Austin Arts Insider Features New Vanishing Austin Poster

Above, the new Vanishing Austin poster by Jann Alexander (c) 2009

Austin Arts Insider Rob Faubion features the new Endangered Species of Austin poster in today's column on tripvine.com. I'm grateful for the publicity, since sales of the poster help support my on-going effort to photograph Austin before it vanishes (so to speak) for my Vanishing Austin series--there are 68 images to date, published in slide show form on my website, VanishingAustin.com

Finally, Overtaken

Vanishing Austin/Overtaken 

by Jann Alexander, AustinDetails.com © 2006

More than a year before a corporate giant’s expansion plans doomed Las Manitas, I enjoyed my first breakfast there amid the late Saturday morning hub-bub and was greeted as warmly as a regular by Cynthia Perez, one of two sisters who’ve owned the Congress Avenue café for over 25 years. She took note of my bandaged thumb, offering some homespun wisdom to aid its recovery from the car-door-slamming that had it throbbing that day, and suddenly lessened my focus on the pain with the unexpected comfort she gave.

Maybe that’s why the left-over neon of the old Avenue Café sign, vivid blue and framed against the turquoise of a new landmark building, the Frost Bank tower, caught me so suddenly when I left Las Manitas that day; the image was so clear. Old and new both embracing a cyan Austin sky. That’s when I made the photograph that would inspire my Vanishing Austin series and set me searching for more of Austin’s architectural funk before it bows to development. The little café that would become the icon for keeping Austin weird in another year had just become my icon for Vanishing Austin.

Las Manitas Closes Its Doors-Sept. 3, 2008

What's Vanishing Next?

At a much-loved Austin coffee shop on West 6th Street in Clarksville, a young man behind the counter handed me my biscotti, looking on in astonishment at my Vanishing Austin series. "All these places are gone??" he asked, seeming a bit dumbfounded.

"No no no," I told him hastily. "This series of photographs is my take on what Austin stands to lose whenever a new high-rise condo overtakes the old-style artsy Austin buildings with all the charm and funk and personality that these have." (well, I said that more or less.)

He seemed relieved.

"But look," I pointed out. "Already this is gone. And this. This, too." We both looked longingly at the Alamo Drafthouse neon sign that once enlivened the Warehouse District (I called my image Remember the Alamo). And we contemplated the image I called Frisco Gold, where soon Walgreen's would stand in place of the Frisco-Nighthawk's vivid golden orange-roofed home on Burnet Road.

But his face lit up when he saw the one-of-a-kind mural that Marriott would soon raze--painted on the side of the building next to Las Manitas (Avenue Cafe) on Congress. "That Joseph's mural," he explained about the image I call Stylin' High, "I love seeing that mural because that's my name. Joseph."

We both considered this loss solemnly.

He promised to visit my Vanishing Austin blog and post a comment.