Henri on 6th Street:: Part 1

Okay, so here's the deal: way back in May, when we first announced that we were going to be moving the downtown location from 409 Colorado Street over to the Ritz, we started getting people complaining about different aspects of the move. The parking and dealing with vomiting were the two complaints that I personally saw over and over.

"How will I ever get out of my car to see a movie again?" someone said.

"What about all the people that will be puking in front of your theater?" someone else asked. "Won't that diminish my desire for one of your tasty pizzas?"

Back then, I dismissed those fears without really even thinking about them, with visions of a newly remodeled historic theater dancing in my head, and not dancing like sugar plumbs and other lame swaying too and fro fruit on Christmas Eve, but dancing with moves that were sort of flailing about like the tiny girl trying to create dancing space for herself in the front row of a show on Red River where she's just throwing her elbows around and jabbing hipsters in the stomach if they dare to come too close to here in their silly prison-striped Urban Outfitters Tees.

Tonight, I decided to see if those fears of puking and parking being just as painful as standing next to the elbow-throwing girl at an Avril Lavigne concert were founded. Tonight, I... went down to 6th Street.

By myself.


I know! Scary, right? What if a frat guy threw up on me?

Well, surprise, surprise; that never happened. Parking was remarkably easy on this Sunday night and I didnt't see anyone throwing up anywhere. I was actually a bit disappointed by that. But still, I went down to 6th, and once I was there I felt like it wouldn't be right to leave without doing at least a tiny bit of reconnaissance. And so I decided that I'd start blogging about 6th Street with a plan: any time I've got a free night, or a free hour or two in a night, I'm going to head down to every Austinite's favorite place to bring that random relative who stopped in for the weekend to show off our "live music capitol."

And every night, I'm going to hang out for at least 15 minutes in a random bar. Tonight,I was by myself at Buffalo Billiards, the first bar that was open when I headed east from Congress.





Buffalo Billiards was also pretty uneventful tonight, but hopefully by the time the Ritz opens I'll have seen where people throw up and I'll be able to tell you how to avoid it. With luck, I'll also have spotted other pitfalls and spontaneous joys to share with you by then, but seeing as how tonight was my first night and I went down there alone, I really don't have a lot of awesome things to share. I do, however, have a bit of video I made at Buffalo Billiards, in which I try to beat myself up for not being awesome enough to interact with strangers. As you can see in this unfortunately unedited video clip, I was hoping that I would be more of a bad ass than I actually am:





Hopefully on some other night I'll actually have some whiskey at another bar and then I'll suddenly find my ability to talk to strangers:

"Oh, there your are, secret confidence! You were hiding at the bottom of this bottle this whole time!"

Okay, but for real. The parking was seriously easy on a Sunday, and actually much simpler than parking for the Colorado Street location. In the Warehouse District I had to park at least 3 and a half blocks away on the deadest of dead nights. Tonight I was two blocks away from the Ritz and I found a spot without having to circle. Obviously it isn't a Friday or Saturday, but still.

Also, as I've said, I saw no one puking at all. There was some annoying music coming out of a few of the clubs, but that was the worst of it from the actual 6th Street patrons. The one issue that I did have to deal with was the increase in the amount of bums. Even on a Sunday, I was approached three times by different panhandlers. And panhandlers are a tricky annoyance, because for the most part I like them. Don't get me wrong; I don't like being asked for money, but I do like that we live in a society where a select few of us are good at asking people on their way to a bar for free money, cause as much as it sucks that we live in a world where not everyone is well cared for, it's still cool that there are those among us who are like, "What? I'm awesome. Give me a dollar."

And yet... I recognize that paying those bums that I think are awesome solely for being awesome only serves to encourage more bums who are less awesome to think that they can ask for money, too. And nothing is worse than giving your money to one bum at the start of the night and then meeting another more awesome bum later, when you're already broke. Gah, I hate that.

And so I'll end this first entry with a question:

How do you deal with bums?

I imagine it won't be that big of a problem when you normally park two blocks away and go straight to the Ritz for a movie or a show, but I still want help for the rest of my blogging about 6th nights, when I plan to walk up and down old Pecan Street for hours at a time while I seek out its secrets. Spare me your tips?