Alan Graham

They're going to get hit by a car someday.

Well, that's the fear, but I'd rather walk down 6th Street and see a guy with a guitar on the corner playing with a hat out in front and throw money in that deal, thanking him for that deal or selling me a whirly gig while I'm walking with my family to the restaurant that my kid's looking at and going, Hey, Daddy, I want one of those.

Get me, please.

And you pull out a $5 bill.

It's dignity, man.

And then we never know where that might lead somebody.

Yeah, 7th and Nature's.

Yeah.

Well, that place came about in the 1990s when downtown Austin was just kind of a shithole.

Nothing going on.

We were barely at the beginning of the revitalization of downtown Austin.

So the obvious place to have put that shelter was there on the eastern fringe of downtown Austin.

And then there was an explosion of people wanting to revitalize, move downtown.

And then suddenly this thing became kind of the source and summit of the center of the town, reviled by everybody.

moving down there.

So it kind of came about naturally.

It actually happened during my buddy's Kirk Watson's first term as a mayor.

And he regrets it.

He looks at that as a mistake.

But what do you do now?