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After a nudge from a San Antonio musician and label proprietor, the Velvet Taco restaurant on the former Tacoland website will embrace memorials to the beloved music venue’s late proprietor, Ram Ayala, by artists who had been regulars there.
Velvet Taco revamped design plans for the Pearl-area eatery after Jeff Smith, proprietor of SA’s SausTex Information, emailed in January and urged the Dallas-based chain to scrap a mural it deliberate for the positioning.
Whereas the proposed paintings, designed by Velvet Taco’s structure agency, was meant as an homage to Ayala, Smith argued in his correspondence that it felt generic — one thing “peeled straight off a big plastic tortilla chip serving bowl from H-E-B.”
What’s extra, he raised considerations {that a} stylized picture of Ayala used within the mural’s mockup borrowed closely from artwork by tattoo artist Mig Kokinda, who produced similar-looking posters and postcards of the membership proprietor.
Smith urged Velvet Taco to rethink the mural and compensate Kokinda. The outreach got here after Smith obtained a mockup of the proposed paintings from former Sala Diaz director Anjali Gupta, one other Tacoland habitué.
“To be sincere, I wasn’t anticipating to listen to again from [them] after the primary e mail,” Smith advised the Present.
‘Good to their phrase’
But he did. And after a sequence of conversations, Smith satisfied Velvet Taco advertising honcho Cassie Cooper to fee new work from Kokinda in addition to muralist Robert Tatum, each membership regulars. New Orleans tattoo artist Terry Brown, whose bands carried out at Tacoland throughout his days in SA, can also be contributing paintings.
The items are more likely to be put in by the point the restaurant opens for enterprise March 22, in response to Cooper. The eatery will Velvet Taco’s second within the Alamo Metropolis.
Cooper stated she appreciated Smith’s “candid suggestions,” including that she and others on her crew had been swayed to do extra analysis on Tacoland and Ayala, who was murdered — together with doorman Doug “Gypsy Doug” Morgan — throughout a 2005 theft try.
“The extra we did our analysis, the extra we discovered,” Cooper stated. “We needed to be very conscious that we had been paying respect not simply to Tacoland however to Ram.”
Smith stated Cooper was clear through the course of and confirmed an eagerness to respect the historical past of the positioning.
“She was very open and stated, ‘Wow. I did not get all that. We’ll make it proper,'” stated Smith, who sings for country-punk band the Hickoids and had a hand in reserving the primary punk present at Tacoland within the early ’80s. “To date, they have been good to their phrase.”
Artwork and historical past
Below the revamp, a mosaic-style portrait of Ayala will likely be put in on one of many constructing’s exterior partitions. The five-foot-by-seven-foot piece will depict Ayala in his trademark aviator shades — simply as he is appeared on stenciled posters and postcards produced by Kokinda.
The restaurant may also set up a Tatum-designed plaque within the fashion of a historic marker subsequent to the sweeping oak tree on the constructing’s patio. The marker will embrace a stylized model of a portrait tattoo artist Brown painted of Ayala.
As well as, the plaque will function a short historical past of the membership, its 300-year-old tree, Ayala and Morgan.
“Ram, Gypsy Doug and the constructing that housed the bar are all gone now, however the tree nonetheless stands robust and hopefully will stay so for generations to return as a reminder of what as soon as was and the uncooked energy and fantastic thing about nature,” it reads, partly.
Smith stated he is uncertain how a lot Velvet Taco is spending on the brand new paintings, however he estimated that it represented an funding of a number of thousand {dollars} in commissions and supplies. Neither Smith nor Tatum accepted fee for his or her contributions.
Bitter style
For Smith, Velvet Taco’s willingness to rethink its homage to Ayala stands in sharp distinction to the positioning’s prior tenant, developer Chris Erck. Erck reopened the bar in 2014 below the moniker Viva Tacoland regardless of urging from Smith and others to not use the identify.
Erck advised the Present in 2018 that he wasn’t attempting to revenue off Ayala’s legacy. “The historical past of Taco Land was type of erased,” he stated. “Now, there’s at the very least a dialog about it.”
However that is actually how Smith and different Tacoland regulars learn his motivations. For a lot of, the Erck’s institution represented the ham-handed gentrification churning by way of near-downtown neighborhoods.
Finally, the argument grew to become moot when Viva Tacoland closed in 2019 following a prolonged lease dispute with the property’s house owners, developer David Adelman and Determined Housewives actor Ricardo Chavira.
Smith acknowledged the brand new paintings could not fulfill everybody with reminiscences of rough-hewn however beloved music venue. However he stated it might erase among the bitterness many really feel about what grew to become of the positioning after Ayala’s demise.
“It simply felt like we had an opportunity to type of put issues proper this time round,” he stated.
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