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“It kind of sucks you in, ” says Kim
Chaddick, an A&M senior from
Houston. “You go over there for
lunch and get a pitcher. Then another.
And ‘just one more.’
“Then, gradually, you get to talking
to people and you forget that you had
afternoon classes, that you had
studying to do and that you don’t
have any more money until next
Friday.”
We resist temptation to join those
escaping the world for a few hours,
and walk out of Duddley’s by the front
door. Outside, we see a crowd of
people hanging out on the long
wooden benches that line the front
porches on either side of the door.
“A lot of folks just naturally migrate
to the front porch,” Benning says.
“We have one on either side of the
door, so you can have two unique
social groups out there; they can
intermingle if they want to.
“We’re living in a small town in the
country, and there’s no pollution
problem. It’s really nice just to be
outside. It’s pretty agreeable weather
six or seven months out of the year. ”
After stopping to chat with a couple
of leather-jacketed guys whose
motorcycles are pulled up next to the
porches, we reverse our steps back
past the Dixie Chicken and head over
to Sticky Chins to get some ice cream.
The old-fashioned soda shop
We pass the Chicken’s front porch,
which also tends to collect people, and
enter Sticky Chins —which,
incidentally, Canter also owns.
It’s a long, narrow building just
large enough to hold several dozen
flavors of ice cream and a couple of
tables. Most folks just get a dip and eat
it while they continue their walk down
Northgate. But it’s nice to sit here for a
few minutes and watch people go by.
The shop opened in 1985.
“Sticky Chins used to be a bicycle
shop for years, ” Canter says, “then I
rented it for years and it was nothing
but a storage room. Roof caving in
and everything else. I remodeled the
whole building... We’re looking for
the 1800s soda-shop deal over there. ”
Pizza pizzazz
Next to Sticky Chins is the Flying
Tomato, a pizza-pub that has rock ’n’
roll bands once or twice a week. The
Flying Tomato also has tables out
front where people can sit and watch
the world go by.
Hopping to please
Hungry? But you’ve got only five
minutes and a couple of dollars to
your name? No problem. We’ll go to
the Cow Hop. For about $2 each, we
order a “cow pie with fries” and
unlimited iced tea.
The long-haired androgynous-
looking employee adds our ticket to
the long row of others awaiting
attention in the smoke-filled kitchen.
Despite its unappetizing name, the
cow pie is a fairly good hamburger,
and the Cow Hop, open since 1978, is
another Northgate institution.
“You’ve got seniors taking
freshmen here, ” says John Ward,
manager. “We like to think it’s almost
a tradition at A&M. ” The place
doesn’t have a lot of class, but its
quick, assembly-line service and rock-
bottom prices keep the customers
coming back.
“NUMBER 4851!” yells an irate
voice from the kitchen window.
“Yeah, you! Come get your food
before it gets cold!” We grab our
burgers and find a seat out back, in
the sunshine. It takes about five to
seven minutes from the end of the line
to when you get your burger. When
you have half an hour for lunch, that’s
pretty good. Sunday nights, when
A&M’s dining halls are closed, the
Cow Hop does a big business.
This summer the Cow Hop
expanded into the empty building
next door. The Cow Hop Expansion
has pool tables and occasional live
bands.
New kids on the block
Also competing for the lunch crowd
are two more new restaurants, the
Brazos Landing, which offers pretty
inexpensive seafood, and Gizmo’s,
which has, well, unusual food. It’s
hard to put these in a category.
“We used to kid around —when
people would say what kind of food
do you have, we’d say, ‘Uh, we have
Gizmonian food,’ ” says Laurie
Tanguy, owner of Gizmo’s. “It’s really
the only way to describe it A lot of
people want to call us a soup-
sandwich-salad type of place, but
we’re not. Our most popular items are
like — things that we made up. They
aren’t sandwiches, they’re not salads,
they’re not entrees. Like the shrimp
dip in a round sourdough bowl-thing.
It doesn’t really fit. It’s like munchie
food.”
Gizmo’s, which opened in 1985,
has mixed drinks, tablecloths,
aquarium-lined walls and waiters. Soft
jazz music is piped in. The atmosphere
is a notch up from the usual Northgate
fare, which shows in the prices on the
menu, although they’re still
reasonable. Tanguy says she’s more
interested in quality than quantity.
“You can’t get a meal for $1.50
here, ” she says. “There’s a market for
that, because people are on limited
budgets, but that’s not what I’m doing
here. ”
Steams, owner of Brazos Landing,
shares Tanguy’s philosopy.
“Our ambition was to try to bring
something a little more sophisticated
than the usual Northgate scene, ”
Steams says. “Live jazz and blues, a
menu that has more to eat than
burgers, a nice selection of beer and a
place where it’s a little nicer to sit — a
pleasant environment more
conducive to a conversation. ”
Brazos Landing offers —depending
on the season — oysters on the half
shell, crayfish, shrimp and other
seafood items. The menu items are
surprisingly inexpensive, and on
Sunday the special is an all-you-can-
eat fish dinner. The restaurant has
both rock ’n’ roll and jazz bands
playing some weekends.
Northgate extras
Also on the strip are several
bookstores, a camera shop, a chicken
wing restaurant, a sandwich shop and
two other pizza places.
Most of the food places, with an eye
on the student market, accept
personal checks and offer free delivery
to the A&M residence halls. Northgate
draws quite a lunch crowd during the
day, with people walking to and from
the University. Several new
restaurants have opened in the last
year or so, hoping to capitalize on this
prime location.
Dance after dark
If we feel like dancing, we can walk
farther down the block to Rocco’s, a
restaurant that turns into a new wave
nightclub after dark. The crowd here
consists mainly of sorority and
fraternity types, well-dressed, talkative
and sociable. The feeling is upbeat
and big-city.
Rocco’s, open since 1986, has live
rock ’n’ roll bands, a variety of food
items to choose from the lunch menu,
and dance-new wave music nightly.
A potential problem is that most of
the churches in College Station are on
the street—aptly named Church
Street — directly behind Northgate.
But Benning says all efforts are made
to make sure the church grounds
aren’t disturbed by “happy”
customers leaving the strip. With a few
exceptions, there’s been a peaceful
coexistence.
“We pay for a guy to come out
every Saturday morning and sweep
the church parking lots,” Benning
says, “and we try to pick up any debris
that might be on the lawns. We try to
give the image that we’re not even
over here. This is a residential
neighborhood, with a lot of churches,
but if everyone does their part, usually
we have no complaints. ”
So far, the most successful and
permanent Northgate establishments
have been hole-in-the-wall, college
hangouts. The exceptions — like
Gizmo’s, Brazos Landing and Rocco’s
— are all fairly new, so it may take the
test of time to determine whether
Northgate can be civilized. After all,
the jury is still out on whether A&M
itself can be civilized. But in the
meantime, the drinks at Northgate will
keep flowing, the bands will play and
people will want to hang out and
escape the world for a few hours. And
whenever you feel like a beer — or
five, or six — Northgate will be there.
Photo by Shelly Schluter