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See more of this great show and others at www.onnetworks.com.

All of ON Networks&#039; shows are available in both Apple TV HD and a smaller version that plays on both iPods and iPhones. To download a different version of this show, click on the &quot;See All Podcasts&quot; link and select the version you&#039;d like to download! </itunes:summary>
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 <media:description type="html">Austin craft queen Jenny Hart explains her fascination with needlework.</media:description>
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 <media:text type="html"><![CDATA[Austin Connoisseur
Episode “Embroidery”

Jenny Hart: Sublime stitching really is about providing creative resources and creative inspiration for other people.  I think everybody needs a creative outlet of some sort.  I am really inspired by what I don’t see, a lot of my work comes out of a kind of desire of saying you know I have never seen that done.  Where is it, look for it, and then I do it.
I am Jenny Hart and you are in my sewing room, I am an embroidery artist and I also founded a company called Sublime Stitching with updated patterns in resources for embroidery.  You can see my artwork at jenny hart .net and you can buy sublime stitching kits and patterns at sublimestitching.com.  I started Sublime Stitching in the fall of 2001 that was a year after I started embroidering and I had been working with embroidery for my artwork, doing portraits and original kinds of compositions.
I did not know how to sew and I had never done any needlework, I did not know anybody who did.  I mean it was a good three or four years before I actually did it, I asked my mom to finally show me and I got addicted to it.  I tend to have a little edge of anxiety and I’m a little high strung and I’ve always got to be doing something so for me to sit still and embroider I thought I would never be able to do that and I will never have the patience for it, it is going to make my skin crawl.  Then I realize that embroidery instills patience in you and it actually calms you down.
I was so surprised that there were not any updated resources for learning how to embroider.  There weren’t any kind of contemporary designs, there wasn’t anything that stepped outside of the realm of teddy bears and barnyard animals and that was a real turnoff, and that was why no one from my generation was doing it.  I grew up reading a lot of comics like Robert Crumb and S. Clay Wilson and Robert Williams.  I grew up in a house where commercial art, illustration like comic art wasn’t seen as anything apart from fine art.
I started making collages when I was really young, when I was like 14 and 15 and started making collages and actually got a lot of attention for the work that I was doing.  I started thinking about embroidering and I thought well that would be such a wonderful medium to apply to original illustration and I did, I got completely obsessed with it.  I am embroidered like 3 to 4 hours a day and it goes into the design aspect of the company too.  Where I am designing these patterns and then customers go and embroider them up and a lot of times customers will send me pictures of their projects.  That is like collaboration to me to I get to see people embroider my drawing and it is really satisfying and fun.
I moved to Austin and 99, in the summer of 99, I was supposed to go to New York and I was really worried that Austin was going to feel like too much of a small town.  I love Austin, for me it offers all the things that a big city has to offer yet without the stifling aspects.  The really nurturing, the genuinely supportive creative community that there is here, I’ve never been some place where the people are so sincerely interested in what other people are doing and are constantly trying to find a way to nurture it or help it along. 
I do feel like Austin has been my partners in making Sublime Stitching happen I really don’t feel like I could make it happen in another place as I did in Austin.  I am known best for being a so called expert in embroidery and I am no expert in embroidery.  I am a beginner and I show people that do not know how to embroider how other beginners learn to do it.
I think a lot of people look at embroidery and think it is tedious and grandmaish and I think you just have to try it.  If you want to start embroidering without sounding too much like a company shill, I would say get my kit, because it is designed for people to learn to embroider.  It is the only kit that puts all the tools together.  
There was not a book that said you need a hoop, this is why you need it and this is how you put your fabric on the hoop, this is how you thread a needle.  Everything assumed because it was 30 or 40 years old it assumed that women grew up being taught by their mothers how to sew.  So I wanted to put together a kit that said here’s a kit with everything you needed to get started in embroidery, it will teach you how to use the tools, it will teach you some starter stitches.  I wanted the instructions to be encouraging, I wanted them to be entertaining; I wanted them to say it is about being creative and playful and you’re going to make mistakes. You’re not a robot so it is the fact that it looks like it was made by hand is really the charm and the appeal of it.
I have devoted my life, I’ve actually devoted my life in the past six are seven years to educating people about embroidery and to keep it from dying as a hand craft, by making sure that people have the resources and the inspiration to keep doing it.  My name is Jenny Hart and I am a connoisseur.

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 <media:text type="html"><![CDATA[Austin Connoisseur
Episode “BBQ Lamberts”

Lou Lambert: Everybody is very opinionated of barbecue because it is something that they know how to do or think that they know how to do and they have memories of what it should be.  My name is Lou Lambert and we are at Lambert’s downtown barbecue, we’re on the corner of second and Guadalupe right next to the new City Hall.  
After being out of the state for many years and looking where I wanted to be back in Texas looking at Austin what brought me back here is just the vibe of Austin you have that Texas roots that I love because I grew up here, it has so much more to offer culturally, athletically, outdoor wise, food. You have the sunshine which I missed desperately after being in San Francisco. 
It was just a perfect fit for me being in the food business, the ability to come in here and do the kind of food that I wanted to cook, and then the outdoors and the people that are here were very vibrant so I think it is a good fit and I am fortunate to be here.  
I have been in the restaurant business off and on for 20 years.  Always since high school been involved with food and beverage to some point whether it is washing dishes, waiting tables, cooking so I always thought that was going to be something to get me by until I decided what I wanted to do when I grow up.  I just reached a point that said I love this and I want to make a career out of it. 
I ended up in Hyde Park New York at the Culinary Institute of America and then worked in New York for a brief while and worked in California for Wolfgang Puck.  Back in Texas I was working in to us at Café Pacific as executive chef, then back in it California.  So it on a traveled a bit before I decided to settle back down in Texas and out of everywhere I detest the time Austin was where I wanted to be.
The food that we’re doing here at Lambert’s is based around smoking and grilling and both qualify as barbecue so we’re doing a lot of great things with a wood burning smoker, and then I think we’re actually one of the only ones in town that have a actual wood burning grill.  We’re doing some great ribs and brisket, I mean basically anything that qualifies as barbecue that you can smoke we are doing it.
It has got that down home and kind of comfort feel but at the same time because of the product and the preparation it is a little bit uptown, or downtown that is where we got the moniker, “fancy barbecue”.  The style of cooking that I do I think is really rooted in coming from a Home Life, a background where food was really important.  And the whole family was involved in cooking, all my mothers side was more of a ranching family and in the summers we would go to the ranch and work cattle and we would have a trail cook cooking over an open fire.  Just that down to earth, really good and simple foods and as I got into the food business I’ve always sort of gravitated back towards those really simple things.
I think we are known for going the extra step in putting integrity back into something like barbecue and smoking.  People look at me as very straightforward, food that is not complicated with a lot of flavor and a lot of depth to it.  Just like Mexican Food there are a lot of styles of food not just between Texas and a lot of other states but between West Texas in Central Texas.  In central Texas you have the German influence.  West Texas is more of the Mexican influence with Baracoa’s and things so what we have done here and what has influenced our cooking here is we have picked and choosed a little bit of the best of all those styles of Texas barbecue.
When you come in the restaurant you have got to try any of the meats out of the smoker, we do ribs and barbecued chicken they’re all great also try our achiote seared chickpeas, that is one of the dishes that we did at the restaurant.  The brisket is exceptional, we have been told it is one of the best briskets if not in Texas than the country and that is a bold statement.
For our desserts, we do all of our desserts and house but the one that we sell the most of his our maple bread pudding it is made with biros bread real maple syrup, a little jack Daniels hard sauce it is really great and it is a great way to end a barbecue meal.
I think that people who love barbecue love to have fun and they love to pull up a lawn chair and drink a beer.  They all are very opinionated what barbecue is and what it should be and I think it is kind of a brotherhood of barbecue heads.  I’m Lou Lambert and I am a connoisseur.
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 <media:text type="html"><![CDATA[Austin Connoisseur
Episode “Soup Peddler”

