lessons learned, part XXXI

Lesson Learned During Spring Break #6: The global-corporate economy is profoundly wasteful. When I lived in Austin fifteen years ago, the Guadalupe Street drag was saturated with funkycool local businesses. Since that time, global chains have bought up large swaths of the drag. The venerated Varsity Theatre was sold out to Tower Records in 1990. And the University Co-op sold its general books department—where both I and Berkeley Breathed worked while nominally attending UT—to Barnes and Noble in the mid-1990s.

Both of those businesses have recently closed their Guadalupe Street locations and now the buildings sit empty on the drag like discarded Wal-Mart sacks stuck in a chain link fence. Or, for that matter, like discarded Wal-Mart buildings abandoned in favor of Supercenters.

The huge chains thought nothing of buying and “re-purposing” important parts of local history. And then they thought nothing of abandoning the buildings when they no longer served their money-grubbing needs.

Fortunately, the word is that the Co-op has leased the former Varsity space. Real estate on the drag won’t stay empty for long. But new corporate behemoths that don’t respect the area and its history aren’t the answer.

Speaking of Wasteful Global Superstuff, the SO and I fell in love with some land east of Austin. It’s countryside with a view of the Capital of Texas, a rural area twenty minutes from the drag, and it’s a great place to dream of living when the time comes to Quit the Amarillo Scene.

Unfortunately, it’s also one of the areas being considered for Rick Perry’s hideous monstrosity that proposes to pave over half the state.

SPACEDARK