The real reason people are angry about this hamburger stand in Austin is not about preserving history.
The people trying to save Dirty Martin's Kum Bak are trying to stop transit.
Welcome to The Experiment, where we’re celebrating getting to see both sons this weekend. Last week I forgot to include Frank A. Spring’s latest chapter of Regulator as well as Rachel Megan Barker’s “Feeling Hopeless is Boring.” I included them in this week’s edition. And on Wednesday you’ll get the recommendations of what we’re doing, reading, watching, and listening to, as well as reactions to this essay.
But first, can I tell you my favorite thing about the time change?
I can’t ride my bike to work until we move the clocks forward one hour in March because until then it’s dark when I get off work. There’s a particularly dangerous stretch, too, on a route that I used to take. You go down Guadalupe toward campus in the bike lane until the road narrows, and for two blocks I have to hang my butt out there in traffic and trust that the flashing red light on my seat post will be enough to prevent a distracted driver from plowing right into me. If that happens, my wife’ll kill me. In the nearly 10-mile-long ride to work, those two blocks were the only time I was even remotely worried about my safety.
If you’re from Austin, I can tell you exactly where that is: It’s the stretch of road that goes by Dirty’s.
Almost a hundred years ago, a guy opened a hamburger stand near the University of Texas campus and called it Martin’s KumBack, but because it had dirt floors people started calling it Dirty Martin’s KumBack, then finally just Dirty’s. Last year Matthew Odam inducted Dirty’s into the inaugural class of the Austin360 Restaurant Hall of Fame, praising it more, and deservedly so, for it’s “laidback, friendly vibe that made the place beloved for decades” than for its burgers and fries. Dirty’s might be the oldest restaurant in Austin and is the kind of place alumni return to every year. I do not begrudge anyone their emotional attachment to this business.
More recently, Austin voters in 2020* overwhelmingly approved Project Connect, a $7.1-billion package that would give one of the fastest-growing cities in the country what it should have had a long time ago — and actual, proper transit plan, including a subway downtown, rapid bus routes, even light rail. There was also money for better bike lanes (thanks!), road improvements, and compensation for businesses that would inevitably be displaced.
There was even a map of where all the light rail routes would be. Two of them, the orange and blue lines, converged north of town and ran past campus through downtown. There’s even a stop drawn on the map right around where Dirty’s is. If you’re worried about traffic in Austin, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. But if you own a business along the route, you should know that the light at the end of the tunnel is a train.
As with any public project of this size, CapMetro, the local transit authority, has done a lot of community outreach to the businesses and residents along the orange and blue lines. Since July of 2021, they’ve done 24 block-walks, town halls, design workshops, and community meetings. They’ve sent letters. There’s a pretty good website for anyone who cared to look, right there on the internet for the whole world to see. They’ve done everything but hire people to run naked through the streets yelling about Project Connect, but hey, there’s a labor shortage.
If there’s one thing that cheeses me about Austinites it’s that when they hear about a change to damn near anything, the initial response is, “Well, this is the first I’m hearing about this!” It comes off like government bureaucrats have been plotting in secret and only springing this news on the populace at their most unsuspecting, when in fact they just tuned out multiple entreaties to attend town halls which are admittedly less fun than eating reheated leftovers over the sink.
So I was not surprised at the reaction a couple weeks ago when the owner of Dirty’s, who by all accounts is a helluva guy, said he’d gotten a letter letting him know that his business might be getting condemned to make way for progress. A conservative blog called The Travis Tracker broke the news: “Project Connect claims first victim: century-old campus diner Dirty Martin's” blared the headline.
“WUT???!!” tweeted a friend of mine. “Guess I’ll be voting against every incumbent I can find on the city ballot for a while, again.”
“[A]ustin is almost fully devoid of authentic culture,” tweeted a gentleman who goes by the online moniker, and I am not making this up, classic dumb guy. “[L]eave something for the locals from before 2012.”
A realtor specializing in investment properties tweeted, “Austin you have gone to [sic.] far………again!”
