Donn's Depot, Austin

Maybe if I knew where I was going, I wouldn't have gone. After all, a place called "Donn's Depot", hardly sounds like my new favorite bar. But I do not yet have any friends in Austin, and the women from my department who I sat next to during Orientation has invited me to her birthday, and it's a Saturday night, so I find directions on how to get there, and I go.

The bus drops me off a half-mile away from where I'm supposed to end up: Austin does have mass transit, but it can barely cover the large spread out city-scape. I begin to walk the lengthy trek to Donn's Depot. After a quarter of a mile, the side-walk ends: Just a wide four lane, no parking, major thorough-fare lined with private property. Sometimes the private properties are stretches of strip malls with large parking lots, sometimes they are fenced in residential lots: the city planning here is haphazzard; the landscape is not fabulous. Coming for fabulous Toronto, which privileges the pedestrian and transit user, over the automobile, I realize again that I am not where I used to be.

After a very treacherous negotiation of private property and on-coming traffic, I arrive at Donns Depot. The friend who invited me is not there yet. I grab a beer at the bar and take a moment to soak the place in: Geriatrics and middle-age straight couples partner dance to a mediocre band that plays the hits of rock and country from the 60's, 70's, and early 80's. An old fashion popcorn machines serves free, not-quite-fresh move popcorn. Twenty something girls are dressed up like as if they expected Donn's Depot to be some cosmopolitan "Sex and the City"esque night club, rather than a country saloon. To send the message home, the band begins to play "American Pie": "Drovy my chevy to the levy but the levy was dry, the good old boys were drinking whisky and rye" the drunkenly groan and mumble along with the singer-pianist.

I hang around for an hour, thinking my friend ended up too drunk from birthday festivities to remember to show up. She arrives eventually, but I do not regreat a minute of that time I spent at Donn's Depot alone. Donn's Depot may not be cosmopolitan, fabulous, or even clean (popcorn remnants dot the floors and tables), but this place is authentic: It is what it is and does not try to be anything else.

I am not where I used to be. I may not like where I find myself better than where I came from. But there is something authentic about this place - and that is enough to make me stay for a while longer.