, and kiddie accessories, it was their unique selections of children?s clothing that landed them here. From brand names Slapdoodle to Mulberry Bush (evidently the height of pre-adolescent fashion these days), there are countless outfits available for your adorable little tykes. Clothes range from…
Best Locally Produced TV Show
Live Music. Pure and Simple. This phrase has been the rightful motto of Austin City Limits since its premiere in 1976. Their unfettered format and intimate setting has inspired memorable performances from famous and not-so-famous acts alike for 27 years, with no sign of slowing down. Executive producer Terry Lickona gets credit, of course, but…
Best Bike Ride
If you happen to live in Austin but have never been biking on this trail, take it from those who know: This is the best place to bike! (Note: Nobby tires only! The trail is unpaved, making it tough for road bikes and in-line skates.) The trail/park is also great for jogging, romantic walks, people…
Best Activist
While some know Amy Babich as a math professor, bicycle dealer, or politician, most Austinites know her from her Chronic letters to the editor. The vision expressed in each letter is practically (morally?) equivalent to what Austin aspires to be, or at least to the reputation our city has: Bicycles, so pure and kind, rule…
Most Important News Story
We’d like to offer this space for a moment of silence, please …
Best Pet Care
Where you gonna go for Fido or FiFi’s health upkeep or style adornments? When your frisky cat feels like shizzat or your suavest pooch is putting on the dog? Our readers’ pampered pets choose both these places for their great service and attention to the details: Bark ?n Purr for its grooming and friendly service…
Best Bookstore
Here is what Events Coordinator Peter Duggan said on his last day at BookPeople, back in August: “My only official comment is that BookPeople, the Chronicle, and the folks working for these institutions are blessings to the city of Austin.” He was quite obviously drunk when he got to the part about us, and we…
Best Specialty Books
Your enduring favorite faces new challenges with the ongoing development plans of Sixth & Lamar, but for now they continue to satisfy your female and feminist needs with musical events, video screenings, BookGroup, and a hearty selection of opinionated stickers and T-shirts. Oh … and books! Did we mention books?
Best Addendum to the University of Texas at Austin
Established last year as a site dedicated to research and production in contemporary art and design, this new exhibition space, directed by local artist and UT graduate Cynthia Camlin, is a great addition to the already fine programming offered by the Art and Art History Department at UT. Besides a year round schedule of exhibitions…
Best Reason for Artists to Stay in Austin
Why should artists stay in Austin, or, more importantly, make Austin their home? The Austin Museum of Art’s “22 to Watch” — the brainchild of Dana Friis-Hansen and co-curators Gail B. Sanders and Erica M. Shamaly — offered some good incentive. It was the first AMOA exhibition to focus on local talent in over a…
Best Renaissance Men
Marc Gunn and Andrew McKee, aka the Bards for short, have been spreading ye old good word far and wide ever since their days on the South Mall at UT. Austin?s prime purveyors of Renaissance and medieval folk music and what-have-you made quite the impression during SXSW 2002, as they traipsed about in full kilt…
Best Desserts on a Summer Afternoon
We love their delicious panini and go ga-ga over their scrumptious capellini. We adore Emmitt and Lisa Fox’s prompt and knowledgeable waitstaff, but it’s all a ruse — we’re really there for the dessert menu. One day it was a crispy sweet cannolli, the next a divinely inspired brioche with fresh peach topping. With Dolce…
Best Taqueria That Used to Be a Dunkin’ Donuts
With all of the mom-and-pop stores falling prey to skyrocketing rent affordable only to Starbucks and the Gap, it’s refreshing to step inside of La Tapatia, housed in a building that used to be home to a Dunkin’ Donuts. La Tapatia offers everything you would expect from a quality neighborhood taqueria, whether you have a…
Best Disneyfied Snapshot of Texas
Disneyland may have Animatronic Abe Lincoln, but we have Sam Houston and a re-creation of the 1900 Galveston hurricane with wind and rain effects to boot. The Texas Spirit Theater’s presentation of The Star of Destiny never fails to excite out-of-town guests with its surprise-filled multimedia whirlwind through Texas history from colonization up through the…
Best Smoke-Free Glow Bowling
Health-conscious parents: If your offspring are craving glow bowling, but you don’t want to deal with the hazards of second-hand smoke, there is no better place to go than the Union Underground. The black lights and fun music will wow them. And if that doesn’t, there are also pool tables, an arcade, and snacks. Don’t…
Best Reason to Scream ‘All Aboard!’
Austin based poopoochoochoo.com remains lively, funny, and well … they boast the longest, most memorable name on the Net that sounds like it should be a porn site but isn’t. The chooch takes on national news and personal crises with wit, sincerity, and a cynicism that puts most blog-like sites to shame. poopoochoochoo.com is also…
Best Initiative for the Elderly
When Austin’s newest skatepark (roller rink with wooden hills and a rubber-lined ceiling) opened in April, Wednesday nights became Old Man Night. The initiative proved so popular with the bus pass crowd that Monday night turned into Older Man Night. A mere $5 for over 18 year olds ensures clear runways, polite company and less…
Best Scary Fish
Strolling through Zilker Botanical Gardens is a very peaceful and beautiful experience; it’s the perfect place to take the family or to just relax and enjoy the beauty of nature. Nestled in the middle of the gardens is a lotus pond. Irresistible stepping stones lead the curious to the center of the pond. Movement catches…
Best Excuses
-Fred is out of town and somebody has to stay to look after the goats—it was a difficult birth. (Apple Computers)-I’m taking my girlfriend to the doctor. For a test. (Axcess Systems)-I know I took time off yesterday, too, but I need to spend time with my girlfriend right now. (Axcess Systems)-I can’t do Thursday,…
Best Return to the Club Business
After spending the latter half of the Nineties working for Austin’s own music festival, Thomson hung up his SXSW ballcap and returned to this former employer, Emo’s. The club had been undergoing a renaissance of sorts since Frank Hendrix took over, but with Thomson back, the venerable punk joint has both heart and soul. Not…
Best Branch Library Oasis
Following its recent relocation from a nearby strip mall, the revitalized Windsor Park branch — behind the regal lions — became even more indispensable to the neighborhood. There are so few walking destinations in near Northeast (north of Old Mueller Airport) that the library, with its high-demand Internet terminals and affably knowledgable staff, can be…
Best Place for Spots (and Stripes, Too!)
Danny Smith, formerly of Catapult, opened up his own digs recently in those cool industrial buildings on Third Street. The Beauty Lounge offers your basic spoiled-in-the-chair-’til-your-hair-is-perfect treatment. But there’s more! Danny is a total badass with bleach and dye and has been responsible for some pretty amazing striped, checked, leopard-spotted, and polka-dotted ‘do’s around town.
Most Relaxing Shampoo in a Salon
The practice of having the “shampoo girl” wash your hair instead of the stylist doing it himself/herself seems kind of old-school, and we seek out in earnest the hair salons that resist dividing the labor that way. Dave Bain at Vitali Salon is not only most happy to shampoo your head with his own capable…
Best Place to Buy Orchids
Georgia O’Keefe would have had a field day here. With thousands of Hawaiian orchids imported weekly, It’s a Jungle lives up to its name. The selection runs the gamut with these popular flowers, from the common, inexpensive Phalanopsis Dendrobiums to the rarer, pricier Vandas. And for those who don’t know the first thing about orchids…
Matters of Perception
Evidence suggest that former APD officer Timothy Enlow hasn’t been completely honest — nor have those who have testified against him.
Austin @ Large: Austin at Large
The Envision Central Texas project is an opportunity for the citizens to plan our own destiny.
Best Hotel
Once a rundown residential dump, the Hotel San José is now a sparse, spectacular, comfy, contemporary center of cool, from the concrete and red hardwood floors to the mini-balconies and the heated pool ensconced in a most relaxed courtyard area. The continental breakfast, stylin’ bar, and warm-weather catering festivities are all just gravy.
Best Dance Company
While Ballet Austin offers some great classics — the year will mark the 40th anniversary of the company’s presentation of The Nutcracker – it’s also en pointe with the daringly creative. Look forward to next season’s full-length, non-narrative work in the debut of Touch, a live music and multimedia extravaganza.
Best Live Music Acoustics
From the manic chaos of Snoop Dogg to Lucinda Williams’ songs of heartache and desire, there is no better place than Stubb’s to hear it. Dishing out cold drinks and hot music (not to mention their legendary barbecue), Stubb’s showcases local talent as beautifully as world-class acts in a distinctly Austin venue.
24 Hour Party People
24 Hour Party People 2002, R, 113 min. Directed by Michael Winterbottom, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Steve Coogan, Danny Cunningham, Chris Coghill, Shirley Henderson, Andy Serkis, Sean Harris, Paddy Considine. It doesn’t matter if you think Joy Division is queer math, or if your knowledge of New Order is limited to various…
Best Kids Clothing Resale
The JLTS is loaded with top-of-the-line duds for dudes and dudettes of all sizes. You can get you some fancy mall clothes without having to — perish the thought — actually go to the mall, and without having to shell out big bucks for big fashions. Plus the Junior League ladies who work there are…
Best Morning Radio Host
A champion of local and visiting music, theatre, and literary acts, a derring-do promoter of playing the same song (different versions) 50 (or so) times in a row, a smooth-voiced soothester with an absurdly broad taste in everything audio, Austin’s favorite radio host truly is a local living legend. And coming up in second place…
Best Bowling Alley
Austin’s beloved Dart Bowl is King Pin again, courtesy of our readership. Born at a time when that part of town still defined what was considered “Northwest” Austin, the Dart holds true to its mid-20th-century American roots. You can still get some real nachos (not that processed goo), a gin & tonic, plus witness the…
Best City Service
We are all about the blue bins. Recycle and reuse: That’s where it’s at! We love to feel good about our consumption. But what makes us feel better is finding that perfectly useable, albeit a tad smelly, sofa in dark chocolate brown to match the rest of our tattered aesthetic, lying on the side of…
Best Appliance/TV Repair
Bond’s Television & Electronics Inc. has been a local fixture since 1954. Family owned and operated, Bond’s has a reputation for doing good, solid work – and for being honest and easy to work with. Heavy on customer service, light on the frills that drive up prices, Bond’s wins this year’s vote!
Best Pharmacy
Don’t assume that these are merely places to pick up prescriptions. There’s more to it than that. While you wait at either of these Chronicle reader faves, belly up to the counter and order up some fine local chow at Nau’s soda fountains and People’s lunch counters (three out of their four local stores have…
Best Clothing
Austin’s very own temple of fashion has earned its reputation with cutting-edge styles and creative merchandising. Through constant revising and renewing of their collections, they keep up with the fast pace of fashion unlike any other Austin retailer, bringing the world of high style to our doorstep. By George, we think they’ve got it!
Best Thrift Store
With everything from slacks and blouses arranged by hue to antediluvian computers and furniture, Goodwill stands as our readers’ reigning champion of the thrift world — all while helping folks with disabilities help themselves in the way of gainful employment.
