Quote:
Originally Posted by kingkirbythe....
Dry Creek Cafe, an Old-school Dive Bar on Lake Austin, Is Closing After 68 Years
You’ve got until October 31 to stop by for a cold one.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-t...-cafe-closing/
Calling all dive bar enthusiasts! Sadly, it appears that the final last call at Austin’s beloved Dry Creek Cafe & Boat Dock is nigh. The historic and ever-rickety cash-only dive, which has peacefully sat on the backside of Austin’s Mount Bonnell since that part of town was considered the city’s outskirts, is set to shut down at the end of October. Barring a miracle, there’s a “99 percent chance” that October 31 will be the last night in business, bar manager Elly Barksdale tells Texas Monthly. “We’re surrounded by multimillion-dollar homes, and we don’t have foot traffic,” she says. “The profitability just isn’t there.”
Many who have ever called Austin home—or even just passed through—will fondly remember the little joint for its ice-cold longneck beer, sublime 45-rpm honky-tonk jukebox, and beautiful sunsets from the ramshackle rooftop deck. And for those who had the pleasure of dropping in before the turn of the last century, there was, of course, Sarah. Nobody who ever encountered Sarah Ransom, the late, great, longtime proprietor, could forget her or her admonitory “bring your damn bottles down” mantra. She notoriously possessed a short temper and an even sharper tongue (in her 2009 Austin American-Statesman obituary, her son observed, “She was like living with a bobcat or a black widow spider”).
According to Barksdale, the bar will say goodbye with a raucous celebration on October 30 and 31: “There’s a very strong sense of family and community here. We are gonna party!” There will be live music, as well as koozies and postcards for sale. In case you’re unable to make it by in person, all is not lost. Fans of the joint are advocating for it to become a historic landmark, a designation that could help preserve the building. And some kind soul has seen fit to assemble a 109-song-long Spotify playlist titled “Dry Creek Jukebox.” Pop your own top, sit back, and relive those glorious evenings of your misspent youth. And be sure to pour a little out for this soon-to-be-lost old saloon of the old school. Cheers! |
The Last Ballad at the Dry Creek Cafe
For 68 years, hippies, rednecks, and college kids drank beer at the Austin roadhouse, which received a final sendoff from famed country group Freda and the Firedogs.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-en...ry-creek-cafe/
A few days before Halloween, a small crowd of aging hippies gathered in an old Austin beer joint to hear an old Austin band play an old murder ballad. The bar—Dry Creek Cafe & Boat Dock—had been open since 1953 but was closing for good at the end of the month. The band—Freda and the Firedogs—had officially broken up in 1974 but the musicians had performed at various reunion shows over the years. Now they convened in the early afternoon of a blustery day on the creaky second floor of Dry Creek to play a song inspired by the bar, to make a video, and to say goodbye to a place and a time.
“I’m ready to roll,” said Bobby Earl Smith, who had set the whole thing up. The 78-year-old sat on a stool wearing jeans and a Stetson, his acoustic guitar in his lap. He had been the main songwriter in the Firedogs as well as one of the singers. Born in San Angelo, Smith had moved to Austin in 1965 to go to law school, then wound up hanging out at Dry Creek, listening to classic country songs on the jukebox like “Don’t Let Me Cross Over,” and dreaming of writing his own. He loved murder ballads like “Tom Dooley,” the number one hit for the Kingston Trio in 1958 in which the narrator stabs his girlfriend to death. So he wrote one in which a young man catches his lover cheating and stabs her to death too. “She’ll never go again,” he sang, “to the Dry Creek Inn.” Smith changed the name of the bar because he couldn’t find a rhyme for “cafe,” but truth was, Dry Creek rarely served food anyway. In the second verse, the singer notes that although he got away with murder, he too can never go again to the Dry Creek Inn.
Prev
Thanks for sharing.
Linear Mode
