A Hole in the Wall

When I first wandered into Hole in the Wall, on Guadalupe Street in midtown Austin, I was unaware that I had just entered one of the oldest music venues in the city. I pushed open the door -- with a Louisville Slugger bat used as a handle and as an homage to the sports bar the site had been when it was founded in the 1970s.

The place was dingy, dark and living up to its name. Dark pictures lined the grimy walls of the main room and the backroom. Graffiti covered the bathroom doors and stalls. The floor was seemingly black, coated with years of beer and tears and music.

Still, there was something homey about the place. It avoided the wild nightlife sense that ran amuck at the venues on Red River Street. While everything else around it was changing and venues were being knocked down all over town, the Hole in the Wall’s iconic yellow and green exterior remained untouched.

“It’s been open for forty something years,” Austin Chronicle music columnist Kevin Curtin said. “The average lifespan for a venue in Austin is a few years. It’s incredibly hard to keep the place open. It’s not hard, it’s improbable. How would it still be going if there wasn’t something magical happening there?”

And magical it must be, given the challenges.

The building’s force field remains impenetrable even with all the new buildings popping up around downtown and along Guadalupe. The downtown Austin skyline has grown over 50 feet taller in the last decade. Skyscrapers, hotels and apartment complexes are popping up all over downtown. The Austonian and 360 Condominiums stand high above what once was the tallest building in town, Frost Bank Tower, a testament to a new era for the city. This era encourages tourism and new immigrants to the city, while the ones that remain are left to hold their own amidst rising property values and trendy new bars meant to entice yuppies.

“Our problem is often the rent,” Hole in the Wall owner Will Tanner said. “[Guadalupe Street] is perceived as a high volume area but its not a high volume area for a bar. A few years ago, when we had that very public lease negotiation, it was because of the rent and the perception of where the business should be.”

While Hole in the Wall survived that test, thanks to the landlord and the supportive fans and musicians, a new 5-story hurdle is moving into the abandoned parking lot next door. A small Marriott hotel – called a Moxy Marriott -- is slated to begin construction soon.

“When you’ve been at this for as long as I have, I try my best to be positive and look on the bright side,” Tanner said. “Because it can feel like we’re always closing, like the city doesn’t care and the rents going up or whatever, but I try to look at any change as an opportunity.”

“I’m looking forward to the hundreds of construction workers next door,” Tanner continued. “I want to sell ‘em a beer. And show ‘em some live music.”

While the JW Marriott downtown is the second-tallest hotel in Austin and caters to a more “elite” crowd, her sister the Moxy Marriott exudes a different kind of vibe. Moxy Marriotts are designed for “the next generation traveler, not only Gen X and Y but people with a younger sensibility”, a press release for the Moxy states.

Meant to be small and compact, Moxy Marriotts market themselves as “boutique hotels”, catering to the millennial generation. A company website claims they can give customers a room key and a drink at the bar. In New York, a Moxy hotel has rooms with 42-inch flat-screen TVs and that are priced in the $200 a night range – far from Hole in the Wall prices.

Despite Hole in the Wall’s incoming neighbor, both Tanner and Curtin have hope for Hole in the Wall.

“[The Austin music scene] has challenges,” Curtin said. “Which basically come down to high rent and high property value in a city that has not figured out how to deal with that yet. And honor and preserve the history of music. Even with these challenges I still have a lot of hope.”

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Hotels and music venues colliding are not a new phenomenon here in Austin. Just last year, Sixth street music venue The Knook went head-to-head with the neighboring hotel The Westin. After its first year of business in Austin, The Westin sued The Knook, claiming its live music shows were too loud and bothering guests. In a press statement, the hotel claimed they supported Austin’s claim as “Live Music Capital of the World” but also wanted to ensure their guests enjoyed their stay at their hotel.

In the end, the two parties reached a settlement where The Knook would install a state-of-the-art sound-proofing system, paid and maintained for by The Westin, with a promise the venue would turn down noise levels if prompted by the hotel. This is not the first instance of the two worlds of Austin learning to coexist. The dozen or so venues housed on historic Red River Street share their space with several apartment complexes and hotels. With a noise curfew - that was recently extended - it’s proof that the two parties have learned to coexist. And, more importantly, stay open.

Tanner hopes he can also stay open.

“I think places like The Hole in the Wall are important,” Tanner said. “And by that I mean small to medium-sized local venues because we have a way of being in touch with local bands in a way that larger venues probably wouldn’t.”

As big corporate companies like Live Nation take over Stubb’s on Red River and venues are closing their doors all over town mainly due to high property values, Tanner’s advocacy for local venues is merited. And with the Moxy Marriott about to cast a shadow over the Hole in the Wall, the venue’s next fight could be a long one.

Or, there could be no fight at all.

“There’s a constantly changing environment [in Austin],” Curtin said. “But the one thing that stays the same is - weird people coming together and making great music. And sometimes having a lot of success at it and sometimes not. But still leaving a cool legacy in their own niche.”