Austin, Illustrated

It’s practically a Texas tradition at this point: The Hole in the Wall in Austin threatens that it’s being forced to close, so someone swoops in at the 11th hour to save it. Or sometimes the 13th hour: The Hole briefly closed in 2002 but was revived the following year by new owners. Will Tanner, the latest owner of the Hole—the home of “Cheap Music, Fast Drinks, and Live Women”—started intimating last year that the bar couldn’t survive another rent hike.

The alarms went off again in September: This was it for the Hole. Earlier this month, though, the bar owner and landlord struck a new deal to renew its lease for another 5 years. Local real-estate brokers, usually painted as the villains in any story about a beloved institution shuttering its doors, stepped in and negotiated a new lease—pro bono—between parties for the Hole.