These Boots Were Made For Walking

Greetings from the corner of North Loop and Guadalupe! It's nearing 1am and I can hear my downstairs neighbor has a roomful of company. He is a tiler and when he's home there are usually big buckets of grout and piles of strapped up tile stacked in the driveway and lots of people speaking Spanish very fast coming and going. I haven't really met him as he is rarely home. Gets here late and leaves early. It's probably just as well for him that he doesn't have to listen to me playing scales on the guitar over and over and over again. I wouldn't wish that upon anyone. (yes, that little barking dog is wear a faux fur stole with a pink bow)

I made a New Year's resolution that I would start taking daily walks and it's proving to be such a good thing. Turns out we live in a really cool part of Austin, the police district known as Central West. I know it's police district Central West because of a comment I made to Jeff.

After the first week of forays on my own I mentioned to Jeff that nearly every time I was out I would see a police car patrolling. Each time, I noticed that the driver would make eye contact me with as he passed. Usually he would smile and nod his head in acknowledgment. The fact that we made eye contact made me feel safe for some reason. I guess it was just the fact that someone knew I was out walking that was comforting. Jeff's response to this information was that we should find out who our district representative is and that I should send a note saying that I appreciated having the police patrolling my neighborhood while I was out walking. He said that letter would be put in the file of the officers who cover our area, as any letter that is received concerning a specific officer is made part of their permanent file. The police often get negative letters and a positive one is evidently always a good thing. Plus, Jeff said, it would put me in a category as "friendly" toward Austin PD, another good thing. Of course we laughed at the transience of good will should the occasion arise that the cops run a background check on me and find out who I associate with in Austin. he he he. So I wrote the letter and sent it off nonetheless, thus ensuring that my writing skills have been viewed and appreciated by a few members of APD and will be preserved forever in police archives.

Hey...it's one way to get published!

I've ended up becoming quite delighted with the neighborhood that joins us to the south called Hyde Park. Oh is it a charming place to go walking. The streets are lined with mostly small, single family homes that are heavily influenced by the Craftsman style of architecture and the design ideas of Frank Lloyd Wright. Hyde Park has evidently become one of the most desirable places in Austin to live. Some of the places are rented out to students at UT but the majority seem to have permanent families in them. There are gardens and fences and friendly cats and barking dogs. You'll meet people pushing strollers, people out jogging and cycling. Turn a corner and you may find a coffee shop or a sandwich shop like in the photo above. Small, neighborhood businesses that persevere. What is also cool about this area is that even though it has the potential to become overly precious and politically correct, you'll find a storybook house right next to a funky artist house, right next to a college rental with sofas on the porch and the recycle bins at curbside piled impossibly high with empty beer and wine bottles. Here's a Land Rover. There's an old El Camino with faded paint and bald tires. And my favorite, which I haven't dared to take a picture of yet but will...an old Ford Ranger pickup with a three foot long rubber alligator with its mouth open lashed to the hood. I laugh every time I see it, though I couldn't tell you what street it's on. Avenue G maybe. The truck has been there long enough that someone has slipped a flier for Domino's Pizza in the door, inside the truck. It's so silly. And so Austin. It's stuff like this that is the sweet, goofy side of this city.

Some of the houses are new and quite large like the one above and this beauty. Actually, the house in the picture above is gigantic and both verandas wrap around the front of the house and run the full length of the building. Work is still going on there. Jeff tells me that one of the houses in this neighborhood was a project house for the PBS series, This Old House.
http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/tv/house-project/overview/0,,1546552,00.html

There is a picture in that link. It's vaguely familiar. I'll be on the lookout for it.

I was totally delighted when I came across this fantastic archway that leads into the garden of a local artist because it's a place I had seen in 2006 when I stayed with Kendra Curry here in Austin for several days. She was living on 38th street and we had walked through a little bit of Hyde Park one morning before heading downtown. When I was walking last Sunday I said aloud to the blue sky, "I wonder if I'll come across that wonderful wall Kendra showed me." Not 30 seconds later, I was standing right in front of it and smiling. It's not clear from this photo but the stone work is intermixed with ceramics and stones and whatever else the creator felt like putting in. The same goes for the wall and the mulch in the border.

Maybe some day I'll get to meet the artist. I believe Kendra told me it's a woman and you can see what looks like a tower studio in the back of the yard. How cool.

Speaking of studios, today I stopped at, of all things, an italiante villa that was the Austin studio of sculptor Elisabet Ney. She was an world renowned sculptor during the late 1800s/early 1900s and Formosa, her studio, is today a museum in Hyde Park. http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/elisabetney/

What a place. As it was constructed to be a studio, the ceilings are enormously high and things are quite spare but oh my, how beautiful. I wasn't allowed to take photos but the website will give you some idea of the inside as well as insight into the life of this remarkable woman. Her life size marble sculptures of Stephen Austin and Sam Houston stand guard over the rotunda at the Capitol. For the museum's purposes, the down stairs studio space is filled with plaster sculptures which might actually be the real casts for the pieces that were then committed to marble. Ney's prowess is remarkable. The second floor of the building is very spare and consists of just one room with some tables and benches. And you reach the tiny sitting room of at the top of the tower by a very tight spiral staircase which presents you to a tiny fireplace and a chair. Evidently there was also a hammock there for napping or gazing out the windows at the sky. What a charming place.

So there's your unofficial tour of Hyde Park. I walk in parts of it nearly every day to go to the post office or up to Quack's Bakery for a quick pee and cup of hibiscus lemonade, or a coffee and a macaroon if it's chilly. Austin swirls about on the edges but once I'm on Avenue B it's like stepping into a small town. I guess this is what it means to be part of a neighborhood.

I hope everyone is well and the new year is starting off with a bang that isn't the sound of snow-laden boughs ripping off the pines and taking down power lines. Jeff and I are about to embark on our biggest adventures to date: setting up a non-profit agency to help place service cats with combat veterans & being a clearing house of resources for this special segment of society. Heck, what else do we have to do? I'll worry about getting a job tomorrow......

Hugs and habaneros from Austin! xoxo sharon