Greenhouse/Outhouse: 3500 Block of Guadalupe

Two quite-different clubs were neighbors on the North Drag

“Generally everybody in the club business is in it to make money and we find that many blacks and Mexican-Americans like to dance but don’t spend any money,” Paul Stone of the popular Greenhouse dance told the American Statesman in May 1978. “They usually go out in the parking lot, get high and come back in and want to dance the night away.” It was a strange way to defend yourself against charges of discrimination, including assaults against minority patrons.

On Christmas Night that year, Stone and bouncer David Bostow were shot to death by a pair of men who’d been ejected from the club- Jesse Montez, visiting from Michigan, and his brother-in-law Albert Perez of Bastrop. Four others were wounded, including a bystander shot by a police officer who happened upon the scene. Stone was 39 and Bostow, on his first night as a bouncer at the Greenhouse, was 28.

The shooters received light sentences- five years for Montez and “shock probation” for Perez, which would amount to just four months in the joint if he stayed out of trouble. I couldn’t find any account of the trial in the newspaper, but you could be sure the club’s history of mistreatment of minorities was a consideration of the sentencing judge.

Before the 3500 Guadalupe St. location was the Greenhouse, it was Sit N’ Bull, a topless joint that had earlier featured live music from such acts as Plum Nelly and Blind George. Before that it was the original location of Rooster Andrews sporting goods, until he moved into a new building across the street. It’s currently the home of Amy’s Ice Cream, which takes 3500 Guadalupe full circle. For decades it McCray’s Creamery, an “Ice Cream Factory” for Superior Dairies.

AUSTIN OUTHOUSE

The Bentwood Tavern next door at 3510 was a classic neighborhood bar, with darts and shuffleboard and sweaty sports teams, but manager Chuck Lamb and harmonica-playing bartender Ed Bradfield started booking music in ‘78, around the time of trouble at the Greenhouse. Regulars included Blaze Foley, Cody Hubach, Jubal Clark, Pat Mears, Rich Minus, Calvin Russell, Lost John Casner and Townes Van Zandt. It was a stage of zero status, but where these hard-living friends could play the songs they just wrote.    

That motley bunch of musical poets conveyed when Lamb bought the license plate-plastered dive in 1981 and changed the name to the Austin Outhouse. It was the club you went to if you’d been 86ed from the Hole. They didn’t take down the Bentwood Tavern sign for years.

For a stamp of extra weirdness, the Outhouse was the new homebase of Curly Thompson, Austin’s #1 musical savant, who was a fantastic drummer, played blues harp with just his hands and sang like Bon Scott when he wanted to. Curly, who got his nickname because he looked like one of The Three Stooges, was a strange cat, but truly loved by all. He lived with his mother, and after she shot herself in the head in the early ‘90s, a sister came down from Oklahoma to take him away, and Curly’s not been seen since.

Curley Thompson, a true original.

“I loved those years, good and bad,” Lamb recalled. “Music every night, good and bad. People you probably know, many you never heard of. It was real. I was sad the night we turned out the lights.”

The club had been bailed out by benefits- most notably a Timbuk 3 show in Jan. ‘89 that paid back rent on the verge of eviction. A week after that jubilant celebration, Outhouse regular Blaze Foley was shot to death by the son of a friend.

Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, the musical focus at the Outhouse gradually changed after Foley’s death to more indie rock bands. It became the new Beach, north of campus, with such bands as Happy Family, ST37, Texas Instruments, the Horsies, Pocket FishRmen, Coz the Shroom, Go Dog Go, Brompton’s Cocktail and so on.

In ’93, Asylum Street Spankers packed the place every Wednesday with their old-time acoustic music, and zany antics. First Wednesday was Pajama Night- which some lovelies took as Lingerie Night- for an only-in-Austin scene. “At the end of the set we’d say, ‘now let’s go break into Barton Springs and go swimming’ and half the crowd would come with us,” recalled Forsyth.

Most of the bands weren’t that interesting, so people would go out on the patio and smoke pot. Then the music would sound better so they came back inside.

“When you saw a great show at the Outhouse, you walked out feeling like you’d stolen something and gotten away with it,” said Forsyth, who played the Outhouse until Flamingo Automotive bought the property for an expansion in 1995.