Home for Christmas, in Texas
I’m going home to Texas for Christmas. Yeah, it’s not just an avatar; I’m really from place called Humble, Texas.
After spending Christmas Eve and morning at Ines’ family’s house, which I lovingly refer to as the Byam Estate (a great modernist home), we’ll catch a flight from Hartford to Houston – which, by the way, should be used as the title of a song, in the vein of ‘Tampa to Tulsa’, by the Jayhawks, or ‘Boulder to Birmingham’, by Emmylou Harris.
We’ll touch down in Houston and head to the Hill Country, Brenham, Texas, home of Bluebell Ice Cream and of Delmer and Alma Waggoner.
This year we’ve decided to spend a couple of days in San Antonio. Now, to our hipster friends this is a slap in the face of all-hail-St. Austin, where just a year ago we stumbled upon a fantastic place called Beerland and an equally fantastic little band called Chili Cold Blood. Check out this and this and this.
Be that as it may (and who knows, we might not be able to withstand the temptation to make the short drive from Brenham to Austin some evening), this year we’ve put San Antonio in our sights. We love San Antonio because it’s like a European villa, with its supercool river walk, complete with gondolas.
Well, that’s how I’m remembering it. I’m quietly hoping it hasn’t been too Disneyfied.
But, there is another Texas attraction that we’ve been eying for a couple of years now, watching the progress of its development, waiting for just the right time. Marfa, Texas, a dusty little town way out West in the Big Bend region of the state, closer to El Paso than anything else.
Until a few years ago Marfa was just another West Texas town. It still is. But it has also become a bit of an artist mecca, and the home-in-progress for what promises to be a great resort called El Cosmico. This is the brainchild of one of Austin’s successful hotel developers, but scaled down in an interesting way.
El Cosmico is supposed to consist of an encirclement of smartly renovated Airstream trailers. it is supposed to offer community dining around an open fire, in the middle of the desert, singing, the sharing of stories, and a kind of front row look into Marfa’s eclectic art scene.
I love West Texas. I love Airstream trailers. I love music and art and community. So THIS is something I’ve got to see.
And when I do, I’ll tell you all about it.
From all of me here at Drinking Upstream, I hope you have a real merry Christmas and real happy New Year.
Also, “Twenty Four Hours to Tulsa,” Burt Bachrach, “Last Train to Clarksville,” the Monkees.
Humble, TX? Sweet.
Sounds like you’ve had a better holiday than I had here in Guilfud. Christmas Eve was fun–I got to watch everyone else drink. As I was reading this, I thought the name of the town was Mafia. Shows where my mind is. Love the site, man. I’ve got some abstracts on dwellings I’ll get to you soon.
I’d love to go to Marfa sometime for the Donald Judd stuff and for the air, the light. Judd has finally become interesting to me. It tok a long time. Plus the Ilya Kabakov installation. What do you think of Andrea Zittel’s work? Have you seen her customized trailers? We saw a big show of her stuff in Vancouver a few years ago.
Funniest thing David. Over Christmas I was reading through an issue of ab, architecture boston, or some such thing, and at the same time reading your comment, and ab had a couple of pages on andrea zittel with images of her trailers. I have a feeling her work inspired the el cosmico concept. Yeah I think Marfa could become interesting, we’ll see. I’m on the record somewhere for having been a little more cynical about it. I thought, along the lines of something Adorno wrote in the section from Minima Moralia that I posted on this blog, that for a high end hotel entrepreneur to turn trailers into chic getaways ran the risk of mocking what is for many rural residents hardly a glamorous fact of life.
Remember Mae West’s “For goodness sake”. “Honey, goodness had nothing to do with it”. Yes, trailer park chic. Mockery is often an element of “chic” isn’t it. And chic developers love to follow chic artists – I don’t think Andrea is chic, but her art is ripe for appropriation by the seekers of chic. Her trailer – pods I think she called them – with a hot tub in it was wonderful. This reminds me of a friend of mine who wanted to drive around Rhode Island and buy up old wooden powerboats – the kind that people have stored on their front lawns with no hope of ever launching again, and which may even have become a bone of contention in a marriage? – his idea was to maybe get the wife to sell before the hubby came home. Then he’d set them all up in a field somewhere as a residence or a get away home – maybe all facing the same way like a fleet returning to harbor.
But I still think El Cosmico sounds like grand fun. Maybe one of the smaller craft groups (like the furniture society) could rent it for an annual conference.
I agree about El Cosmico. I really do want to visit. I keep thinking I’ll do that on one of my trips to Texas. But it’s so far out there, 8 hours driving or so from Austin I think. You’d do better to fly into El Paso and rent a car I guess. By the way your drawings on Facebook are amazing.
David –
“Mockery is often an element of “chic” isn’t it”
I found myself thinking about this a few times throughout the day. Susan Sontag said that camp is a kind of mockery, but also serious about it. El Cosmico as a concept is, I think, within a tradition of campiness that incorporates sort of Western (as in country western, not occidental) elements. I guess the thing that gave me pause was that, as opposed to Marfa generally, El Cosmico was not just an artist enclave but something being developed by this really successful Austin hotel builder. But I think that since Sontag wrote that piece (I’ll include the link below), camp has become a different kind of creature, and the market has learned how to accommodate it. I know this is a pretty cliche thought (how the market appropriates all the cool stuff), but your comment on chic and mockery got me thinking about it. Curious what you think.
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1964.html
Chic/mockery. I guess I was just thinking in the high school sense – being with the cool kids and separating yourself from the squares – to jump back to a 50’s expression. My mother, who was quite chic herself, always used the word in the basic sense of “stylish” or “smart”, I thought the word was “sheek”. so I always just thought of it that way. Someone who was chic was admirable for taking the time and having the experience and worldliness to turn themselves out well. Another amusing thing my mother told me was that an architect was always the most lavishly dressed person on a building site, so I had this image of an architect in New Yorker-ish spats, morning coat and top hat. I’m thinking these impressons were formed when I was 12 or so.
[...] Studio CO., and his very interesting furniture society’s blog). David and I have been talking here at DU about El Cosmico, chic, mockery, and what I would describe as the political aesthetics of nostalgia. And [...]