David Ansel: I like to develop relationships with the customers, the soupys, like a one off to deliver to someone one time, it kind of feels like a failure to me. To actually be a part of some ones household and be a part of how they eat is to me that’s, that’s what I want. 
My name is David Ansel and I am the soup peddler. And we are here at the soup peddler world headquarters. And we are about five houses down from where the business started, here on Mary Street in south Austin. I first learned bout soup by getting a degree in electrical engineering.
 I was always sort if just enchanted. But you know the moneys good, but it is kind of this cage with golden bars. A couple of things kind of collided to make me, make a leap of faith like this. One was a trip to Africa, for about four months. That kind of demonstrated to me that I really had far too much security in my life and lived in such a land of opportunity that I could really try anything. And I had such a strong safety net underneath me that it was; you know failure wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. 
I started this business about five years ago, a little over five years ago out of my home. I kind of kicked off the business by just sending an email out to all my friends asking if they wanted some soup delivered. The bicycle thing was not really meant to be that much of a shtick; I had kind of quit my job because I wanted to kind of have more control over my day to day existence. And one of the things I wanted to do is not be a part of the rat race and not have to drive back and forth to work everyday. 
I just love the freedom of being ion a bicycle so I thought if I am doing his I might as well, I will do it on a bike. The demand started growing to the point where I had o take the leap and borrow some money on a credit card and open this place. That was probably three years ago or so. Since then we have expanded into the next unit and that’s changed quite a bit. I have hired chefs and we have delivery trucks now, and a general manager. It is a really kind of stable year round business for the first time really. 
It took several years to get to this point. The uniqueness of the gesture that I was making and like that there was slow food, homemade food being delivered on a slow mean of transportation. I realized how much it charmed people here. And so we kept up with the bike for a good long time. But now it’s kind of been relegated to kind of an occasional Tuesday afternoon deliveries in the original neighborhood. 
I have been in Austin for about almost nine years. He for forty days I was here were over a hundred degrees, but I still stayed. I think my favorite thing in Austin are Bouldin Creek coffee shop is one of my favorite things, going to Jovitas on Thursday nights to see the Cornell Herd band. I really believe that Austin is this special, special place. I don know how it happened, or what things collided to make this be an attractant to jus kind and gentle people. And I think the thing about Austin that make this business so, what made it happen is that the communities are very tight here. There is so much connection between people. It is like this very fertile ground for spreading of ideas.
People here also really appreciate, well people obviously really appreciate independent businesses and business that have an opinion and have a clear identity. My influences are the grandmothers of the world, informal food from around the world. Like street food and kind of small stands, where there is not much between you and the person that made it. 
Soup is kind of an expression of caring, like when you make soup for someone, it is an expression of love. There is one main thing about making a good pot of soup and that’s patience. Soup is one of those things that can’t really be rushed. Like with a few exceptions. Making stock I kind of like the alchemy part of cooking. Where you turn like scraps, into gold almost. And it is something a lot of people don’t do. 
That’s kind of the real essence o making soup. You know some of the stocks just by themselves are so rich and so deep. That that’s really to me the big experience bout making soup is tasting that depth, kind of getting lost in that. I think I like to kind of recommend to people they kind of put away the recipe and try to just focus on what they are trying to accomplish. 
You don’t jus throw everything in a pot, its almost like painting where you kind of make base coats, and then you start narrowing your strokes using smaller brushes and then at the very end you are kind of adding little accents. And there are definitely steps in soup making like that. Soup is like your first food when you’re a child. It is your last food when you’re old. 
Soup is love is just a kind of three word way of saying how soup touches people and how it is an expression of caring. When you make soup for someone and this is kind of our little catch phrase. My name is David Ansel, and I am a connoisseur. 

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 <itunes:keywords>Austin tx texas living furniture wine restaurants food shopping</itunes:keywords>
 <itunes:subtitle>David Ansel - aka &quot;The Soup Peddler&quot; - is as Austin as you get.  Find out why!</itunes:subtitle>
 <itunes:author>ON Networks</itunes:author>
</item>
 <item> <title>Vintage Boots</title>
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 <description>Evan Voyles knows boots.  Vintage boots, that is! An Austin original tells all.&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onnetworks.com/videos/austin-connoisseur/vintage-boots&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://images.onnetworks.com/images/austinconnoisseur_boots_425x239.jpg&quot; title=&quot;Vintage Boots&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;</description>
 <pubDate>Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:17:00 -0500</pubDate>
 <dc:creator>ON Networks</dc:creator>
 <guid isPermaLink="false">3399 at http://onnetworks.com</guid>
 <category domain="http://onnetworks.com/videos/austin-connoisseur">Austin Connoisseur</category>
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 <media:text type="html"><![CDATA[Austin Connoisseur
Episode “Vintage Boots”

