Mercurial Traffic Patterns
The original location, a typical hotel ballroom, like I’ve worked in for over thirty years? The mainstay was a hotel ballroom, near the intersection of Interstate 35 and San Antonio’s “Loop 1604.”
As the proverbial crow flies, less than a linear mile from where I first landed in San Antonio, or one of the landing spots, some twenty years back. The headshop is long gone, but the location is similar. Besides, this whole career is full of hotel ballrooms throughout Texas, mostly. It’s just where I fit in best. A few convention centers, but mostly “meeting rooms” associated with hotels. Motels, in some cases.
With a commute from Austin to San Antonio, and now, San Antonio to Austin? I’m more than used to the traffic and ongoing construction delays. However, from a business perspective, these construction zones, and associated traffic patterns, or rather associated traffic chaos, they impact business.
Customers don’t like chaos and confusion.
Mercurial Traffic Patterns
The endless and relentless construction at the confluence of Interstate 10 and San Antonio’s “Loop 1604,” that basically killed the business at the hotel by there. Then, in the following year, that metastasized in the construction at the aforementioned “1604 and 35.”
Killed the business, or our traffic slowed way down. Didn’t bother me, but the promoter noticed a precipitous drop in the door, so we’re back in the shop, now.
Mercurial Traffic Patterns
At the rock shop in Austin, same problem. Same highway number, in part, Interstate 35. A meme circulated, recently, something about the Sun being extinguished 2 billion years in the future, imploding upon itself, and that means the highway construction will have to be finished in the dark.
My entire life, I-35 has been in a state of repair, widening, and ongoing construction.
The pattern around the shop in Austin in and near Braker Lane? That whole stretch, didn’t add more than 5 minutes to the commute, for me, but the construction and weird entrance to the shop’s new compound? Scared some folks off, and rightfully so.
Made me long for the good, old days when I was neither good nor old, and I had a tall truck that would easily bump over curbs to cut my own exit ramp.
That, in itself, is a time-honored Texas tradition.
But with Mercury in Retrograde, potential patterns persist, and there are no shortcuts.
astrofish.net/travel
“Mercury is in Gatorade; stay thirsty, my friend.”
the Portable Mercury Retrograde
