Touring the neighborhood, one would be hard-pressed to find a house that retains its original character. Hyde Park is a zone of living buildings that have evolved with their environment: Bungalows that routinely spawn gargantuan vertical extensions in the rear, home equity loan affluence striving for space for the TV room and home office that Col. Shipe didn't foresee. Lawns and porches that accumulate the found art detritus of college town bohemia -- severed mannequin heads, fourth-hand frat house furniture, Volvos on blocks -- the architectural equivalents of body piercing. Strip mall bunkers that sprout vernacular monstrosities like the Frankenstein arm growing from the Hyde Park Gym and the forkful of fanciful fat propped up at Park and Duval. Even the student ghetto complexes of the '60s and '70s accrete the Hyde Park karma over time, mutating into bizarre blocks of crumbling stucco that tune the offbeat vibe, perhaps serving as accidental relays for Radio Free Austin. Would the Enforcement Committee ban it all?

    To be fair, Hyde Park has a new plan -- the NCCD Neighborhood Plan finalized in 2000, the product of tireless volunteer effort by the Association and its leading members, who have all worked very hard to put in place a set of core rules guiding future development. The goals of the NCCD are laudable, principles no one would argue with, like preserving and enhancing the unique historic and residential character and streetscape patterns of Hyde Park. The veterans of the neighborhood wars know that they are a thin gauntlet protecting more apathetic neighbors from pirate capitalists that would just as soon mow it all down to make room for more Villas at Guadalupe, Walgreen's and Chili's -- the Monroe Shipes of the 21st Century. Their challenge is to balance this experience with recognition that Hyde Park's eclectic character is essential to its survival -- preserving the spirit of the neighborhood while recognizing it looks a lot more like the world of Richard Linklater's Slackers than the "planned community" of 1891.

    The essential character of Hyde Park is libertarian, not suburban, and the Neighborhood Association should be mindful in its effort to combat incompatible development not to accidentally destroy that fragile character by rigidly enforcing rules when doing so may violate the true spirit of the neighborhood. Without its unpermitted bungalows on stilts and Volkswagen buses that last sparked a plug in the Carter administration providing a home for all the stray cats, Hyde Park would not be the same. The HPNA should be encouraged in its effort to promote good law and good neighbors, as long as it and its members can be trusted to lighten up once in a while and remember to help Keep Hyde Park Weird.

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Chris Brown 4008 Avenue H nakashima_brown@yahoo.com 467-7859