Evan Voyles: Most people look at boots and just assume whether they like them or not. And in fact that’s almost the best test for vintage boots. What kind of go me into it was that’s what I thought real cowboy boot looked like. It doesn’t look like I do much of anytime in this room but store stuff. But in fact I am a sign maker and an artist by trade. And this is where I build stuff. 
My name is Evan Voyles and I own, what seems to still be the largest vintage boot collection in the world, and I have 750 pairs. I don’t think anybody’s close and half of those were involved in a firm twelve years ago. So they are a little darker and crispier than they started out to be. I am not really keeping track. I am not trying to stay ahead. I jus haven’t heard of anything else. And I would want to know because I would probably want buy from them for stuff that they had. Or trade with them. 
A vintage boot, general we are talking about the nineteen thirties to the nineteen sixties. That some people call the golden age of cowboy boots. It was this period where western Americana sort of permeated the culture at large. You have to remember at the turn of the century, America became obsessed with the vanishing west. We win the war, we have got the most amazing economic machine the world had ever seen much less we have ever seen. And we were just not ten years ago starving. Down here we were definitely starving. 
And so we can do anything, and you see his explosion of products that are being crafted, and it is not just cowboy boots, it’s everything. And they are more colorful, they are more flashy, they are more streamlined than ever before. Forty six into he fifties we are like making the stuff, this is the stuff the world wants. 
And I think that’s what informed that, in some deep psychological level. To make them so colorful or to make them interesting was part of an American expression. I am from Austin, I was born and raise here. I left when I got out of high school and I didn’t really think I was coming back. I have lived on the east coast and I have lived on the west coast. I have been to every state in between. And I can find something nice to say about all of them. But this is where I ended up living. 
The main thing I liked about then and I like now about Austin is it’s a town full of possibilities, and it a town full of people who will support possibilities. It allows for oddball things, it embraces oddball things. It sustains oddball things. And I think we are the richer for it. I was starting to do a lot of traveling on the road and I was looking for old Navajo rugs and discovered that I was bout twenty year too late. 
What I found instead were great colorful cowboy boots. For nothing, nobody was interested. And I was thinking this is just as much folk art as Navajo rugs. I was driving around west Texas I was doing some estate work for my family and I just started buying up all the boot I could, sixty thousand mile of driving a year, back and forth across the country. Which inturn led me to be able to become a dealer to finance my habit. 
When I started collecting vintage boots, there were a lot available. For at least a year or so I thought I was the only person on the island and then like Robinson Caruso I found a footprint on the beach, and it was not mine. And all of us went out there and decimated a herd that it had taken years to build up. Or it hasn’t been replenished in the meantime. We really did hunt it to death.
The thing I am known for is being able to identify boots that aren’t marked, because I became obsessed, because I was driving. In interviewing boot makers about well, was this you? When did you start doing that?  Where did you learn it? I got to where then I could look  at a pair of boots and be able to say oh yeah, that is definitely San Angelo and in fact that is a M.L. Letti as opposed to  Mercer or opposed to a Stanley. The way car freaks can look at a great car at a distance and go that’s a FORD. 
If you wanted to look into buying vintage boots, I wouldn’t buy on EBay but it might be a good place to educate yourself about what you like. I men you can look for nothing. But I would try to find out if there was someplace you could see them live, on the ground. 
In Austin there are several places that sell them; fit is and condition are virtually everything. Unless you are going to put them on the nail, then you can buy them on eBay and it wont matter. You get what you see not necessarily what you pay for. Regarding fit, Allen Bell al boot maker in Abilene says I can fit your feet, but I can’t fit your mind. The idea that it is up here, not down at your feet, some people want them really tight , some  people want them so loose that they can kick them off. 
That gets into what you want and knowing how to indentify what you want, for a lot of people that I hard to do. But if your toes are crunched under, if they are too short in other words, there is not damn thing you can do about that. Believe me I have tried everything short of sharpening the axe.  You just don’t want to go there, it is not worth it. There is always another pair. 
I don’t wear vintage boots to wok anymore. I used to and I was wearing them out too fast. It is the equivalent of asking your grandfather to go man a fence with you. He knows how to do it, he is probably better at it than you, but you run the risk that he is going to have a heart attack. You should buy them for ceremonial occasions or to wear lightly. 
I have a wide ranging love o bots and there are things I appreciate bout all of them, even the ones that look like nothing. I have got boots in my collection I have there just because it has got an oddball repair. But to me that’s, I love it. So get what you love. I started collecting stuff when I was little kid, I would literally go out in the gravel driveway behind the house and I would pick up rocks that I thought were interesting. And I would pick up the ones that were special and I would put them in a shoe box. And it is funny watching my son now who is twenty months, not even two yet. And he is already picking up rocks, and I am thinking maybe all kids do this. Or maybe just my kids are doing to do this. And if he sees another one he doesn’t put these down he just shifts the two to his hand and goes for that one. That’s me ,and maybe that I all I am, is just a kid who cant put down the rocks and wants to pick up the next rock and wants to pick up the rock and go wow look. And there is another one. My name is Evan Voyles and I am a connoisseur. 

]]></media:text>
 <itunes:duration>6:38</itunes:duration>
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 <itunes:author>ON Networks</itunes:author>
</item>
 <item> <title>Austin Boutique: Blackmail</title>
 <link>http://onnetworks.com/videos/austin-connoisseur/blackmail</link>
 <description>Owner Gail Chovan explains why she sells only dark fashion&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onnetworks.com/videos/austin-connoisseur/blackmail&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://images.onnetworks.com/images/austinconnoisseur_07blackmail_480x270.jpg&quot; title=&quot;Austin Boutique: Blackmail&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;</description>
 <pubDate>Thu, 17 May 2007 12:41:31 -0500</pubDate>
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 <media:title>Austin Boutique: Blackmail</media:title>
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 <media:description type="html">Owner Gail Chovan explains why she sells only dark fashion</media:description>
 <media:keywords>fashion,black,dark,dresses,noir,hip,cool,couture</media:keywords>
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 <media:copyright>Copyright 2007-2008 ON Networks, Inc.</media:copyright>
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 <media:text type="html"><![CDATA[Austin Connoisseur
Episode “Fashion: Blackmail”