Best Muffler Art
Seems you can’t drive past an auto-repair shop without your eyes being assaulted by the usual silly sculpture sprung from the impulse: “Hey, let’s stick a few extra pipes on a muffler and stand it up so it looks kinda human! Hyuk!” But the impulse of AAA Muffler’s Wayne Barbee led to the full-blown, full-color…
Best Artist Community in the Environs
If Austin is to become a place where curators and critics come to find new artists, it is imperative that Austin become a viable place for artists to thrive, not merely survive. Margo Sawyer’s 1/4 Hora Project Space, a refurbished 19th-century opera-house-turned-studio and alternative art space, is one step in the right direction. An associate…
Best Reason to Get out of the Shower
Closet crooners and shower sopranos delight! You can finally come out of the shower! Tapestry Singers sings music about, by, and for women every Monday night, 7-9pm. One of the healthiest vices in Austin, Tapestry requires no auditions nor musical training. Just show up and open your mouth — but make sure you towel off…
Best Chicken ‘Product’
Every Sunday from 4 until 8pm you’ll find free live music, free monster chili dogs, and Dewey the Chicken holding court at Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon. For a “poultry” two dollar donation, you draw numbers at random and wait for Dewey to do her business on a numbered board. Whichever numbered square Dewey hits with…
Best Renaissance Women
If you thought Elizabeth the First and Kathryn the Great were history, think again. The two are better known as the Tudor Tarts, and their divinely bawdy ballads and deliciously lascivious lyrics have made them favorites at fantasy faires and Renaissance festivals all around Texas, not to mention livening up weddings with their naughty bits…
Best Dining on UT Campus
As the saving grace of university dining, O?s Campus Cafe offers Orange Olive Oil Muffins, fancy sandwiches like Cilantro Tuna Salad and Cucumber, Avocado, Sprouts & Olives, and our favorite, Roasted Veggie with Basil Pesto Pizza. It beats a stale peanut butter & jelly sandwich with an apple and a pint of milk any day.…
Best Nuts
Why are these nuts better than all the rest? Because the native Hungarian and Israeli owners have been making them their entire lives, by dry roasting each seed in their own special ovens, and not adding preservatives. Nuts range from the common peanut, almond, pecan, and delicious macadamia, to the more obscure Israeli sunflower seed…
Best Taste of New Orleans
The key to a good New Orleans PoBoy is a perfectly baked French baguette with equal amounts of chewiness and crispness. Operating since 2000 in the heart of East Austin, Gene’s delivers the genuine article. The Smoked Sausage PoBoy is a standout, and vegetarians can go off the menu and try a French Fry PoBoy…
Best Educational Day Camp
Despite a potentially intimidating name, MasterSchool ensures development and fun somewhere in between catching grasshoppers, building model rockets, riding horses, and swimming — all on a healthy, low-sugar diet. MasterSchool has run a spring and summer day camp for gifted children since 1982 and recently expanded its operation to offer an overnight camp. Not to…
Best Soggy Movie Viewing
Austin’s next generation of cinephiles is getting primed through the movie series that combines the fun of film with the wonder of wet: movies at Deep Eddy. From the cool pool, a veritable flotilla of floaties bob in the water as family movies are shown on a trucked-in screen. All for the same modest price…
Best Sunday Brunch Listening
Nothing complements the smell of flapjacks on the griddle on a lazy Sunday like the timeless tunes of Benny Goodman, Harry James, and other Big Band heavyweights from the Forties. From noon to 6pm each Sunday, Charlie St. George’s Band Stand Sunday on KNCT 91.3 FM (Killeen’s NPR affiliate) captures the rose-colored nostalgia of postwar…
Best Living Piece of Art
Metz Recreation Center, Canterbury Street. With the help of local children, Mexican artist Patricia Greene designed this Life-Scape: three arches which look like the six legs of some giant visitor. For the bones, Greene used local cedar branches, vines act as sinews holding the arches together. An ivy fur grows over it all, even the…
Best Skatepark for Young and Old Alike
Equipped with verts in the back half, and quarter pipes, rails, and boxes in the front street course, M&M Skatepark is a full-on skaters dream come true. Plus, Monday nights are Old Man Nights — 21 and up skate for $5, after the kids are put to bed. This special proved so popular with the…
Best Fight
Austin may never kick its rep as the safest city in the Wild West, or the cleanest city in the Dirty South, but is the municipal backbone entirely made of tofu? One family proved otherwise during a particularly spicy meal at Baby A’s. Following an argument over grace, a young man received a right hook…
Best Role Model for Aspiring Politicians
The Mr. Deeds myth is a powerful one, but political success comes not from naive innocence but from hard work and a clear vision. Starting with absolutely no advantages — a flat-broke gay progressive white man in a Hispanic district in a conservative statehouse — Glen Maxey left the Lege after a decade of tireless…
Best Chance You Stand of Getting Your Darned Nutty Mutt to Mind You
Melanie and William McLeroy are the alpha female and male of this fine doggie training service. Able to domesticate even some wild-eyed Rott-hua-hua mix you picked up at Town Lake Animal Center (you kindhearted soul, you) or improve upon the fanciest, schmanciest traits of your purebred whatever, they will make you love your pooch even…
Best Place to Fight the Ravages of Time
Her hands are like magic, performing minor (and major) cosmetic miracles everyday. With her lilting French accent, comforting demeanor, and vast knowledge, she tends some of the great faces of Austin in need of nourishing treatment from too much sun, too much stress, and just plain age. Turn yourself over to Vickmay: With treatments that…
Speediest Auto Repair Service
Doc’s is a South Congress fixture. Amid stylish boutiques and salons, it has been servicing the area for four years, providing reliable, friendly service and quick turnaround. Owner Brad Watson and his team are expert repairmen, with a specialty in Saabs, though they’ll handle just about anything that rolls into their shop.
Best Place to Encounter the Funkiest of Treasures
When traveling south on Guadalupe, follow your nose past Mojo’s; the smell of incense will lead you to Pangaea, a wonderland of thingamabobs and knick knacks, including unique shoes, dresses, shirts, skirts, cards, candles, oils, various decorations, exquisite jewelry, and even fairy dust. The dragon door handle is fabulous, and so is this imaginative gift…
The Statesman … Files a Motion
The Statesman files a restraining order for the Enlow arbitration
The Hightower Lowdown
George W. Bush makes war on evildoers — except the ones he likes; and W and his cohorts love war — unless they’re the ones who have to fight.
Best Motel
The motel is about as funky as it gets, with 41 rooms spread out over three buildings built in decidedly different eras (1938, 1950, 1969). This is not the Four Seasons. Welcome to Planet Austin Motel, slogan: “So Close, Yet So Far Out.” Since 1938, this fabulous neon sign (refurbished by Todd Sanders) has decorated…
Best Dancer (Fine Arts)
A choreographic visionary so committed to her art that every cell of her body vibrates with dance. Given her international renown, so recently celebrated in the reunion tour of Judson School choreographers in which she danced a duet with Mikhail Baryshnikov, and this year’s acknowledgment of her long local career by the Austin Critics Table…
Best Live Music Venue
The Live Oak Amphitheater has played host to everyone from Willie Nelson to Bonnie Raitt to Counting Crows to Stevie Ray. Nestled at the joint of Highways 71 & 620, the Backyard offers a surreal yet beautiful concert setting to crowds of up to 5,000. Just recently, the venue had a makeover, adding a food…
Best Kids Restaurant
With endless rounds between the all-you-can-eat buffet and video/virtual reality games and indoor carnival rides, what more could one ask for, except maybe a TV room featuring three different channels and another strictly cartoon room? Oh, wait, they have that, too! Plus they can even provide the cake. Whoa. There’s not much more for a…
Best News Source
Why, thank you, Austin. We try our darndest to get you the news and doings around our town in a cheap and timely manner (still wild & free, every Thursday!). But, really, you shouldn’t have. The way we see it, you guys are just voting for yourselves in this category, because, after all, without you,…
Best Day Hike
Preservation pays off. A day’s relief from traffic in the heart of Austin, the Greenbelt is just close enough to your car, but far enough to forget you’re in the big city while you explore caves, climb rocks, or sit in the gentle eddies of the creek.
Best Council Member
Why do we like Will Wynn? Maybe it’s because he’s got the fresh-scrubbed All-American thing in spades — can’t you just see him walking down Congress Avenue arm-in-arm with his wife, kids scampering nearby, enjoying a fine Saturday afternoon? Maybe it’s because he knows how to tell a joke — remember his spoof send-off of…
Best Auto Service/Repair
Handling just about anything you can push, drive, or tow in, Clint’s provides quick and reliable service at a reasonable rate. Edging out stiff competition from perennial BOA faves Flamingo and Groovy, Clint Small’s will have you back on the road in no time flat.
Best Photo Lab
Since 1981, Holland has been an Austin institution for the amateur and professional photographer alike. While still offering the standard, traditional services, like processing, proofing printing, and duplication, they have kept pace with the latest technology for digital imaging (including an Internet drop box).
Best Comic Books
Well, of course. Not only do they carry the entire available panoply of superhero-type glossies from the Big Two and others, Austin Books blesses readers of more catholic tastes with a huge selection of indy comics and graphic compilations. Jonathan Adams? Kalah Allen? James Kochalka? Dame Darcy? Tim Doyle? Gosh-wow, this is the place!
Best Used Records/CDs
Has looking at your CD collection made you feel depressed and uncool? Well take your crappy old disks to the only place where you can still get cash for an Ace of Base CD: Cheapo! Selling back these used embarrassments can get you some nice cool cash to buy some newer or cooler (or even…
Best Arts Crusader
It all began at the tender age of 11, when Rachel Koper realized she had a knack for drawing horses. Now the practicing artist and director at Gallery Lombardi, Koper is a ruthless yet selfless promoter of local art in Austin. At virtually every opening, talk, and performance, she’s there creating opportunities for those around…
Best Shaper of New Worlds
Seeing a new play at the Vortex isn’t like seeing one anywhere else in town. You don’t just hear the dramatist’s words given voice, you’re taken to the places they’re spoken. That’s because Vortex Artistic Director Bonnie Cullum takes pains to realize a new script’s setting. Collaborating with exceptional designers — e.g., Jason Amato on…
Best Comeback
When you lose your Sixth Street guitar palace of many decades around the same time you’re diagnosed with hep C, making music may not seem like the salve it always was. Unless, that is, you’re Danny Crooks, Steamboat’s down-with-the-ship Commodore. He went down with the steamer alright, but up from Davy Jones’ locker he rose…
Best Retro Game Rooms
He had long, flaxen locks of sun-kissed mousey brown, the coolest pair of Foster Grants, shiney blue Birdwell Beach Britches, and nimbler fingers than any boy his age should ever be allowed to have. Oooh, he was King of the Arcade — a Pinball Wizard, the master of our High Score. And we think of…
Best Downhome Special
Actually, every day at Gene’s is a very good day — but on Thursday, they bring out the smothered pork chops, sweet potatoes, and cornbread to die for, with some iced tea just to clear your palate for the next heavenly bite. The food is so good you forget your boss, your job, and the…
Best Place to Get a Stiff Drink and Exotic Bar Food
Pango serves a wide assortment of creative drinks that are both delicious and heavy-hitting. The prices ain’t so bad, either! To go along with these libations is a bar snack far more classy and interesting than corn nuts and jalapeño poppers: toasted green peas, coated with a crunchy wasabi batter. Great to wash down with…
Best Thing the Aggies Ever Gave Austin
You know, the whole place is cool. The workers are cool. The bigger-than-your-freakin’-head burritos are cool. The Statue of Liberty bursting through the wall on a Harley is cool. And even the little signs workers leave for each other (but you can see if you look hard, on the back wall) are cool, such as:…
Best Film School for Kids
If you’ve gotta kid who’s gotta make a film — send him down to Barna Kantor. There, after learning the how-to’s in a small class, and then actually doing it (shooting, editing, making the soundtrack, public screening, and all) individually, your little auteur will know whether filmmaking is a possible metier — and you’ll have…
Best Store Pet
Ya gotta love a record store that values its pet dog’s opinion as highly as it does the employee picks for good listening. Mafesto, the bulgy-eyed, moon-faced Pug often found at the front desk, joins the illustrious list of our “Best of Austin” store pets if only because he’s so cute. Owner Jason Shields knows…
Best Texacana Journalist
Who has traveled deep in the heart of Texas and returned alive to tell the tall tale? That would be none other than Texas Monthly’s resident Texacana specialist and renegade historian Anne Dingus. Why is everything, including state pride, bigger in Texas? Her Lone Star-spangled articles provide tantalizing clues to the mystery that is Texas…
Best New Use of Public Land
An Eastside answer to Austin’s beloved Zilker Park, the Roy G. Guerrero Colorado River Park remains a work in progress, but when complete, will offer something for everyone: a hike-and-bike trail, picnic areas, basketball courts, soccer, softball, and little-league fields. Kudos to the Austin Parks Foundation for helping to make this project a reality.
