For more than four decades, the Pinata Party Palace, located on Cesar Chavez Street in East Austin, has remained steadfastly anchored to the past while the world around it has changed. Glassy office buildings and trendy, upscale eateries have flooded the neighborhood, but the beat-up looking, one-story warehouse—bright yellow and covered in sun-bleached advertisements for party supplies—has continued to delight its loyal customers. That sort of proud history might be a cause for preservation. But in East Austin, which remains the throes of a dramatic transformation fueled by gentrification, legacy can often feel like a liability.
The shop’s owner, Jorge Salazar, a 50-year-old veteran who served during the Gulf War, grew up in a Victorian-style home a few blocks away from his store. Salazar is warm, comedic, and talkative, qualities that have helped him pass unscathed through cartel-controlled checkpoints in Mexico, where he sometimes travels to pick up the handmade piñatas that he sells at his shop. Over the years, he has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel and created a custom-made piñata for Hillary Clinton. Salazar is most proud of being one of the first in Texas to offer Donald Trump piñatas, helping to ignite a trend that fueled sales across the country during his presidency.
To his customers, Salazar—who took over the store more than a decade ago from another longtime owner—is a beloved character and a neighborhood fixture. He’s known to design a one-of-a-kind decoration for a wedding, anniversary, or kid’s birthday. “Adults love piñatas, especially the naughty ones for bachelor and bachelorette parties,” he said. “But the best is when a little kid gets to see their piñata for the first time. It’s something they don’t forget and neither do you.”
Barring a miraculous change of some kind, it’s a joy he’ll no longer be able to indulge in. Last week, the building’s owner of two years, an Austin-based development company called 3423 Holdings, placed a lock on the shop’s front door and began the process of evicting Salazar. The firm plans to construct a two-story office building where the piñata shop currently stands. “We have to redevelop the property because we paid millions for it and it costs way more than what the owner of the piñata shop is paying,” John Paquin, a company representative, said.
In previous interactions, Salazar said, the building’s ownership had implied he was selling drugs to keep his doors open and treated him more like a nuisance than a longtime member of the community. Reached by phone, Paquin said his company had been “really nice” with Salazar, whose name he couldn’t remember, but his tenant was three months late on his rent, which is around $5,000 per month. He also denied that anyone at the firm ever accused Salazar of selling drugs. “We’ve bent over backwards for this guy,” Paquin said. “We don’t want to hurt him in any way.”
Salazar, meanwhile, claims he has intentionally forgone paying rent because ownership has refused to fix his ceiling, repair his air-conditioning, or return the deposit he says he put down when he took over the lease. During a recent tour of the building, multiple holes could be seen in the ceiling and, inside, the temperature had surpassed 90 degrees. Representatives of 3423 Holdings meanwhile say they can find no record of a deposit. Paquin argues the building was already in a state of disrepair when 3423 Holdings purchased it two years ago. At the time, he said, his team offered to move Salazar to another location.
Salazar denies that any concrete offer was ever made. “They basically didn’t care that the rent for this building has been paid consistently for 45 years or that we do good business,” Salazar said. “They just wanted me gone.”
The neighborhood around the piñata store has changed rapidly over the last decade. East Austin was home to working-class Latino families for more than a century, but has, in recent years, become one of the city’s primary hot zones for Airbnb party houses owned by outside investors and bars promoted by influencers and hospitality groups seeking to amass followers and turn a profit. The area hosts numerous development projects that are changing the historic character of the neighborhood, while also providing new housing and conveniences for new residents.
When 3423 Holdings bought the property including the piñata store and the gas station next door two years ago, the gas station was rundown and the corner was plagued by homelessness and drug-dealing, Paquin said. But recently, thanks to his team’s efforts, the gas station has been transformed into Chalmers, a splashy new southwestern-themed bar with fire pits and a patio featuring multiple big screen TVs. The restaurant’s website promises to “show ‘em how we do it out here on the East Side.” (None of the hospitality team’s members are from East Austin, the company acknowledges.)
During the construction of Chalmers, Salazar said workers used his parking lot to store equipment and park their work trucks each day for more than a year despite him pleading for parking spaces for his customers. “People would tell me they couldn’t even see my shop when they passed by,” he said, pointing out a large gray shipping container still blocking a large chunk of his parking lot. Paquin acknowledged the shipping container, but denied that Salazar’s business was hampered by the bar’s construction.
If Pinata Party Palace is evicted, it would be the second time East Austin’s past and future have clashed over a popular piñata store. In 2015, Jumpolin, one of the neighborhood’s most beloved piñata shops, was leveled with its inventory still inside the building as its tenants looked on. Though many shuttered East Austin businesses are fondly remembered, the piñata shops have induced a particular form of nostalgia. They’re closely associated with milestones—birthdays, weddings, holidays and celebrations—that turn into lasting memories. When they disappear, for some, it can feel as if an elemental part of those personal memories vanish with them. Eventually, Jumpolin’s rubble was cleared and a highly controversial (and since shuttered) “cat cafe” was erected in its place, instantly becoming a monument to local gentrification that bordered on satire. As Texas Monthly’s Michael Hardy reported in 2018, heated protests ensued.
The protests may have died down, in part because of how many local residents have been displaced by the rising housing costs, but much of the original frustration remains. Chas Moore, an Austin community activist who heads the Austin Justice Coalition, a community organization that advocates for those impacted by gentrification, said that the public typically associates gentrification with housing, but it also impacts small businesses that play a large role in maintaining the culture and character of a neighborhood. That’s especially true in an area like Cesar Chavez, which was lined with Latino-owned, mom-and-pop businesses until fairly recently. A new landlord who arrived not long ago, he said, may not realize that an outdated-looking older business may have a loyal customer base. “When outsiders come in, they often ignore the layout of the community and just see the next opportunity for the brewery or yoga spot,” he said. “How many more places do we need to drink alcohol in Austin?”
One day this week, after his building’s owner placed a lock on the Pinata Party Palace, Salazar defiantly removed it with a bolt cutter, walked inside his store, and began clearing out some of his delicate merchandise, worth $45,000 combined. He was afraid that his business could meet the same fate as Jumpolin. I asked him if I could take a photo of him holding his favorite piñata, the one that felt most reflective of his time running the shop. He looked around carefully, bypassing Superman, princesses, and various Disney characters crowded together on the shelves.
Eventually, he picked up a rectangular American flag piñata, and walked outside and into the hot Texas sunlight. I asked him why he had chosen that one. “The people who are moving into this neighborhood, many of them think we’re stupid, they think we don’t speak English and they think we’re illegal, like we don’t even belong here,” he said, a determined look spreading across his face. “But I am a veteran and a business owner and I love my community and my country. That’s why I chose this piñata.”