Gail Chovan: Blackmail came from my love of all things black, my love of film noir, black and white film. As a matter of fact is was almost called film noir but everyone would think it was a video store. My name is Gail Chovan and I am the owner of Blackmail, and Vivid its sister store. I have been on south congress for six years, but I started Blackmail, it would be ten years ago. Fairly soon I will be about to celebrate my tenth anniversary with Blackmail. 
One day years ago I walked into a shop, actually in Washington D.C. where everything was white and I was wearing all black. And I stood there and said, somebody could do this in a really good way, have a black store like this white store and have it be beautiful and classic, and unique and without it being scary. 
Blackmail was founded on the concept of being able to walk into the store and finding whatever you needed to find that was black. I don’t like to go into stores where you can find everything you need in one stop. Having lived in Europe I would go to the bakery to buy a loaf of bread, the cheese store to buy cheese, the light bulb store to buy light bulbs, and the button store to buy buttons. And so if you need black stuff you should com4e to blackmail.
To stock the store I go to markets across the country. I shop everywhere actually, New York, L.A, Los Vegas are the three big markets that I go to, both for the gift market and the clothing. Publication will interview me and say, what lines do you carry? And I say it’s not about lines to me. It’s about a designer maybe even doing two pieces that speak really well in black. 
I have been in Austin maybe for 12 or 13 years. I really have embraced Austin because it has both the Liberal open minded thinking of the east coast, yet it has the Texas sentiment of anything is possible, starting my shop with 2,000 dollars in my pocket and a bunch of vintage clothing. Which is basically what I did ten years ago, was a risk. But Austin embraced it. Austin is a really great place that embraces, it embraces the independent spirit. It embraces independent business owner’s .the people of Austin love to support unique small business. I think that really important and I think that’s a major reason why I like living in Austin. 
It’s a long story beginning with I guess my passion for French and all things French. I studied French literature for years and lived in France for years doing graduate degrees. And one day I was just overtaken with sewing. So I left the world of academia and just got into enrolled in design school in Paris. I became quickly ensconced in the design world there and ended up finishing school and working as a designer.
Why do I love doing what I do? That’s kind of a tough one at times because it’s a really, really difficult job. I often call different boutique owners in town and say, how do you do this? How do we make money? Its not, it’s a lot of smoke and mirrors. It looks like we lead this glamorous life of having our own business. It’s really, really a tough business. 
I like being self employed, and I really enjoy having my business environment. Being in this boutique where for me its a little stage to create the kind of environment that I decide to create that particular day. People know me for fostering the individual style. Not being afraid to thin outside of the box in term’s of fashion or in terms of style. It doesn’t have to be designer with a label on it. It can be also a little more creative o r not so much formal, but maybe a little bit more creative and innovative than just a T-shirt and jeans, maybe a little avante garde at the same time.
I think that there’s a common thread with people that come into blackmail, or at least even take the time to look at our shop. And that is that there brave, they can think outside of the box. There not stuck in there little microcosm of I’ve got to go to the gap and buy my T-Shirt. They might go to the gap and buy a T-Shirt; I go to the gap and buy a T-Shirt. But there willing to maybe have the experience of coming in here and just saying, oh look this is a great little black dress that I can wear with something I have at home. 
It’s not the mantra that you have to wear all black, it’s the willingness and the openness to come explore the space and say hey, that was a really cool place and I like what there doing. The importance of having a business background and opening a shop is Fundamental. I would recommend if you want to get into fashion go to school. I think it’s really important to have an educational background. I talk to a lot of people that will sit at my counter, which is kind of like a little salon that we conduct there. And they say I want to open my own shop because I love to shop. 
Well I think you really need to, and I wish I had had more of a business background. Working a boutique manage people, learn how to do payroll, get all of your background in business courses. But there are opportunities to go and work for a designer in New York and hone yo0ur skills after you have a solid educational background. 
If you don’t have the technique, people say I want to be a designer but I hate to sew. Well, learn to sew first. You don’t see tom ford at a sewing machine now, but he did at some point. Then branch out, you need to have a world view. You need to travel and see the world. It’s really, really important to just kind of think outside of your comfort zone. And see where people are coming from, what there wearing, what there buying in different cities. If you cant go to Europe travel around the United States. 
And even to this day I love to sew, I could lock myself up in my little studio and just sew all day long, but I don’t think it would pay the bills. My name is Gail Chovan and I am a connoisseur. 


]]></media:text>
 <itunes:duration>6:59</itunes:duration>
 <itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
 <itunes:keywords>fashion black dark dresses noir hip cool couture</itunes:keywords>
 <itunes:subtitle>Owner Gail Chovan explains why she sells only dark fashion</itunes:subtitle>
 <itunes:author>ON Networks</itunes:author>
</item>
 <item> <title>Conservation: The Nature Conservancy</title>
 <link>http://onnetworks.com/videos/austin-connoisseur/conservation%3A-the-nature-conservancy</link>
 <description>Jeff Francell on greenspace&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onnetworks.com/videos/austin-connoisseur/conservation%3A-the-nature-conservancy&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://images.onnetworks.com/images/austinconnoisseur_conservation_480x270.jpg&quot; title=&quot;Conservation: The Nature Conservancy&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;</description>
 <pubDate>Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:02:00 -0500</pubDate>
 <dc:creator>ON Networks</dc:creator>
 <guid isPermaLink="false">897 at http://onnetworks.com</guid>
 <category domain="http://onnetworks.com/videos/austin-connoisseur">Austin Connoisseur</category>
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 <media:content medium="video" height="720" width="1280" bitrate="4164" framerate="24" samplingrate="44.1" channels="2" lang="en-US" url="http://podcast.onnetworks.com/videos/austinconnoisseur_conservation_1280x720.mp4?feed=video&amp;key=5&amp;target=site" onntype="hd" />
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 <media:title>Conservation: The Nature Conservancy</media:title>
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 <media:text type="html"><![CDATA[Austin Connoisseur
Episode “The Nature Conservancy”

