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Donald’s Used Furniture used to keep a 500-lb bale of cotton in the store. Red River was where you could buy a stack of Playboys as a teenager and nobody would ask for an ID.

That open clientele policy continues at Cheer-Up Charlies in the same former car lot office location. At 900 Red River, Chances was that rare lesbian bar that booked indie rock bands, like 16 Deluxe, Glass Eye and Sincola- a wild hybrid that brought different cultures together. Miss Laura of the Blue Flamingo turned her drag bar into a punk club, with the action spilling out onto the street. In the early ‘90s, the BYOB Cavity Club installed a half-pipe for skateboarders. The Red River walk has always had a bit of an outlaw swagger.
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The menu of Lung’s Chinese Kitchen gave instructions on how to use chopsticks, as Austin’s ethnic/exotic food scene was born. Sam Lung, whose Cantonese father moved to Texas in the 1890s to work building railroads, opened Austin’s first Chinese restaurant at 1128 Red River in 1946. This was as close to the East Side, both spiritually and physically, as you could get in downtown Austin. During the era of segregration, black-owned businesses were next door to white-owned ones on Red River from Sixth to 15 th Streets. Red River had an edge, but the flow was inclusion. Those nascent Austin clubs were where Symphony Square is today. Janis Joplin sang just steps away at the 11 th Door that same year.

Red River gave birth to psychedelic rock in 1966, when the 13 th Floor Elevators debuted their first single “You’re Gonna Miss Me” at the New Orleans Club. It’s been home to Elysium since 2001.Īlthough Red River began to be known as Austin’s live music district in the ‘90s, with Emo’s and Stubb’s leading the way for the Mohawk, Beerland, Club DeVille, Room 710 and others, this strip was where the earliest Austin hippies went before the Vulcan and the Armadillo opened. As the Cave Club, the location introduced industrial music to Texas in the ’80s. Snooper’s Paradise, the inspiration of Doug Sahm’s Austin anthem “Groover’s Paradise,” at 705 Red River was later the location of country-western clubs, gay bars, hip hop clubs and rock bars. Most of those buildings are nightclubs today. For most of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, the strip was dominated by used furniture stores and junk shops with names like Williams Do-Rite Swap Shop, Fairyland Antiques, Dutch Meyer’s Trading Post, Red River Rats, Hurt’s Hunting Grounds and J.B.