Best Social Event Masquerading as Sporting Event
The Texas Relays has long been one of the premier track-and-field events in the nation, but in recent years, it has also become one of the Lone Star State’s major party events. People now travel from all over the state – even if they have no intention of actually going to the track meet –…
Best Friend of Smart Growth
It’s supposed to be Austin’s consensus vision, but at times the DAA seems like the only friend of Smart Growth in all its manifestations — affordable housing, walkable streets, better transit, not just the “pro-business” stuff. Despite being a group of big landlords, the DAA equates its own self-interest with the greatest good for the…
Best Scam Artists
Electro hippies in white van. On 183 last November, they hard shoulder the traffic, weaving, waving, begging attention. Stupidly, we follow them up a side-street and all stop. Hairy Chad does the shouting. Dave says “Yeah,” a lot. “We have speakers we didn’t sell and want to give you for free,” shouts Chad. All they…
Best Curly Hair Stylists
We hate our hair: It has a mind of its own. We have had to deal with it our whole lives, the cowlicks, the frizziness. We’ve tried everything – gel, confixer, blowtorches – even the overpriced salons can’t quite get it to look and lay right. We finally tried this salon, buried in the far…
Best Place to Find Fluffy Luv
Dogs and cats of all ages and breeds have grown increasingly grateful to the Humane Society since its founding in 1952. Promoting responsible pet ownership and preventing pet overpopulation, this nonprofit organization is not governmentally subsidized, yet has participated in the city’s efforts to end the liquidation of healthy, adoptable, but homeless pets. As the…
Best Brotherly Endeavor
Austin is all about family legacies, from Champ and Warren Hood to Dubya and his daughters; so too are Ryan and Jason Enright methodically establishing theirs. Fast becoming the Waterloo Records of Hyde Park’s musical jet set, their Jupiter Records new/used record store owes no small amount of its growing success to its sibling owners’…
Best Place to Find Carrie Bradshaw Shoes
Not all of us can afford to accumulate a closet full of designer shoes on a writer’s salary. Lucky for us, Emeralds keeps our heels — and account balances — high with a funky range of options at reasonable prices. Sure, Carrie may not deign to wear Nine West, but let’s not confuse snobbery with…
When Is a Violation Not a Violation?
According to Austin Police Dept. administrators and the city of Austin, former APD officer Tim Enlow violated numerous departmental policies — violations that allegedly necessitated his termination. Yet testimony at Enlow’s civil service arbitration hearing reflects that he wasn’t the only policy violator — merely the only one dismissed for those violations. Among the APD…
Best Mural
The visual splendors of ex-pat Austin artists, musical fringe legend Daniel Johnston and punk rock poster man Frank Kozik, include a flying eyeball, two spiky, four-eyed, lovable geckos (think: Keith Haring on acid), a faded image of Jack Nicholson from The Shining (“Heeeeeeere’s Johnny!”), and our personal favorite: a froggy extraterrestrial welcoming you with a…
Best Museum
If you missed the elephant prancing about Congress, celebrating AMOA’s circus-themed exhibit this past summer, you can expect further innovation to excite the senses in a perhaps less pachyderm-smelling way. AMOA continues to educate and entertain with modern and contemporary art at its current locations and now pushes forward with fundraising for the construction of…
Best Movie Theatre
Dinner and a movie. Such a common phrase … such a common date. Alamo Drafthouse puts the two together and takes the concept more than a few notches higher. Their genius programming (Mr. Sinus, Spike & Mike, Butt-Numb-a-Thon, not to mention first-run mega-hits at the north location) has taken the Alamo from local novelty to…
Best Coffeehouse
Spider House rules! The baristas are friendly and laid-back, the atmosphere comfy and relaxing. After you order one of the usual coffee or tea drinks, or a glass of beer, wine, or champagne, you can peruse the mixture of antique-store finds decorating the inside of the converted old manse or wander outside to the wonderful…
Best Kids Shoe Store
Twinkle, twinkle, little toes New Balance, Keds, and Club Polo, Bass and Reebok, Pretty Please, Make teeny tootsies feel at ease. 20,000 pair; 4,800 square feet Will please your kiddies’ widdle … feet!
Best Photographer
Yes, his subject matter is frequently of a political nature instead of some endless string of celeb-studded glamour shots. But our readers are not swayed by content alone; Pogue has technical skills that art directors swoon for, but chooses to use it in documenting the more serious sides of life.
Best Day Trip
These two may have tied, but you can combine them to make one big ol’ day o’fun. Hit Fredericksburg for the antique shops and scrumptious German food, not to mention curiosities like the Butterfly Ranch, the dulcimer factory, Cross Mountain, and the Admiral Nimitz State Historical Park and Museum of the Pacific War, then go…
Best Eccentric
Everybody knows Leslie, right? He’s Austin’s top-notch boho homo hobo, a queen among men. We’ve heard rumors of his westwardly migration (West Lake Hills?!?), but hey, he and his homemade sleep/cart are still downtown institutions.
Best Barber Shop
Point of fact: The $7 shave both removes unwanted facial hair and 10 years from your haggard, pirate-like scruff. More effective than a Botox session chased with a chemical peel, with none of the guilt. Thirty-seven rotations around the sun, and the Woo’s scissors are as sharp as ever.
Best Printer/Copies
It’s four in the morning, and you’ve just finished your portfolio/pamphlet/MIS project. Now you need to print and bind 100 copies before 8am. You’re not stressing, though, because there is a beautiful red-and-blue sign that shines like a beacon of hope through your procrastination haze. Kinko’s has capitalized on people’s inherent need to finish things…
Best Computer Store
Think Central Market for electronics. Over half of the warehouse that Fry’s Electronics calls home is devoted solely to computers. For those who like to build their own computer, Fry’s has everything you need, as well as any number of roving employees who will help you to the best of their ability. Check out the…
Best Vintage
Austin’s favorite place for retro clothing and accessories is Blue Velvet, where their fashion lineup includes mullet wigs, paisley button-downs, bowler hats, AC/DC shirts, and blue jeans that are faded from actual human wear. Yea!
Best Place to Watch Rising Flood Waters
Situated perfectly about 500 feet from the bulk of Tom Miller Dam, this first bridge on Town Lake can at first appear to be as bland as all the rest. But when the sparse rains roll through Central Texas, the flood gates open and the docile fisherman’s pond below the dam returns to its raging…
Best Choreographer of the Air
For nearly two decades, artist Sally Jacques has won our admiration for breaking new ground, with both her site-specific dances in empty swimming pools and gravel pits and her politically engaged works from The 64 Beds Project to the annual Body Count on Day Without Art. Now, we’re also admiring her for breaking new air.…
Best Sidebar
Four years after its inception as a sidebar program of Cinematexas, the annual Eye + Ear performing arts series has evolved into an important international event in its own right. Sonic Youth’s Jim O’Rourke and Thurston Moore, Japanoise artist Merzbow, DJ Lithops from “intelligent dance music” ensemble Mouse on Mars: The list of past performers…
Best South Austin Listening Room
Not that we need a bunch of yankees on some hifalutin’ cable news channel telling us how cool the Saxon Pub is, but they did indeed say it. Now well into its second decade on South Lamar, Joe Ables’ unpretentious little room is rumored to be expanding. Besides bringing together singer-songwriters of several generations like…
Best Expansion
When you’ve got the best pizza and Italian food in town ?- even if it’s waaaaaay up north in a strip mall on 183 — word will spread like garlic butter, baby. That’s what happened to Reale’s, and the once-cozy, Chianti-bottle-adorned mom-and-pop restaurant found itself lacking in the elbow room department. So they knocked out…
Best Place to Get Work Done in the Wee Hours (Out of the House)
Granted, its hours were once “always to always” and have now been reduced to 6:30am-2:30am, but 503 still holds a place in our overcaffeinated, palpitating hearts. From the outside it looks like a party house with a cool mural, a hut always full of people. But the inside? Well-lit and just cluttered enough to be…
Best Foam for Fake Mustaches
Got root beer? You only got root beer if you got a root beer mustache, bucko, and some of these newfangled, adult-niche-marketed-and-caffeinated-to-boot beers just don’t cut it. If you are looking for a root beer made with the kiddies in mind, one free of that devil crack of childhood (caffeine), one full of cold icy…
Best Traffic Tracker
He’s something of a miracle, this one: A good number of us participating in the passé pastimes known as driving cars and watching TV couldn’t do either without him. Always optimistic but never naive, Warfield is a magician who knows the rules of the road better than anyone, and lucky for us, he shares them.…
Best Night to Catch the Express in Round Rock
With apologies to Bull Durham: We believe in cold beer on hot summer nights, and we believe the Dell Diamond is not likely to change its name anytime soon. We believe that Express first baseman Royce Huffman should be headed for the show. And if the beer is cheap, we also believe that there are…
Best Sporting Event
Professional men’s basketball bores some of us to tears. You know why? Supersize players, dully loping about the court like moose, so tall that they barely need to move their legs. UT women’s basketball games, in contrast, are full of energy and skill. Those girls can move; they’re exciting to watch! Led by super-cool Coach…
Best International Activist
UT graduate student Mahajan is well-known about town for his indefatigable anti-war activism, especially against the devastating economic sanctions imposed on Iraq, as well as U.S. and “allied” plans for renewed war on that country. Now he’s getting nationally known as the Green Party candidate for governor and the author of a book, The New…
Best Taskmistress
Let us now discuss thankless jobs. Think about coordinating the hundreds of volunteers with the thousands of tasks required to pull off any one day and night of SXSW. Now, multiply that by five for the music conference and festival, and factor in the media conference and film fest and … well, you’d need someone…
Best Customer Service For Your Car
The folks at the S. IH35 location certainly treated us right … and for $50 less than the other guy! Mechanics with talent, management with integrity. We share a dim recollection of the same exact experience at NTB ten years ago. Some things, unlike your motor oil, should never be changed.
