Review from Monk.com

Hole in the Wall

There are soooooo many good places to hear music in Austin that aren't reviewed in this guide (Black Cat, the Cactus Cafe, Liberty Lunch, and during South by Southwest everything from mini-marts to record stores to gas stations). Hole in the Wall made our list because it is a sure-bet to see a musician drunk on his ass and falling off the stage. The night we entered, Slobberbone, a rowdy four piece outfit, was playing the nastiest cowpoke rock we'd ever heard. The crowd was pure hippy, pure college. There's not more than a dozen tables to sit at in this storefront dive. The bar is so old you'd get splinters if you ran your hand across it. The reasons you come to Hole in the Wall, and the reasons locals have kept this dump alive for 25 years are the beer's cheap, the smoke's heavy, and it offers the best small bar rock and roll in all of Austin. You enter through a door, which has a baseball bat affixed to the doornob. In the back is a game room with half a dozen pool tables and a video arcade. When we entered the back room we found owner Jeff Smith sprawled on a table with his legs up in the air getting porked by a pool stick. The doorman was doing acrobatics on a neighboring table, and two chicks were making out in the corner. Jeff couldn't make it to his feet, but an old coot named Tex said if we'd come back on a Sunday things really get cookin'.

[original article at http://www.monk.com/placestogo/austin/ausbarsclub3.html ]