I took a walk yesterday from University Avenue near the Texas Tech campus eastward to Avenue A on Broadway, eventually reaching the site where the first Stubb's Bar-B-Q stood until it closed in the mid-1980s, until the business moved to Austin.

There's an amazing little historical environment built up around where this business once existed. It was a tiny establishment, no more than about twenty feet wide and fifty feet long. Yet, it served as a restaurant, bar, and nightclub where some great musicians played for several years. The original floor is still there, with various signs planted into it, indicating where parts of the joint were situated: KITCHEN, PIT, LADIES, MENS, JUKEBOX, STAGE.

I'm not sure who financed the installation of this permanent exhibit or who pays to maintain it, but carved into red bricks surrounding the floor are the names of many music makers like John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, David Byrne, Emmylou Harris, and Lucinda Williams. This is the face of Stubbs, himself, aka Christopher B. Stubblefield, Sr. For a gallery that I put together of photos that I snapped there yesterday, click http://pics.livejournal.com/dabroots/gallery/00063qr1 and take note there are four pages in that particular album. (Be warned that the first many photos in that gallery are pictures of bricks with names carved into, therefore not all that fascinating. Various views of the statue--a pretty remarkable work of sculpture--are a bit further on.) LATER NOTE: A bit of Googling came up with references to BUY A BRICK AND GET YOUR NAME PUT ON IT, which might explain why many of the bricks have the names of local people, not musicians. I still wonder if David Byrne, for example, bought his own brick.

LATER NOTE: I decided to drop a brick into this post. Lucinda Williams has the prettiest brick of all, so here it is.