Best Place to Go Gently Into That Good Night
Proving that a good death is not an oxymoron, the skilled staff and compassionate volunteers at Hospice Austin’s Christopher House ease pain, quiet fears, hold your hand (both literally and euphemistically), and calmly guide you through the final days of life. Patients and family members alike are treated with loving kindness and the utmost respect.…
Best Clothes/DJ Combo
With fancy threads and a cool cat sitting atop the little store tucked in off South First & Mary, Gomi brings fashions from the upper Eastside (NYC) down Southside (ATX). The men’s clothing is remarkably handsome and affordable, and the ladies-wear is sexy and sleek. All this fashion, with so little pretense!
Best Place to Find Cheap Records
Remember records? Sure you do. Those glorious 12-inch slabs of vinyl that spin at 33, 45, and even 78 revolutions per minute. While Sound Exchange has plenty to offer the savvy music fan – underground zines, local music, hard-to-find punk, jazz, and experimental music, etc. – venture into their backroom and you will find a…
Weed Watch
With college classes now in full swing, it’s fitting to note that the U.S. Dept. of Education’s latest statistics show that 30,000 students will not receive federal student aid for the 2002-03 school year, based solely on the 1998 Higher Education Act, which denies aid to students with any prior drug convictions. Since strict enforcement…
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever 2002, R, 91 min. Directed by Kaos, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Antonio Banderas, Lucy Liu, Gregg Henry, Talisa Soto, Ray Park, Miguel Sandoval, Terry Chen, Aidan Drummond. Thai director Wych Kaosayanada knows a disaster when he sees (or directs) one; paring down his given name to the graffito…
Best Neighborhood
Were the Cold War still frosty, one could easily mistake the neighborhood called Hyde Park as some huge KGB training facility, where cultural agents are taught how to be perfect Americans. Lawns are perfectly coiffed and lightly peppered with Timmy’s (aka Anatoly’s) toys. Fresh-scrubbed cars are tasteful and discreetly middle class. The neighbors are friendly…
Best Painter/Sculptor
Though he’s made his own bands’ fliers over the years, Ethan Azarian’s style emerges from an otherwise informal art background. His resulting playful acrylic paintings combine unexpected objects in dynamic relationships, like his free-floating fruit in heavy interiors and vacant-eyed cattle among weightless houses or paintings in his In House Gallery, like Herds of Chairs,…
Best Place to Cruise Chicks/Dudes
Though many voted for “Anywhere but Sixth Street,” somebody must be having some sort of success. Now the question is, for you lucky/beautiful/pheromonal elite, what was your strategy? Well, for the rest of us, we can remain assured that we can still cruise Sixth and expect to bump into enthusiastic partiers.
Best Diner
Once again Star Seeds captures the hearts of Austinites whose desire for diner fare is likely to strike in the wee hours that stride dusk and dawn. Still open 24 hours, with all the same features of its notoriously yummy menu intact, Star Seeds has stepped up its game by offering draught beer! All of…
Best Party Place
With endless rounds between the all-you-can-eat buffet and video/virtual reality games and indoor carnival rides, what more could one ask for, except maybe a TV room featuring three different channels and another strictly cartoon room? Oh, wait, they have that, too! Plus they can even provide the cake. Whoa. There’s not much more for a…
Best Public Access TV Show
Like one of those edgy boîtes too hip for a sign out front, The Show With No Name may be the best-kept secret in Austin. Those in the know tune in on Sunday nights to wise guy Charlie Sotelo’s giddy pile-up of vintage video clips and forgotten movie trailers. Watching Charlie stare out in disbelief…
Best Dog Walk
If you happen to live in Austin but have never been biking on this trail, take it from those who know: this is the best place to bike! (Note: nobby tires only! The trail is unpaved, making it tough for road bikes and in-line skates.) The trail/park is also great for jogging, romantic walks, people…
Best Effort to Improve Austin
“Waste not, want not,” our mother always told us. As kids we shrugged it off, but nowadays we understand that the wastefulness of our culture’s auto-obsession and sprawling homes and impermeable driveways are a sure path to self-destruction. Kudos to all who consider light rail (or any public transportation for that matter) and the Save…
Best Bicycle Repair
A steady favorite for the past decade, we understand the dedication of the Sport Shop’s customers. Free estimates from an attentive crew make a difference to the old pro, but perhaps even more so to the beginner. And the work is guaranteed.
Best Rental/Roommate Locator
It was mighty neighborly of you to vote our very own Classifieds department as the winners of this prize. We bet they are grinning ear-to-ear. Well, The Austin Chronicle Classifieds is certainly the first place we look to avoid filling our room vacancy with some stuff-shirted, anti-Austin freak.
Best Drugstore
What other drugstore offers splendiferous burgers, egg sandwiches, grilled cheese, and shakes back at the counter? Not to mention all the cool knick-knacks. And, oh yeah, the health and beauty stuff. Just say yes to Nau’s Drugs.
What Makes Austin Austin
When most people not from Austin talk about Austin, it is usually with a note of shock in their voice: They enjoy themselves so much while they are here, and it is Texas after all. But when these out-of-towners wax poetic about our burg, it’s never the bats or the music, it’s the people. The…
Best Reception Site
Nestled on a wooded hillside off South First Street, Mercury Hall hosts weddings, parties, bar mitzvahs … you name it. The 1,700-square-foot, turn-of-the-century hall was moved to its present location from its original home in Mercury, Texas, some 120 miles away. The stained glass and rugged interior recall Texas’ past, while its ample kitchen and…
Best Dazzler
Some stage designers may treat light like a technical tool, but Jason Amato conducts light — not in the electrical sense but the orchestral sense. Shafts of light swell and fade at his bidding, like brass instruments in a symphony; colors saturate a stage the way strings come to the fore in a musical passage.…
Best Theater Group Name
“Like most actors, we all had a background in Shakespeare,” says Sarah Richardson, one of five artistic directors in Rude Mechanicals. “And it was way back in the dark ages in 1995 when we thought we would end up being a Shakespearean troupe.” Their company’s name is plucked from a quote by Puck in a…
Best Drag King Troupe
Mothers! Lock up your daughters! Just when you thought Hedwig got to have all the fun, Kings ‘n’ Things, Austin’s very own cross-dressin’, schlong-swingin?, lady-pleasin?, harmonizin? boi band extravaganza, is coming soon (but not prematurely) to a stage near you. Nothing “beats” a performance by Jack Hov and his Kenneth Anger-esque tribute, complete with sparkler.…
Best Use of Auditorium Shores
Over the better part of the past decade, one of the best components of SXSW has been its free outdoor shows. No badges, no wristbands, no cover required, just lots of warm bodies and lots of local and national headliners. This year, rather than cordoning off already crowded downtown streets and/or parking lots, the biggest…
Best Freakin’ Migas
Cisco’s bakery was forever Rudy Cisnero’s place– it wasn’t just that the migas were fantastic but the ambience seemed wholly reliant on the presence of the eccentric (to put it lightly) proprietor. When Rudy departed for that big Mexican restaurant in the sky, it was a sad day for regulars. But some consolation came when…
Best Use of Sundried Tomatoes
Sundried tomatoes in bloody marys, who would have thought that a tasty combination? The fine folks at Opal Divine’s soak their sundried tomatoes in vodka and then float them in their tasty house bloody marys. If you’re feeling a little hung over on a Sunday head over to Opal Divine’s, sit out on the patio…
Best Hope for World Cup 2014
Depending on a number of factors — your kid’s interest and skill level, your financial situation, and your willingness to go to countless practices (or not) — Austin is a fine town to initiate the young’uns to this favorite international pastime. There’s Hancock Recreation (your equal opportunity league), West Austin Youth Association (not cheap, but…
Best Underutilized Online Resource
Craigslist Austin is a mere shadow of the hugely popular Craigslist San Francisco, or Craigslist New York, which is a damn shame. It’s free, searchable, and includes a public discussion forum, which many SF and NY expats seem to use upon relocation to Austin. This essential online guide is a comprehensive list of cool events,…
Best Park for the Family That Does Everything
This property, acquired by the city over a half-dozen decades ago, is an excellent, community-forging, gem of a park on the Eastside. With a softball field, two all-purpose fields, 17 picnic tables, basketball and volleyball courts, a pavilion, a playground, a pool, barbecue grills, free parking, and more, it’s a good place to spend an…
Best Strokes
Introduction to Rowing Course starts at $65 at the Texas Rowing Center on Town Lake. Follow-up with a 10-row card for $99.
Best Local Elected Official (Not on Austin City Council)
Davis first attracted citywide attention as a leader on environmental justice issues, and he’s stayed on top of those issues, which is a good thing given how easily distracted city and county leaders can get. First with SH 130, and most recently with the Northeast landfills, Davis has helped both his precinct and the whole…
Best Unsuccessful City Council Candidates
“Unsuccessful” may be the wrong word for McCracken, who did well enough in his first political foray to be the favorite for any open seat next spring. “Unsuccessful” may also not be apt for Sifuentes, who brought much-appreciated decorum, honesty, and common sense into the campaign. He earned our respect and demanded little more. Neither…
Best Florist to Appease a Rock Star
We confess to insider info here: When Courtney Love threw her famous tantrum (about Ken Lieck’s column item on her) at the Four Seasons during SXSW 2002, Cowgirls & Flowers whipped up a to-die-for bouquet of stargazer lilies, baby pink roses, creamy white snapdragons, and fey greenery delivered on the Chron’s behalf. Owner Kathryn Miller…
Best Place to Hear 80’s Music Without Getting Drunk
For those of us who were young and punk (or, okay New Wave) in the ’80’s, our time has come: we ARE the target market and we can tell by the soundtrack haunting businesses these days (Elvis Costello in HEB anybody?) But nobody does it better than Kinko’s, where you can hear Robert Hazzard and…
Best Concession to the Scots
We could never imagine a store getting away with the name “Frugalstein’s, ” no matter how successful they became at moving cheap wares. So those of us of Scottish descent always wondered why the powers that be thought that a name like “MacFrugal’s” — obviously a tip of the tam to those thrifty Scots –…
Best Place to Pick Up a Used Honda or Toyota
Jim Ernst and his crew of earnest car mechanics operate a full service repair and body shop. But in addition to fine service and decent prices, they move cars, specializing in reselling used Hondas and Toyotas. So if your beater has beat it, call the nice guys at the Depot.
50 Watts of Freedom
Radio activist Pete Tridish of Philadelphia’s Prometheus Radio Project has been traveling across the southern U.S., hoping to spread the free-radio gospel by helping community groups take advantage of the Federal Communication Commission’s new Low Power FM license. While typical commercial stations use 10,000 watts or more, LPFM stations broadcast at a power of only…
Best New Building in the Past Five Years
Mmmmmm, you like ’em neo-classical, eh? What is it? The towering columns? The rosy, pink afterglow of the fine slabs of Texas granite? The luscious, matronly orb that covers the top? Ooohhhh … Aaaaahhhh … Did E. Vernor Johnson & Associates of Dallas have any clue that they were creating such a sexy landmark?