Jeff Francell: There’s so many great places to go here that nobody should ever be bored. Pick a place on a map, if its green it’s probably a park, go check it out. It’s probably got some sort of secret that’s worth finding out. My name is Jeff Francell, and I work for the Nature Conservancy of Texas. The nature conservancy is the largest non profit conservation organization, and were focused on wildlife and unique habitats, and biodiversity, and preserving that for future generations. 
The Nature Conservancy has had an extremely long history in Austin. We have been active here since the mid eighties. The first action that the Nature Conservancy was involved in was the Balcones canyon land conservation plan, setting aside 30,000 acres in western Travis County for endangered species, setting aside those lands to allow other lands in the area to be developed. So it was sort of a balance between the environment and development, which that’s a big part of what Austin’s recipe for success is. 
I think that the community leaders throughout the last several decades have been visionary. They realize they can’t do it alone, its taken unique partnerships, working with the Nature Conservancy, working with other organizations. It’s really been a commitment of the community to make sure something is spared from the onslaught of bulldozers and houses and shopping centers.
When you look at us, compared to other major cities in the state, were doing really well. In fact if you see the park lands that Dallas and Houston and San Antonio have per capita. That’s a good bit of the reason that we have had the growth that we have had. Because we have this green infrastructure, these parks and places to swim, and run, and hike, it’s attracted people, people from other cities in Texas, people from other states, and the people that get here and learn to appreciate that become committed to protecting those places, and to protecting more of them. 
The reason that you have companies and you have jobs coming to Austin is because it’s a great place to live. I have been in Austin for most of the last twenty years. It’s a unique combination of things. It’s a great community. 300 days of sunshine, good clean water, just a great place to live and to raise a family. I have got a three and a five year old girl who are totally thriving. I like to go out to places where we can eat outside. Barton springs road restaurant row, or Polvo's in south Austin. 
I have always had an appreciation for the outdoors and open places. I was born in far west Texas and I spent most of my summers out there. It’s the land of wide open spaces, you can drive for 50 miles and not see a subdivision sign or a billboard or a shopping center, still today. And when I was growing up I just appreciated that.
 I spent other parts of my life, the rest of the school year in the big city. And just knowing that wide open spaces existed sort of instilled an appreciation of that to me. This made me interested in wildlife, and made me interested in conservation issues. I think though that it was really after coming to work for the Nature Conservancy and realizing that I can have an impact on saving a particular place, that’s when I realized it was the right thing for me. 
Over the last ten years I have helped do a few things like that in Travis County and there are a few places that won’t be developed because I played a role in helping protect them and it feels good. If you have never been to Austin there are definitely a few places that should be on your list. First thing that I would do if I had somebody that was in from out of town is take them to Barton springs. That’s Austin. We get so hot here in the summer time, that to have a humongous 1/8th mile long natural swimming pool. It’s a constant 68 degrees; it’s a great place to chill out. 
I might suggest that they take a run or a walk on the town lake hike and bike trail. On a Saturday morning, it kind of looks like one of the busiest freeways in town on a Saturday morning. You’ve got hundreds of people per square mile walking up and down the trial, strollers, dogs, bikes, everybody out there kind of getting their exercise in the fresh air. 
I probably would hike them up to Mount Bonnel for a sunset, watch the sunset over Balcones escarpment, one of the highest points over Lake Austin. You get a sense of what people who came to this part of the world a few hundred years ago, kind of why they settled here. 
I think that the best way that you can make a difference is to use our parks. To get out there and be on the Town Lake Hike and bike trail. Take a hike on the greenbelt. Go to a plays cape with your kids. But use them responsibly. Pick up your trash, stay on the trails, and be courteous to other people. Because people noticed that our trails are used, and so it becomes a no brainer in a city counsel member or mayor or county judge’s mind. Trails and open space is just something that we do here. 
A lot of the things that the conservancy does and the city and county here do are for the future. And they may seem expensive or they may seem hard to do today. But twenty years from now nobody’s going to look back and say wow, why did you do that? What a waste of money that was, no way. It’s always going to be valued, and the value will significantly increase over time. My name is Jeff Francell, and I am a connoisseur. 

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 <itunes:duration>6:10</itunes:duration>
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</item>
 <item> <title>Vegetarian Living: Mr. Natural</title>
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 <pubDate>Mon, 14 May 2007 15:42:24 -0500</pubDate>
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 <media:text type="html"><![CDATA[Austin Connoisseur
Episode “Vegetarian Living: Mr. Natural”

Maria Mendoza: Food is medicine and medicine is food so is the saying of Hippocrates which is considered the father of the medicine from ancient times. So we are just going back to the basics. Well, I’m Maria Luisa Mendoza; I’m one of the owners of Mr. Natural in Austin. And this is a place where you can come, and it’s a health food store, it’s a bakery, it’s a restraint, and also a center of Yoga and meditation. 
My passion of this kind of things we do is because I am a vegetarian person for about thirty years. I love Austin, I was not born here but I found Austin as a very beautiful city because it’s all green. The town lake with all the places we walk through or we can bike. And al the swimming holes that it has, its lovely. 
The blue sky and all this green are relaxing to the eyes. I do think god blessed this city very much in many ways, I am no Austenite, but I love it like I was born here. I grew up in a family, a Mexican family where rice, beans, meat, and vegetables were part of my diet. I was kind of an ill person from my legs, my knees. Then I was having a hard time to find a good solution for that. We met Doctor Estrada, he was a naturopathic. 
He was putting me into this style when I was still a vegetarian person. So his treatment in a way really made me free from those pains in my legs. I quit my job and I joined the program of Doctor Estrada. And I am a part of his program of teaching and educating communities in this type of life style.
Well, Mr. Natural is a center for holistic health, because you find a place where you can eat healthy food. That is with no meat, with no fats of animals, and also a place that has a vitamin section. You can come and find a yoga class and a meditation session for free, where you can try and join. Also we offer a very nice array of deserts and bakery, where everything is with organic flour. We are teaching how to take healthy thinking, because the healthy thinking is also going to have an impact on the emotional life of a person that has illness of any kind. 
I would recommend to someone who wants to become a vegetarian, to go in a gradual way, reducing all the food that usually was taken. Like less fats less meats, less sugar. Check the amount of salt, because sometimes we eat a lot of salt too. 
In a soft way, integrate into your diet whole grains, nuts vegetables, and protein from the soy. These will be fine, but if you combine in one cereal. From any kind, it could be rice or corn. And then you combine one of the legumes, like the beans any kind of bean. The combination of these two is a very good protein that you could have. Then add just vegetables, fresh vegetables, like salads or soups or steamed vegetables. Or you can have stir fry with nuts, like pecans or sesame seeds, or cashews, all that is going to enrich the flavor and also the nutrition of the vegetable dishes. 
The fresh salads always are irreplaceable. The main goal is to stay healthy, because nowadays we have so many generations where we were told to eat meat, eggs and vegetables a little bit. And we have a generation full of arthritis, rheumatism, high blood pressure, diabetes. Your nutrition comes more direct form nature to yourself. 
So when we have that type of food, also our digestive system works much better. And to give the opportunity of an eternity of to eat healthy and tasty that is the main goal. But also to motivate people to improve there lives, to find themselves and learn to be happy, how to be happy, how to reach the happiness, because that is the basic thing for someone who wants to be healthy.  My name is Maria Luisa Mendoza, and I am a connoisseur.