There was much rending of digital garments over the decision. An online petition was quickly launched that now has more than 10,000 signatures, which sounds like a lot. But for every one of the people signing the petition, there are 24 who voted for Project Connect.
Another thing that cheeses me about Austinites is their fervent belief that there is an obvious solution at the ready. They are so stupid, say the armchair experts. If they would just do this… When I worked in the Mayor’s office, there was a group quite angry that we refused to entertain their solution to traffic: gondolas from the suburbs to carry commuters downtown. I was under orders never to respond to press questions by asking if they were f*cking kidding me, so I confess I was never able to give that proposal the attention it deserved.
Similarly obvious ideas, untrammeled by use, leapt into the Dirty’s discourse. All you have to do, they said, was change the route to avoid Dirty’s, ignoring that to do so would displace a four-story office building or residences. All you have to do, they said, is just not do what I don’t want.
The owner, bless his heart, had his own ideas. “Our prayer is we will move this track out in the street, or they will keep it underground and move on down the road and we can keep on doing what we do here,” he said. In other words, either shut down the road to all vehicular traffic, or add several hundred million dollars to the price tag. Just don’t make him change.
By all accounts, the owner is a nice fella who may or may not care that the person credited with “sounding the alarm” about Dirty’s is a Republican candidate for Austin mayor who is probably among the minority of Austinites who voted against Project Connect. And I’m sure he appreciates that one of the people promoting the petition is the spokesperson for the county Republican Party, which in Austin is a role full of sound and fury.
There’s certainly not enough proof to say that anti-transit Republicans are using the choke point of this narrow stretch of road to rally public support for a burger joint that they can leverage against building, at long last, light rail in Austin. It would be unfair to insinuate that they are using nostalgia to ferment a NIMBY backlash that can slow Project Connect to a crawl, only later to attack the whole process as flawed, delayed, and unfair. I would never do such a thing.
You want the grown up truth? Dirty’s is only the first. If we want a real big-kid transit system, we’re going to have to have 100 more businesses like Dirty’s that might have to make way. Project Connect has $300 million set aside to help displaced businesses and people. The goal here is not for everyone to feel good. The goal is to get light rail and better bus service so our city is not completely dependent on cars commuting on these 1980s state highways with chicken lanes. Some people aren’t going to want to change. It’s up to us to say, “That sucks. Let me help you move.”
Austin has a lot of experience with this as the churn of personal memory holes has become commonplace. More than once I’ve walked into a place and asked, “Didn’t this place used to be…?” and three people would come up with five answers, each of them correct. I’ve been to Antone’s, a famous blues joint, several times over the decades in at least three locations that I can remember. The BBQ place near campus I used to walk to from work now requires a drive to a completely different part of town to get to, but the food’s still good. The morgue became a federal courthouse. But when they built the new federal courthouse by Republic Square that used to be the Mexican part of town, the county started operating a probate court out of the old building. When you think about it, a probate court is a pretty good use for a morgue. You probably didn’t know half of that because Austin makes way for the new stuff so constantly that it’s barely noteworthy anymore.
In other words, Dirty’s can move. A rose by any other address can still serve burgers and show football games on the television. And just because your grandparents got engaged at Dirty’s before UT integrated doesn’t mean progress isn’t just possible but preferable.
I’ve since found another route to work, and tomorrow is the first day since the time change when my work schedule will allow me to ride to work. Seasons change, but they also start back over again. Austin’s always going to feel this tension of holding onto our past while flying at warp speed into the future. We need to show each other a lot of grace because no one ever said making progress was painless. Let’s just make sure that while we’re enjoying memories of some pretty good burgers that we’re staying on track toward the future.
*The original version of this essay misstated the year that voters approved Project Connect.
Jason Stanford is the co-author of NYT-best selling Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. His bylines have appeared in the Washington Post, Time, and Texas Monthly, among others. He works at the Austin Independent School District as Chief of Communications and Community Engagement, though he would want to point out that these are his personal opinions and his alone, but you already knew that. Follow him on Twitter @JasStanford.
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