Best Theatre Actor/Actress
The raw talent, the polished craft, the undeniable stage presence, the occurrence of all three and more in two Austin actresses? Yes, when you’re talking about the Rude Mechs’ Lesley or Ms. Instant Waterworks St. Denis lighting up stages all across the city.
Best Place to Meet Friends After Work
Whether you prefer the yummy Tex-Mex, the Mexican Martinis (limit two), or the great happy hour specials, Trudy’s keeps you running back every time the whistle blows. Laughter and mingling from off-duty workhorses always fills this Austin hot spot. With all the ruckus, people must feel this is the perfect place to unwind, let loose,…
Best Home Delivery
Eighteen years ago owner Jackie Davies was the first in the nation to set up this food delivery service that brings your order right to your door. They now have more than 40 contracts with various restaurant chains around Austin and Round Rock, ranging from Chili?s to Dan McKlusky?s to the County Line. Deliveries usually…
Best Party Supplies
Suffer the wrath of your 6-year-old, or simply head on over to the Party Pig for those absolutely necessary Pokémon plates. From New Year’s Eve to luaus, da Pig has da goods to deck out any back yard in themed party splendor. May the fiesta begin!
Best Radio Show Team
Mix 94.7 FM’s JB & Sandy are our readers’ new, No. 1 choice for that intimate wake-up cackle first thing in the morning. Their morning crew (featuring the likes of Steakboy, Digitz, and Autumn the Intern) will get you out of bed in no time. On the other hand, sexy new Brit sidekick Debi (who…
Best Gear/Sporting Goods
Is it their low prices? Their generous selection? Their catchy jingle? Academy just has that reassuring atmosphere and all the right gear to provide a relaxing atmosphere anywhere we choose. We won’t worry about extreme conditions on the speedboat, on the hunt, or even the first day back at school.
Best Effort to Keep Austin Weird
Everybody knows Leslie, right? He’s Austin’s top-notch boho homo hobo, a queen among men. We’ve heard rumors of his westwardly migration (West Lake Hills?!?), but hey, he and his homemade sleep/cart are still downtown institutions.
Best Car Wash
Seven years and running as winner of the best car wash in town. Are they headed for our hall of fame? Only the Genie knows for sure. In the meantime, they’ll help keep your car spotless inside and out.
Best Shoe Repair
Eight previous years of Readers’ picks can’t be wrong. This must be the place for all your shoe repair needs. They relace baseball gloves and repair luggage, to boot. … And boots, they do boots, too!
Best Furnishings/Home
Each of these three Texas-bred home furnishings havens expresses a unique take on Southern style. Louis Shanks is at the high, yet not outrageously, priced end of the type of comfy modern décor you’d expect to see in any number of new model homes, while Aqua’s version of “modern” is strictly mid-last-century (among other genres…
Best ‘Best’
Oh, she is one handsome beast. She greets us every day on our drive to work. And every day, before work, we swoon. She is the lovely worker woman carrying the roll of pink insulation on the city of Austin billboards that proclaim Austin’s status as the city with the “Best Energy Efficiency Program.” And…
Best Reminder That Your Time Will Come and God Willing It Won’t Be Your 30th Birthday
We can’t say what this thing’s going to look like when it’s completed in 2003, and we can’t say whether we’ll even be around to see it, but we can ask: Is anybody else creeped out by the resemblance of this building’s pointy glass top piece to that eerie throbbing crystal in that classic Seventies…
Best Digital Society
“The Austin Museum of Digital Art (AMODA) is a non-profit institution that promotes access to and appreciation of digital art. Currently AMODA is a nomadic institution, holding exhibitions, showcases, lectures, youth programs and other events at various locations around Austin, often in collaboration with other arts and educational organizations …”I like AMODA because it is…
Best Two-Way Exhibition
Is Aztlan an imaginary place or actual geographic landmark? The verdict is still out, but, at least for a short period of time, it provided a wonderful link between two of Austin’s finest art institutions. With the pre-conquest works on view at the Austin Museum of Art and the contemporary ones housed at TFAA’s Jones…
Best Elvis Karaoke
Looking for some fun on a Wednesday night? Slip on your blue suede shoes, baby, and make your way to Ocean’s 11 for Elvis Karaoke! The atmosphere of this tiki bar screams fun, which you just can’t help, especially after a gulp or two of their famous “Smok’n Krakatoa.” When it’s time to head up…
Most Romantic Music Venue
The sunsets alone make OWT worth the visit. Situated atop a bluff that overlooks the rolling hills just west of Austin, this mansion was converted into a nonprofit music venue in ‘93 and subsequently a theatre in ‘99. Comfortable yet intimate, the theatre seats no more than 300 people for acts that range from Grammy…
Best French Fries
Sure, the merest nip, or seven, from their stores of single malt Scotch might be enough to get a body all out of focus, but you could be stone-cold sober and know for a fact that Opal Divine’s golden-brown lengths of pommes frites, spiced to a delicate perfection and of just the right thickness, are…
Best Place to Pretend You’re in a Big City
Pango Tea Bar is the “one of these things is not like the others” storefront near the northernmost end of Congress Avenue — our own version of the Hollywood Blvd./Times Square renovation projects — sandwiched as it is between bank buildings, jewelry stores, fast food joints and theaters. There surely is some good ol’ down-home…
Best Way to Pretend You’re Back In College For the Duration of a Meal
You know the “runaway fantasy”? Where you’re sitting at your desk and it’s been 10 a.m. for the last three hours and you just wish you were independently wealthy and living in Hawaii or at least back in college when things weren’t so grinding and maybe somebody else was footing the bill? Well, a trip…
Best Inner City Jurassic Park
Thanks to Steven Spielberg, Discovery, and PBS, the allure of fossil finding is deeply ingrained in all American youth. Thanks to the Dino Pits at the Texas Memorial Museum and the Austin Nature Center, junior archaeologists can dig locally for fossils (replicated from ones housed at the TMM), and cries of Eureka! ring out when…
Best Tennis Teacher
Ward, the beloved kids’ coach at Pharr Courts, has a tennis c’est quois; he manages to get the kids to learn while they’re having fun. Says one of his students, “He’s nice, and he’s a good teacher. I sucked before I went there. I’m better now.” Says mother of same student, “Lincoln is really encouraging.…
Best Use of Your Dulcet Tones
Thousands of sightless and learning-disabled Americans rely upon RFB&D for textbooks and other printed materials. Last year, the Austin office logged hundreds of volunteer hours — every minute of which was well spent. It’s difficult to remember when we felt more appreciated, better utilized, and more productive than at RFB&D Texas. What a fun and…
Best Pay-to-Play Mountain Biking
When we get the hankering for a change of scene, we take our fat-tire steeds to Smithville. With 16 miles of trail stretched across 1,200 acres of Texas Hill Country, there’s no place better to seek thrills, work on skills, and take spills. After tackling “Fat Chuck’s Demise,” “Omar’s Howl,” and “the Wall,” stop into…
Best Unusual Day Trip, Really
Fredericksburg might be 80 miles from Austin and crowded with tourists on most weekends, but it can be more than a cliche to take out-of-town guests to visit. Look for some of the more unusual attractions like the Butterfly Ranch, 508 West Main; dulcimer factory, 715 S. Washington St.; Herb Garden, six blocks south of…
Best Losing Candidate
After losing to Jackie Goodman in May’s City Council race, we caught up with Sifuentes at Nuevo Leon, and he was nothing but gracious. He lavished compliments on Goodman, politely reiterated his bones of contention with current council direction, and sincerely made us believe that his reason for running was love for his city, not…
Best UT Gadfly
This one might also be called the “Majority of One Award,” because Professor Jensen shares with Thoreau the very risky virtue of fighting injustice no matter the consequences. He’s best known for opposing U.S. militarism abroad, but he also stoutly defends faculty and student rights. His students and readers know him as a champion of…
Best Groomers
That “dog smell” will permeate everything over time, and if that’s a problem, try taking your best friend down for a bath and trim at West End Grooming. They use no chemicals or tranquilizers and will even personalize your particular pet’s haircut, so your, say, poodle doesn’t have to look like Richard Simmons. On top…
Best Place to Let Your Volvo Convalesce
Dave comes on like Father Time, his long white beard showing up a good five minutes before the rest of him does, and that’s perfect for the kinds of circles he travels in. Volvos are his trade, and his repair lot is about overrun with them, which is saying something in this town. He knows…
Best Place to Spend Money on Art
Every couple of months Ethan Azarian displays his work and that of an artist friend at his In House Gallery. Literally at his home, Ethan transforms his home into a veritable visual labyrinth, lining every available wall, nook, and cranny with paintings. “Herds of Chairs” hangs next to “Nests of Sharks,” which hangs next to…
Behind the Tree
Ben Sargent’s Wednesday Statesman cartoon captured the ritual campaign refrain: the politicians have set out to slay “Fraudanwaste,” the mythical Capitol beast whose demise will solve all the state’s budget problems. That song was in heavy rotation last Friday at the Four Seasons hotel, during a Chamber of Commerce forum featuring the major party candidates…
Best Online Texas Guide
What makes Austin360 such a good guide is that it’s dot-comprehensive and dot-straightforward. No fancy schmancy interface here. Just pick your poison – jobs, entertainment, restaurants, clubs, organization, homes – and click, and you’re quickly delivered to another easy-to-navigate page, making Austin information way easy to access.
Best Theatre Company
“Like most actors, we all had a background in Shakespeare,” says Sarah Richardson, one of five artistic directors in Rude Mechanicals. “And it was way back in the dark ages in 1995 when we thought we would end up being a Shakespearean troupe.” Their company’s name is plucked from a quote by Puck in A…
Best Pub/Neighborhood Bar
Far from the fast-paced, drunken fervor of Sixth Street, Dog & Duck Pub offers dart boards, pool tables, a jukebox, and taps a-flowin’ to make for one refreshingly laid-back pub. Fish and chips are on the menu if you want more of the British pub feel.
Best Local Food Trend
Hmmm, while some of us old-timers scratch our heads at the concept of Tex-Mex as a “trend,” we think we follow your logic here: Austin is a frisky town, where food and dating go hand in hand. That said, sushi and Tex-Mex tie for best local food trend, and our town boasts a wealth of…
Best Place to Commune With Nature
With the hike & bike trail, access to the greenbelt, our beloved Barton Springs, that awesome big red kiddy firetruck, tons of playscape action, Zilker Botanical Gardens, a disc golf course, nine soccer fields, a rugby field, a sculpture garden, a hillside theatre, a moontower, a nature center, and — phew! — tons of wonderful…
Best Radio Station
Regularly airing award-winning national and international programming from sources such as National Public Radio and Public Radio International, KUT is also the station that, as they note in their mission statement, “mirrors the unique nature of Austin and Central Texas …” as evidenced by shows like “Live Set” and the programming talents of hosts Olivier…
Best Gym/Fitness Facility
Even before its expansion a few years back, the Town Lake branch of the Y was a real favorite, thanks not just to a central location, but for fantastic access to one of the best resources our town has to offer: Town Lake’s awesome hike & bike trail. Now, it’s a state-of -the art facility,…
Best Employer
While it’s certainly the largest employer in our fair town, size alone doesn’t matter so much to Austin. The richness of the community of over-educated colleagues and the diversity factor are enough to make for a favorite employer. But we think it’s more than that. Like our state government, UT has a certain ubiquitous charm.…
Best Computer Repair
Fast, friendly, and knowledgeable – exactly the combination you want when your hard drive’s gone soft or your mother board’s nagging. Previous years’ winners Computer Nerdz came in second.