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</item>
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 <pubDate>Tue, 01 May 2007 18:03:11 -0500</pubDate>
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 <media:text type="html"><![CDATA[Austin Connoisseur
Episode “Art Gallery Soco”

Jason Siegel: I mean the artists of today are documenting the world as they see it today. I opened the gallery on south congress in February of 2000. So we are now in our eight year of being in this location. My name is Jason Siegel, I own Gallery Soco on south congress. We sell fine art and custom framing.
South congress is a really popular destination for locals who come down here just to spend the afternoon. As well as tourist, you know people come to Austin and they come from all over the place and you have a very, it’s a really good quality of life. There are lots of good restaurants; there are lots of things to do outside. There are cultural things to do. There is lots of music, there is lots of art. You have this sort of haven of positive energy. 
I actually grew up in the art business. My family has been in it since I was born. And so from the time I was young I was running around art galleries and museums, interior design studios, just always surrounded by art. Maybe it’s strange but the works to me there alive, there vey dynamic and so I look at them in moonlight. Or I look at them in bright halogen light. Or I turn lights off and look at them in daylight, on a cloudy day or a rainy day or a sunny day and I see different things. And I am having a conversation with that piece. 
But sometimes I will look at a piece and I don’t always understand it. Then I can ask the artist what they were trying to achieve in it, and they might explain it to me, then I get it too, and then I can pass that on. When you buy the original piece, you’re buying that work of art that that artist stood in front of. And so when you go to a museum and your standing in front of a Picasso, Picasso stood in front of that painting and worked on it. 
I like to have a lot of art work that I think isn’t shocking necessarily, but it is pushing the edges of artwork. And you know, the colors speak to you, the layers of paint speak to you, and the way that the paint changes with different lighting speaks to you. And the artist as a body of work, all there work, you can see there style in it and see what there doing. There doing something completely unique. I have always had a really good eye for finding good pieces and I think that translates into how I have done my business into not only finding good pieces but finding artist who create all good pieces.
Ok so this painting here is by Lisa Fittipaldi, she is one of my artists, and she is an artist who happens to be blind. And she says that she can not see color distance, print, peripheral vision, shape, shadow, or dimension. But she says she can sense light, so she's not what’s known as black blind. If you look at her earlier work it was darker it was muddier. 
But she practiced twelve hours a day and she got better and she got better. And she obviously had natural talent but she overcame this disability. 
This artist behind me is Kevin Greer, he’s my youngest painter, and he is only twenty nine years old. Although his palette is so sophisticated he paints probably like he is in his fifties or sixties. He is my most collected artist, I have been sending his paintings to London, Chicago, New York, Florida, Houston, Dallas, all over the place. 
He is so dynamic, you know a lot of artist they will base, you know there paintings are always based on still lives, or there always based on horizons, or they are always based on color fields. With him he’s influenced by so many things that he is constantly doing new and different work, which I find to be really refreshing and unique.
This artist that’s behind me, his name is Jeff Scott. And he was a fashion photographer and lived in New York, and got kind of tired doing fashion photography. He wanted to get into fine art; he had always really been an artist. So he contacted Graceland with his idea of the personal Elvis Presley. Graceland really liked the idea and they hired him on I think initially for a three year contract. They gave him access to all of Elvis’s artifacts, at Graceland and all the warehouses. Part of this thing is that his photograph is sort of like a blank canvas, and then he uses that to create his fine art from it. 
The first thing I would recommend to people who are looking to buy artwork who don’t already collect artwork. Buy what you love and buy things that are in your budget. Those are the two most important things. But the most important thing is can I live with this piece? I mean what is it? What about it is striking me? And you might not, you might walk into the gallery just to look around and not think your going to even buy anything. And then this piece just jumps out at you. And you need to start thinking, where can I put it in my house? That’s kind of the right piece.
So that brings us into you should buy artwork that’s in your budget, because you don’t ever want to buy a piece and like be out on a limb. And you know be all stressed out, because its going to give you negative feelings about collecting art, and it should be fun, easy, and you know there is artwork from 5 dollars up to millions of dollars. So there is a vast price range. So figure out what am I comfortable spending? What am I comfortable purchasing, and look for artist that are in those budgets. 
I do have pieces, original pieces of art, that start off at forty or forty five dollars, and they go up to… Probably the most expensive piece I have in the gallery is probably fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. And then I encourage all my collectors too, you know when you travel go to galleries. When you go travel go to museums. When a new gallery opens go to there openings and look at there work. Because it’s going to help you realize what you want to collect for yourself. 
I always found that a lot of galleys are very intimidating and so I say, don’t make it intimidating. Go into the galleries, ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, there are no stupid questions that question will cause a dialog between you and the gallery owner or you and the artist or you and the painting. That will help you experience what it is that you might be  looking for or the answer that you need in order to feel comfortable buying a piece or taking a piece home. Or looking at a piece or understanding a piece. 
I personally try to make the art buying experience very enjoyable and as easy as possible. I put all my inventory on my website so that people can go and peruse and look at which artist they like and which artist they don’t like, and which pieces they like. Because I understand that it can be intimidating and people don’t understand it. So it easy for them to… Since I don’t understand it I’m just not going to do it. And the only way your going to understand it is by looking at pieces and asking questions. 
If your in Austin come on down to the gallery and feel free to ask some questions and feel free to look around and I am happy to give you other places to go look at art and other places to educate yourself about the art world. Hopefully it will become a hobby for you and you will start collecting artist work and end up with your own personal collection. 
My name is Jason Siegel and I am a connoisseur. 



