(Image from Google Maps.)
This place no longer exists. This is taken from Google images from 2007. As of January of 2020, it looked like this:
(ditto)
What happened to the apartments? They were gone by 2008, as far as I can tell, & nothing has been put in their place.
For the life of me I can't recall what they were called - maybe Town Lake Apartments? The street I looked out onto was Elmont, but officially the address was Town Lake Circle. I moved in with school friends Paul & Todd in 1986, lived there till the summer of 1987, when I returned to Garland. I lived in a smaller apartment toward the back with another school friend William in my sophomore year of college, roughly August 1987 to May 1988, & lived again with William & yet another friend, Joe, in a two-bedroom apartment (I lived in the living room) from around August of 1988 till December of 1988, when William & Joe decided to move out, leaving me with a place I couldn't afford. Luckily, I had been a good tenant, & the landlord let me break the lease.
These apartments were in an area that used to be called "the Riverside student ghetto." They were far from campus, maybe six miles away. I used to take a bus to classes - which went onto I-35 past the lake through downtown - & it took around ten to fifteen minutes to get to UT; nowadays I'm sure it takes twice as long, or worse if the traffic is bad.
Down the street was a venue called "The Back Room." It was apparently mostly a space for metal shows, but I have fond memories of seeing Love & Rockets, the Jesus & Mary Chain, the Sugarcubes, James, & gosh probably other shows there. Here's an article about the place. It's apparently now where Emo's, once a downtown club (where I also saw too many shows to count), now exists.
There was also a supermarket within walking distance, & I remember my roommate Paul & I had a brief fling with tennis while we lived there - there was a tennis court down the road. Alas, Paul got better & better at the game, while I plateaued at "somewhat mediocre," & Paul was very competitive. & as people who suck at sports know, it's never much fun to play with people who are better than you are if they love to win. You end up just asking to be humiliated.
One amusing story is that I had a longstanding obsession with a girl who lived in the apartments who had purple hair. I would refer to her to friends as "the purple-haired girl," inviting comparisons with Charlie Brown & his "little red haired girl." She lived with a boyfriend, & I would never have had the courage to speak to her, so I would sit on the bus, listening to the Birthday Party on my Walkman, & daydream about getting to know her. Years later, as fate would have it, we became somewhat acquainted, &, alas, she wasn't a very interesting person. Her name was Leanne. I think after we hung out once or twice we realized we didn't really have much in common.
At some point I'll get to the years 1986 through 1988 in my birthday series so I'll have more to say about this place. Once I moved away from this part of the world, I never really went back - my home range, such as it was, shifted to the Hyde Park area of Austin after this. But in 2017, my wife & I visited Austin for what would be the very last time & there was a food truck that we went to there, & the whole area seemed utterly strange to me. I guess I noticed the apartments were gone. We did walk the dogs down by Town Lake & I kinda wished that I had had a dog when I lived there - I really wish I had spent more time down by the lake.
Today I was talking to a friend who had lived in Austin in the 90s & we chatted about different areas of the city. I lived there for more than twenty years & really didn't see a whole lot of the city. It's a shame, really - it was a big place, expansive, & the time to get to know it was then, when it was still a somewhat sleepy little town. Now it may be entirely unknowable.
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