Arandinas

I live in an interesting part of town, I'm about 2 miles from Austin's froo-froo shopping center and new Neiman Marcus and Saks, and about 2 miles from one of the most gut-bucket poor part of town. Guess where I go for a $3 burrito? Usually not a big deal, but 9pm last friday I go to arandinas number whatever over by the HEB . Tonight they have a band - accordian, bass, guitar. I listened while I waited for my burrito al pastor. The bass player sang and played the lead line. He had a beat-up white p-bass with a huge green pot-leaf sticker on it. He wore a stetson, white shirt, sky-blue sans-a-belts, and sky-blue custom ostrich boots - with the pointy toe so you kill the roaches in the corners. He was about a 1/4 step flat compared to the accordian, but nobody seemed to notice. It was fun. I was the only anglo in the place, which is actually kind of unusual in austin these days.

saturday morning-

Roll down to Cameron looking for the Tandy store to get stuff for a new mandolin strap. It's a hard place to find - tucked in one of those low-rent garage/body shop strips in a place with bad traffic access like underneath a tangle of texas flyover interchanges - you know the usual Austin kind fo place. There's the leather store (with harleys out front), a thrift store, the amature radio supply shop, and a goodwill. They were teaching a class in back of Tandy and there was a special on full cowskin rugs - pretty cool if the dog wouldn't eat it. Got my 'superior grade' latigo lace and briefly considered the fringed moccasin kit for $27. I tried to figure out where I'd wear fringed buckskin moccasins, cause the kit looked like fun and a pretty good deal for buckskin, but I decided I wasn't sure enough of what size I'd be to buy it right there. I stopped in the thrift store which had a real old VCR - the kind with tape-deck mechanical switches for play/stop/etc. Cool. Anyway, continued my drive over to the east side to check out the lofts where Tamara's 'naked as you want to be' art show was the night before. I didn't go, but I'd never been in that neighborhood and wanted to check it out. It is pretty neat, and you could imagine being in mexico with the way the houses are painted, the restaurants, and the cool-ass spanish colonial style churches, if it were for the ass new 'apartment homes' being built all over. Next stop - South Austin farmers market - I've never been to this one, and figured I'd check it out. There was one stand selling some crappy yellow organic tomatoes. Baah. So back up to the downtown farmers market, which is always bumpin. I didn't have a cooler, so I passed on the buffalo steaks, but it was already getting hot so I got an iced black coffee. I'm always eyeballing the plant guy who has the exotic plumerias, but he's always asking ~$50 for the cool ones, and I haven't been real lucky with gardening in texas. Over to Lamar, stopped in Whole Earth provisions to look at yuppies buying hemp shoes and rock climbing harnesses. 'The Tavern' is up the street from there, around 11th and Lamar. It's a cool old german bar with a deck on top - it looks like a cuckoo clock - I need to check that place out later. It's 11:30am and already 90 degrees, but the iced coffee helps (and the truck's AC).