Picture pawn shops, cheap motels, and adult video stores lining this strip — that was SoCo for most of the twentieth century. For most of the twentieth century, this was a rundown strip of pawn shops, adult video stores, cheap motels, and auto repair shops. The Continental Club opened at 1315 South Congress in 1955 as a supper club; by the 1970s it was one of Austin's most important jazz and blues venues, hosting everyone from Tina Turner to the Fabulous Thunderbirds.
But the broader transformation of SoCo happened in the 1990s, when a handful of visionary independent retailers — Tesoros Trading Company, Allen's Boots, Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds — chose the cheap rent on this neglected strip to open the kinds of shops that couldn't exist in a mall. Amy's Ice Creams, founded in 1984, added the essential Austin element of performance and play. South by Southwest showcases made SoCo stages essential.
Within a decade the street had flipped from blighted to boutique, and Austin's most photographed stretch was born. Today SoCo is self-consciously curated — the weird is now designed — but the Continental Club still anchors the block with genuine history and nightly live music that no amount of gentrification has managed to gentrify away.