The Flashback Funk Fest photos are here. What I learned? If you are in charge of the party, you shouldn’t also be in charge of taking photos…I missed a lot of action! If you have photos, why not upload them to the Wall of Fame?

e’d like to take time to thank some very special people for helping us make our Flashback Funk Fest a grand success. (And apologize for being so late about it!)

In particular, we want everyone to know about the great bands that entertained us all night, gratis.

Izzy Cox was incredible at the Flashback Funk Fest

Izzy Cox was incredible and I felt a special connection to this fellow native West Texan who crooned her modern murder ballads with a velvety voice as the night got started.  She blew us away, and made me wish we’d booked her for later in the evening when more people could hear this special lady. We will certainly hope to be lucky enough to book her for many future events to come. Wow. I wish I’d gotten my camera out when she was on.

Monster Girl Jenny Gacy wowed us next before the fashion show

Monster Girl (Jenny Gacy) gave a special solo performance just before the fashion show, and between the tinkling voice, solo piano, and adorable cocktail dress paired with converse, all were suitably charmed.  Hip and haunting… behind that good girl exterior lies some dangerous curves, and we can’t wait to hear her again soon!

Gave a fun and funky show at the Funk Fest

Framing Strangers also floored us, first by showing up with genuine smiles in Flashback apparel looking adorable… and even more so with their amazing sound. It is SO nice to see hip and talented people who aren’t too cool to ALSO be nice.  They left everyone smiling, and we want to be the official band stylist.

Venus Fixer rocked the rest of the night away at the July Flashback party

Finally, Venus Fixer wowed everyone with their high energy jam session that closed the night down. Holy crap, batman, these guys can play! Real, unpretentious rock filled the bar for a couple of hours (!!) as we all were awed, and inspired to dance. They were unstoppable….definitely a band you MUST see.

The USAA/United States Arts Authority was the perfect venue for our little soiree, and we’d really like to thank them for doing everything possible to make our lives easy and our event a success. If you have an event to host and need a cool venue with a bar, hip atmosphere, and great staff, I highly reccomend using the Spiderhouse’s USAA. Thanks guys!

The fashion show, while walked faaaar tooooo fast by our volunteer models for my camera to capture, was still very fun and fabulous, and everyone in attendance seemed to understand, it’s easy to go too fast when you’re excited. Special thanks to Jesse, Lia, Victoria (also our sound/band manager for the night), Lydia, Chelsea (our makeup/hair stylist and model wrangler), April, and everyone else involved.  It was really fun when party goers wanted to wear the fashion show outfits about, and several were purchased on the spot.

Victoria flying through the fashion show

Aidan in re-purposed vintage jacket

Jesse in vintage bell bottoms and rock tee

Lydia in an Aztec 70s Maxi-Dress

April in Funky Disco Halter Dress

Chelsea in 50's sequined swing dress

Most of our fashion models were recent LASA graduates, soon heading off to college!

We had a silent auction, and would like to thank the following people for their donations to the cause:

Kelly D Tees – Thanks Kelly for the family pack!

Troy Campell of Collection Agency Films- for the Roky Ericksen Posters

Aidan Liller for his handcrafted Vinyl Album Clutch Handbag and Hat. Amazing work from this crafy honorary Flashback mascot!

My good friend Leslie Cochran for his donation of five Leslie Magnet Sets. Buy some in-store at Flashback and help support this iconic Austinite who helps us keep it weird. Another of our honorary mascots..

A special thanks to Victoria, our amazing store manager, and her boyfriend Guy- without whom we’d have had no proper sound for the great bands who donated their time and talents.

Vicky and Guy kept us rockin all night!

And to my family- my daughter Chelsea, who ran the fashion show, my brothers Jonathan and Jeremy Boyd who worked the doors and spread the word, my sister-in-law Lydia Boyd who modeled and helped out all around, and her parents too. I am a pretty lucky girl to have them all.

Lydia Guarino-Boyd

Jeremy Boyd

Chelsea, Jonathan, and Brandi Boyd

Finally, thanks to everyone who told a friend, passed along our email invites, fanned us on facebook, and who actually came along. The long list includes TiffanyDianne of Austin is Burning, Niel Diaz of NCD Resources, Carolyn Phillips at the Chronicle, Amy Fletcher and the Onion staff, and so many more. t was a great party and we plan to make it an annual event. We even made it onto the “A-List” … so it is official. After 27 years, we are still hip. We’ll post a gallery to all the pics we took in our next post. Thanks again, Austin, for a fabulous Funk Fest. We look forward to next years’!

Iconic Austinite Leslie Cochran is a good friend and a common sight around the store…sort of a mascot of ours. We were lucky enough to host the early portion of his birthday party this June, and are honored Leslie feels so at home at Flashback. Here are a few pics of the anticswith a few special friends that evening!

Recently I took a short break and visited a friend in Washington DC. And found a few fun places I can reccomend.

