h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The best place in Austin for two-stepping is The Broken Spoke on South Lamar - the last Texas dance hall in this city. It's open Tuesday to Saturday every week, and almost everyone who's anyone in country music (particularly Texas country music) has played there since it was opened in 1964 by the man who still runs it - James White, including Bob Wills, Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff, Hank Thompson, Tex Ritter, Ray Price, Kitty Wells, Grandpa Jones, Willie Nelson, George Strait, Alvin Crow, The Geezinslaw Brothers, Don Walser, Jerry Jeff Walker, The Derailers, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Dale Watson. To go into the The Broken Spoke is to step back in time at least 30 years - you'll see men wearing Wrangler jeans, shirts with pointy metal collars, bolo ties, cowboy boots, stetson hats, and big bellies dancing with women wearing either Wrangler jeans or gingham skirts, cowboy boots, frilly blouses, and BIG hair (usually blonde) They claim to serve the best chicken fried steak in Texas, which "...means the world to us." They also claim to be the last of the true Texas dancehalls, which isn't quite so true as they might like - The Gruene (pronounced Green) Hall in the town of Gruene, not far from New Braunfels is not only one of the most well known, but also the biggest. The Broken Spoke however may be *the* most well known - hell, even QE2 herself has been there If you go there, you must visit The Tourist Trap - a small room filled with photographs of James White with various country musicians, as well as items owned by many of the same musicians (and also leave a message in this researcher's message centre - I live about 200 yards away and will stand you a meal )

I'd post a url for the BS so that you could add it to the entry if you wish, but it would be moderated out, which makes something of a mockery of the house rules because how the hell else are you supposed to get it? If I say do a search on Google (legal notice - there are other search engines) and go to the link which is on lone-star, will that get by the process?

Hey St. Goshoogoshoogosh,

You must write an entry about this place - it sounds excellent and it will help build up the Texas part of the Guide too...

BTW I'm back in Austin in August - we should meet this time

Years ago I went to Gruene Hall with some canoing buddies, quite a place. Now I know where all those big football players at UT and A&M come from. I'm about 5'11" by 155 pounds, I was roughly half the average size of the males in the place. As I recall, Alvin Crow was playing, pretty good stuff, and I'm not much of a country music fan - I do like Robert Earl keen, is that country?

Hi Ashley

Yeah, I'll do some more research about it and see what I can dig up. I reckon it would make a hornswogglingly good entry And if you're in town and have the time (what are you doing in Austin during August btw - that's when everyone tries to leave and get away from these 100°+ temperatures ), we should visit the joint, maybe go see Don Walser. He plays there most Saturday nights.

I know what you mean about the folks at Gruene Hall Steve, they're big I've never been to either place during the hot months (i.e. April - October ), but I know that at the GH they have no a/c - they just roll up the netting that serves for windows and let the warm air blow through