Greetings From Austin

The most photographed wall in South Austin is a postcard. Todd Sanders and Rory Skagen painted it in 1998 on the side of Roadhouse Relics, Sanders's neon sign shop at South First and Annie, copying the format of the large letter postcards American towns sold in the 1940s: the city name in block capitals with a scene painted inside each letter. The scenes are local, including the University of Texas tower, the Capitol, the Congress Avenue bridge and Barton Springs. Sanders bought the building when it was close to derelict and South First was a street people drove through rather than to. The mural was an attempt to give a declining block something worth looking at, painted years before the neighbourhood turned into a destination, and it long predates the idea that a wall might be an attraction in its own right. By 2013 the paint had faded badly in the Texas sun. Roughly ten thousand dollars in community donations paid for a restoration that November, which is a fair measure of how thoroughly a hand painted advertisement for nothing had become public property. Sanders still builds neon signs in the shop behind it, which is worth knowing: the mural is not a tourist installation dropped onto a blank wall but the side of a working business that has been there the whole time.