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 <media:text type="html"><![CDATA[Austin Connoisseur
Episode “Austin Art Glass”

Aaron Gross: Glass blowing is just fun. It almost seems like your getting away with something. You know it’s really satisfying to hear comments from people who buy this stuff and how much they enjoy it. And it enriches their lives, so for me it’s really satisfying work. 
I am Aaron Gross I am owner and Craftsman at this Austin Art Glass and we have he Gallery location on south congress, and then my studios here in north Austin. I am born and raised in Austin; I have been here thirty eight years. 
Austin is full of interesting people and friendly people and then there’s just a lot to do here. I personally love to fish. Fishing is great around here. A lot of people like the night life, you know. There’s a lot of fun place to go, celebrity spotting down on South Congress. I started out in glass at the California College of arts and crafts. I went there to study sculpture and ceramics. Just got lured into the glass shop, I had no ideas that they even blew glass. So it was pretty exciting for me. They have one of the best glass departments in the country so I just got into it by luck. 
I worked in a big goblet factory in California. We would make about two hundred wine glasses a day, and I moved up through every position in the factory. So I got a lot of practice there. You start at the bottom, sweeping the floors. And move up through bringing nits, and then it’s on to master finishing. It’s not the most fun way to work with glass. 
I obviously have a lot more fun here at my studio making things one at a time. The factory is kind of production style. We have about twelve guys on the team. And each person will have a little small specific job to do. And the piece would just go down the production line. Glass blowing is the oldest industry, you know, besides prostitution and the factory settings. The progression of how you move up in the factories hasn’t changed for two thousand years.
Most of my inspiration comes from nature. It’s kind of a classical motif in art to be inspired by nature. A lot of my pieces are coral reef or rainforest inspired. There are not too many glassblowers around Austin. But my specialty is wine glasses. I am really passionate about that. It’s the hardest thing to make skill wise, and I spent about ten years of my career, working on nothing but wine glasses. 
Glass kind of has its own agenda, which is directly opposite from my agenda. I strive to make things really round and as perfect as I can. But glass wants to be more drippy and organic shaped and it doesn’t like to take a perfect form, so… You have to strike some kind of balance between what the glass wants to do and what you want to do with it.
The price range goes from about one dollar for some of the small beads that I make, up to about three thousand, maybe thirty five hundred for some of the more elaborate sculptures. Some of those sculpture groupings I would work all day on one piece and sometimes more than a day so a lot of work involved. But we try to have something in everybody’s price range.
I think the people who are really drawn to glass are people that are fascinated with fire and loved the heat. When they were kids they loved to set fire and play with gunpowder. Model rockets things like that, its just fascination with fire that seems to attract a lot of people. A Lot of fire signs, Leos and Aires tend to love it. It never hurts to have some background information about glass; there are some books that I recommend to my students that like to read before they take the class. They can check out a couple of books. History of glass is always interesting so I would recommend everybody check that out too. 
If you want to get into glass blowing and come take a class with us they can check out our website. All the info is on our website, Austin art glass. Or you can call the gallery, its 916-glass. I get a lot of people that have never done it before that just want to try it, and some of them I just teach one class and they realize it’s just too hard and they don’t want to do it. 
A lot of them continue and make it in my apprentice program. After I teach about three classes you’re eligible to apprentice with me. Learning here at the studio and ultimately assisting and making pieces and getting some real practical and assisting. And improving enough more advanced things like to make wine glasses could take years, should take years, unless you’re just a natural. 
Glass is always exciting and I really, really look forward to seeing the pieces that I made and that’s something that I look forward to all week. I only blow glass three days a week and the whole rest of the time I look forward to it. It’s just always been something I enjoyed doing. My name is Aaron Gross and I am a connoisseur. 


I 


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 <media:text type="html"><![CDATA[Austin Connoisseur
Episode “Whip in Wine”

Humbre Finch: Not only super sophisticated people drink wine. I’m known pretty much for being able to understand other people’s pallets. Whip in has been here since 1986. We had our 20th anniversary last year, which was really nice. And uh, here we are now. 
I actually really don’t have one single favorite wine; to me wine is more like an occasion thing. You know it’s a seasonal thing also. Like in the summer I wouldn’t really want a rich, big, thick red in the heat of the summer. I want something light. It’s always about the moment, you know. Whatever I feel that moment. If I want to have something soft, if I want to have a nice easy night. I want a easy soft wine. If I want a wine that is really a little bit livelier, maybe I might get a Zinfandel, or a Shiraz. Something with some spice to it. 
Some people come in and there really nice and elegant, and they really like, really light wine. It seems like it fits their personality. Normally, it seems like the wine that they like is the wine that fits there personality at that time. My first memory of wine was my uncles peach wine. It was homemade, but they make it out of all kind of fruits; like plums, peaches, raspberries, strawberries. That’s what I thought all wine was supposed to be like.
If you don’t know anything about wine and you just, you just starting out. Do a little research, you shouldn’t just go out there blind and try to pick something. You should be aware of the year. You shouldn’t just choose a wine, because the last vintage was good. Each vintage is usually different. Because every year is not the same at every vineyard. So there’s not going to produce the same amount, the same type of grapes, and the same quality of grapes. So you should really pay attention to the vintage.
If you know the year that you like, then you’re pretty much set on getting what you want. Just because you buy a $80 bottle of wine doesn’t mean it’s going to be better, than like a $20 or 30$ dollar bottle of wine. It’s really not about the price that you pay for your wine; it’s about the quality of wine that you’re getting. 
And it’s also about the type of year that the vineyard, that’s selling your wine to you, had. If they had a really good year, and it’s a lower end wine, and the sun was shining just like it was supposed to, and the rain fell just right. Then they are going to have pretty good quality grapes. If it is a higher end wine and they had a bad year I am pretty sure they won’t lower the price for you because they had a bad year. 
If it’s your first time tasting wine ever in your life, then I would say you probably start out with your white wine. Because it’s a light wine and it’s not so complex. But then when you’re ready to go drier, then you might need to dip into like maybe a, dry Pinot Grio. Or even a drier Sauvignon Blanc. And then you would probably start slow into the reds. You would probably start slow maybe some light bodied reds. Some Italian reds, you would probably try eating it with food. Maybe some cheeses, or if you get into reds, try it with some rich chocolate.
 After that you can just start upgrading into a little heavier wines. Maybe even a more medium bodied wine. Or maybe a Zinfandel after that. Then you will be on your way. I believe that a lot of people they have there own way of judging wines once there palette gets trained. Because your palette is trained by what kinds of wines you tried over the years. So the palette constantly changes. 
If I had three wines I would like for you to try, it would probably be a Malbec, a Carmenier, and a Zinfandel. A Malbec is a special grape, from Argentina. Normally a Malbec would normally be something that is a nice dry plum flavor. It has a little bit of oak. It packs a lot of earth normally, but it usually blends in pretty well with the fruit. So it can be light to medium bodied. But the fruit is normally like dried plum. And sometimes you can get them when they have a little bit more of a red berry taste. 
You know, and that’s what I do like about Malbecs. I kind of think of Malbecs, as the little girl cousin of the Pino Noir. Because where as a Pino Noir is drier and a little heartier. A Malbec is a lot softer, and brighter. 
I would say my next grape would be the Carmenier. Which comes out of Chile. And it is really a Bordeaux grape. For a long time they thought it was a cabernet, and then they thought it was a merlot grape, and then through genetic testing they found out it was really a Bordeaux grape. It has the dryness of a Merlot, but the fruitiness of a cabernet. Some are light in body, some are medium bodied. They come in all ranges all the way to full body. 
Some are kind of earthy; some are really light and not earthy at all just a hint of fruit and a hint of earth and a hint of oak. And just a little smooth finish, not much spice on it. Normally they still would have just the right amount of oak. Their normally not to earthy. Some come from Argentina they would be earthy. 
And then that last grape would be the Zinfandel. Red Zinfandel. You a really rich, full bodied red Zinfandel. It has a lot of robust fruit, its usually bright fruit. Some people say that it is an original indigenous American grape. Some say that it came from Italy. And there normally really rich, with a little bit of black cherry, a little black currant undertones. It’s really a nice robust, rich, hearty, fruity wine.
I think for the most part the world wine family is pretty nice and tolerant and helpful. So don’t be afraid to ask for help. That’s what people like me are here for. My name is Humbre Finch, and I am a connoisseur. 
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 <pubDate>Wed, 07 Mar 2007 11:18:02 -0600</pubDate>
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 <media:title>Vintage Furniture with Elle Green</media:title>
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 <media:description type="html">&lt;p&gt;Fill out your furniture needs&lt;/p&gt;
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 <media:text type="html"><![CDATA[Austin Connoisseur
Episode “Austin Modern vintage Furniture”