Best Tailor/Garment Repair
Ace Custom Tailors & Alterations aces this year’s award. With four locations to choose from, there’s no excuse for tossing out that skirt with the ripped hem or the jacket that needs a little work.
Best Gift Shop
Follow the yellow brick road to Emeralds’ city of hip girlie fashions. The place for cards, candles, and Betsey Johnson dresses, Emeralds makes finding the perfect gift for any occasion easy. The difficult part is not hoarding it for yourself.
Best Apartment Finder
wait, it’s not really me, but i can’t remember the name right now. i wrote it down somewhere, i’ll get it to you asap.
Best Feminist Synchronized Swimming Troupe
Eat your heart out, America. Austin is home to the nation’s one and only feminist synchronized swimming team, and we’re darn proud of it. The swimmers, who go by the name of the H2Hos, have three central concerns: 1) homemade swimwear and accessories; 2) fabulousness; and 3) creating a space for inclusive discourse about gender…
Best Visit From Austin Past
MacArthur fellow Dave Hickey, currently of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, may be the most important Man of Aesthetic Letters in our era, and he landed in Nevada up from Fort Worth and his legendary Sixties Austin gallery, A Clean Well-Lighted Place. His essays on contemporary art send global sparks, and his lecture here…
Best Free-Range DJ
Not for ravers, not for hippies, DJ Sue is just for mods. Her monthly appearance at Beerland’s Fuzz Club gives Austinites a chance to enjoy obscure early punk, garage rock, and an assortment of all things Italian while dancing up a sweat. And for those from the “in” crowd, DJ Sue makes appearances at house…
Sexiest Kings
With names like Hank, Da Boner, and Ox how could a gender parody enthusiast not get all giddy. These gals…uh..I mean boys throw a wicked vaudeville-esque show.
Best Frozen Velvet
There’s no shortage of water ice/snowball/shaved ice options in this town. And everyone has their own reason for loving their own favorite. But Jim-Jim’s ice is distinct, with the real fruit juice flavors frozen into the ice, not just glopped on top, creating a unique flavor/texture/heaven-sent quality of its own. Plus, Jim-Jim is this incredibly…
Best Place To Pretend You’re In Berkeley
With it’s oldwood, almost-all-windows interior and enormous outdoor deck on the lake, it’s no wonder that Mozart’s is populated by writerly and professorly looking folk with laptops. Located off Lake Austin Blvd. at the foot of one of our fair city’s tonier Baby Boomer enclaves, Mozart’s serves up fresher-than-fresh caffeine with its classical music. Despite…
Best Middle School Mentors
Officially, Goldbarth teaches journalism and Underwood teaches theatre at Fulmore Middle School. Unofficially, they turn what can be the drone of the ‘tween years into The Wonder Years. They’ve won numerous awards for yearbooks, newspapers, and dramatic productions. More importantly, they’ve introduced hundreds of young students into the self-discovery and wisdom of writing and drama,…
Best Way to Make Sure Your Child Is the Next Lyle Lovett (or Toni Price)
Thanks to the Austin Children’s Museum’s Austin Kiddie Limits, your future star can get his or her groove on. Your child will get the chance to hop on a child-sized stage and choose a song by one of 12 Texas artists, including Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Miss Lavelle White, Kelly Willis, Flaco Jimenez, and Toni…
Best, Hardest-Working Soul at KUT
When KUT-FM won the Station Development Award at the Public Radio Development & Marketing conference this year, manager of membership services Betsy Pilkington was much of the reason. It’s not just that she’s put in more than 20 years at KUT, it’s that she genuinely loves her job, a palpable part of the station’s appeal.…
Best Place for a Keg Party at the Lake
With every mile that passes between downtown and Lake Austin, Voltage’s “Keg Party at the Lake” resounds slightly louder. Anyhow, what good is a lake without a keg? Emma Long Park, just off of FM2222 and Loop 360, is the best host for that kind of outing. Although it can become quite crowded on the…
Best Manifestation of Bravery and Righteousness and Good in the Face of Right-Wing Terror
Pregnant teens in Texas seeking an abortion must either notify their parents or obtain judicial bypass. Neither is easy from an emotional standpoint. From a legal standpoint, the latter can be so intimidating as to be avoided. Enter Jane’s Due Process, with a toll-free hotline to give straight info to teen girls in crisis. JDP…
Best Voice of the Celts
Although KUT’s Folkways does a fine job playing Gaelic music along with the folk, Donnelle McKaskle’s Celtic Storm show is the perfect way to begin the week. Scottish, Irish, Breton, Welsh, Manx, Cornish … if it’s Celtic, it gets a turn on her show, which serves as the mouthpiece for the Celtic community, too. Fiunder…
Best Hope for Aging and Awkward Athletes
When those beer-drenched Sunday softball games start feeling like they were no-holds-barred rugby games come Monday morning, you know you’re in trouble. Too often, we are advised that surgery or giving up the sports we love are our only options. Now, aging athletes, weekend warriors and the less adroit among us have a wonderful ally.…
Best Place to Make Your Car Fast and Furious
10800 N. Lamar, 835-3540WHO / WHAT IS ACTUALLY GETTING THIS AWARD???
Best Flood Survivor/Best Local Celtic Music
Last November, with Christmas four weeks away, life looked grim for Lanora Davis’ beloved shop when over three feet of floodwater washed away about 70% of her stock. It wasn’t exactly the cavalry, but members of the Gaelic League and Austin Celtic Association pitched in with the staff and the cleanup, and the store was…
Best Revival of the Art of Window Dressing
1202 S. Congress
Exhibitionism
There is potential in this material for overwrought melodrama, but as realized on the Mary Moody Northen Theatre stage, Miller’s morality play has a simmering urgency.
Scott Locked Down
Michael Scott is convicted in the second yogurt shop murder trial.
Best Public Artwork
There he stands, bluesman Stevie Ray “Gone but Not Forgotten” Vaughan, in heroic scale be-caped and cowboy-booted, casting a long tall shadow and offering a place for countless fans to come, remember, and fill his hands with flowers, picks, and cigs, ringing his feet with candles, and singing the blues that he’s gone.
Best Theatre Director
It takes some heavy gray matter and not a little blood, toil, tears, and sweat to wrangle Kirk Lynn’s complex scripts onto an audience-thrilling stage with the Rude Mechanicals, and this director’s got all of that in spades. Actors, dancers, musicians, set designers, light techs – she brings them together under one Off Center roof,…
Best Swanky Joint
Tucked downstairs from the Brown Building lofts, behind smoky glass on the corner of Eighth & Lavaca streets, the Brown Bar has become the lounge of choice for Austin’s beautiful people. Maybe it’s the lighting, which has that Forties feel of glamour. Or it could just be that the bartenders know how to make a…
Best Lunch Hour Spot
With a variety of gourmet pizzas and sandwiches, burgers, pastas, soups, and salads, and a crew that can sling it out before your boss knows you’re gone, Central Market Cafe has something to charm the taste buds of the most discriminating and frenzied palate. The produce department of Central Market is like a store unto…
Best Recreation Center
Boasting a gymnasium, game room, dance studio, batting cages and fields, WAYA is the perfect place for kids and adults to get that adrenaline pumping in a fun, interactive environment. The $150 yearlong family membership allows more than 4,500 kids to participate in 12 sports leagues and numerous other programs every year. What better way…
Best Radio Station to Listen to at Work
Regularly airing award-winning national and international programming from sources such as National Public Radio and Public Radio International, KUT is also the station that, as they note in their mission statement, “mirrors the unique nature of Austin and Central Texas …” as evidenced by shows like “Live Set” and the programming talents of hosts Olivier…
Best Local Athlete
Lance. He enjoys the first-name recognition that is reserved for Austin’s elite hometown fixtures (think Willie, Leslie, or Stevie Ray). With four Tour de France wins and countless other showings in the racing world, the Plano boy has done us proud time and time again.
Best Local Online Personality
This film industry gadfly has earned his share of detractors (there was a sizable “anyone but Harry” voting contingent) for his oddly reflexive writing style and his network of shadowy informers who keep the film gossip and movie spoilers rolling in. Enough of our readers, however, love him for it, and are proud to call…
Best Dry Cleaner
For those who care about their clothes – and those who would rather someone else did – Reid’s 10 convenient locations, pickup and delivery service, alterations, and shoe repair make them a hometown favorite.
Best Holdout in the Warehouse District
Waterloo Brewery is gone, the Bitter End is next on the chopping block, and Ruta Maya has been … well, let’s not talk about it. Cheer up! The Gingerman is still its same old self — more than 60 taps on the wall and a happening, center-of-the-action atmosphere perfect for enjoying them.
Best Hardware Store
Whether you need to kill the rats in your dumpy slumlord rental or are looking for certain accouterments to round out a barbecue featuring matching sterling silverware, Breed is the little hardware store that could, and will, be there for you. It’s astounding, the broad range of products. It’s like taking a trip back into…
Best Soffit
We could wax on about so many facets of the design of this grand new addition to the UT campus. But for our purposes here, we’d like to focus on one element that keeps our necks craned and our gaze heavenward. The building’s soffit — the underpinning of awning that can be seen from underneath…
Best Friend of the Public Library
If you’re browsing at the central library on Guadalupe on any given Tuesday or Saturday morning, listen closely in the quiet. Put your ear to the floor. You might hear the Friends of the Public Library whirring away like well-oiled industrial equipment down in the basement. Chances are you won’t, and that’s the reason this…
Most Compelling Proof Yet That Austin Really Is the Third Coast
At first it was just wanton boasting. So a couple of movies had come out of Austin. Big deal. Then there was a film society, a few film festivals — make that a half-dozen and counting. Maybe the River City really does know something about movies. But what finally clinched the deal was Austin Studios…
Best Guilty Pleasure
Sitting in Cozzoli’s midweek, grabbing a couple forbidden slices of some of Austin’s finest pizza before going into a purely fun double bill at the Paramount. Eating and watching people on the balcony of the Stephen F. Austin drinking cocktails and watching the sun go down. Observing people hurriedly passing by and wondering if they’re…
Snazziest New Martinis
Ginger and Wasabi Martinis with infused vodkas that they make at Pango.
Best Gourmet Pizza
With all the money in West Lake Hills, one would think there would be better eats. The diamond in the rough may be Marye’s Gourmet Pizza, whose fresh Neapolitan-style pies range from the simple, classic Margherita to the exotic Rosemary Caesar Chicken. No time to wait for their gourmet stylings? No problem. Actually, Marye’s specialty…
Best Place to Stay Out Til Two A.M. and Meet Freaks Without Getting Drunk
Do we ever get tired of hearing about Linklater connections in this town? No, we don’t. He catapulted the original (now-closed) Quack’s on the Drag to infamy in his early work. With Waking Life we got to see the newish location of Quack’s, on 43rd Street, in vivid Rotoscope. It’s a cool bakery, unpretentious, open…
Most Authentic Comfort Food
With no disrespect intended toward our town’s reigning kings of Southern comfort food, this unassuming West Lake cafe just has pure, unaffected “home” cooking. Burgers, chicken-fried steak, and fried catfish make up much of the regular menu; items such as chicken & dumplings, spaghetti & meatballs, and liver & onions appear as daily specials. We…
Best Mom’s Best Friend
The “Customers With Children” area in the parking lots of these local grocers is a life-saver if you’re lucky enough to be doing the marketing with crumbcatchers in tow. Shopping carts are parked in a little covered shed, right where you’ve put the car. No negotiating loose children across a busy parking lot into the…
Don’t It Make You Wanna Dance?
