Hippy Church

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Another lovely warm spring day in Austin. We went to Sunday brunch at Maria's Taco Xpress. It's only a block away from where we are staying across the street on Lamar. We've been there in years past but not on this trip. They have live music on their outdoor patio and advertise the weekly Sunday event as the "Hippie Church". There certainly were a few hippies there.

The "Rockin' Gospel Project" is a very large band, somewhat ad hoc, that plays the first Sunday of every month. They're sort of R&B and 60's music with a dynamic leader who worked very hard to keep the audience rocking. The band members are older (well old like us) and we haven't seen such a congregation of old hippies for quite a while.  At one point, they passed out face masks (actually masks you would use for doing plaster work), did a song called the coronavirus dance and had everyone put on the masks to join in dancing. Some did a conga line dancing around the patio. People were to take pictures and post them on Youtube saying "Austin's ready!".

Like many Austin events people bring their dogs which tend to be well behaved. We find it odd that so many restaurants let you bring your pets.

I met a young woman who was shooting pictures for their Facebook page, she asked if I'd share any pictures we took and we've gladly obliged. The picture above is Kate's.>

It was quite a funny event but, in retrospect, a bit of black humor -- laughing in the face of imminent catastrophy. Coronavirus isn't a joke.