Elle Green: I don’t think I have a piece of furniture that I haven’t tired of in about five years. Well, um, if you’re a collector and you’re attracted to it and you’re buying it continuously. You need to have a outlet. If you’re a collector you cannot, not buy. Pretty much everybody in my family is involved in the arts or antiques or collecting, buying or selling. And it’s just a kind of a natural progression. 
My name is Elle Green and I own Austin Modern. Vintage furniture, 20th century antiques, mainly ranging from art deco all the way up through 70’s high design. I have been working in vintage for 20 years. I am 37 years old, so that’s almost half of my life. 
I am a bit of a history buff, and you see a lot of historical events reflected in design of the period. With art deco you have a lot of Egyptian influences, and it’s because they discovered tuts tomb, around the same time. So that in itself is kind of fascinating to me. 
We like items in the best possible condition, or the most unique items. We try to find items that are not easily found. That’s pretty much what we are known for, is furniture and being fanatical about quality. We go out of our way to make sure that the items we have are going to last and are worthy of collecting. Versus the $10 dollar table because you just need a $10 dollar table. There are people that are collecting; there are people that are trying to fit a new house they just bought. There are interior decorators that are just trying to get that one fabulous crazy piece to make a home different. 
A lot of people are in there 30’s. They grew up in divorced households, but they love 50’s furniture. They grew up watching reruns of “Leave it to Beaver”. And so they are trying to capture this lifestyle that they never lived. You know a family unit, a mom who cooks dinner. And so for some people it really resonates, bringing about a past that they never actually had. Which is kind of a trip too.
It would be great if you could just walk into a thrift store, garage sale, or an estate sale. But with the advent of the internet, there’s not a lot of things coming on to the market that people don’t know what they are, the likelihood of finding an item somewhere, where people don’t know exactly what it is, and what its worth is close to nil, so theres a lot of driving and travel involved. 
Vintage stores are completely different. Antique stores are completely different from normal retail businesses. Especially here in Austin, um, they like to be grouped together. And so it’s more of a destination. Like here on north loop we have five vintage stores. And we are not really in competition with each other. 
Its kind of creating a community for people who are in to vintage shopping. So we have gone so far as to print up the vintage guide to around town. Which list all the stores in Austin. It has a map, and will tell people what those stores carry, what they specialize in, where there located and how to find them. 
And any of the stores listed in the vintage guide will have copies of that. Plus there in a lot of the hotels downtown. So is not hard for someone who is visiting Austin to find where all the vintage stores are. 
It’s really crucial for someone looking for an item to do a little bit of homework. The first thing to do would be to educate yourself as to what it is that you’re looking for. You know what the market is; you know what the price range is going to be for that item. It’s just a bummer for anybody to make the mistake of buying something, paying a high price for it. Then finding out its not really worth what they thought it was. 
Having some sort of education and giving yourself a little bit of knowledge before you go out and buy is crucial. And dont always rely on whoever is selling you the item to give you the whole back story. Because they might not have it.
The second thing that I would say is check in, you know pick out those stores that regularly carry those items. Check in regularly and let them know, Hey I am looking for a credenza. If you are looking for something specific, I would definitely let a dealer who specializes in that know what it is what you’re looking for. They will look for you and contact you if they have one. And you should never feel obligated to buy that item. If someone makes you feel that they found something specifically for you and now you need to purchase it from them. That’s probably the store that you don’t want to shop at. 
Dealers will know who has what, and ask several different stores. Not everybody wants to send customers here there and yonder. My thought process on it is, if I don’t have an item, its not going to hurt me to tell you who does. You know these items are 40, 60 years old r older. They are going to have life; they are going to have age. They are going to have a little bit, I call it soul. These items are not perfect. They have had a life and they have been around. They have seen the world. They have seen many persons and many things, there are no perfect pieces. 
When it comes to condition, you need to almost expect an item to not be immaculate. If you’re looking for something that is one hundred percent perfect, you need to buy a reproduction. It’s a common misconception that stores want to bargain and you know; go back and forth on the price. Really we don’t. We really, really don’t. It’s such a drag. But you know, stop in even if it’s not to buy, stop in, look around see what they have new, say hello. Keep your face fresh in their mind, and they will always keep you in mind when they find something interesting hat you might like. My name is Elle Green, and I’m a connoisseur. ]]></media:text>
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