This tough-as-nails little upstart has shaken up Austin’s airwaves, and continues to mow ‘em all down with its nonstop approach to dance music. With a handful of entertaining hosts, including Bradley, Jay Michaels, Miss Kitty, EvanInTheAfternoon, Forrest Bueller, Jason Jenkins, and the lovely Tara, Mega presents innovative programming with their retro Three@Three, Vinyl Drive @…
Best Place If You Don’t Know Your Amaryllis From Your Elbow …
When things are hectic, take the time to visit the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and smell the cacti. In 1982, Lady Bird Johnson and Helen Hayes founded the center to educate Texans about native plants. Visitors can wander through the center’s gardens and natural areas, learn about rainwater collection and recycled building materials, and…
Best Use of Title IX Funds
Granted, it took a lawsuit in 1992 to bring the Burnt Orange tribe into compliance. Now, however, Longhorn women’s soccer is poised for greatness. Last year, these chicks with kicks won the Big 12 championship. This year, a run at a national title looks all but guaranteed with 19 players returning and the NCAA College…
Best New Arrival From California
Not that Austin is — ahem — short of Bay Area transplants, but if Austin is to really get smart about growth politics, it will need imported expertise from places where our “difficult” and “daunting” ways would be child’s play. By inviting out-of-towners to oversee the new Mueller, Austin has thought outside its usual box,…
Best-Dressed Bailiff
Move over Regis Philbin, there’s a new fashion maverick in town. Sal Hernandez, bailiff for Travis County District Judge Mike Lynch’s 167th court, has the classic style that makes us think of courthouses of old — or at least the ones in the movies, sans the white powdered wig stuff, that is. Indeed, not a…
Best Kept-Secret Manicurist
As the old adage goes, the best-kept secret is kept secret because the people who know about it don’t want to lose the privilege. Bellisima’s Dominique Strauss is a perfect example. Strauss came to Austin nine years ago, after receiving a college degree and five years of training and apprenticing in Los Angeles. While hair…
Best Reason to Wear Out Your Shoes
Repeated experiences of exemplary customer service underscore the fact that Golden Slipper is a prime example of independent Austin business at its finest. Family-owned since 1950, their reputation goes far beyond offering friendly and knowledgeable service. Counting the dearly departed Doug Sahm among their devoted customers, Golden Slipper is currently run by Abel & Robert…
Best General Store
If anything, Callahan’s is testament to how much Austin has grown over the last 24 years. In 1978, they set up a general store right next to their Feed & Milling Company and served nearby ranchers who didn’t want to make the trek all the way into the capital city. Now they find themselves well…
Best Service In Adult Novelties
There radio ads are a scream but their service is not. Choosing the proper adult novelties can be serious business, and Tabu’s staff is helpful, knowledgeable and discreet. In addition, they offer innovative and unusual swimwear for women (“This is not your mall bathing suit…”) as well as (“Feeling left out, gentlemen?”) the most stylish…
Page Two
Over time, our “Best of Austin” issues have become an ongoing catalog of all things Austin, truly capturing the city and conveying a deep sense of place.
Another Bite at the Dogs
The outlook for one of Texas’ largest prairie dog colonies became a good deal bleaker last week when the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (formerly known as the TNRCC, or “Train-Wreck”) approved Lubbock’s controversial plan to exterminate the dogs, which city and state officials believe cause groundwater pollution beneath the waste-application field for the city’s…
Best Restoration Project in the Past Five Years
This eye-catching landmark has been an Austin beauty queen since 1886. Each of its 188 guestrooms and suites were returned to the turn-of-the-century decor (with modern amenities), when the Driskill underwent a three-year, multi-million-dollar restoration. This past July, the Driskill also opened its most delicious new improvement, the 1886 Cafe & Bakery on the site…
Best Theatre Space
Nowhere else in Austin compares to our precious Paramount. Whether it’s a Rosalind Russell redux, a Mel Brooks melee, or live musicals from Austin’s finest – not to mention the double cocktail you can order at the bar to sip during your viewing and listening orgy – the theatre experience offered to audiences here in…
Best Video/DVD Rental
So in a film town rolling in reels, what distinguishes one great video/DVD rental center from the others? In most places, you could certainly make a case for selection — as usually is the case of these “best of” city things: The “artier” and more adventurous places get chosen. But Austin has a number of…
Best Neighborhood Grocery
Fresh Plus offers everything from your standard provisions to high-end specialty/novelty cuisine, all in two compact, convenient, easy-to-park-in or walk-to locations: Clarksville and Hyde Park. You can get Jif or Skippy, or you can get sunflower, cashew, sesame, or almond butter; you can get Maxwell House, or you can get your organic coffee beans in…
Best Summer Camp
The Dougherty Arts Center (comprising the 1,800-square-foot Julia C. Butridge Gallery, the 150-seat Dougherty Arts Theater, and the Dougherty Arts School) isn’t just for kids, and it isn’t just for the summer. But from the looks of this poll, they’ve got those two covered.
Best Sportscaster
The Dallas native knew he wanted to be a sportscaster since the age of 8, after a few seasons of frequenting Cowboy and Rangers games with his father. “That is, if the whole playing in the NFL thing didn’t work out,” Mike Barnes laughs. After graduating from UT, Barnes did his time at a station…
Best Local Team
Ah, those beautiful orange horns –- what a lovely symbol to rally behind! Those horns are as lovely as our fave Lady Longhorns b-ball player’s long legs, as tantalizing as our fave Gentleman Horns f-ball player’s cherubic cheeks, as luscious as … uh, you get the point. Kudos to these awesome athletes –- Austin and…
Best Mover & Shaker
Alex Jones of Infowars.com fame matched with Lonny Stern of KOOP radio’s Outspoken and every-gay-cause-you-can-think-of fame? Talk about your strange bedfellows. One fella stands up for what he believes in at the risk of being ridiculed for his whacked-of-center views, and the other stands up for what he believes in at the risk of being…
Best Florist
Central Market is so great for so many things – not the least of which is their floral department, with a staggering array of lush and lovely blooms to suit every need. Their gifts, accessories, and above all, their service make this Goliath an Austin favorite. The “David” in this scenario is the independent Flower…
Best Local Libation
Tito Beveridge, owner of Texas’ only legal distillery, makes an award-winning vodka that is pretty good sippin’ all by itself. However, when Tito’s Handmade Vodka is mixed with Boggy Creek Farmer Larry Butler’s handmade organic Tomato Tonic according to the formula below, the resulting libation is so much more valuable than simply the sum of…
Best Jewelry
Somewhere between their loyal, elder Austin contingent and their recent young, hip Internet followers are the girls at camps near Kerrville who have been known to shoot rifles and dine on camp vittles without ever removing their personalized charm bracelets from James Avery. What brings all these generations together? Years of good business and great…
Best Big Brother Traffic Improvement
Steadfastly eyeing the traffic from high above 250 intersections across Austin, little cameras send signals to television monitors located at a new, multi-million-dollar traffic center. Operators stand by to adjust the timing of the signals or to send repair service, depending upon the information received. The center opened last October, and traffic flow has improved…
Best State Tourism Resource
One of our favorite parts of crossing state lines is stopping at the tourist center to load up on free travel literature. Austinites can approximate this thrill with a visit to the Texas Travel Information Center on the Capitol grounds. Located in the old General Land Office building, the center is staffed with friendly travel…
Best Illusion
Recently on view at the Blanton as a part of the “Timeframe” exhibit, this framed and mounted color video triptych by internationally renowned video artist Bill Viola was purchased by the local museum for its permanent collection. At first glance, the odd video installation did not look like much to the cursory viewer. But for…
Best Ambassador to Cuba
Only 90 miles off the coast of Florida, Cuba remains largely unknown and impenetrable to most Americans. Determined to break through the haze of government half-truths and bureaucracy is Fran Magee’s Gallery 106. Affiliated with MedAid.org, a grassroots nonprofit organization that provides medical support and encourages cultural exchanges between the U.S. and Cuba, Gallery 106…
Best Happy Minutes
From 3:00 pm to 3:15 at the Texas Showdown pints of Budwiser are $.90. It’s not happy hour. It’s better. It’s happy minutes. And it’s a favorite of university students and saloon lovers alike. And on September 7 Showdown will turn 21 and finally be legal.
Best $5 Steak
Nothing like a gay cowboy club to get you feelin’ like a Texan. And on Thursday nights, that Texas feeling gets a little closer to the source as some fine slabs of moooooooo are offered up (or chicken for our red-meat-avoiding friends). Dinner at a bar? Well, for some folks, it’s just second nature, but…
Best Ham Sandwiches
Though it may appear to the untrained eye as a mere spiral sliced ham shop, Hickory Honey Hams also serves some of the heartiest, tastiest sub sandwiches in town. Their sweetly cured ham sandwich is the obvious go-to choice, but the smoked turkey sub is no less impressive. Be sure to try the ham-chocked baked…
Best Rainwater
Travel on 290 West past Dripping Springs to this little place known as Tanktown. Turn down Rainwater Lane and go past a large replica of one of the Rainwater bottles with the catch phrase, “Fresh squeezed cloud juice.” After smiling at the tanks painted like various animals (ladybug, turtle, etc.), continue up the rock path…
Most Romantic Point of Light
If the glow from the star bright Starlite Cafe is the first star you see at night, trust us, it won’t be your last. The atmosphere — not to mention the luscious libations and delicately Asian-tinged cuisine — is intoxicating, perfect for that intimate aura to lure in the one you love. You’ll swoon, as…
Best Nonviolent Toy Store
Don’t let its strip-mall location or the fact that it’s a national chain dissuade you — Zany Brainy is a store that Austin can love. They specialize in nonviolent and non-gender-specific toys and games, the kind that expand kids’ minds and creativity. GI Joe and Barbie, make way!
Most Fun While Learning
UT Explorers is a fun-filled day of hands-on activities including making play dough, playing “judge” in a courtroom, painting, sculpting, treasure hunts, and storytelling. This kid college happens once a year, every March on the UT campus. And it’s totally free!