First, shoe sluts must visit ShoeFly. And any Washingtonian transplant who secretly misses “keeping Austin Weird”. ShoeFly is an adorable small chain of stores owned by a mom-and-daughter team that reminded me a whole bunch of me and Chelsea. Find quality and fashionable shoes and accessories in a fun Boho atmosphere for gret prices with these ladies. I, for one, had left my favorite comfortable Italian walking shoes in my car in Austin; seeing a woman walk by my hotel with a ShoeFly bag, I googled them and started walking. In my uncomfortable shoes. And found an immediate salve to that problem in less than 20 minutes: adorable copper toned strappy wedge sandals by J-41. And had a great time swapping stories and sharing tatoos with the ladies…made me feel right at home in the heart of DC.

I also, of course, made time in my schedule to visit a few vintage shops. Well, I planned for a few. I made it to one. Annie Creamcheese, in both Georgetown and Las Vegas. Fun and funky, and full of both vintage inspired and real vintage peices. The Georgetown manager and sales staff were fun and exuberant, stylish and helpful. It was refreshing to know that in so buttoned up a town, someone IS wearing torn up tights with daisy dukes and punk rock hair.

Along the way I also visited with the owners of Phoenix Bridal in Georgetown. Quite by accident, really. But wow was I glad I went in! This delightful dress shop features not only bespoke, off the rack bridal and formal wear; but also custom designs many of their own items such as some of the best Etheopian coture I have ever withnessed, and designs dresses from client’s sketches. Including one of the most incredible opera coats I have ever seen…I am trying to get some down here to Texas! Ray and I pawed fabric swatches over a glass of wine, and I enjoyed chatting with the ladies he’d invited to offer customers a special undergarment presentation. And speaking of undergarments… the selection was small but divine here at Phoenix Bridal. Rivaling La Perla in looks and quality, but not price. So, run…don’t walk. And don’t forget your long lost dream-dress sketches.

Back in August, just after we shut down to prepare for having floors refinished, a frantic film director came knocking at our door. The location that had been arranged for some of the scenes in Hays Carll’s “She left Me for Jesus” music video … well, it just wouldn’t work, or something. And the crew had already arrived, they were just down the street. And he needed a funky, true Austin weird store to shoot in. Right away. We couldn’t refuse … and an afternoon of filming shenanigans ensued.

Not all the footage ended up in the final edit, but we were glad to offer our totally unhumble abode to the cause. In no small part because we can now call ourselves the home of ‘Bad Jesus’ (inside film crew joke), and because it was a great excuse to not scrub floors and box merchandise to ready for our upcoming rennovations. The video premiered on Imus in the Morning recently and you can watch it here on Hayes’ website. Congrats to Hayes Carll, Troy Campbell, and the whole crew.

Flashback’s location recently underwent a small facelift, and we just had to show off.

The 80+ year old white oak and yellow pine hardwood floors in our 1920’s bungalo got a refinishing, for the first time ever. They had aged and weathered to an almost black shade, and really begged to be restored from under the many rugs. We left them natural, and the result is a much brighter, lighter space.

We also added lighting in every room; which prior held only single bulb overhead fixtures, making Flashback rather dark and dreary. Now, you can see where you shop! We also found the original doors to the house’s bathroom and closets and re-hung them; the bathroom is still a walk-through area as it’s an old railway house, but now you can use the facilities with a door for privacy instead of a curtain.

Finally, we painted all but the one room in which all the inventory was stored for the floor refinishing. Adding stripes, fleur de lis, and paisleys to the front three rooms, brightening the kitchen paint, and changing colors in a few rooms. Since all the inventory was magically crammed into the back dress room, we haven’t touched that one yet, other than to add dressing rooms, but we plan to. We still have some finishing work to do here and there, but we think the end result is Flashback fabulous already.

This is the first ad that we ran in the Austin Chronicle since Flashback’s change of ownership. So it’s really not our FIRST Chron ad. But then again, it is.

This photo is of one of my sets of grandparents, Horace and Yvonne Oliver of Lubbock Texas. Yvonne, my grandmother, is one of two ladies (the other being my other grandmother) who inspired my love of vintage fashion. She was always impeccably dressed. While I never got to see her and grandpa looking soooo natty, I always noticed that grandmother never failed to wear matching demi-parure and lipstick, even in the (very stylish and matching) sweatsuits she resorted to in her eighties. She had the very best housewares- the iconic dishes from each era. I didn’t get to know grandpa Oliver for very long, but he developed a love for tools and mechanical things in me that had been otherwise ignored. Now, when I am unable to NOT buy the oldest tools at the flea market, I know it’s because they remind me of his tools. Anyhoo. They are such a lovely couple, I thought it only fitting they be in our first ad.

This ad was also for our Grand Re-Opening on October 4, 2008, during the South First Street Art Walk. We had SO much fun and can’t wait for next year!