The Parlor Might Be Closing at the End of April

The family behind the Parlor, on the cover of the Chronicle in 2009

After 24 years, beloved North Austin pizza joint and music venue the Parlor might be closing at the end of April. The family-owned business, located at 4301 Guadalupe St., launched a GoFundMe earlier this month to raise $100,000 for closing costs.

The potential closure follows the death of the Parlor’s longtime landlord. David vonOhlerking, son of Parlor owner Deborah Gill, says the fundraiser’s $100,000 goal will allow the Parlor to pay its 10-or-so employees and cover business loans they’ve taken out. As of publication, the Parlor’s GoFundMe has raised about $14,000.

“We're up to date on payroll. That hasn't been a problem. I've been paying that out of my pocket. But we want to be able to give people at least another couple weeks, or a little severance thing,” vonOhlerking says. He adds that the money would allow his mom, who recently suffered brain damage in a car accident, to close the business without filing for bankruptcy.

According to vonOhlerking, his family has the option to buy the Hyde Park building for $3 million, but doesn’t have the $600,000 required for the downpayment. vonOhlerking tells the Chronicle the building has been appraised at around $2 million. If he can get the landowners to lower their asking price to that number, he says they could potentially make a deal work.

“There’s still a chance, but it’s completely contingent on two things happening,” vonOhlerking says. “One, still getting together a little more funding or finding someone who wanted to come in and partner or invest. And then two, getting [the family] to come down on the price some.”

Like many small businesses, the Parlor was hit hard by the pandemic. In January 2021, Autumn Spadaro, another one of Gill’s six children, told the Chronicle the business was mostly just covering overhead when COVID-19 hit, and incurred an additional loss when they advance-ordered extra alcohol for that year’s – canceled – South by Southwest.

In the GoFundMe statement, vonOhlerking wrote, “Our unwavering intentions to ensure our team was payed [sic] a livable wage, led to a monthly deficit that our post-c0vid bank accounts could not handle.”

Deborah Gill played in ska bands and ran a club in Arizona before she opened the original Parlor, on North Loop, in 2000. The Hyde Park location followed in 2006. Most of her six children have all worked at the business in some form over the years, and posed for the cover of the Chronicle in 2009.

Though the Parlor is known for the family’s original dough recipe and vegan meats, it’s venerated more as a music venue than a pizza joint. At one point, Gill, who booked locally through DAG Presents, and daughter Singer Mayberry, who ran Tangled Snark Productions, organized shows there seven nights a week. Together, they helped launch the careers of indie-pop duo Deep Time (formerly known as Yellow Fever) and one-man-band Scott H. Biram.

vonOhlerking says the Parlor will host shows all day, every day, until it (maybe) closes on Tuesday, April 30. Participating bands include Sabbath Crow, Cabrones, and Pocket FishRmen – playing Thursday – and Semihelix, Utley3, and Larry Seaman – playing Saturday, but he says there are others he can’t share.

“If the ‘Diver Goat Ramblers’ might be doing things… I could mispronounce a bunch of names,” vonOhlerking offers, likely referring to a particular group of Parlor-loving Austin punks. “There's a pretty even split of some people who got their start at the Parlor way back in the day and [have] gotten big. And even people who used to work here – a lot of the bigger bands used to just work at the Parlor.”

vonOhlerking says the reaction to the Parlor’s GoFundMe has inspired optimism about their future, but he can’t “with a good conscience” tell his employees to stick around. “They gotta be able to start finding jobs and stuff in case this doesn’t work out,” he reasons.

Still, he says, “People cheering and talking about it and stuff has been probably the biggest help. That's getting the exposure of possibly finding that partner, or even putting that pressure on the owner to let us stay around – let us do a reasonable offer, rather than letting this building sit vacant for the next six months.”