Most Glamorous Deejay
The mega-nificent Miss Kitty is the fiercest kitty in town, attracting a major following in the short year that Mega 93.3 has been on the air. She is smart, sassy, and smooth as silk. In addition to her wildly popular regular evening show, this fashionable feline makes the scene with her live broadcasts from the…
Best Place to Catch a Neighborhood Ball Game
Givens Recreation Center, in the heart of East Austin, is a beautifully kept space with rolling green hills, wading and swimming pools, basketball courts, even indoor facilities. We enjoy watching the kiddos play ball and the spontaneous games between adults even more. Sunday nights rock – it seems the whole town is there, just hanging…
Best Way to Get Around Austin
Tired of sitting in traffic? Feeling guilty about relentlessly trashing the city with emissions from your motor vehicle? Leading a sedentary lifestyle? Then get out yer bike and start riding it! Do you know that Austin is rated (by Bicycling magazine) one of the top 10 cities for bicycling in the U.S.? Well, you live…
Best New Waterheads
One of the city’s most popular summer refuges, the increasingly down-at-heels Deep Eddy Pool was badly in need of some friends. Presto! The devoted swimmers of FODE are trumpeting the pool’s history, raising money for renovation, and have begun a new adult swimming championship as a way to promote swimming and one of Austin’s gems.…
Highest Austinite
Since Commander Kenneth Cockrell was born an Austinite and came back to attend UT (BS, Mechanical Engineering, 1972), we are claiming him as our own. He’s been at NASA in a variety of engineering, research, and administrative positions since 1987, and became an astronaut proper in 1991. His flight time has included five space shuttle…
Best Knife Sharpening/Tool Honing
This business is housed in a ramshackle old building, a likely holdover from when its location was considered way out of town. Inside, you can get your knives sharpened and tools honed while you wait. And while you wait, well, there are all varieties of knives to peruse in cases and on the walls. And…
Best Rehearsal Space
Considering that everyone you bump into these days is in a band (or two), it is no surprise that the Music Lab is thriving. The lab not only offers rehearsal space at hourly and monthly rates, but is also a recording studio, they repair and rent gear, and in case your brain-dead drummer forgets his…
Best Little Gift Shop in Hyde Park
Whether you love Buddha and/or incense and/or lesbians and/or Stevie Nicks, and/or witchcraft, and/or beautiful silver jewelry, Celebration is your one stop, smell good shop for great gifts from tiny, stone-inlaid boxes to little home fountains, womyn’s literature, Beanie Babies, unique instruments, wind chimes, and more. The staff is exceptionally helpful. And men are welcome,…
Best Spare Computer Parts
The next time you’re in the market for a computer or computer part, don’t let a high school salesclerk at the local MegaBuyMart sell you a computer with bells and whistles you don’t need. Save your money and sanity and check out the used components at Logic Approach. CPUs, monitors, keyboards, and other accessories are…
Mr. Smarty Pants
Refrigerated celery is said to keep better if it is wrapped in aluminum foil.Every year, about 3,000 coats and jackets, 2,500 cell phones, 2,000 sets of keys, 1,500 wallets, purses, and IDs, and 1,100 umbrellas find their way into the lost and found at Grand Central Station.There’s a chain of pharmacies in Iowa, Missouri, and…
Buda Sewage Overflow
A state environmental agency official says he doesn’t fault the Travis Co. Attorney’s decision to dismiss sewage-dumping charges against a Buda public works employee, but he does disagree with the rationale. Paul Sarahan, director of litigation for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, says his agency, through an e-mail, granted Buda permission to dump excess…
Best Romantic Spot
The beautiful views of Austin’s rolling hills to the west and shimmering skyline to the south — not to mention a perfect environment to just sit back, relax, enjoy nature, and smooch your sweetie — pulls at our readers’ heartstrings year after year after year.
Best Bar Ambience
Looking for some magical adventure in your next drinking experience? Club De Ville’s indoor space is an intimate study in mellow lounge atmosphere, while the outdoor area — set against a colorfully lit, jagged, sheer-faced cliff — constitutes the majority of this mystical club. Upon arrival, one finds cocktail servers floating effortlessly among a rag-tag…
Best 24 Hour Late Night
If your normal sleeping habits allow you to hit up a window seat early in the day, you’ll have a hard time deciding what’s better: the food or the crisp morning atmosphere that begins after the departure of the last after-hours partier. Or, if you’re like some of us, pancakes and bacon go down real…
Best Produce
With a variety of gourmet pizzas and sandwiches, burgers, pastas, soups, and salads, and a crew that can sling it out before your boss knows you’re gone, Central Market Cafe has something to charm the taste buds of the most discriminating and frenzied palate. The produce department of Central Market is like a store unto…
Best Toy Store
This fun-loving, and sometimes twisted, toy store is fun-plus for kids and adults alike. With a clutter of old favorites to the new and obscure, shoppers can find at least a dozen goodies they cannot live without. Even better, it stays open until at 11pm every night should you be driven by some strange craving…
Best Sportswriter
Sports fans cheer when Austin American-Statesman writer Kirk Bohls goes to bat. His cheeky, opinionated style and his way with words bring readers back time and time again while he serves up Texas-sized helpings of down-home sports.
Best Participatory Sport
Whether drinking beer while tossing a flying disc into a tree or running after a little ball in the Texas heat, our readers seems to love both these sports equally. Maybe we could combine the two and create an even crazier pasttime? Some of your more interesting votes in this category were for “Bush bashing,”…
Best Nonprofit Group
The U.S. Dept. of Justice reports that, statistically, a woman is raped every two minutes in America (which doesn’t even account for the men and boys who also fall victim). SafePlace’s mission is education, prevention, intervention, and advocacy regarding issues surrounding sexual assault and domestic violence. Tied is last year’s winner, the Texas Freedom Network,…
Best Gardener/Landscaping
Husband and wife team Dylan Robertson and Selena Souders own this Austin jewel situated in an oasis-like setting on the Eastside. From the chic Hotel San Jose on South Congress to stylish residences all across Central Texas, their work is among the finest and most creative around. As their business continues to expand, so does…
Best Lingerie/Naughty
Naughty, naughty Austinites … it seems that Forbidden Fruit has stolen your hearts and lowered your inhibitions again this year. In their three separate locations, they have managed to warehouse enormous collections of subconscious desirables, from educational erotic toys, to body art. Just don’t forget to hide it under the bed when Mom comes to…
Best Bird’s Nest on the Ground
The loss felt by all of South Congress upon the closing of Donna and Harry Defoy’s beloved Twin Oaks Hardware store has almost been matched by the speculation of the future of the vacated spot. As any First Thursday turnout can attest, South Congress is a happening place with lots of foot traffic and lots…
Best Missed Gallery
One of the few local galleries to specialize exclusively in contemporary fine art photography, Lake Austin Fine Arts will leave a large hole in Austin’s gallery community. Although usually showcasing the work of internationally recognized photographers such as William Christenberry, Bruce Davidson, Michael Kenna, Neil Leifer, and Julius Shulman, Lake Austin Fine Arts ended on…
Best Answer to Austin’s Pathetic Lack of Lesbian Bars
When Austin lost its last lesbian hot spot (Gaby & Mo’s), local women were left with little in the way of dependable social forums. While the mostly men’s Forum has been presenting their sassy Monday night “Grrls World” and a local group of nonprofit babes have been hosting semi-regular Club Skirt nights at Fiesta Gardens…
Best Heir to the Hole in the Wall
It is time for us to stop all of our sobbin’, for even if the Hole opens again, it won’t be the same. Still, another hole-in-the-wall venue has been reaping its share of beers and bands since waaaaaay before the Hole started to close. Tucked away discreetly under a South Congress apartment complex, Ego’s offers…
Best Bird and a Bottle
Sometimes you wanna go where the meal is fast. Sometimes you wanna go where it’s an event. Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name. Sometimes, it’s gotta be a bird and bottle. Nothing fancy, but something soul satisfying, just some good roast chicken and some wine. Something that you and your friends can…
Best Innovative Use of Mahi Mahi
Chango’s has the smooth design, the smooth t-shirts, the smooth monkey icons differentiating the men’s and women’s restrooms. Chango’s has agua fresca that is thirst-quenching just to look at. And the made-on-the-spot tortillas are about the best in town. But above all, what Chango’s does with Mahi-Mahi is to be commended via repeat business. You…
Best Remaining Vestige of Old Austin
There was a time when folks in cowboy hats looked normal in Austin, and haute cuisine meant a good chicken-fried steak. That Austin is almost gone, but a real, non-ironic, living example still exists on Burnet Road.
Most Unlikely Margarita
Avocado Margarita. Creamy & smooth, made with avocado and cilantro. (But no lettuce, of course) This novelty drink is worth ordering just to watch your friends’ faces– the Avocado Margarita looks exactly like guacamole in a margarita glass. We don’t recommend dipping your chips, no matter how tempting.
Best One-Stop Entertainment Spot in East Austin
Fifty thousand square feet of pure fun. It’s like every dream kid event in one spot. There’s a movie theatre, arcade, bowling, roller skating, “kid’s kingdom” soft play area, and a food court. Available for private parties, too. Watch for special events, workshops (like last year’s CinemaKids), and 99 cent bowling on Tuesdays.
Sweetest Bookworms
Being a public librarian can be a thankless job, especially if your library happens to be located next to a major public school. Not that the kids from the nearby Kealing Junior High are a headache, mind you, but often the foot traffic of little feet at this particular Austin branch can get a little…
Smartest Alternative to Those Hyperadrenalined Potty-Mouthers at ‘Talk Back’
Having received two thumbs up, way up, from no less than the venerable French publication Cahiers du Cinema, Todd Harbour’s local Web site Mobius Home Video Forum is a welcome antidote to all those mean nasties over at that other local Web site (…ain’t it?). Smart, sharp, always informed, Mobius and its packed message boards…
Best Place to Chill on Lake Austin
If you can’t afford to pop for a hillside mansion, a million-dollar lake house, or even a zippy little ski boat, Lake Austin is still within your reach. Make a left off 2222 onto City Park Road and wind all over God’s creation until you come to an unpretentious little burger shack straight out of…
Best Performance by a City Board
Urban Trans’ job is hard enough — trying to give useful advice on a huge sticky issue where nobody, but nobody, is happy with the status quo. But like many city boards, Urban Trans has assumed the role of City Hall’s conscience, staying focused on the city’s vision through the thick political fog, which is…
Most Dedicated Carillonneur
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 12:50pm, 10 minutes of wonderful melodies drift from the University of Texas Tower Bells enchanting everyone within earshot. Most people don’t realize there is a man behind the music — Tom Anderson, UT carilloneur extraordinaire! In addition to a huge repertoire, he also takes requests, the most frequent of…
Best Legal Services
We’re not talking wrongful prosecution (no matter how “medicinal” your possession was) here. P.A.P.A. is a nonprofit organization concerned about the immigrants and refugees of Central Texas. It offers education as well as free and low-cost legal services to an immigrant community composed of indigent asylum seekers, undocumented immigrant survivors of domestic abuse, and new…
Best Sewing Center
South African emigre Barbara Goldkorn arrived in Austin in 1984 and opened Sew Much More. Since then, the business has survived economic ups and downs, rapid changes in the home-sewing market, and a fire. Sew Much More is an authorized dealer of Viking, Husqvarna, Elna, and Baby Lock sewing machines and sergers. They carry a…
Best New Bookstore
[I THINK SHAWN BADGELY COULD DO A BETTER JOB WITH THIS ONE THAN ME] — MK
Best Stop for Japanese Go Fun Snacks!
In case you are uninitiated in the world of Japanese fun snacks, our friends in Nippon are geniuses with the junk food (to the point that some of it — key word “some” — is actually good for you). Asahi has lots of Pocky — pretzely sticks dipped in chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. And they…
