Visit by ‘Very Big Star’ to tiny Marathon could be a portent
MARATHON — Last Sunday afternoon, a Very Big Star of cable TV swooped into town, sampled local culinary offerings on camera and then, before word spread about the visitation, vanished like the mysterious Marfa Lights. I heard that in-the-know locals had to sign a Stormy Daniels-style nondisclosure agreement, in effect until the show airs in the fall. When it runs, VBS warned, Marathoners should expect an onslaught of visitors so vast they might not be able to handle it. (From a New Yorker magazine profile of VBS, I learned that onslaughts have indeed happened elsewhere.)
“Hey, we’ve had Beyonce and Matthew McConaughey here,” a local said to herself as she watched VBS settle into an SUV and head west on Highway 90. “I’m guessing we can manage.”
Maybe so, I was thinking on my bike ride home after VBS’s quick-as-quail visit. (“Native Texan” readers may recall that wife Laura and I are part-time Marathoners.) Still, the visit got me wondering whether the unassuming little town we love, the slightly scruffy un-Marfa of the Big Bend, might be about to experience an unexpected — and perhaps uncomfortable — star turn in the trans-Pecos sun. (You never know where fickle fame will choose to light; after all, a winsome cable-TV couple transformed my humble hometown in recent years by fixing up down-at-the-heels houses.)
Marathon’s in the news. A week before the VBS visit, the Austin American-Statesman featured a glowing piece about a new barbecue joint and microbrewery soon to open a block from Marathon’s already-famous Gage Hotel. Traffic on 90 picked up immediately, although I’m guessing the spring break lure of Big Bend National Park, not the Statesman’s “Five Things to Do in Marathon” sidebar, was the reason.
There was a time, not that long ago, when nearby Marfa, an hour to the west, was a faded, little ranching town known for its handsome Presidio County Courthouse, the filming
of “Giant” in the mid-1950s and not much else. These days, it’s an ultra-cool arts mecca that gets mentioned in Texas Monthly and the New York Times Travel section every six weeks or so. (One of 52 places in the world you have to visit, the Times proclaimed.)
Marfa’s cattle pens may be empty, but you still see herds: young, black-clad hipsters meandering along downtown streets, wondering why the cool bar they read about on their phones isn’t open on weekdays and what else there is to do in a place so far from Austin or LA or New York. Housing prices have soared beyond the means of teachers and Border Patrol agents and other middle- and working-class residents. Housing stock has grown scarce as out-of-towners buy up old adobes and transform them into stylish part-time residences or vacation rentals. Marfa thrives, but it runs the risk of becoming a caricature of itself.
The late artist Donald Judd gets credit for transforming a cattle town in decline into an internationally known art center when he purchased Fort A.D. Russell, a defunct cavalry post, in the 1970s and established the Chinati Foundation. Marfans who’ve been there a while suggest that the town became the Marfa we know today more recently, when monied urban Texans — first Houstonians, briefly Dallasites and then Austinites — discovered the lure of the distant and the different in the late 1990s.
Maybe Marathon’s next, since out-of-towners have been buying second homes and fixing them up in recent years. Or, maybe not. It’s been more than two decades since Texas Monthly predicted the little town at the foot of the Glass Mountains might become the Taos of Texas, and it hasn’t happened yet.
My friend Russ Tidwell, a political consultant who’s divided his time between Marathon and Austin for more than three decades, says it’s not likely to happen. Russ reminds me that Judd made Marfa a specific destination for a particular niche of people who visit year-round, whereas Marathon, a much-smaller community, is a seasonal jumping-off place for elsewhere: Big Bend, Fort Davis, Marfa. Art galleries, restaurants and other local businesses can’t handle what he calls “the tourist drought” between seasons.
“I love Marathon. It’s a very special, magical place,” Russ says, even though he knows from experience how hard it is to keep a business going year-round.
Meanwhile, Brick Vault Brewery & Barbecue, a block from the Gage, may be able to ride out the periodic tourist droughts. The new business occupies what used to be the town’s mercantile, which also housed the bank. The building burned to the ground in 1920, but the bank’s brick vault survived. The 131-year-old structure also has been a gas station and, more recently, a bar and burger place called the Flying Burro. Gage owner J.P. Bryan, a longtime Marathon benefactor, bought the property last year.
The Brick Vault will be open Thursday through Sunday, with Hill Country-style brisket, sausage, ham and chicken smoked in the vault and sold by the pound until it runs out. The pit-master is Adam Molina, a 32-yearold Robstown native who comes from Texas Meat Company in Boerne.
Overseeing the microbrewery is Brodie Pierce, 33, who was with Big Bend Brewing Co. in nearby Alpine until Bryan hired him away. He’ll make beer to serve solely on the premises.
“We’ll start off with five flavors,” he told me last Sunday, “although the possibilities are endless. What I would like to do is start off with the more traditional German- and English-style beers and eventually lager and pilsners. Low alcohol, easy drinking — we’re going to try to ease the people into it a little bit.”
The Brick Vault’s soft opening is this weekend, the official opening late April. Don’t tarry too many weeks before making the trek, though. If VBS is right about the TV show’s impact, the Gage Hotel and the Marathon Motel will be booked for months, and the cozy White Buffalo Bar will be packed. All you’ll get from the hotel’s superb .12 Gauge Restaurant will be a sniff of ribeye aroma as you stroll by on the crowded sidewalk. Lines at the Brick Vault will be out the door, across the patio and down the road.
If that happens, give me a call, and we’ll go visit my friend Harold Cook, another political consultant who divides his time between Austin and Marathon. Harold is likely to have a bottle of reposado tequila in the freezer, a pot of chili simmering on the stove and Frito Pie makings on the counter. Along with Travis, the world’s friendliest dog, he’ll happily take us in.